Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/554

 briefly on the prospect; and if you will keep me advised of its progress, it will lay me under an obligation I shall take pleasure in requiting. In my judgment, the least possible notoriety should attend the case in New Orleans, no matter what the result may be. Nor do I think it was the best pohcy to have pressed the courts of Texas. They may be easily made to follow the law, while they have not the nerve to pronounce it.

"You will please call on Mr. Grimes. Let me hear from you.

"Yours truly,

"."

", May 22, 1847.

":—Can you not contrive through Jennings, of New Orleans, to get at the Judge's opinion? His mind must, ere this, have been made up. Tell Jennings to get it out of the clerk of the district or of the circuit court. Tell him that you must have it for me in advance of the mail. Do your best to have the decision go off quietly in New Orleans. As Jennings is now interested, tell him that he must work to our hands. Ail this you can do from your acquaintance with him. You may promise him your influence as to the future, and it will not be less potential than the Duke. I would give anything to know at this moment, as I could so much better shape my action with Mr. M. Indeed, if we get a favorable opinion, and have the news in advance, I shall go by lightning to Texas.

", Esq." The declarations of these letters, perhaps, surpass anything ever seen in a correspondence of this nature, in shameless effrontery, and the betrayal of corrupt intentions. It is openly advised that "the best should be done to have the decision go off quietly in New Orleans"; that "the least possible notoriety should attend the case," It is recommended that dishonorable influences should be used with the officers of the court there; and it is admitted that they had been made interested in the case. Not satisfied with the part he had already taken in the making up and direction of this suit, but rivaling his confederates in the steps taken toward influencing officers of the court, we find Judge Watrous leaving his court at Galveston, to attend the court at New Orleans during the progress of the suit; thus giving an influence to his views and interests by his presence and countenance.

On the 30th of June, 1847, a decision was given in the case of Phalen vs. Herman, in the court of New Orleans, in favor of the plaintiff, declaring the fraudulent certificate sued on to be valid, and giving judgment for $3,000. Here the curtain drops in New Orleans; but without a day's intermission rises again, in continuation of the plot, in Texas.

With reference to this Phalen suit we find the following judgment expressed in a series of resolutions passed in August, 1856, by the Senate of Texas, but at too late a day in the session to obtain the action of the other legislative House: "Said judge (Watrous) is guilty of obtaining and attempting, by contriving and carrying on a made-up suit in his own court, to validate in the same over twelve hundred fraudulent land certificates, claimed by himself and his 'compeers,' and of a class—in all the enormous amount of twenty-four millions three hundred and thirty-one thousand seven hundred and sixty-four acres—of fraudulent certificates, thereby attempting to deprive his country of a vast domain,