Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/568

 The grant to Powers and Hewitson, the empressarios, included a large body of valuable land on the coast, west of Galveston.

Powers expressed an unwillingness to go out of the State, and change his residence, so as to qualify himself to sue in the Federal court. He, too, as League testified, had the common affliction of being " afraid to trust the juries of Texas." The difficulty, however, appears to have been solved by League, in concert with Judge Watrous' counsel and familiar, Robert Hughes. League volunteered to go out of the State, and bring suits in his own name, in the Federal court, for a share of the property to be recovered. Powers furnished the subject matter of litigation. League furnished all the money, and "Hughes was to do the legal part of the matter."

The plot, however, was finally disconcerted by the decision of the United States Supreme Court, to the effect that League's change of residence not being bona fide, he could have no standing in court; in a word, that it was an attempted fraud upon the jurisdiction of the court.

It then became necessary to use another party in the matter, and a gentleman by the name of Williams, of North Carolina, is substituted. Thus we see this man, bent on accomplishing his ends, throughout identifying himself and the counsel of Judge Watrous with a scheme in which both were only acting mercenary parts, using the word in its broadest sense; in which he was hired to act the part of a litigant in the court of his friend and partner, Judge Watrous, in fraud of the jurisdiction of that court; and in which the judge's counsel and familiar too was hired under a contract of champerty, and was to have a share of the land for "doing all the legal part of the matter."

This is to be remarked, as the first introduction of Hewitson into the Federal court, and will shortly lead, as I shall show, to the development of other connections between him and Judge Watrous in the perpetration of other and more astounding frauds than have yet been disclosed.

I conceive that it is required, in order to complete the history of the system of frauds, in which Judge Watrous was prominently concerned, to show further the connections between some of the prominent actors introduced into the narrative and others to be introduced, in matters which have been the subject of late congressional investigation, and of fierce debate. I certainly do not propose to review the debates that have taken place on this subject. But I refer more particularly to the transactions, which I shall proceed to give a brief sketch of, of the obtaining of lands by Judge Watrous, the wrongful use of his court in relation thereto, and his participation in fixing a forged link in a chain of title upon settlers in Texas, that I may more fully show and illustrate the constant and pervading connection of parties already alluded to with the judge in attempts to plunder the citizens of Texas, and in administering a system of fraud through his court.

In January, 1851, we find that two suits were commenced in the United States court in Texas, presided over by Judge Watrous. One was entitled Uflord vs. Dykes; the other was Lapsley vs. Spencer and ten others.

These two suits were commenced in Judge Watrous' court at the same term, for between fifty and sixty thousand acres of land each William G. Hale was counsel for the plaintiff in one case, and Robert Hughes counsel for the plaintiff in the other. In both cases, it appeared from the testimony.