Another weighty reason in favor, is that the world are not yet sufficiently informed or enlightened on the causes or the merits of the present conflict. The people of Texas have been, and now are accused of being ungrateful rebels, who have repaid the favors and bounties of the nation with ingratitude and rebellion. This accusation is unfounded and unjust. That individuals have committed imprudences and even excesses, and by so doing, have injured the character and the best interests of Texas, by giving a pretext to our enemies to confound the whole of the people with those individuals may be true; but when the causes of such excesses are sought for, they will be found to have proceeded from bad government, bad legislation, ·bad administration, or no government at all. Is this the fault of Te.xas? Whenever the people here have tried to get a local organization of government, in order lo correct and punish such excesses, they have been treated as rebels; so that the people are denounced because the want of local government produces anarchy; and when ever they attempt to apply a remedy, they are treated as ungrateful rebels! This country has been redeemed from the wilderness by the people who now Jive in it, and without any cost to the general government or to the nation. The settlers were stimulated to persevere and to overcome the most appalling difficulties, by the express guarantees of a liberal system of government, and of the right of self-government in their internal a ff airs, as a state of the Mexican confcderation. The lands thus received were granted and sold by the slate of Coahuila and Texas, and not by the general government, (except a few old grants, previous to the establishment of the federal system); and it is worthy of notice, that one of the crimes attributed to the authorities of Coahuila and Texas by the general government, as justification for its military intervention, was a granting of their lands; and yet the general government claims all the merit of having given them away to the Texians! These lands and this country, at the commencement of the settlement, fourteen years ago, were valueless, and so considered by the general government, they became the sole property of the state of Coahuila and Texas, and the stale alone had the power to dispose of them. The stale authorities have always considered them to be valueless; a proof of which is the manner in which they have been disposed of, given away for nothing to native Mexicans, in eleven league tracts, and sold lo them and to the colonists (for all the
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