Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/136

118 It was chiefly suggested by Mr Thurston, and was passed April 22d without opposition. Having secured this measure, as he believed, he next brought up the topics embraced in the last memorial on which he expected to found his advocacy of a donation law, and embodied them in another series of resolutions, so artfully drawn up as to compel the committee to take that view of the subject most likely to promote the success of the measure. Not that there was reason to fear serious opposition to a law donating a liberal amount of land to Oregon settlers. It had for years been tacitly agreed to by every congress, and could only fail on some technicality. But to get up a sympathetic feeling for such a bill, to secure to Oregon all and more than was asked for through that feeling, and to thereby so deserve the approval of the Oregon people as to be reëlected to congress, was the desire of Thurston's active and ardent mind. And toward this aim he worked with a persistency that was admirable, though some of the means resorted to, to bring it about, and to retain the favor of the party that elected him, were as unsuccessful as they were reprehensible.

From the first day of his labors at Washington this relentless demagogue acted in ceaseless and open hostility to every interest of the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon, and to every individual in any way connected with it.

Thurston, like Thornton, claimed to have been the author of the donation land law. I have shown in a