galling and illegal system of servitude that ever stained the annals of
human oppression.

2d. [Footnote: Have been repealed.] Although the colonization law conceded
to emigrants to Texas all the rights and privileges of citizens, in 1829 a
law was passed confining the retail of merchandize to native born Mexicans.
It is useless to comment upon the illegality and injustice of this law. It
speaks for itself, and clearly indicates the diabolical spirit in which it
was engendered.

3d. I pass over many minor grievances growing out of their illegal
legislative enactments, and plainly denoting their settled hostility, and
come to the law of the 6th [Footnote: Have been repealed.] of April, 1830.
By this law, North Americans, and they alone, were forbidden ad mission
into Texas. This was enough to blast all of our hopes, and dishearten
all of our enterprise. It showed to us that we were to remain scattered,
isolated, and unhappy tenants of the wilderness--compelled to gaze upon
the resources of a lovely and fertile region, undeveloped for want of
population. That we were to be cut off forever from the society of fathers
and friends in the United States of the North--to prepare comforts suited
to whose age and infirmities, many of us had emigrated and patiently
submitted to every species of privation, and whose presence to gladden our
firesides we were hourly anticipating. That feature of this law granting
admission to all other nations except our brethren of the United States
of the North, was sufficient to goad us on to madness. Yes! the door of
emigration to Texas was closed upon the only sister republic worthy of the
name which Mexico could boast of in this new world. It was closed upon a
people among whom the knowledge and the foundations of rational liberty are
more deeply laid than among any other on the habitable globe. It was closed
upon a people who would have carried with them to Texas those principles