Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/357



LAST STEP IN PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 329

each plot were complied with. Thus the Company was assured of means of ejecting an intruder upon its lands by thoroughly legal methods. All other lands used by the Company could be covered by registered title in the same way. 13

The life of the Provisional Government after its extension to include the whole of the Oregon territory was to be too brief to determine whether all the benefits to the Hudson's Bay Company anticipated by McLoughlin were to be fulfilled. In the next year the boundary dispute between Great Britain and the United States was settled. The Provisional Govern- ment had, after this settlement, only to mark time until the Congress of the United States provided a territorial govern- ment. However, it will ever be one of the bright places in Oregon history to find that in spite of antagonism, jealousies, and mutual distrust, a spirit of conciliation and compromise prevailed to bring together all the residents of Oregon terri- tory, British and American citizens with the French Canadians, people of diverse religions and unlike temperaments, into a peaceful union for the purpose of maintaining a government "having for its object the protection of life and property."

13 Last Letter, 115.