The violent and dictatorial language of the army, the pragmatic and senseless denunciation of the newly arrived volunteers and the overheated anathemas of many citizens, all concentrated in one portentous mass, upon the members of the administration, and especially on myself, were well calculated to weary the patience of men, who had rather consented to discharge the arduous duties, than courted the honors or the emoluments of office.-At the moment the tumult had reached its acme of excitement it was seriously proposed in cabinet, to make a simultaneous surrender of the government to the people, the fountain of all political power. The proposition was, I _believe, congenial with the individual feelings of every member present: but I resisted it on the ground that our abandonment, at such a juncture, would throw Texas into irretrievable anarchy and confusion. I felt in common with my associates, the injustice and the cruelty of the denunciations pronounced against us: but I also felt, that the well being of the country demanded a sacrifice of feeling; and I preferred being abused for a season to the abdication of my office and the jeopardizing of every hope of success in the great enterprize, the establishment of the independence of Texas, to which I had solemnly pledged my utmost exertions. But the civil government, shorn as it was, of all moral ·and physical power, continued to discharge its functions; to sustain its foreign correspondence; to provide supplies for the army; and to retain a semblance of authority, even after it had been put at naught, by those whom it was intended, and was assiduously endeavoring to benefit. If that proposition had been acceded to and the helm had been deserted, when the waves of popular commotion were beating most vehemently, who can depict the disasters of the shipwreck that would have ensued? There was no organized power, to which the functions of government could devolve: the constitution was not yet ratified by. the people, and had not assumed the character and authority of a social compact: and consequently, the bonds of the incipient political society, would have dissolved into elementary confusion. This chaos could only have been reduced, harmonized and reorganized, by another primary convention of the people; and until then, every one, the vicious and intractable especially, would have felt at liberty to do "as should seem good in their own sight." And where then would
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