Powers
and Duties of An Empresario-Stephen F. Austin.
The following letter to James W. Breedlove of New Orleans has been pointed out as a
particularly good description of the responsibility and mission from the greatest of all
empresarios, Stephen F. Austin:
AUSTIN'S COLONY TEXAS
OCTOBER 12, 1829. SIR: I thank you for your kind disposition manifested in your letter to
Mr. Williams towards this settlement; and in reply to your suggestion relative to the
acquisition of land here, I deem it my duty to explain to you, somewhat in detail the
nature of the colonization law, the authority given to the "Empresarios,"
and also the nature of the authority under which I have acted. This subject is not
understood in the United States, and the consequence has been, that some persons have been
greatly deceived, and even this Government has been most unjustly slandered and abused for
exercising the powers and doing what it is by law compelled to do. You are no doubt
informed that the person who contracts with the Government to introduce families, or as it
is commonly termed, settle a colony, is called in the law empresario. By explaining to you
what an empresario is, you will understand this matter, and see that such projects, as
published by Dennis A. Smith of Baltimore are totally incompatible with the authority
given to Exter and Wilson and Company, for they are nothing more than empresarios. The
empresario is an agent who is hired by the Government to introduce a specific number of
families of a certain description within a certain time, who are to be settled within
certain designated limits. Should the empresario introduce the families, and should they
be received by the Government Commissioner as being of the description required, then, and
not before, the empresario is entitled to receive his pay, which is five leagues of land
for each hundred families so introduced by him. The titles for land are all issued by the
Government Commissioner 14th of that month the Executive did confirm them in due form and
return them to me. I then left that city for Texas. I give this narrative to show how and
whence my authority emanated. You will understand that at that time the Government of this
nation was consolidated. The Federal system was not adopted and the State Governments
established until about one year afterwards.
The authority given to me was to introduce and settle
three hundred families from the United States or elsewhere, in certain limits of Texas.
The Baron de Bastrop and myself were jointly appointed the Government commissioners to
survey the lands of the settlers and issue titles to them in due form in the name of the
Government. We were specially authorized to increase the quantity of land over one league
to any settler, who, in our opinion, was entitled to such an increase, either by the
capital which he introduced into the country or by the size of his family, and there were
no limits fixed as to the extent to which we might go in making such increase of quantity.
We were entitled as commissioners to receive fees or pay for our services, and the
necessary office fees and charges for writing, translating and recording, and also the
surveying fees, all of which were fixed by a regulation of the Government of Texas, and
were, or ought to have been paid by the settlers; for the Government allowed us nothing
for our services. I was therefore both empresario and commissioner to my first Colony.
Besides this, I was specially appointed by the Supreme Government of Mexico to be the
Civil Chief, the sole judicial officer, and the commandant of the militia of the new
Colony, subject always to the orders of the Government of Texas, and the
Commandant-General of the military department, but for these services I received nothing
from the Government. These several appointments (for they were all separate and distinct
the one from the other) threw a vast burden of labor and responsibility and expense upon
me individually--an expense and labor which I was not bound by my contract as empresario
to bear. What rendered my situation still more troublesome and perplexing, was that the
Government at that time was unsettled and shaken by frequent political revolutions and
changes of systems, policy and officers, and I had to make new friends and acquaintances
amongst the superior powers at every change. Added to all this, out of my office, there
was not one person in the settlement who could correctly translate any law or order of the
Government. I was from necessity the sole organ of communication with the Government; and
as respects the local government of the settlement, the granting of lands, etc., etc., it
appeared to the settlers that my authority was absolute.
It is sufficient for me to say that my settlers were
North Americans, and many of them frontiersmen who had never known restraint, to inform
you that I was looked upon with jealousy and suspicion. It was the natural result of the
national character of those people, and of the situation in which circumstance and
necessity, and even the salvation of the settlement had placed me-and that situation also
imposed upon me the duty and difficult task of bearing in silence and good humor, all the
abuse and jealousy that ignorance and suspicion could heap upon me, leaving it to time to
test my acts and prove whether they were correct or not. It has done so, and all are
satisfied with me except a few. I do assure you that it was a difficult task, and I may
frankly confess that I would have abandoned the settlement, the settlers and the country,
if no other motive than pecuniary individual interest had influenced me. My ambition was
to be the means of laying a foundation for spreading an intelligent and an enterprising
population over this fertile and hitherto unknown and wilderness country. Perhaps, also, I
had a little pride in wishing to succeed, for I undertook this enterprise in opposition to
the advice of my friends in the United States, who nearly all pronounced it visionary and
impracticable. You must pardon my egotism in speaking so much of myself, but the history
of this settlement is so closely connected with me individually, that one cannot be
clearly explained without allusion to the other, and beside it seems to account in part
for some of the erroneous opinions that have spread as to powers of the empresario. Those
who were ignorant of the language, or who would not or could not take the trouble of
inquiring, supposed, or pretended to suppose, that I derived all my authority solely from
being empresario, when, in fact, I held various distinct appointments, and those powers
have been supposed to attach to the empresario, which in no respects whatever belong to
him. Also, they have confounded the old National
Colonization law of January 4th, 1823, which is no longer in force, with the present State law passed 25th of March, 1825.
