Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/148

130 to Winthrop, of Massachusetts, cautioning him against Thurston's misrepresentations. Then Thurston prepared an address to the people of Oregon, covering sixteen closely printed octavo pages, in which he recounts his services and artifices.

With no small cunning he declared that his reason for not asking congress to confirm to the owners lots purchased or obtained of McLoughlin after the 4th of March, 1849, was because he had confidence that the legislative assembly would do so; adding that the bill was purposely so worded in order that McLoughlin would have no opportunity of transferring the property to others who would hold it for him. Thus careful had he been to leave no possible means by which the man who had founded and fostered Oregon City could retain an interest in it. And having openly advocated educating the youth of Oregon with the property wrested from the venerable benefactor of their fathers and mothers, he submitted himself for reëlection, while the victim of missionary and personal malice began the painful and useless struggle to free himself from the toils by which his enemies had surrounded him, and from which he never escaped during the few remaining years of his life.