Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/655

604 or locations of the inhabitants of the territory, such interference being detrimental to the growth, prosperity, and interests of the country. Bailey followed with another, recommending the legislature to embody in its memorial that claim-jumpers, or persons interfering with the rights of others touching land claims, should be debarred from receiving any land or donation in the territory.

Once more one of the Oregon City delegation made a motion to adjourn, which was rejected; and Moore again resolved that the convention considered it unnecessary to obey the mandates of the agitators of the late movement to memorialize congress, or to send a delegate or messenger to that body; after which Burns moved that the proceedings of the convention be signed by the president and secretary, and published in the Spectator, the motion being carried. The adoption of each of these resolutions, so opposite to the intention of the movers of the convention, was effected by the delegates of the other counties voting solidly against the Oregon City delegates, whose number, six, was reduced to five by making one of themselves, P. Foster, chairman of the convention. Thus ingloriously ended the first attempt to devise means to evict British claimants under the organic law. Two days later came the news of the settlement of the boundary question, in anticipation of which these measures had been taken, but the full tenor of which was unknown for several months afterward.

In the mean while the legislature met, and