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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1837
112
JUNE, 1837
To THE TEXAS CONGRESS 1
Executive Department, June 3, 1837.
Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Representatives. An act for the relief of those who lost property during the war, has been presented to me for approval, and received my careful consideration. However much I am inclined to applaud the motives which led to the passage of the bill, contemplating as it does the relief of persons who have been sufferers in our present arduous struggle, I am constrained under the view I take of the subject to decline giving it my signature. Some of the losses and injuri~~ it proposes to redress, namely those inflicted by the enemy and the Indians, are of a character which lie, as I think, wholly beyond the reach of legislative relief. They seem rather to come under the denomination of those inevitable evils of human destiny, which, like the visita- tions of Providence, have to be borne with patience and resigna- . tion by those upon whom they are inflicted. Many and various are the calamities that fall upon men in civil society, such as ravages by flood, fire, pestilence, and the like, which it would be vain to expect government to alleviate. No one would say that it was possible for any human agency, wisdom or ability, to make good to the innumerable victims of misfortune, which the world is daily presenting to us, the losses and bereavements to which in the course of human affairs they find themselves subjected. They are left out of the care of government then, not because there is any want of sympathy or humanity for their sufferings, but because it is plain there is no public mode of administering to them the desired relief, without continually attacking the established foundations of property, and subjecting all that is in the hands of those that have anything at all, to new divisions of those who have nothing,-and this would immediately lead to a dissolution of society. That injuries inflicted by an enemy in time of war are looked upon in the light of ordinary visitation of Providence which laws cannot undertake to redress is sufficiently clear fron the fact that there is not an instance within my knowledge, in the history of the world, when the government has interposed on such occasions. In the oldest and wealthiest countries it is con- sidered impossible to do it; how much more so is it in a country
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