489
PAPERS OF MIRABEAU BuoNAPARTE LAMAR
your welfare the president addressed you a letter 37 dated the 14th. of April 1840 in which you were invited to a more intimate Union and a political Co-operation with the people of this section of the Republic, giving you at the same time every assurance that all the rights and pro- tection guaranteed by our free institutions should be extended to you as fully as to any other of our fellow citizens. Your attention is again respectfully invited to the subject matter of that letter, a (copy of which is hereto annexed) and after a due consideration of the proposi- tion it contains, if you should deem it to be your interest, as we think you will, to to [sic] accede to the views of the government, you rest assured that all the pledges which it makes will be most faithfully ful- filled. Knowing that you have been long subjected to lib injuries with those which impelled us to take up arms against the authorities of Mexico, we do not doubt but that you duly appreciate the spirit, that animated our patriots, and sympathized with them in the progress of our struggle in which you were not able to participate.- as you probably desired to do-in consequence of your remote and isolated situation. That strug- gle was brief, bloody and decisive; and terminated in the total discom- fiture and expulsion of our foe, and in the establishment of a free, happy, and independent, Republic, extending from the Sabine to the Rio del Norte, and from the Gulf to the Pacific; embracing within its limits a vast and varied Country, unrivalled in beauty, salubrity, and fertility; and capable of sustaining a population as dense prosperous · and powerful as any people on the earth. The boundaries which were thus marked by the sword, and which have been confirmed to us, by the recognition of t~e most enlightened and influential nations, it is the re- solve of this Government, at all hazards to maintain the country has been won by our valor, and is consecrated to civil :md religious liberty; and in no portion of it will the enemy who provoked our resentment and received our chastisement, ever be permitted to continue its authority or perpetuate its domination. Knowing such to be the feelings of our people, it is due to candor to apprise you of the fact and to let you know that the position which which rsic] you now occupy towards this govern- ment is temporary only and will have to give way to a more enlarged and liberal policy.- Although residing within our established limits you are at present payin~ tribute to our enemies, professinis allegiance to them and receiving Laws from their hands a state of things utterly in- compatible with our right of sovereignity, and which certainly cannot be permitted to be of long continuance. We do not use this languge in any spirit of unkindness to you; and although it is plain ·and unequivocal it proceeds from no design or desire on our part to extend the jurisdic- tion of our government over the country you occupy in opposition to your wishes. Our purpose is simply to place before you the rights which we claim, and to admonish you of the change in your condition which the force of circumstances will inevitably bring about at no distant period, either with or without your consent; for no one can be blind to the truth, who reflects a moment on the subject, that constituting as you do, a portion of the civilized population of this Republic, you can~ not. upon any principles of justice, or considerations of policy be allowed
•'No. 1773.
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