Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/344

, and descending into the vilest and most unmerited abuse of the people of Texas, forced upon the President the necessity of a response. He accordingly replied in such terms as he believed the occasion required at his hands.

Our Indian affairs are in as good condition as the most sanguine could reasonably have anticipated. When it is remembered that a great while necessarily elapsed before the various tribes, all of whom were in a state of the most bitter hostility, could be reached through the agents of the Government, and that they are now taken as different communities, completely pacified and in regular friendly intercourse with our trading establishments, in the judgment of the unprejudiced and impartial, the policy which could inculcate and maintain peace, and thereby save the frontiers from savage depredations and butcheries, will be viewed as satisfactorily demonstrated. It is not denied, that there are among the Indians, as among our own people, individuals who will disregard all law and commit excesses of the most flagrant character; but it is unjust to attribute to a tribe or body of men disposed to obey the laws, what is properly chargeable to a few renegades and desperadoes. Other Governments of far superior resources for imposing restraints upon the wild men of the forests and prairies, have not been exempt from the infraction of treaties and the occasional commission of acts of rapine and blood. We must therefore expect to suffer in a greater or less degree from the same causes. But even this, in the opinion of the Executive, does not furnish overruling testimony against the policy which he has constantly recommended, and which he has had the happiness to see so fully And so satisfactorily tested.

The appropriation made by the last Congress, for the service of the Indian Department for the present year, has been found insufficient to meet the necessary expenditures. An additional sum is therefore respectfully asked to cover outstanding liabilities necessarily incurred—amounting altogether to not more than four thousand dollars.

It will appear from the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, that the finances of the country are in a most healthy and prosperous condition. It is believed the receipts from the various sources of revenue will at least equal the expenditures and perhaps leave a small surplus in the Treasury. The Executive has no hesitation in declaring that this would have been the case to a comparatively large amount, if the recommendations he has so frequently made in relation to the more prompt and certain collection of the revenues had been responded to by the honorable Congress, by the enactment of the legal provisions deemed absolutely indispensable for this object. It is plainly unjust that the law-abiding citizen and faithful officer should be charged with the burthens of Government, and the dishonest and unpatriotic be permitted, by the defects of our statutes, to be relieved from the contribution of their fair proportion. Had the necessary laws been passed as recommended, we should have received from customs, upon our eastern boundary, as is estimated, some seventy-five thousand dollars more annually than have been collected; making, within the last three years, the sum of two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, which has been totally lost, and which at this time would enable us to be in a far better state of preparation for the contingencies to which every nation is liable, and for undertaking the various improvements which our situation as a rising people makes obligatory upon us.

It is only necessary to mention, in order to show the striking propriety of