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cake and have it too. If his head lands are unsalable, he has only to blame his grasping propensity for sitting up claims that puzzle honest buyers, and give him a blasting reputation for chicanery! If his finan- cial arrangements with that friend 7 ' in New Orleans, "on whom he relied in all things, his express order for that bill of stationery and his contingent debts to Government court publicity, spirits may yet be called up to show how admirably he profited by the rank and selfish corruptions practiced with the Army, commisariat, and in his indian accounts. The barefaced Custom House maneuvers, which under his favorite, Collector Cocke, all Galveston witnessed, must have resulted in as vast profits to the "Houston Clique" as losses to the merchants and in- habitants generally. The swindling trick of alternately admitting and repudiating the paper of an empty treasury, and a supposititious echequer, subserved a bye-play for local plunder, and a partiality well observed here, although unknown abroad. The Custom House found in the recess of Legislature, functions alien to all legislative definition! It issued at an arbitrary price, and collected at a fluctuative one. It suspended nor proportional its issue by no rule, but the Collector's judgment; and in creating a scarcity or plenty of "Echequer bills", the delay of a few hours, nay one hour's entry in the public books could, without any primary capital, make a difference of a consider- able amount. Is it possible, that with such uncontrollable facilities, the "sharp fellows" encharged with Sam's unparalleled banking scheme, omitted to make fortunes for themselves and their consenting Superior? Had unsavory Sam restrained his ambition to Texas, his true char- acter, well known as it locally is, would never have been worth exhib- iting as of general importance to the F£-deration; but he has been so importunate in the fiction he calls "His Life" as to compel Burnet and others, in defence of their own good standing, to expose facts, might might otherwise have slumbered out of existence. His restless stretchings after the first Magistracy made him pwbli.c property; and when arraigned, such evidence comes out as defeats all pretentibn~ to the qualities that belong to human dignity! Under such bereavement, his adherents remove their camp to a ground never before occupied. They claimed the suffrage of the "great unwashed", by demanding their attention to the gigantic frauds, the innumerable malversations which in open day, 1tave stalked unreproved and unreprest in the Offices at. Washington City, under the administration of PreRidents who are, out of courtesy, allowed to have possessed thofle exalted sentiments of which poor Sam Houston, has been so remorselessly ousted! Without incur- ring- reproach as irreverent, might not a dilemma be started? Either the virt'l.l:Ous Chief knew of the unrhecked iniquity and was a rogue, or - He did not know it, and was a fool The predicates are sound enough, and if you should be di!!posed to cavil at the coni::equenti::, you will, I have no doubt, acquisce in that ancient and sag-acious adage - "set a rogue to catch a roinie" &c If now it be admitted· that the general Government is a perfect sewer of fraud, corruption and perulation, much resembling that era
"Bryan. [Note in document]
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