“To give thee some adequate idea of the importance of that beautiful republic of Texas, which Lord Palmerston and the late Whig government of England took under their especial protection, I will just refer to the statistics of the late election of its President.  The successful candidate, General Houston, a man notorious for his open contempt for all the decencies of civilized society,—­brutal, brawling, profane, and licentious,—­received somewhat rising five thousand votes:  his competitor, Judge Burnet, between two and three thousand,—­a vote smaller by thousands than that of our little county of Essex, in Massachusetts.  Late accounts from Texas inform us that gangs of organized desperadoes, under the names of moderators and regulators, are traversing its territory, perpetrating the most brutal outrages.  In one instance they seized a respectable citizen who dared to express his dissatisfaction with their proceedings, hurried him into the forest, and deliberately dug his grave before his eyes, intending to bury him alive!  The miserable victim, horrified by the prospect of such a fate, broke away from his tormentors, and attempted to escape, but was shot down and instantly killed!  Such a congregation as Texas presents was never, I suspect, known, save in that city into which the Macedonian monarch gathered and garnered, in one scoundrel community, the vagabond rascality of his kingdom.

“Thou would’st be amused to read an article, which has made its appearance in the Houston Telegraph—­a Texian paper—­in which the editor says, ’that while we deeply commiserate the situation of our sister republic, in regard to the political scourge of abolitionism, it is pleasing to reflect that our country enjoys a complete immunity from its effects.  Indeed we may with safety declare, that throughout the whole extent of our country, not a single abolitionist can be found.’  He goes on to say that this induces many of the southern planters to emigrate to Texas, who, he remarks, ’will necessarily look to Texas, as the Hebrews did to the promised land, for a refuge and home.’  It will thus be seen that Texas is the promised land of the patriarchal slave-holders of the southern States.  When hunted from every other quarter of the globe by the inexorable spirit of abolition, when even Cuba and Brazil cease to afford them an asylum—­when slave-holding shall be every where else as odious and detestable as midnight larceny, or highway robbery,—­Texas alone, uninfected and secure, is to open its gates of refuge to the persecuted Calhouns and McDuffies, and their northern allies in church and state—­the San Marino of slavery, dissevered from the world’s fanaticism—­isolated and apart, like the floating air-island of Dean Swift.”

The following extract from a recent New York paper gives an equally deplorable representation of the society in Texas.