The judiciary report of 1843, in defining the powers of the executive committee, gave them authority to "recommend such laws as they might consider necessary, to the representatives of the people, for their action;" and they had, at the opening of the second session, recommended to the representatives to make provision for framing and adopting a constitution for Oregon previous to the next annual election on the first Tuesday in June. Accordingly an act was passed to provide for holding a constitutional convention, requiring the executive committee to notify the inhabitants of all the counties that they should at the next annual election give their votes for or against the call for a convention to frame a constitution, and notify the legislative committee elected of the result. This act, in which both committees elected by the people were agreed, was unfavorably commented upon by certain friends of the original organic law, as a movement toward an independent government. Applegate expressed the opinion that the changes made in the mode of administration were unnecessary for the short time the provisional government was expected to last.[1]
Two of the executive committee, I think, leaned toward independent government, and they were among those who had been longest in the country. This was hinted in the message of June signed by the whole committee,[2] though bearing the impress of but one author.[3] The second message explains that adjournment to December was made in the expectation of receiving some information from the United States relative to the adjustment of claims with Great Britain. When this fact is taken into consideration, and that no satisfactory intelligence had been obtained of such settlement, the coloring given to the acts passed in December is such as to justify
