1822 - Edocs

190
MEMORIAL
To the President of the United States.
To His Excellency James Monroe, President of the United States.*
Y>our mefftoiialists constituting the Le-
gislative Council dfthe Territory of Florida, beg leave to
submit to the President of the United States, a statement
of the prominent subjects of general interest to the inhabitants
of this Territory, for which they- have been -appointed
to Legislate, and in the destinies of which they
feei a deep public and individual interest.
The Legislative Council will approach the topics, to
which they would most respectfully solicit your attention,
with that frankness and sincerity which citizens have the
pride and satisfaction to assume, in addressing the chief
magistrate of our grand confederacy; and through him
the Congress of the United States. After a long and protracted
negotiation the United States acquired the Florida,
an acquisition which it was then supposed would
form one of the brightest epochs, in the history of the distinguished
administration that negotiated, and the Congress
that sanctioned the treaty of cession, and enable the
ceded inhabitants with the influx of population and wealth,
to fulfil the high destiny to which the God of nature seemed
to have assigned this highly favoured country. Candour
however obliges us to say that the act of Congress
for the organization of the government of this Territory,
although calculated to remedy many of the defects of the
provincial establishment from which it was lately emancipated,
was nevertheless not so favourable as we had a
right to expect, when we contemplate the value of the acquisition,
the commercial and agricultural advantages of
the country, its soils, bays, rivers and harbors, its important
resources and energies when' developed, and called
into action, and above all its exposed situation possessing
a sea coast of twelve hundred miles, constituting the natural
boundary of the most important part of the union,
and liable to the incursions of any foreign invader, or
lawless domestic enemy, whose cupidity and enterprizing
avarice might lead them to desolate our towns, and plunder
our spare population. Your memorialists do not in
the remotest degree, charge the neglect to a want of that
careful and provident attention to the interests of the native
and adopted citizens of the United States which has
always characterized the policy of those .who are intrusted
with the guardianship of our rights, but to a want of
the requisite information in regard to the necessities and
wants of our Territory, deprived as it has been of representation
in Congress.
The first subject to which we would particularly invite
your attention, and that of the Congress of the United
States, is one of as much national concern, as solicitude,