Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/150

140 law-makers and enact a body of laws. But from the nature of the conditions confronting pioneers they were almost certain to adopt bodily the laws of their ancestral States. The social traditions and political inheritance of the first inhabitants, or rather the dominant elements determined whether the laws of this or that State were adopted.

We have some interesting examples of such transplanting of laws in the establishment of the territories of Iowa and Oregon. When Iowa was given a separate territorial existence in 1838 the laws of Wisconsin were "extended" over the new Territory. The bulk of the laws adopted, however, were those taken over from Michigan when Wisconsin was cut off from that jurisdiction in 1834; and the major portion of those were the growths from the ordinances made for the government of the old Northwest Territory pursuant to the great ordinance of 1787. But the members of the first territorial legislature of Iowa knew little and cared less about the genealogy of the laws they enacted in 1838-39. They were but little learned in laws or in law-making. They had no new and radical notions to promote. The late Theodore S. Parvin, who was the first secretary of the council or senate in 1838-39, has told us how little the members knew of the real needs of the people, how ignorant they were of law-making, how they selected here and there from the statutes of various States as fancy or State pride prompted them; how each member felt in duty bound to get as large a number of the laws of his own State enacted by the new Territory. The matter that was important and urged was to inaugurate the new government and it did not signify much to them one way or other what laws were adopted so that they gave the people the form and substance of laws that would satisfy the traditional notions. Professor Jesse Macy has shown us how remote often the laws actually adopted were from corresponding to or regulating the actual life and conduct of