known and be admitted. In 1833, the people of Texas, know- ing thnt their numbers exceeded those of several of the old States, in solemn co1wention formed a constitution, and sent on a delegate to the city of Mexico, praying that Texas be admitted as a State. Instead of granting this just and legal request, they imprisoned our delegate in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and detained him without a trial for more than a year, deprived of the- common air :md common use of his own limbs! Under all of those multiplied oppressions, the colonists, from a spirit of for- bearance, or rather from physical-inability to resist, long groaned and languished. Not a voice, not an arm was uplifted. Thd wheels of government were not retarded in their operation by us. We consoled ourselves with the pleasing but delusive hope that a retu~ning sense of liberality and justice would give to these obnoxious laws a brief duration. While laying this flattering unction to their souls, while indulging dreams of fancied felicity never to be realized, the dictator, Santa Ann;, developed his tyrannical course. He surrounded Congress with an armed force, dissolved the body, and declared the constitution at an end. He dispersed our State Legislature by- violence, impris- oned our Governor, demanded the arrest of some of the unof- fending colonists, to be tried by military tribunals for (if ally) civil offences, disarmed the militia, leaving only one gun to 500 citizens, and sent an army of mercenaries into Texas to rivit up- on us the chains of centralism. When these glaring oppressions were attempted to be practised, the people of Texas felt that the cup of their bitterness was full to overflowing-that the rod of persr.cution had smitten sufficiently severe, and that they could no longer submit without relinquishing forever the glorious appellation of freemen. 'f hey struck, and struck with the po- tent arm of liberty. They conquered and drove the enemy from their soil. They wish not to wage a war of cupidity and conquest. They only ask to be permitted to govern the territo- ry they occupy after the republican mode of their fathers. If this, their reasonable demand, is not conceded, they will carry the war into the enemy's country, and force the tyrant (as they have the power to do,) to acknowledge the independence of Texas within the very walls of his capital. After so many de- scriptions it is useless to discuss the capability of Texas to fig- ure as an independent government. Suffice it to say, that it is larger than France, England, Scotland and Ireland united-of more general fertility, and susceptible of a greater and denser population. CURTIUS.
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