at the first election. When in 1852–3 the legislature amended the laws regulating elections, it removed in a final manner the restrictions which the Thurston democracy had placed upon foreign-born residents of the country. By the new law all white male inhabitants over twenty-one years of age, having become naturalized, or having declared their intention to become citizens, and having resided six months in the territory, and in the county fifteen days next preceding the election, were entitled to vote at any election in the territory.
To return to the donation law and its construction. Persons could be found who were doubtful of the meaning of very common words when they came to see them in a congressional act, and who were unable to decide what 'settler' or 'occupant' meant, or how to construe 'improvement' or 'possession.' To help such as these, various legal opinions were submitted through the columns of newspapers; but it was generally found that a settler could be absent from his claim a great deal of his time, and that occupation and improvement were defined in accordance with the means and the convenience of the claimant.[1]
The surveyor-general, who arrived in Oregon in time to begin the surveys of the public lands in October, 1851, had before him a difficult labor.[2] The survey of the Willamette meridian was begun at
- ↑ See Home Missionary, vol. 24, 156. Thornton held that there was such a thing as implied residence, and that a man might be a resident by the residence of his agent; and cited Kent's Com., 77. Also that a claimant whose dwelling was not on the land, but who improved it by the application of his personal labor, or that of his hired man, or member of his family, could demand a patent at the expiration of four years. See opinion of J. Q. Thornton in Or. Spectator, Jan. 16, 1851. It is significant that in these discussions and opinions in which Thornton took a prominent part at the time, he laid no claim to the authorship of the land law. To do this was an afterthought. Mrs Odell, in her Biography of Thurston, MS., 28, remarks upon this.
- ↑ Cong. Globe, app., 1852–3, vol. xxvii. 331, 32d cong. 2d sess.; U. S. H. Ex. Doc. 2, vol. ii. pt iii. 5–8, 32d cong. 1st sess. The survey was conducted on the method of base and meridian lines, and triangulations from fixed stations to all prominent objects within the range of the theodolite, by means of which relative distances were obtained, together with a general knowledge of the country, in advance of the linear surveys. Id.
