Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/453

Governor Curry's message indicated the Lane influence. It contained some remarks on what the Statesman called the anomaly of a territorial government, and urged that the territorial system was unconstitutional, wrong in principle, and not in harmony with the spirit of American institutions. He declared there was no provision of the constitution which conferred the right to acquire territory, to be retained as territory and governed by congress with absolute authority; nor could the people of the United States who chose to go out and reside upon the vacant tertory of the nation, be made to yield a ready obedience to whatever laws congress might deem best for their government, or to pay implicit deference to the authority of such officers as were sent out to rule over them. No such power, according to Governor Curry's view, had ever been delegated to the government by the sovereign people of the sovereign states, who alone could confer it; and the only authority of congress over the territories was that derived from a clause in the constitution intended simply to transfer to the new government the property held in common by the original thirteen states, together with the power to apply it to objects mutually agreed upon by the states before their league was dissolved. The power of enlarging the limits of the United States was by admitting new states, and by that means only. It was contended that California, which had no territorial existence, came into the union more legitimately than Oregon would do, because Oregon had submitted itself to the authority of the general government. This and more was declared, in a clear and argumentative style, very attractive if not convincing. The Statesman recommended it to the perusal of its readers, at the same time declining to discuss the question. This was only another indication of the tendencies of the democratic party in Oregon, as elsewhere. Curry's whole argument was an attack on the validity of the ordinance of 1787, to which the