To his Excellency Charles Elliott, H.B.M.
Chargé d'Affaires for Texas.

You will see from the enclosed copy of correspondence between General Thompson and Mr. Doyle, that the contingency upon which I am authorized to make General Thompson's statement public is the failure to procure those letters. I am, very respectfully, your ob't serv't,

Sir, - I have the honour to acknowledge your letter of the 6th instant, and, as a general rule, I must decline to furnish you with copies of any correspondence between other persons and myself. I have the honour to remain, sir, your obedient servant,

To his Excellency Charles Elliott, H.B.M.
Chargé d'Affaires for Texas.

Sir, - I have the honour to acknowledge your note of yesterday in answer to mine of the 6th instant, and can readily allow, as a "general rule," the propriety of your not furnishing copies of your correspondence; but the correspondence I requested was of such an extraordinary character, I cannot believe it should come under such "general rule." Your excellency, therefore, will allow me most respectfully to state more at length the reasons of that application.

Upon the arrival of myself and companions at Tacubaya, near the city of Mexico, about the 15th of March last, we were several times informed by gentlemen who had it direct from General Thompson, the United [457] States minister near that court, that you had, at the request of President Houston, written to H.B.M. minister, Mr. Packenham, to this purport, "that though the Mier prisoners had entered Mexico contrary to law and authority, yet he, Houston, begged mercy for them," &c.

The high authority of President Houston, that the Mier prisoners were brigands, endorsed by the still higher authority of her Britannic majesty's chargé d'affaires residing at their homes, gave the President of Mexico all the legal right he desired to shoot them. The whole history of our war shows that he could desire nothing more than such legal pretext to execute upon Texians the bloodiest vengeance. We had been prisoners of war from the 26th of December up to the middle of March, and under our articles of capitulation had been treated as such. Then comes, to say the least of it, your unfortunate letter, which took from us all protection of that capitulation, which legalized our murders, and proved a death-warrant to the whole of my brave companions. Most fortunately for them, three days after the bloody order had gone into the hands of a soldier too just and too brave to execute it, the remonstrance of the foreign ministers got it countermanded; but still, their influence could not prevent the execution of your countryman, the brave Cameron, and his seventeen companions. Justice to the memory of these brave spirits