their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in ils stead, calculated to rescue them from impending clangers, and Lo secure their welfare and happiness. Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts Lo the public opinion of mankind. A slalemenl of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justifi- cation of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the ~lexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth. The Mexican government, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the Anglo American population of Texas to colonize its wilderness under the pledged faith of a \\Titten conslilulion, that they should continue to enjoy thal constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habi Luated in the land of their birth, the Uniled States of America. In this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the Mexican nation has acquiesced lo the la le changes made in the government by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who, having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers, as the cruel alternative, either to abandon our homes, acquired Ly so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood. It hath sacrificed our welfare to the stale of Coahuila, by which our interests have been continually depressed through a jealous and partial course of legislation, carried on at a far dis(ant seal of government, by a hostile majority, in an unknown tongue, and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned in the humblest terms for the establishment of a separate state government, and have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented to the general congress a republican constitution, which was, without a just cause, contemptuously rejected. It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens, for no other cause but a zealous endeavour to procure the acceptance of our constitution, and the establishment of a state government. It has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the )ife, liberty, and property of the citizen. It has failed to establish any public system of education, al though possessed of almost boundless resources, (the public
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