educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government. It has suffered the military commandants, stationed among us, to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression and tryanny; thus trampling upon the most :mered rights of the citizen, and rendering the mili- .tary superior to the civil power. It has dissolved, by force of arms, the state congress of Coahuila and Texas, and obliged our reF:-esentatives to fly for their livei; from the seat of government, thus depriving us of the fundamental political right of representation. It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered military detailments to seize and carry them into the in- terior for trial, in contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of the laws and the constitution. It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce, by commis- sioning foreign desperadoes, and authorizing them to seize our vessels, and convey the property of our citizens to far distant porhJ for connscation. It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty, according to the dictates of our conscience, by the support a national religion, calculated to promote the temporal interest of its human func- tionaries, rather than the glory of the true and living Goel. It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defence, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyi::annical government. It has in,arled our country, both by land and sea, with intent to lay waste our territory, and drive u.; from our homes; and has now a large mercenary army advancing to carry on against us a war of extermination. It has, through its emmissarics, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenceless frontiers. It bath been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolu- tions; and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrannical government. These, and other gr:evances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, until they reached that point at which forbearance ceased to be a virtue. We the·n took up arms in defence of the national constitution. We appealed to our Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed. no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, th11t the Mex- ican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution thereof of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self-government. The necessity
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