WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1859
357
What did I find? The country bankrupt. The promises of the government not worth ten cents on the dollar,-the National debt twelve millions,-not a reguiar mail communication,-a portion of Eastern Texas in a state of civil war. My administra- tion was commenced. Quiet was reestablished. Peace was made with Mexico. A portion of the public debt was paid. A currency was established and when I went out there was money ·in the treasury. Whether it was wisdom, patriotism, luck or accident, it was done, and I leave the country to judge as to how it was done. Where is the five million dollars which was placed in your treasury? Is taxation coming? I told you to look for these things, and it is time you should look at them. I do not pretend to say the money is not there, though 'I'd have authority for saying so; but these things may be asked. I will pledge you one thing, however, that if it is there, it will stay there, or I will know what's done with it. I'll promise you that no man shall get a cent of it, without the full sanction of law, be he a tnousand times the Public Printer. It will make no difference whether he praises or abuses me, it will be the same. That's all I have to promise with reference to that. I do not seek favor by making pledges which I do not mean to fulfil. I stand before you a man with no more selfishness than falls to the rest of humanity-a man who will not avail himself of his position to countenance fraud, or allow the'treasury to be robbed to promote the ends of his partisans. If any have been at this business, I do not blame them for opposing my election, for it will end the game. If the Organ there now has been sustained by the means that respect- able citizens say it has, it is right in thundering its anathemas at me. It condemned my Watrous speech· 1 before it had seen it, and pronounced it a slander. Hear the facts. Judge Watrous had by chicanery and fraud made his judicial position the engine of oppression and wrong. He had combined with wealthy and unscrupulous men to deprive Texas wrongfully of millions of acres of her public domain. Villiany had blackened upoi1 him until it had formed a crust, through which he deemed justice could not break. He had sat upon the trial of causes in which he had an interest. He had taken advantage of his judicial posi- tion to benefit himself and his coadjutors. The honest settler, who by fair purchase had acquired a title to land, was made the victim of his machinations. Associated with skillful and bad men, he deemed the guards he had thrown around the avenues to his corruption, so secure that none could approach him to lay bare
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