Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/288

 joy and Hill—2." He then informs us, as already stated, that the executive urged the amendment of the act at the December session, 1844; and then, on pages 380–3, gives the communication of the executive committee in full. Now, as he had the Journal before him, why did he not follow it up to the short December session, and ascertain what the legislative committee had done, if anything, in regard to amending this act?

His history of the proceedings of the committee of 1844 is very short; but, concise as it is, it is full of flagrant misrepresentations. There was one act, however, that he affirmatively approved; and yet, so great was his prejudice, that he wrongfully imputes a bad motive for a confessedly good act. He says, on page 379: "Mr. Burnett claimed great credit for getting up a prohibitory liquor law, and made several speeches in favor of sustaining it, that being a popular measure among a majority of the citizens."

All our legislation under the provisional government was based upon the settled conviction that Oregon would be the first American State on the Pacific. We considered ourselves as the founders of a new State of the great American Union. At the time this measure was passed, each State had the constitutional right to determine who should be citizens and who residents. Any person born on the soil of a State had the natural, moral, and legal right to a residence within the State, while conducting himself properly; because the place of one's birth is an accidental circumstance, over which he can have no control. But, for the very reason that every human being has the right of domicile in the place of his nativity, he is not, as a matter of right, entitled to a residence in another community. If that other community denies him the privilege of such residence, it denies him no right, natural or acquired, but only refuses a favor asked. The territory of a State belongs to its people, as if they constituted one family; and no one not a native has a right to complain that he is not allowed to form one of this family. Although every one, under the broad and enlarged principles of law