A new history of Texas for schools : also for general reading and for teachers preparing themselves for examination Page: 215 of 412
This book is part of the collection entitled: From Republic to State: Debates and Documents Relating to the Annexation of Texas, 1836-1856 and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the UNT Libraries Special Collections.
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ERA OF REVOLUTION.
199
UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
By the people of Texas in General Convention at the town of
Washington, on the second day of Mlarch, 1836:
[GEORGE 0. CHILDiESS, AUTHOR.]
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty, and
property of the people from whom its legitimate powers are derived,
and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted; and
so far from being a guarantee for their inestimable and inalienable
rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their
oppression -when the Federal Republican Constitution of their country,
which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial ex-
istence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly
changed, without their consent, from a restricted federated republic
composed of sovereign States, to a consolidated central, military
Despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the
army and priesthood, both of which are the eternal enemies of civil
liberty, the ever ready minions of power, and the usual instruments of
tyrants--when, long after the spirit of the Constitution has departed,
moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the
semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms even of the consti-
tution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances
being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons,
and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon
them at the point of the bayonet; -when, in consequence of such
acts of malfeasance and abduction on the part of the government,
anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original ele-
ments ;-in such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of preser-
vation, and the inherent and inalienable right of the people to
appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their
own hands in extreme cases, enjoin it as a right toward them-
selves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such
a government, and create another in its stead calculated to rescue
them from impending dangers, and to secure their welfare and
happiness.
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Pennybacker, Anna J. Hardwicke. A new history of Texas for schools : also for general reading and for teachers preparing themselves for examination, book, 1895; Palestine, Tex.. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth2388/m1/215/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.