William H. Wharton

“ I pass over the toil and suffering and danger which attended the redemption and cultivation of their lands by the colonists, and turn to their civil condition and to the conduct and history of the government. It is a maxim no less venerable for its antiquity than its truth—a maxim admitted and illustrated by all writers on political economy—and one that has been corroborated by experience in every corner of the earth, that miserable is the servitude and horrible the condition of that people whose laws are either uncertain or unknown. ”

“ With a sickly philanthropy worthy of the abolitionists of these United States, they have, contrary to justice, and to law, intermeddled with our slave population, and have even impotently threatened in the war now pending, to emancipate them, and induce them to turn their arms against their masters. If they would cast their eyes around them, they would find that at home the more wealthy and intelligent of the Mexicans have unjustly imposed upon at least one quarter of their fellow citizens, the most galling and illegal system of servitude that ever stained the annals of human oppression. ”

“ Have we had more than one or two organs of communication with the government, and must not they have been omniscient to have always understood the wishes of the people, and incorruptible to have always correctly represented them? Who of us feels or ever has felt any reliance or can place any confidence in governmental matters, or can predict with any sort of certainty what in this respect a day may bring forth? There are thousands of other evils growing out of our present situation, too hourly, universally and bitterly felt to require to be mentioned. ”

“ The achievement of their independence of old Spain is no longer a question. But it is a very serious one what will then become of them. Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government. They will fall under military despotism, and become the murderous tools of their respective Bonapartes. No one I hope can doubt my wish to see them and all mankind exercising self-government. ”

“ I ask, with a defiance of contradiction, if ours is not and has not always been, in Texas, the unhappy condition and miserable bondage spoken of in this maxim? Who of us knows or can by possibility arrive at a knowledge of the laws that govern our property and lives? Who of us is able to read and understand and be entirely confident of the validity of his title to the land he lives on, and which he has redeemed from a state of nature by the most indefatigable industry and perseverance? ”

“ If this sacred principle is recognised and acted upon, all must admit that the colonists of Texas have a clear right to burst their fetters, and have also a just claim for recognition as an independent nation, upon every government not wholly inimical to the march of light and liberty, and to the establishment of the unalienable rights of man. ”

“ This cannot be said of Mexico. Not one dollar has she spent for Texas—not one Mexican soldier has ever fought by our side in expelling the savages. She has given us no protection whatever; and as allegiance and protection are reciprocal, we have a right on this principle to cast off her yoke. However, in my next I pledge myself to demonstrate that the Mexicans are wholly incapable of self-government, and that on that principle we are bound by the first law of nature—self-preservation—to dissolve all connexion, and take care of ourselves. ”

“ Yes, humanity shudders, and freedom burns with indignation at a recital of the barbarities and oppressions practised upon the ill-fated Mexicans from the bloody days of Cortes up to the termination of their connexion with Spain. ”

“ Yes! our superiority in enterprise, in learning, in the arts and in all that can dignify life, or embellish human nature, instead of exciting in them a laudable ambition to emulate, to equal, or excel us—excites the most hateful of all the passions—envy—and has caused them to endeavor for years past, by an unremitting series of vexatious, oppressive and unconstitutional acts, to retard our growth and prosperity, and if possible, to get rid altogether of a people whose presence so hourly reminds them of their own ignorance and inferiority. ”

“ A true statement of facts then is all that is necessary to pay at once that immense debt of endless gratitude which, in the estimation of the ignorant and interested is due from the colonists to the government. ”

“ But in our case, the government only gave wild lands, that they might be redeemed from a state of nature; that the obstacles to a first settlement might be overcome; that they might be rid of those savages who continually depredated upon the inhabited parts of the nation, and that they might be placed in a situation to augment the physical strength and power and revenue of the republic. Is it not evident that Mexico now holds over the colonized lands of Texas, the same jurisdiction and right of property which all nations hold over the inhabited parts of their territory? ”

