WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 184-2
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intended to operate within their own appropriate spheres. They are designed as checks and balances to each other; and being distinct, but conjointly presenting and sustaining our beautiful system of free and republican government. They are mutually dependent upon each other when preserved in systematic opera- tion. Suspend either in its action, and at once the system is deranged. Embarrass the action of any one by a combination of the remaining two for that purpose, and they cease to har- monize: the whole system yields to discord, and the ends for which the structure was intended are supplied by the worst of evils-anarchy and ruin. No one department of government is so immediately connected (under a wise constitution and laws) with the well-being of the community as the Judiciary. The rights of the people, their peace, their property, their persons and lives, are under the con- servation of the courts so long as they exist. They are to be accessible to all, and hence they become familiar to every one as a place of refuge for the innocent and where the guilty are to be punished. Thus, independent of their being regarded by every statesman as the palladium of liberty, they are looked to by every citizen as the tribunal to which he must appeal for the redress of wrongs and the protection of his rights. To maintain an able, honest and enlightened Judiciary should be the first object of every free country; and in none can its influence be more salutary than in Texas, where discord, disorder and disobedience have raged with so much violence. The civil authorities of the country must be established and preserved, or Texas must fail in the accomplishment of rational government. 1 Executive Record Book, No. 40, pp. 22-23, Texas State Library. 2 Jose Antonio Navarro (February 27, 1795-1870), second son and third child of Angel and Mary Josepha (Ruiz) Navarro, was born in San Antonio, Texas. His father, a native of Corsica, was one of the "Canary Island Colonists" who settled San Antonio. His mother was a member of an old and wealthy Spanish-Mexican family of Saltillo. At San Antonio, the Navarro family was well-to-do; the father was a merchant, honest and honorable. After 1813, however, they lost much of their fortune, and for years were under the persecution of the Spanish-Mexican Government, be- cause they had taken part in the insurrection (1813) against Arredondo. Jose Antonio Navarro was always a friend to the Anglo-American settlers in Texas; he admired and loved Stephen F. Austin with great loyalty (Lamar Papers, III, 524), and always considered himself a true Texan. He was proud to give of his fortune and his personal talents to the service of his native Texas. In 1834-1835, he served as land commissioner for the Bexar District, and for DeWitt's colony; he was a member of ~he conven- tion of 1830 that declared the independence of Texas for Mexico, and he
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