These people have put fifty or sixty fine {214} farms under cultivation in the Willamette valley, amidst the most discouraging circumstances. They have erected for themselves comfortable dwellings and outbuildings, and have herds of excellent cattle, which they have from time to time driven up from California, at great expense of property and even life. The reader will find it difficult to learn any sufficient reasons for their being left by the Government without the institutions of civilised society. Their condition is truly deplorable. They are liable to be arrested for debt or crime, and conveyed to the jails of Canada![16]
For, in that case, the business of British subjects is interfered with, who, by way of retaliation, will withhold the supplies of clothing, household goods, &c., which the settlers have no other means of obtaining. Nor is this all. The civil condition of the territory being such as virtually to prohibit the emigration to any extent of useful and desirable citizens, they have nothing to anticipate from any considerable increase of their numbers,
- [Footnote: in Senate Docs., 26 Cong., 1 sess., 514, signed "David Leslie and others;" Cong. Globe, 26 Cong., 1 sess., 440, reports seventy signers. The memorial requests
Congress to establish a territorial government, notes that the British are, through the Hudson's Bay Company, granting lands, surveying harbors, bays, and rivers, cutting and shipping timber, and preparing to hold all the territory north of the Columbia. It describes the country south of that river as "of unequalled beauty and fertility," "a delightful and healthy climate," and "one of the most favored portions of the globe;" and concludes by praying for the "civil institutions of the American Republic," "the high privileges of American citizenship; the peaceful enjoyment of life; the right of acquiring, possessing, and using property; and the unrestrained pursuit of rational happiness."—Ed.]
