friends in the United Stales of th<! North-to prepare comforts suited lo whose age and infirmities, many of us k1<l emigrated and patiently submilled to every !-pecies of privation, and whose presence lo gla<l<le:1 our firesides ,re w::•re hourly anticipating. Thnt feature of this law grantin~· admi5sion to all orlrcr nations except our brethren of the li11ited States of the North, ,~as suf- ficient lo goad us Oil to madness. Yes: the door of emigration to Texas was closed upon the only sister republic worthy of the name which Mexico could boast of in this new world. It was closed upon a people among whom the knowledge and the foun- dations of rational liberty arc more deeply laid tlran among any other Oil the habitable globe. It was closed upon a people who would have carried with them lo Texas those principles of free- dom, and those ideas of self-government in which, from their birth, they had been educated and practised. In short, and more tl:an all, inasmuch as it stamps the Mexican government with the foul blot of ingratitude, it was closed upon ::i people who generously and heroically aided thPm in ti.cir revolutionary strug- gle, ard who were first and foremost to recognize and rejoice at the consummation of their independence. Nothing but envy, jealousy, and a predetermination to destroy the colonial settle- ments, could have prompted the passage of this most iniquitous law. Simultaneous with it, all parts of Texas were d~luged with garrisons in a time of profound peace. These garrisons extorted and consumed the substance of the land, and paid for their sup- plies in drafts on a faithless and almost bankrupt government. In their presence and vicinity the civil arm was paralyzed and pow- erless. They imprisoned our citizens without cause, and de- tained them without trial, and in every respect trampletl upon our rights and privileges. They could not have been sent to Texas for our protection, for when they came we had expelled the savages, and were able to protect ourselves; and at the com- mencement of the colonial settlements, when we were few and weak, and scattered, :rnd defenceless, not a garrison-no! not a soldier came to our assistance. As another evidence of the hostility of the Mexicans to the Colonists, I will instance the following: On the 7th of May, 1824, when the Republic was divided into States by the constituent Congress, the territory called Texas, not being sufficiently populous for a State, was united lo Coahuila, but it was specially decreed by Congress that whenever Texas was sufficiently populous to figure as a State, she should make it
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