Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/134

116 decided to take his chance among the candidates, with what result we know.

The first we hear of Thurston in his character of delegate is on the 24th of January 1850, when he rose in the house and insisted upon being allowed to make an explanation of his position. When he left Oregon, he said, he bore a memorial from the legislative assembly to congress which he could not produce on account of the loss of his baggage on the Isthmus. But since he had not the memorial, he had drawn up a set of resolutions upon the subjects embraced in the memorial, which he wished to offer and have referred to their appropriate committees, in order that while the house might be engaged in other matters he might attend to his before the committees. He had waited, he said, nearly two months for an opportunity to present his resolutions, and his territory had not yet been reached in the call for resolutions. He would detain the house but a few minutes, if he might be allowed to read what he had drawn up. On leave being granted, he proceeded to present, not an abstract of the memorial, which has been given elsewhere, but a series of questions for the judiciary committee to answer, in reference to the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Puget Sound Agricultural Association. This first utterance of the Oregon delegate, when time was so precious and so short in which to labor for the accomplishment of high designs, gives us the key to his plan, which was first to raise the question of any rights of British subjects to Oregon lands in fee simple under the treaty, and then to exclude them if possible from the privileges of the donation law when it should be framed.