my comrades shot, and others starved for the want of bread, had not some newspapers in his interest recently insulted public intelligence by speaking of 'his kind feelings for those men.' This most unblushing and barefaced insult, as well to the memories of those hundred and odd whose deaths he caused, as to [459] the remaining half in chains and slavery, is my excuse, if one were necessary, for again obtruding myself upon the public.

"Though our last Congress placed to the credit of our prisoners in Mexico thirty thousand dollars, under the most positive and peremptory injunctions upon President Houston 'forthwith' to supply them, not one dollar has been sent them. When the President is asked why he has not sent the money to these men, he adds insult to their misfortunes by saying that they are better off than they would be at their homes.

"No man of sane intellect, whatever may be his devotion, personal or political, to President Houston, after reading the annexed correspondence can for a moment doubt that he was the malicious, vindictive, cold-blooded author of the execution.

Sir, - I have had the honour to receive your letter of the 8th of November, in which you inform me that President Houston not only disavows having authorized Captain Elliott to write such a letter to the Hon. Richard Packenham, as it was reported that he had done, but that he also asserts that no communication to that effect had ever been made to me by Mr. Packenham or Mr. Doyle. If President Houston had confined himself to the disavowal of having authorized such a letter to have been written, I do not know that, upon mature reflection, I should have considered it my duty to have made any statement upon the subject; but as the matter now stands, I have no alternative left me. I therefore send you the accompanying statement, with a note from Benjamin E. Green, Esq., and another addressed by me to Mr. Doyle. I trust that nothing farther can be required of me in the matter. You, sir, very well know that my name has been involved in the affair by no officious interference in it, and it has been made public contrary to my advice and wishes. The fact of such a letter having been written came to my knowledge while endeavouring, under the express orders of my government (given in a similar case), to protect those brave and unfortunate men, the prisoners of Mier. It was a matter of such a character that it was impossible I could have been either indifferent or mistaken about it. I have furnished General Houston with a copy of this statement. I have the honour to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

Shortly after I heard of the capture of the Texian prisoners at Mier, [460] and having serious apprehensions that their rights as prisoners of war might be violated, I called upon the Hon. Richard Packenham to request that he would, if necessary, add his great and well-deserved influence with the Mexican government to mine, for the protection of those men. He expressed at once a willingness to do so, but said that, from what he had heard, he was afraid they were not strictly entitled to the rights of prisoners of war, because the expedition had not been authorized by the Texian government. I told him that I was very certain he was mistaken. In a subsequent interview with Mr. Packenham on the subject, he told me that he had received a letter from Captain Elliott, H.B.M. chargé d'affaires in Texas, saying that General Houston requested him (Mr. P.) to interpose his good offices in behalf of the Mier prisoners, although they might not, in strictness,