and these two first are fortified with exclusive privileges, and made
predominant. It is specially declared that the Roman Catholic religion
is, and forever shall be, the established religion of the land. No other
is tolerated, and no one can be a citizen without professing it. Can
any people be capable of self-government--can they know any thing about
republicanism, who will, in this enlightened age endeavor to erect the
military over the civil--to bind the conscience in chains, and to enforce
an absolute subscription to the dogmas of any religious sect--but more
especially of that sect, which has waged an unceasing warfare against
liberty, whenever the ignorance and superstition of mankind have given it
a foothold?

Can republicans live under a constitution containing such unhallowed
principles? All will say they cannot. And if the Texan colonists are
willing to do so a moment longer than they are able to shake off the yoke,
they are unworthy the sympathies or assistance of any free people--they are
unworthy descendants of those canonized heroes of the American revolution,
who fought, and bled, and conquered for religious as well as civil liberty,
and who established the sacred principle, that "all men have a right to
worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their consciences." Yet
bad as this constitution is, it has been swept away by, if possible, a
worse form of government, the central. This system, now attempted to be
rivetted upon the people of Texas, has preserved most of the bad features
of the old constitution, viz: the preponderance of the military and clergy,
and has destroyed all of the good features, to wit: the representation of
the people through the medium of Congress, and the division of the republic
into States. The whole of the States are now consolidated into one, and
governed by a dictator and council of about a dozen, who are the creatures
of his will, and the flatterers of his lawless despotism. All of Mexico,
but Texas, has submitted to this, and she is waging a war against it with