Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/482

Rh The legislature of 1844 has been censured by some for undoing so much of the work of the previous year. But in their opinion as well as in the judgment of the executive committee, it must be done; the code of the older colonists must be changed, but it was an ungrateful task. The new-comers composed three fourths of the legislative committee of eight, the ninth member not being elected. But two thirds of the executive committee who recommended the changes were old colonists. Burnett before going to take his seat in the committee had never been at Oregon City, nor examined the laws of 1843. Therefore to charge upon him as has been done a premeditated intention of subverting them is manifestly unjust.

Having his attention drawn to the peculiarities of the organic law by the executive committee before making an examination of it, Burnett, who had been district attorney in Missouri, and was an able jurist, declares that on attempting to separate the fundamental from the statutory part of the code, or to understand where the constitution ended and the statutes began, he found himself unable to do so, and that it became necessary to make some distinction