the unhallowed ambition of their military aspirants, the country would be
too continually distracted with revolutions to admit of their advancement
in education or any useful knowledge whatever. Time has developed it. There
has been no attention on the part of government to schools or other useful
institutions. The present generation are as ignorant and bigoted as the
past one, and so will continue each succeeding one to the end of time,
unless some philanthropic and enlightened citizen shall arrive at power
with a purity of patriotism and reach of intellect unexampled among his
countrymen, and with energies of character sufficiently commanding to
emancipate the nation from the thraldom of her priests--to curb or kill her
countless military aspirants, thereby preventing incessant revolutions, and
thereby enabling a new generation to experience the benefits of education
and to qualify themselves in other respects for complete self-government.
I have now gone through with the administration, or rather
mal-administration, of the General Government. It is equally demonstrable
that so far as Texas is concerned, there have been equal confusion,
insecurity and injustice in the administration of the State governments.
Texas, as is known, forms an integral part of the State known by the name
of Coahuila and Texas. During the past year there were three persons
claiming and fighting for the office of Governor of this State. There was
no session of the legislature at the regular period, on account of this
civil war, and fifteen officers of the federal troops elected a governor
of their own over the head of the one elected by the people. At an
extraordinary time the legislature was convoked, and fraudulently sold for
a thousandth part of their value, millions of acres of our public domain.
This legislature was finally dispersed by the threats of the General
Government, and our Governor and one of the members were, on their retreat,
arrested and imprisoned by the troops of the permanent army--leaving us
involved in chaotic anarchy. Do not these facts conclusively demonstrate an
incapability of self-government on the part of the Mexicans? Do they not