WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1859
284
parties to the sale of this land. I will briefly express this view, and I will challenge upon it the judgment of this honorable body, whether there was fairness or fraud in the transaction. I refer to the circumstance of the monstrous inequality between the amount of purchase money to be paid by Judge ·watrous and his partners, for these lands, and their actual value at the time of the sale. And I will start out with the well-settled prin- ciple of law, that a purchaser, with a notice of fraud in the sale on the part of those selling, becomes a party to the fraud. Here, then, as the evidence shows, we see a body of sixty thousand acres of choice land, worth at the time of sale, at least one hundred thousand dollars, with land scrip to the amount of "ten or twelve thousand acres," sold for the paltry sum of $6,200. This scrip alone had a cash market value at the time of the sale, nearly, if not quite, equal to the whole amount of the purchase money; but, located on a questionable title, its market value was much more, which would render the La Vaga title an absolute donation to these parties. These lands were in the hands of trus- tees, Messrs. M. B. Menard and Nathaniel F. Williams. The latter was the brother of Mrs. St. John, the party for whose benefit the sale was made; the other was one of the large land operators in Texas; and both were intimately acquainted with the value of property of this description. The title, also, had been derived through Samuel M. Williams, also a brother of Mrs. St. John, who was the actor in obtaining the title, and who knew all about it. If there was any defect in that title, he knew of it. If there was a reason for selling it cheap, he knew of it. Further, it is to be noticed, that shortly previous to the sale of this land, the case of Hancock vs. McKinney, 10 had been de- cided in the district court of the State, wherein a title, exactly similar to the La Vega title, as admitted by Judge Watrous himself, had been adjudged to be valid. So identical were the titles, as the testimony shows, ·that it may be considered that the adjudication was upon this very title, purchased from Williams by Judge Watrous and his partners. Yet, under all these circumstances, this large body of land, worth $100,000 at least, and the title to which had just been de- clared valid by the district court of the State, is sold by gentle- men who are acting under the obligations of a trust, and who are well acquainted with the value of the land, for a few cents an acre! I ask, do not all these circumstances combine to show that thei:e was a known and acknowledged defect in the title? They irresistibly point to the fact that Williams knew that there was
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