It was chiefly suggested by Mr Thurston, and was passed April 22d without opposition. Having secured this measure, as he believed, he next brought up the topics embraced in the last memorial on which he expected to found his advocacy of a donation law, and embodied them in another series of resolutions, so artfully drawn up[1] as to compel the committee to take that view of the subject most likely to promote the success of the measure. Not that there was reason to fear serious opposition to a law donating a liberal amount of land to Oregon settlers. It had for years been tacitly agreed to by every congress, and could only fail on some technicality. But to get up a sympathetic feeling for such a bill, to secure to Oregon all and more than was asked for through that feeling, and to thereby so deserve the approval of the Oregon people as to be reëlected to congress, was the desire of Thurston's active and ardent mind. And toward this aim he worked with a persistency that was admirable, though some of the means resorted to, to bring it about, and to retain the favor of the party that elected him, were as unsuccessful as they were reprehensible.
From the first day of his labors at Washington this relentless demagogue acted in ceaseless and open hostility to every interest of the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon, and to every individual in any way connected with it.[2]
Thurston, like Thornton, claimed to have been the author of the donation land law. I have shown in a
- ↑ Cong. Globe, 1849–50, 413; Or. Statesman, May 9, 1851.
- ↑ Here is a sample of the ignorance or mendacity of the man, whichever you will. A circular issued by Thurston while in Washington to save letter-writing, says, speaking of the country in which Vancouver is located: 'It was formerly called Clarke county; but at a time when British sway was in its palmy days in Oregon, the county was changed from Clarke to Vancouver, in honor of the celebrated navigator, and no less celebrated slanderer of our government and people. Now that American influence rules in Oregon, it is due to the hardy, wayworn American explorer to realter the name of this county, and grace it again with the name of him whose history is interwoven with that of Oregon. So our legislature thought, and so I have no doubt they spoke and acted at their recent session.' Johnson's Cal. and Or., 267. It was certainly peculiar to hear this intelligent legislator talk of counties
