Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/529

478 or by marks at the corners and upon the lines, and be recorded within twelve months in the office of the territorial recorder, with the names of adjoining claimants in the cases of those already in possession, and within twenty days in the cases of new-comers. Permanent improvements were required to be made within six months by building or enclosing, and residence begun within a year; or in cases where not occupied, the claimant might hold by paying into the treasury five dollars annually. Non-residents should not have the benefit of the law, nor men who were obliged to absent themselves from the territory on private business beyond the period of two years.

No individual was allowed to hold more than one square mile, in a square or oblong form, nor to hold more than one claim at the same time; but partnerships not exceeding the amount of one claim to each partner might be formed by improvements made upon one, provided none of the partners held separate claims. Any person complying with the provisions of these ordinances became entitled to the same recourse against trespassers as in other cases provided by law. ^By the amended organic laws, the officers chosen at the general election on the first Tuesday in June 1845 were declared entitled to act under these laws, and their official acts, in accordance with them, were valid and legal. The house of representatives could, by a two-thirds vote, amend the organic laws, but the amendments must be made public by being read at the polls at the next general election, and two thirds of the members elected at that time must approve of them.

All the merely statutory laws were expunged from the instrument called by the committee of revision a compact instead of a constitution, a distinction with-