Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/488

Rh organic laws by an act of three sections making males of sixteen and females of twelve years of age competent to enter into the marriage relation, but requiring the consent of the parents, till the man was twenty-one and the woman eighteen. The person marrying minors without the sanction of parents or guardians was made liable to a fine of one hundred dollars, to be paid to the parents or guardians; but the marriage was not invalidated for want of their consent. Burnett says the law was enacted only to obviate the evils sure to grow out of the former one. Early marriages are the rule of all new communities for obvious reasons. In Oregon, especially, where women were few, a girl was sure to have suitors before she had fairly reached maturity. But making children of sixteen and twelve years of age competent to marry led to abuses in colonial and territorial times resulting too often in divorce, and sometimes in death.

One of the acts passed intended to have a wholesome effect upon the colony, and which met the approval of the majority, was a prohibitory liquor law. The penalties were fifty dollars for importing, twenty dollars for each sale, and one hundred dollars for manufacturing, together with the destruction of the distillery. White, as Indian agent, was permitted to make some remarks before the committee in favor of its passage. The administering of the law by White has already been alluded to in a previous chapter.

An act touching the subject of slavery, free negroes, and mulattoes is worthy of notice. The adoption of the ordinance of 1787 as the basis of the organic law of Oregon had already made this free territory, and every article of the laws of 1843 was in consonance with free principles. Some occasion, however, was given for special legislation by an affray at Oregon City in the month of March previous, in which two white men and an Indian had been killed, and the public mind much excited, for all of which it was proven that a free negro was to blame. White had