ground it would have puzzled him to tell. And how was he to be at once champion and law-breaker? The missionaries said further: "You do not pretend to justify yourself; you plead the want of money. We are very sure you will not find it profitable, and we will reimburse you for your expenditures thus far."
This communication was signed by nine Americans and fifteen Canadians,[1] who subscribed in all sixty dollars toward purchasing the obnoxious distillery, and promised to furnish whatever further amount was required. Yet another influence, to be mentioned presently, was brought to curb the purposes of the obstreperous Yankee.
Young arrogantly rejected the advances of McLoughlin, and refused reimbursement at the hand of the missionaries, but he promised to abandon his scheme for the present.[2] He would withhold his hand from sowing drunkenness broadcast over the land, but he could not deny himself the pleasure of railing at the fur company. In his reply to the temperance society, Young declared that McLoughlin's tyrannizing oppression and disdain were "more than the feelings of any American citizen could support;" and declared that the innumerable difficulties placed in his way by the company under McLoughlin's authority were the occasion of his being driven to consider so objectionable a means of obtaining a livelihood.
On arriving at Boston, Kelley hastened to publish a pamphlet setting forth in strong terms the fact that the American settlers in Oregon were suffering great
- ↑ Hines Oregon Hist., 20. This author seems inclined unfairly to ignore the efforts of the Hudson's Bay Company in the matter. The fifteen Frenchmen were still on the books of the fur company, and Daniel Lee more correctly affirms that 'McLoughlin seconded the efforts of the missionaries and friends of temperance, and that the course he has taken in regard to spirituous liquors has done much to preserve the general order and harmony of the mixed community of which the settlement is composed.' Lee and Frost's Or., 140.
- ↑ Walker, in his sketch of Ewing Young, in Or. Pioneer Assoc. Trans., 1880, 58, says that 'upon this appeal and offer he abandoned the distillery, and then was planning for a saw and grist mill.'
