275
WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1851
bay; they were everywhere but where they ought to have been. When they did get together, they mismanaged everything, and kept us still in trouble. The following year the constitution was recognized by the people, voted upon, and adopted ; and at the same time, you will recollect, for I want you to think of this matter and· see what trials we have had, they voted upon the subject of annexation to the United States. Out of all the votes given, but 96 were opposed to annexation, and yet you postponed us from 1836 to 1845, nine years of probation. A government wa3 established ; our debt was then about a million and a half of dollars. The executive came in. All the papers-the archives of the whole nation-were in one old skin trunk made of boards, covered with cowhide; and there was the first germ of constitu- tional government. It began by the distribution of the docu- ments ; the government lasted two years, and the debt was then a million and a half of dollars. A new administration came in on the 28th day of August, 1838, and it lasted three years. The debt accumulated under that government from a million and a half to over twelve millions of dolla1rs. A new administration commenced-a new currency was created-an exchequer system established-the old debt postponed because there was nothing to pay it with (we refused to pay it, to save the creditors the trouble of calling for it). We established, as I said, the ex- chequer system, issuing only a currency of $200,000, and never more than fifty thousand of that at one time; it was depressed occasionally by a new meeting of the legislature, by improvident laws, and by the contests between the legislature and the presi- dent as to who should be the chief; they would pass laws, and he would veto them; and so they kept up a see-saw system. But they made out to carry on the government without in- curring one dollar of additional expense, and paid $70,000 of old debts to the United States and Great Britain, growing out of the piratical conduct of some scoundrels that government had em- ployed. We had to redeem every dollar of it with gold and silver. France and Great Britain, seeing we were such good economists, tried to establish more intimate relations with us, until Uncle Sam, seeing what they were about, thought at last it was time to annex us. ·well, to tell the truth, the United States managed that affair elegantly. They first made a man of straw, and then sent a minister to put him down. England never made any overture to Texas on the subject of slavery, or anything else that was not perfectly compatible with the kindest relations with the
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