TEXAS INDIAN PAPERS, 1860-1916
293
In order that you may be able to satisfy yourself of the justice of the statements herein made, I have caused a full statement of the receipts and expenditures of this county for the past year to be made out with care, and annex it hereto. From this it will appear that our annual outlay for securing and bringing criminals to justice amounts to the sum of nearly eleven thousand dollars. against a nett income from all sources of a little over six thousand. In exact figures our expendi- tures for the past year have been in excess of our receipts four thousand and four hundred and twenty dollars. If this was mereiy an exceptional case, hard as it would undoubtedly be, it would furnish no grave cause of complaint. But a similar state of affairs has existed here for many years past. The deficit has heretofore been made up by issueing county scrip. to supply the place of the lacking funds. In this manner we have now reached a point, where county scrip has become value- less. It can only be sold, in limited quantity, for a few cents on the dollar. It will no longer purchase subsistence for pris- oners in the hands of the Sheriff, and our community stands in actual danger of being compelled to release a jail-ful of expert and practised criminals in consequence. There is no Legisla- ture to which we can apply for aid. Even if their were, our isolated position, sparse population and necessarily feeble rep- resentation would not give us sufficient influence in a political body, principally composed of men unused to the examination of abstract questions of justice, to secure us a permanent safe guard against the recurrence of our present disorder. I there- fore invoke the interposition of your authority to protect this remote and numerically feeble American community from the dangers that threaten it. Political or social disorders among the permanent residents of this place are now, and have always been, unknown. Our present financial embarrassments are not the result of neglect or prodigality on the part of the people or their officers. They are due solely to our geographical po- sition. They arise from our being required to sentinel and pro- tect the interior Counties of the State and at the same time contribute equally with them for the support of a state govern- ment that does not and cannot afford us protection in return. We are at once compelled to stand on guard and do extra duty. The remedy lies in either remitting the one or compensating the other. We seek merely that so much of the State tax as is necessary to pay the expenses of maintaining civil order here
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