The Texas Almanac for 1869 and Emigrant's Guide to Texas. Page: 43
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HISTORICAL REMINISCENCES. 43
publican Mexico. She can have no interest adverse to the common weal, can
feel no desire to depress the agricultural faculties of any portion of her com-
mon territory, and can entertain no disquieting jealousies that should prompt
her to dread the increase or to mar the prosperity of any portion of her agri-
cultural population. These are the best, the broadest, and the most durable
basis of free institutions.
We must look to other causes; therefore, for the lamentable negligence
that has hitherto been manifested toward the prosperity of Texas. The fact
of such negligence is beyond controversy. The melancholy effects of it are
apparent, both in her past and present condition. The cause must exist some-
where. We believe it is principally to .be found in her political annexation
to Coahuila. That conjunction was, in its origin, unnatural and constrained,
and the longer it is continued the more disastrous it will prove. The two
territories are disjunct in all their prominent respective relations. In point
of locality, they approximate by a strip of sterile and useless territory,
which must long remain a comparative wilderness, and present many serious
embarrassments to that facility of intercourse which should always exist be-
tween the seat of government and its remote population. In respect to com-
merce, and its various and intricate relations, there is no communion of in-
terests between them. The one is altogether interior---is consequently
abstracted from all direct participation in maritime concerns, and is naturally
indifferent, if not adverse, to any system of polity that is calculated to pro-
mote the diversified and momentous interests of commerce. The other is
blest with many natural advantages for extensive commercial operations,
which, if properly cultivated, would render valuable accessions to the na-
tional marine and a large increase to the national revenues. The importance
of an efficient national marine is evinced not only by the history of other and
older governments, but by the rich halo of glory which encircles the brief
annals of the Mexican navy. In point of climate and oFnatural productions,
the two territories are equally dissimilar. Coahuila is a pastoral and a min-
ing country. Texas is characteristically an agricultural district. The occu-
pations incident to these various intrinsic properties are equally various and
distinct; and a course of legislation that may be adapted to the encourage-
ment of the habitual iidustry of the one district might present embarrass-
ment and perplexity, and prove fatally deleterious to the prosperity of the
other.
It is not needful, therefore, neither do we desire to attribute any sinister or
invidious design to the legislative enactments or to the domestic economical
policy of Coahuila, (whose ascendency in the joint councils of the State gives
her an uncontrolled and exclusive power of legislation,) in order to ascertain
the origin of the evils that afflict Texas, and which, if longer permitted to ex-
ist, must protract her feeble and dependent pupilage to a period coeval with
such existence. Neither is it important to Texas, whether those evils have
proceeded from a sinister policy in the predominant influences of Coahuila, or
whether they are the certain results of a union that is naturally adverse to
her interests. The effects are equally repugnant and injurious, whether ema-
nating from the one or the other.
Bexar, the ancient capital of Texas, presents a faithful but gloomy portrait
of her general want of protection and encouragement. Situated in a fertile,
picturesque, and beautiful region, and established a century and a half ago,
(within which period populous and magnificent cities have sprung into exist-
ence,) she exhibits only the decrepitudes of age, the sad testimonials of the
absence of that political guardianship which a wise government should al-
ways bestow upon the feebleness of its exposed frontier settlements.- A hun-
dred and seventeen years have elapsed since Goliad and Nacogdoches assum-
ed the:distinctive names of towns, and-they are still entitled to the diminutive
appellations of villages only. Other military and missionary establishments
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The Texas Almanac for 1869 and Emigrant's Guide to Texas., book, 1869~; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth123774/m1/35/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.