“ If the time-hallowed principle of the Declaration of Independence, namely, "that governments are instituted for the protection and happiness of mankind, and that whenever they become destructive of these ends it is the right, nay it is the duty of the people to alter or abolish them." ”

“ If these lands had been previously pioneered by the enterprise of the Mexican government, and freed from the insecurities which beset a wilderness, trod only by savages—if they had have been situated in the heart of an inhabited region, and accessible to the comforts and necessaries of life—if the government had have been deriving any actual revenue, and if it could have realised a capital from the sale of them—then we admit that the donation would have been unexampled in the history of individual or national liberality. ”

“ Under the smiles of a benignant heaven, however, the untiring perseverance of the colonists triumphed over all natural obstacles, expelled the savages by whom the country was infested, reduced the forest into cultivation, and made the desert smile. From this it must appear that the lands of Texas, although nominally given, were in fact really and clearly bought. It may here be premised that a gift of lands by a nation to foreigners on condition of their immigrating and becoming citizens, is immensely different from a gift by one individual to another. ”

“ 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 territory 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 descriptions it is useless to discuss the capability of Texas to figure as an independent government. ”

“ Jefferson, in his work above quoted, page 195, that in the case of Congress unlimited powers are vested in a plurality of hands. One 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 and provisions 500 years behind the liberalized views of the present age, and at war with every thing that is akin to civil or religious liberty. ”

“ But, as I before said, it is idle to talk of the constitution now. Texas must be Independent. The tie between her and Mexico is severed, and that by the injustice and violence of Mexico. It can never be re-united—for between the colonists and Mexicans there is an almost total dissimilarity of soil, climate, productions, pursuits, interests, habits, manners, education, language and religion. ”

“ In the same great work it is clearly demonstrated, that if each department is not so fortified in its powers as to prevent infringement by the others, the constitution which creates them all will be worth no more than the parchment upon which it is written. ”

“ The unconstitutional oppression long and unremittingly practised upon the colonists of Texas, having at length become insupportable, and having impelled them to take up arms in defence of their rights and liberties, it is due to the world that their motives, conduct and causes of complaint should be fully made known. ”

“ In that instrument the powers of government, instead of being divided as they are in the United States, and other civilized countries, into legislative, executive and judicial, are divided 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. ”

“ When the people of the United States commenced their war for independence against Great Britain, the friends of Britain charged them with ingratitude. They said that Britain had founded the colonies at great expense—had increased a load of debt by wars on their account—had protected their commerce, &c. ”

“ That we were to be cut off forever from the society of fathers and friends in the United States of the North—to prepare comforts suited to whose age and infirmities, many of us had emigrated and patiently submitted to every species of privation, and whose presence to gladden our firesides we were hourly anticipating. ”

“ To make their miserable servitude less perceptible, they were denied the benefits of the commonest education, and were kept the blind devotees of the darkest and most demoralizing superstition that ever clouded the intellects, or degraded the morals of mankind. ”

“ The lands granted were in the occupancy of savages and situated in a wilderness, of which the government had never taken possession, and of which it could not with its own citizens ever have taken possession. ”

“ We have no right to conclude, that if re-established, it will be amended so as to be made more republican and more congenial with our wishes—for in all their changes and commotions, each party contends for the established religion—it is the last thing they will part with—believing it to be the anchor of their hope and salvation here and hereafter. ”

“ In my last I contended that none of those ties which are necessary to bind a people together and make them one, existed between the colonists and Mexicans. ”

“ In addition to the dread of Indians, Texas held out no inducements for Mexican emigrants. ”

“ These were the inducements and invitations held out to foreigners under the imperial government of Iturbide or Augustin I. In a short time, however, the nation deposed Iturbide, and deposited the supreme executive power in a body of three individuals. This supreme executive power on the 10th of August, 1824, adopted a national colonization law, in which they recognized and confirmed the imperial colonization law with all its guarantees of person and property. ”

“ It is equally demonstrable that so far as Texas is concerned, there have been equal confusion, insecurity and injustice in the administration of the State governments. ”