WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1842
463
an act to define the boundaries of the Republic of Texas." 2 I trust your Honorable Body will bear with me, while I assign my reasons for the course which I feel compelled to adopt. Texas has heretofore declared by the law of 1836, that her limits should be bounded on the West by the principal stream of the Rio Grande to its source, thence due North to the forty second degree of latitude and the boundary line of the United States. This formed our limits with Mexico; and agreeably to this we have been recognized as independent by the United States and also by those European governments with which we have estab- lished relations. From these facts, it seems to me that until Texas has it in he1· power to exercise ju1-isdiction, it can be of no possible advantage to her, that she should assert any claim which would subject her to derision, or evince a wish to extend her claim to territory by mere assumption of a right, which she might not be able to enforce. The recognized limits of Texas are greater than either her population or her resources will enable her at this time to occupy. To extend our limits according to the provisions of the bill, would embrace a region of country larger than the United States of the North, and include two thirds of the territory of the Re- public of Mexico. It would take in portions of the States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa, and all of Chihuahua, New Mexico, Sonora, and Upper and Lower California. It is also but reasonable to calculate, that the inhabitants of those vast regions would not number less than two millions. It would ap- pear curious to nations in amity with us, that a people destitute of means to meet their most pressing wants and measuring less than one hundred thousand, should assume, by a declaratory law, that they have the right to govern a country possessing a popula- tion more than thirty to one. T'hus far I am inclined to believe other nations would regard the measure as visionary-or as a legislative jest-inasmuch as it would assume a right which it is utterly impossible to exercise. But other considerations of a most grave and solemn character impress themselves upon my mind. The Mediation of England has been invoked between the governments of Texas and Mexico -the exercise of which has only been delayed in consequence of a want of the ratification and exchange of treaties. This difficulty will, however, soon cease to exist. So soon as the exchange of the ratifications can take place at London, there can be no doubt but that the British Minister at Mexico will be authorized to
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