History of the Revolution in Texas, Particularly of the War of 1835 & '36; Together With the Latest Geographical, Topographical, and Statistical Accounts of the Country, From the Most Authentic Sources. Also, an Appendix. Page: 217 of 227

APPENDIX.

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tions and delays incident to all Governments, where those who
exercise its most interesting functions are removed by distance
from the people on whom they operate, and for whose benefit the
social compact is created.
These repeated delays, resulting from the remoteness of our
courts of judicature, are pernicious in many respects: they involve
heavy expenses, which, in civil suits, are excessively onerous to
litigants, and give to the rich and influential such manifold advantages
over the poor, as operate to an absolute exclusion of the latter
from the remedial and protective benefits of the law. They
offer seductive opportunities and incitements to bribery and corruption,
and endanger the sacred purity of the judiciary, which, of
all the branches of Government, is most intimately associated with
the domestic and social happiness of man, and should therefore be,
not only sound and pure, but unsuspected of the venal infection.
They present insuperable difficulties to the exercise of the corrective
right of recusation, and virtually nullify the constitutional
power of impeachment. In criminal actions they are no less injurious.
They are equivalent to a license to iniquity, and exert a
dangerous influence on the moral feelings at large. Before the
tedious process of the law can be complied with, and the criminal,
whose hands are perhaps imbrued in a brother's blood, be made to
feel its restrictive justice, the remembrance of his crime is partially
effaced from the public mind, and the righteous arbitrament of the
law, which, if promptly executed, would have received universal
approbation, and been a salutary warning to evil-doers, is impugned
as vindictive and cruel. The popular feeling is changed from a
just indignation of the crime, into an amiable, but mistaken sympathy
for the criminal; and, by an easy and natural transition, is
converted into disgust and disaffection towards the Government
and its laws.
No. 4.
The following is one of many documents of like character
which might be presented to the public, showing the popular sentiment
in Texas, in regard to the Mexican Government, in the
summer of 1835:
MUNICIPALITI OF MINA, July 4th, 1835.
At a General Meeting of the citizens of this Municipality, convened
agreeably to public notice, for the purpose of considering
the present situation of the relations of Texas with the Government
of the Mexican United States, and the purposes connected
with the general safety of the country, Dr. Thomas J. Gazley was
18