Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/302

 292 PETER H. BURNETT. but required (without any warrant having been issued first by a court or judicial officer) to seize the distilling apparatus; and in such case each officer and each private citizen was to be himself the judge of both the fact and law, so far as the duty to seize the apparatus was concerned. This was giving to each individual citizen of Oregon a most extraordinary power, and making its exercise obligatory. The fifth section of the amendatory act, as given by the his- torian, was as follows : SECTION 5. All the fines or penalties recovered under this act shall go, one-half to the informant and witnesses, and the other half to the officers engaged in arresting and trying the criminal or criminals ; and it shall be the duty of all officers in whose hands such fines and penalties may come to pay over as directed in this section. This was a most unusual and extraordinary provision. To give a portion of the penalty recovered to the informant and arresting officer was not very improper; but to give another portion of such penalty to the witnesses and judges, thus making them interested in condemning the accused, is indeed most extraordinary; and I apprehend that such a provision never before occurred in the history of legislation among civil- ized men. The author of this fifth section must have had great confidence in the power of money. These objectionable features were so great, in the view of Governor Abernethy, that he recommended a revision of the amendatory act, in his message to the House of Repre- sentatives, December 4, 1846. ( Gray, 442. ) The House of Representatives, at the December session, 1846, passed an act^ entitled "An Act to regulate the manu- facture and sale of wine and distilled spirituous liquors." This act Governor Abernethy returned to the House with his objec- tions, as set forth in his veto message of December 17, 1846. In this message he said, among other things : The act lying before me is the first act that has in any manner attempted to legalize the manufacture and sale of ardent spirits. At the session of the Legislature in June, 1844, an act was passed entitled "An Act to prevent the introduc-