Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/287

 amended by the very same body that passed the original bill, and at the instance of the very same member who introduced it.

An act that is simply prospective, and does not take effect until two years after the date of its passage, is an incomplete measure, liable to be amended at any time before it goes into operation; and, if amended before any one suffers any injury from its erroneous provisions, those provisions are as if they never had been. It is like a bill imperfect when first introduced by a member of a legislative body, and so amended by the author, before its final passage, as to remove its objectionable features. In such case no sensible man would censure the introducer for mistakes he himself had corrected. All that could be said is, that the second sober thought of the member was better than his first hasty thought.

It was substantially so in this ease. In the hurry of the June session of 1844 I could not think of any other mode of enforcing the act but the one adopted; but by the December session of 1844 I had found another and less objectionable remedy, and promptly adopted it. This remedy was not the one urged by the executive committee, as will easily be seen. Neither myself nor the other members who voted for the original bill are responsible for the objectionable features of the measure, because we ourselves corrected the error. I maintain as true this general proposition: that a person who commits a mistake, and then corrects it himself, before any one suffers in consequence of it, deserves a commendation instead of a censure; because the act of correction shows a love of justice, and a magnanimous willingness to admit and correct error. All the intense indignation of the historian is, therefore, thrown away upon an imaginary evil, about which he is as much mistaken as the girl that wept over the imaginary death of her imaginary infant.

On page 378 the historian gives, professedly from the Journal, the yeas and nays upon the final passage of the original bill, as follows: "Yeas, Burnett, Gilmore, Keizer, Waldo, Newell, and Mr. Speaker MeCarver—8; nays, Love-