should immigrate to the state after the adoption of the constitution should ever hold real estate or a mining claim, or work any mining claim therein, and that the legislature should enact laws for carrying out this restriction. These prescriptive clauses, however they may appear in later times, were in accordance with the popular sentiment on the Pacific coast and throughout a large portion of the United States; and it may be doubted whether the highest interests of any nation are not subserved by reserving to itself the right to reject an admixture with its population of any other people who are distasteful to it. However that may be, the founders of state government in Oregon were fully determined to indulge themselves in their prejudices against color, and the qualities which accompany the black and yellow skinned races.
Another peculiarity of the proposed constitution was the manner in which it defended the state against speculation and extravagance. The same party which felt no compunctions at wasting the money of the federal government was careful to fix low salaries for state offices,[1] to prevent banks being established under a state charter, to forbid the state to subscribe to any stock company or corporation, or to incur a debt in any manner to exceed fifty thousand dollars, except in case of war or to repel invasion; or any county to become liable for a sum greater than five thousand dollars.
These limitations may at a later period have hindered the progress of internal improvements, but at the time when they were enacted, were in consonance with the sentiment of the people, who were not by habit of a speculative disposition, and who were at that moment suffering from the unpaid expenses of a costly war, as well as from a long neglect of the principal resources of the country, which was a natural consequence of the war.
- ↑ The salaries of the governor and secretary were $1,500 each; of the treasurer, $800; of the supreme judges, $2,000. The salaries of other officers of the court were left to be fixed by law. Deady's Laws Or., 120.