As I have before observed, my business was despatched by
the National Government, 14th of April, 1823. About one year afterwards the State
governments were established under the federal system, and on the 18th of August, 1824,
the National Constitutional Congress (the same that formed the Federal Constitution, and
was, in fact, the Convention), passed a law relinquishing to the States the territory
within their respective limits, and authorizing each State to make its own Colonization
law, with the restriction that not more than eleven leagues of land should be granted to
any one individual, and also that the lands within ten leagues of the coast and twenty
leagues of a line of an adjoining nation, should not be colonized or granted without the
consent of the President of the nation. Under this authority the State of Coahuila and
Texas passed the colonization law of March 24, 1825, which is now in force, and under
which all the empresarios have been made, for my first Colony is the only one that was
ever granted under the law of the 4th of January, 1823. In addition to my first Colony, I
made three contracts with the State Government to settle 900 families in all, on the
vacant land remaining within the limits designated for my first Colony. One of those
contracts includes the land bordering on the coast, which was granted with the special
approbation of the President as the law requires. Also, in one of said contracts (the one
on the coast) I was appointed commissioner as well as empresario, and in virtue of these
two distinct appointments, all the powers of both were centered in me. I am the only
person in whom these two appointments ever have been united, although others have only
looked at what I did without examining my authority or attending to my advice; and have
supposed that all empresarios could do the same. A General Commissioner has lately been
appointed for the whole of Texas who will shortly be on here. I presume that his
appointment will supersede all other appointments of commissioners. Also a
Surveyor-General has been appointed, who will be on with the General Commissioner. If you
have not already procured the colonization law of this State I will send it to you as soon
as it can be published in English in the Texas Gazette; and by comparing this statement
with the law you will see that it is correct. It may be late in the winter before it is
published for there are some other laws which it is highly important to get out in English
before the elections in December, for owing to the want of a printing press it has
heretofore been impossible to publish them.
The colonization business is the last on earth that any
man ought to undertake for the sole purpose of making money; and no empresario will ever
advance one step if no other motive than money influence him; for he will not undergo the
labor and receive the abuse for all he can make-that is he will not advance legally. No
empresario ever had such an opportunity of making a fortune by imposing on the ignorance
and credulity of capitalists in other countries as I have had, for no one of them ever had
the power that I had; but instead of leaving my settlers to shift for themselves and
instead of distorting the law to mislead others and benefit myself: I have remained here
and shared the toils of settling a wilderness, and have rigidly adhered to the law and my
duty to this Government. And I have also succeeded in laying a permanent foundation for
the settlement of Texas by an enterprising population, and the day is not far distant when
it will become the richest and most powerful State of the Mexican Confederation. But I am
poor. I have not even the means of living with comfort and that decency which my situation
would seem to require, unless I raise those means by a sacrifice of a part of my premium
land so hardly earned, and that I will not do for it is my only stake for my old age. Will
it not appear strange to you that although such is my real situation an opinion has gone
abroad that I have made myself rich by what I received from the settlers, or rather by
selling land to them, as the uninformed and ignorant have styled the fees which I was by
law entitled to as Commissioner, and for surveying, etc, etc? Strange as it may seem, it
is nevertheless a fact. The majority of the settlers were unable to pay anything, and must
have left the country if the fees had been exacted from them promptly. In order to keep
all afloat I did exact prompt payment from those who were able to make it, and out of the
money thus raised I paid the way of the poor who were unable to pay any thing. And I also
defrayed the expenses of the administration of the local Government, and was enabled to
keep the Indians friendly by presents and feeding them until we got strong enough to whip
them into subjection.
By this course of policy I have saved this settlement
and brought it to what it now is, and have secured large-landed estates to hundreds of
poor men who otherwise would not or could not ever have got one foot of land. Some of
these men have never yet paid one cent, and accuse me of speculating and cheating them
because I ask it of them. It is human nature and I do not complain. Besides it is my duty
to bear these matters with patience, for it is a sacrifice that is due to the future
prosperity and greatness of this favored country to bear with patience and perseverance
all the labor and all the mortifications attendant upon the difficult task of laying the
foundation of that prosperity. I have again become an egotist. Perhaps I am influenced by
the idea that a man who labors faithfully to the best of his abilities and with pure
intentions is entitled to some compensation, and that unless I derive one by getting a
little credit for what I have done or tried to do, I shall come off badly, for I doubt
very much whether I shall live to reap much advantage from my premium land, which as I
before observed, is my only stake, and it is not free from embarrassments created solely
for the benefit of this settlement. I have just recovered from a dangerous spell of
sickness, and also I have to mourn the recent death of an only and beloved brother, and I
am not in a situation to write connectedly on any subject; you must therefore overlook my
style. I will be responsible for the facts which I have stated. STEPHEN F. AUSTIN |