further asserted that the donations were in the nature of preëmption, only more liberal.[1]
This decision made the Portland land case more intricate than before, all rights of ownership in the land being disallowed, and there being no reasonable hope that those claiming it could ever acquire any; since if they should be able to hold the land until it came into market, there would still be the danger that any person being settled upon any of the legal subdivisions might claim it, if not sufficiently settled to be organized into a town. Or should the town-site law be resorted to, the town would be parcelled out to the occupants according to the amount occupied by each. Sad ending of golden dreams!
But the commissioner himself pointed out a possible flaw in the argument, in the word 'surveyed,' in the second line of the act of 1844. The lands settled on in Oregon as town sites were not surveyed, which might affect the application of that law. The doubt led to the employment of the judicial talent of the territory in the solution of this legal puzzle, which was not, after all, so difficult as at a cursory glance it had seemed. Chief Justice Williams, in a case brought by Henry Martin against W. G. T'Vault and others, who, having sold town lots in Vancouver in exchange for Martin's land claim, under a bond to comply with the requirements of the expected donation law, and then to convey to Martin by a good and sufficient deed, refused to make good their agreement, reviewed the decision of Commissioner Wilson and Secretary McClelland in a manner that threw much light upon the town-site law, and showed Oregon lawyers capable of dealing with these knotty questions.
Judge Williams denied that that portion of the organic act which repealed all territorial laws affecting the title to land repealed all laws regulating the
- ↑ Or. Statesman, June 6, 1854; Olympia Pioneer and Democrat, June 24, 1854; Portland Oregonian, June 10, 1854. See also Brief on behalf of Stark, Coffin, and Chapman, prepared by S. S. Baxter.
