The Texas Almanac for 1869 and Emigrant's Guide to Texas. Page: 44
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44 THE TEXAS ALMANAC.
have been attempted, but, from the same defect of protection and encourage-
ment, they have been swept away, and scarce a vestige remains to rescue their
localities from oblivion.
We do not mean to attribute these specific disasters to the union with
Coahuila; for we know they transpired long anterior to the consummation of
that union. But we do maintain that the same political causes, the same
want of protection and encouragement, the same mal-organization and impo-
tency of the local and minor faculties of the government, the same improvi-
dent indifference to the peculiar and vital interests of Texas, exist now, that
operated then : and like causes will produce like effects, ad infinitum. Bexar
is still exposed to the depredations of her ancient enemies, the insolent, vin-
dictive, and faithless Comanches. Her citizens are still massacred, their cattle
destroyed or driven away, and their very habitations threatened, by a tribe
of erratic and undisciplined Indians, whose audacity has derived confidence
from success, and whose long-continued aggressions have invested them with
a fictitious and excessive terror. Her schools are neglected, her churches
desolate; the sounds of human industry are almost hushed, and the voice of
gladness and festivity is converted into wailing and lamentation, by the dis-
heartening and multiplied evils which surround her defenseless population.
Goliad is still kept in constant trepidation; is paralyzed in all her efforts for
improvement ; and is harassed on all her borders by the predatory incur-
sions.of the Wacoes, and other insignificant bands of savages, whom a well-
organized local government would soon subdue or exterminate.
These are facts not of history merely, on which the imagination must dwell
with an unavailing melancholy ; they are events of the present day, which
the present generation feel in all their dreadful reality. And these facts, re-
volting as they are, are as a fraction only in the stupendous aggregate of our
calamities. Our misfortunes do not proceed from Indian depredations alone;
neither are they confined to a few isolated, impoverished, and almost tenant-
less towns. They pervade the whole territory--operate upon the whole
population; and are as diversified in character as our public interests and ne-
cessities are various. Texas, at large, feels and deplores an utter destitution
of the common benefits which have usually accrued from the worst system of
internal government that the patience of mankind ever tolerated. She is vir-
tually without a government-and if she is not precipitated into all the un-
speakable horrors of anarchy, it is only because there is a redeeming spirit
among the people which still infuses a moral energy into the miserable frag-
ments of authority that exist among us. We are perfectly sensible that a
large portion of our population, usually denominated "the colonists," and
composed of Anglo-Americans, have been greatly calumniated before the
Mexican government. But could the honorable Congress scrutinize strictly
into our real condition; could they see and understand the wretched con-
fusion in all the elements of government which we daily feel and deplore, our
ears would no longer be insulted, nor our feelings mortified, by the artful
fictions of hireling emissaries from abroad, nor by the malignant aspersions of
disappointed military commandants at home.
Our grievances do not so much result from any positive misfeasance on the
part of the present State authorities, as from the total absence, or the very
feeble and inutile dispensation of those restrictive influences which it is the
appropriate design of the social compact to exercise upon the people, and-
which are necessary to fulfill the ends of civil society. We complain more of
the want of all the important attributes of government, than of the abuses of
any. We are sensible that all human institutions are essentially imperfect.
But there are relative degrees of perfection in modes of government, as in
other matters, and it is both natural and right to aspire to that mode which is
most likely to accomplish its legitimate purpose. This is wisely declared in
our present State constitution, to be "the happiness of the individuals who
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The Texas Almanac for 1869 and Emigrant's Guide to Texas., book, 1869~; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth123774/m1/36/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.