Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/181

Rh of public credit, and on the strictly economic administration of Government. President Jones closed his administration, as Houston had done before him, without having added a dime to the public debt or leaving an unpaid open account. In his administration the Republic of Texas was merged by annexation in the Federal Union. With the transfer of the sovereignty of the Republic of Texas there was turned over to the State of Texas its treasury, with thousands of gold in its coffers; which gold actually sufficed for all the expenses of government of the State of Texas for upwards of two years.

Sam Houston more than once said to Ashbel Smith that he was the author of the plan of issuing exchequers. He claimed it only as a "succedaneum" for gold and silver when these were not in hand, and to be resorted to when, as at the commencement of his second term, the Government had not a dollar, and was utterly destitute of credit. Nor did he, as is sometimes dexterously done, transfer the burdens of to-day upon the future. During his second term not a dollar was added to the public debt, except the accretions of unpaid interest accruing on that previously existing. Nor was there an unliquidated account that had accrued during that period.

I have thus given, perhaps in unnecessarily minute detail, the financial history of the Republic of Texas under the two administrations of Sam Houston, embracing the leading facts in the principles and action of Gen. Houston as President, in the legislation of Congress, in the administration of the Department of the Treasury under him. I have not done injustice to the chivalrous soldier and patriot Lamar. I have paid a passing tribute of justice to the profound statesman, Anson Jones.

I turn again to Houston for a remark or two on closing. Houston's administrations were not distinguished alone for his judicious management of the revenues of the Republic, and, consequently, of the taxes of the people. Honesty was characteristic of his whole official administration. Not one of his Cabinet or staff officers, not one of his high officials, amassed even an inconsiderable fortune. Nearly or quite every one of them left office poorer than when he entered it. With such facts patent, it is not surprising that, amidst all the mutations of superficial and newspaper unpopularity, he retained the solid confidence, the firm attachment, of the mass of the citizens of the Republic of Texas.

It is well, too, for the citizens of Texas, now and hereafter, to bear in mind that such was the true condition of Texas at the time when it was maligned as the country where was rampant the worst form of barbarism, the barbarism of civilization.