Sept 24 1836 to Oct 24 1836 - PTR, Vol. 9

of Congress unlimited powers are vested in a plurality of hands. O~e hundred or two hundred despots are surely as oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it turn their eyes on the republic of Venice. In the next place I will show, that independent of this objection, the Mexican constitution contains principles aud provisions 500 years behind the liberalized vie\vs of the present age, and at war with every thing that is akin to civil or religious liberty. In that instrument the po\vers of government, instead of being divided as they are in the United States, and other civil- ized countries, into legislative, executive and judicial, are di- vided into military, ecclesiastical and civil, and these two first are fortified with exclusive privileges, and made predominant. It is specially declared that the Roman Catholic religion is, and forever shall be, the established religion of the land. No other is tolerated, and no one can be a citizen without professing it. Can any people be capable of self-government-can they know any thing about republicanism, \V ho will, in this enlightened age endeavor to erect the military over the civil-to bind the con- science in chains, and to enforce an absolute subscription to the dogmas of any religious sect-but more especially of that sect, which has waged an unceasing warfare against liberty, whenever the ignorance and superstition of mankind have given it a foot- hold? Can republican!! live under a constitution containing such un- hallowed principles? All will say they cannot. And if the Texan colonists are willing lo do so a moment longer than they are able to shake off the yoke, they are unworthy the sympathies or assistance of any free people-they are unworthy descendants of those canonized heroes of the American revolution, who fought, and bled, and conquered for religious as well as civil liberty, and who established the sacred principle, that "all men have a right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their consciences." Yet bad as this constitution is, it has been swept away by, if possible, a worse form of government, the_central. This system, now attempted to be rivetted upon the people of Texas, has preserved most of the bad features uf the old constitution, viz: the preponderance of the military and clergy, and has destroyed all of the good features, to wit: the representation of the people through the medium of Congress, and the division of the republic into States. The whole of the States are now consolidated into one, and governed by a dictator -and council of about a dozen, who are the creatures of his will,

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