Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/388

372 captains were selected and instructed to enlist men for companies of mounted riflemen. The per diem of the members of the legislative committee was fixed at $1.25, the money to be raised by subscription, and the meeting adjourned to convene again on the fifth of the following July. For the purpose of protecting the public treasury, however, it was provided that the legislative committee should not sit over six days.

In pursuance of the duties imposed upon it, the committee met upon the sixteenth of the same month, and was in session on the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of June. The meeting was held at "Willamette," presumably Oregon City, and, having occupied the entire six days at their disposal (a precedent, by the way, which has been followed religiously by their descendants) adjourned to meet at "Champooick," on the following fifth of July, in order to report their proceedings to "the people." The official title of this gathering is "Public meeting, held on the fifth of July, 1843," and the opening statement is to the effect that "the inhabitants of Oregon territory met, pursuant to adjournment, to hear the report of the legislative committee, and to do such other business as might come before them.' No credentials were necessary to entitle one to a legal participation in the proceedings of this meeting. It was composed of the "inhabitants of Oregon territory," and as such they were laying the foundations of one of the best systems of state government to be found to-day in the entire Union.

This was a period when the people met and enacted their own laws, and may be said to have been the halcyon days of the initiative and referendum, in its fullest simplicity, but it could not last long with that comprehensive exercise of public privileges. Its universality is well