The Whig standard. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1843-1844, 1844-08-15

Waro, OF new 4 ork, and amount 10 far more than
the whole quantity which the treaty corvespon-
dence admits to have been granted by all the Co.
vernments which ever held Texas.
Mr.. b. then enumerated these grants and point
ed out their position on the map the quantities in
all cases not ascertainable because they extended
from rivers to rivers, from mountains to mountains,
and from parallels to parallels of latitude and lon
gitude. The first was grant OF forty five mil
lions of acres, being fraction less than the States
of Kentucky and Ohio united, extending from
north latitude 80 degrees to 81 degrees and 20
minutes, and from longitude l02 degrees west
from Greenwich to the Sierra Obscura mountains,
and covering the upper waters OF the Colorado,
the Red river, and the Arkansas. Another CO.
vered three degrees of laitude-from 90 to 30
degrees-bounded west on longitude 100 degrees
west from Greenwich and extending east to the
Colorado, on which it bound Is leagues. third
extended from the Nueces to the Rio Grande, and
covered 2 degrees of latitude, from 81 to 90. A
fourth claim consisted of set of grants, nine in
number, each for III leagues, making so leagues
in the whole, lying on the Nueccs, and all made
TO Mexcans, from whom Beaes purchased
These ninety.nne leagues were absolute and
unconditional grants, in fee simple the others
were empressario grants, or upon the condition
of settling number Of families upon each. The
families had not been settled, being prevented by
the Indian wars and the Texan revolution; and
the pamphlet sets out the decision of the Supreme
Court of the United States in the case of the Are
dondo claim, and the Clark claim in Florida, to
show that in such cases (the performance of the
condition becoming impossible by the act of God,
of the public enemy, or the grantor) the condition
becomes discharged, the grant is absolute, or the
party may have time after the cessation of the
obstacle to fulfil the terms. Under these dec-
sions and the terms of the late treaty, all these
grants, amounting to seventy or eighty millions of
acres, equal to three or four such States as Ken
lucky, are claimed to be valid and that claim
would go to the same court which decided the
Aredondo and the Clark claims, for the treaty an
nued none. The F orida treaty Of 1919 annul-
led the great grants to the Duke of Alagon, the
Count Punon Rostro, and Don Diego Vargas, and
they are not recognised by the courts but it
omitted to name the claims of Aredondo and Clark,
and these have been confirmed by the Supreme
Court of the United States, and it is notorious
that members of Congress became rich upon the
shares of those grants. The grants, Mr.. B. said
collected into the hands of Bcales, stood upon the
same footing with that to Aredondo. They were
not annulled by the late Texan treaty. None were
annulled by it. All the grants were confirmed
which were good under the laws of Texas; and
the laws of Texas. so far the right of properly
is concerned, are the laws of Spain and Mexico,
property accrued.
Mr.. B. SAID the Presidents message communi-
eating the treaty to the Senate was as untrue in
relation to the granted and TO the vacant lands in
Texas as 1t was in every other particular In.
stead of two hundred millions of acres, there were
only eighty-four millions of acres in Texas
proper; the rest was the one half in Tamaulipas,
Coahuila, Chihuahua, and New Mexico, and had
been granted away centuries ago; and the other
half in the wild country Of the Camanches and
the S1erra O6scura mountains, and must be
fought for and bought from these Indians before
it can be possessed, and will be then found to be
covered Ny BeaIe's forty five million acre grant.
Instead of thiry-seven millions of acres granted,
every inch of Texas proper, and all the Indian
country besides, was granted away. Instead of
one hundred and thirty millions of vacant land,
there was no vacant land for even the seril
mountains and barren prairles had been granted
to spectators to sell to the United States and in
Europe; and the assumption to pay the scrip
debts of Texas in consideration of the vacant
lands, was naked and fraudulent assumption to
pay ten millions for nothng-and that to stock
Jobbers who had given two cents, and five cents,
and seven cents in the dollar for the claims, and
whose agents were at Washington infesting the
Capitol, the Presidents house, and the Depart
ment of State, and doing all that was in their
Senators who despised them and their scrip. The
treaty was fraud in not annuling the great
grants, made for considerations not fulfilled, and
for not sealing the deprecated scrip debt 1t was
fraud in these particulars, but this fraud created
voracous and clanorous interest for the treaty.
Mr.. b. said the patriotic people of Missouri were
mistaken in supposing that every body were like
themselves, actuated by laudable motives in
wanting Texas, because it was geographically
connected with the United States, and essential
to It's POLITICAL, commercial, and social system.
There were others who wanted it for very differ
ent purposes-the disunonsts, for example, who
wanted to use it for separating the slaveholding
from the non-slaveholding States; Presidential
lntrlguers, who wanted it to mako and unmake
Presidential candidates; and land-speculators and
stockholders, who wanted to enrich themselves.
Throughout his speech, Mr.. B. presented it as
the design Of the Texas treaty not to get Texas
into the Union, but to get the Southern States
out OF it, and showed that the whole treaty, and
all the correspondence relating to it, was studi-
ously and artfully contrved for that purpose. To
pick quarrel with Great Britain, ard also with
the non saVehoIdino Statos m tho suhect Of