Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/320

 put in circulation, yet, from a want of confidence in the guarantee given for its redemption, our exchequer paper has frequently been at a discount of fifty per centum. At least one-half the revenue, also, to which the Government is entitled from import duties has not, and will not be collected, unless power is given to the Executive, or the head of the Finance Department, to declare and establish such ports of entry on the Red River and the Sabine, as may be deemed necessary to prevent smuggling and the illicit introduction of goods into the country.

The Government can not exist without a revenue. Its officers and agents must be supported. The pittance afforded them at present is utterly insufficient for that purpose; and some of the most active and efficient officers have retired, and others have notified the Executive of their determination to do so. They are totally unable, from their salaries, to obtain the indispensable necessaries of life. Without necessary and competent officers, no Government can be properly administered. The Executive has found his labors more than twofold greater since the commencement of his present official term, than they were during the entire period of his last administration—a period of more than two years, when he had to organize a Government out of chaos and give it direction. The means placed in his hands at this time for the conduct of the Government, does not exceed one-sixth of the amount annually allowed to his predecessor for the administration of the civil department.

The depreciation of our funds and the embarrassment of our currency have arisen from various causes; among which are the repeal, in effect, of direct taxation, thereby cutting off an important branch of revenue—the want of power to enforce the collection of import duties, and the establishment of the warehousing system. To these may be added the failure of the recommendation made to the last session of Congress involving, as was conceived matter of the highest consideration in the establishment of a currency: I mean the hypothecation or disposition o'f a portion of the Cherokee country, as a guarantee for the ultimate redemption and absorption of the Exchequer bills.

Had the Executive been authorized to have had surveyed and brought into market two hundred thousand acres of those lands, under such regulations as he might have deemed advisable,—fixing the minimum price at two dollars per acre—the entire amount of Exchequer bills would long since have been withdrawn from circulation, and a large amount of gold and silver introduced into the country as a circulating medium, whilst the import duties would now have been paid in specie. This, too, could have been done without incurring any expense to the Government. The cost of bringing into market and disposing of the lands could have been defrayed without requiring the advance of any means for that purpose. To these causes the present condition of our currency, in the opinion of the Executive, may be mainly ascribed, and he would most earnestly recommend them to the scrutiny and consideration of the honorable Congress, believing, as he does, that the existence of the Government depends upon the policy and principles he has laid down.

Without resources no civilized nation was ever known to exist, and that we have ample resources to sustain ourselves no one who will reflect a moment can doubt. The extent of public domain owned by Texas and yet unappropriated can not amount to less than one hundred and fifty millions of acres—resources,