Page:Vol 5 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/186

166 unanimously adopted a declaration of independence, which in synoptical form I give below. The Mexican government had invited them to settle and reclaim the wilderness, under the pledged faith of the written national constitution, which was republican, and similar to the one they had lived under in their native land. Their expectations had been disappointed. Santa Anna had overthrown the constitutional system, offering them the alternative of abandoning the homes they had made after many privations, or of submitting to the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood. Texas had been sacrificed for the benefit of Coahuila; the petitions of her citizens for a separate state organization had been disregarded. Their fellow-citizen, Austin, had been incarcerated a long time for his zealous endeavors, within legality, on behalf of Texan interests. Trial by jury and a system of public education had never been established. Military conimandants had exercised arbitrary tyrannical powers. The state congress of Coahuila and Texas had been dissolved by force of arms, and the representatives compelled to flee for their lives. Good citizens had been unjustly seized by military authority, carried away from their homes, and tried on trumped-up charges. Piratical attacks had been committed on Texas commerce by desperadoes in the service of Mexico. The right of worshipping God according to the dictates of their conscience had been denied them. They had been required to surrender the arms they needed for their defence. Their country had been invaded and laid waste, and their citizens driven away. The Indians had been incited to ravage and massacre. The citizens had been made the contemptible sport and victims of military revolutions. The Mexican government had invariably shown the characteristics of weakness, corruption, and tyranny. This declaration was signed by 57 members, of whom 10 appear to be from northern and European regions, and 3 native Mexicans; the rest were natives of the southern states of the American Union. Baker's Texas, 65-71; Texas, Laws Repub., i. 3-7. The arguments of the declaration are quite assailable. It is not true that the settlers were invited and admitted under the faith of a compact in the form of a republican constitution. Mexico acceded to the petitions of the first colonists when she was still under vice-regal rule, as an appendage of Spain. The changes subsequently experienced in the institutions could not justify their defection. An insignificant minority, as the Texans then were, had no right to arrange the whole country's administration to its own liking. If that minority disliked the changes, it was at liberty to leave the country. In the political vicissitudes of the Mexican republic, Texas, as an integral portion, had to bear her part of neglect, burdens, and general troubles, like the other states and territories, neither more nor less. Military coercive measures, unwise or brutal though they undoubtedly were, resulted from the general political disturbance; and so far