The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897 Volume 1 Page: 1,063

                                
THE
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
MADE BY THE
DELEGATES OF THE PEOPLE OF TEXAS
IN
( 1063 )
General Convention, at Washington,
On March 2nd, 1886.
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and
property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are de-
rived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was insti-
tuted: 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 constitu-
tion of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer
has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their govern-
ment has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a
restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a
consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest
is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both 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 themselves of the constitution dis-
continued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances