----------------- ---
equally well known to the people of th-e United States in general. We will therefore take the liberty briefly to stale them. During the long period that ~lexico was despotically ruled by the King of Spain, through the medium of a Viceroy, the jealous and mistaken policy characteristic of Spanish dominion, rigorously excluded the residence of foreigners from its territories-and as the Mexicans themselves arc an enterprising, pastoral, mining people-not agricultural in their habits-the vast and fertile plains of Texas remained, during the whole of this period a slumbering wilderness, their very existence almost unknown except to the savages who made it their hunting grounds, or the occasional traders who traversed it in the course of their adventmous journeys from the United Stales to the ~lexican interior. But about the year 1824, the people of Mexico, after the example of the United States, having thrown off the galling yoke of Spanish bondage, a more liberal and enlightened policy began to pervade their national councils and the advantages arising from the residence of enterprising and i11teUigent foreigners among them, became apparent to its rulers. It was particularly the policy of the government that the then wilderness of Texas should be settled and cultivated, and thus serve as a frontier protection to the interior provinces against savage incursions. Accordingly, a system of colonization laws was framed, by which foreigners, and particularly citizens of the United States, were not only allowed, but invited to settle in the country, and such inducements held out as had never before been known in any government. Having modelled their constitution of 1824 after that of the United States-of which it is almost a literal copy-the inducements of Republican Government, equal rights, liberal laws, and a splendid endowment of public lands, were offered to every emigrant. Great numbers availed themselves of the privilege; and braving the privations of the wilderness and the dangers of savage warfare, are now possessed of comfortable homes, and in some instances, large estates in a country which is beginning to attract the attention of the world, on account of its great fertility, unequalled climate and abundant production of the richest of all agricultural staples-cotton and sugar-a country which may without exaggeration by denominated "the garden spot of the world,"- the fairest portion of the sweet and sunny south-in which, more than any othcr,-man is exempt from the original curse
'I
54
Powered by FlippingBook