Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/178

160 In order to sustain his position with regard to the location act, Games appealed for an opinion to the attorney-general of the United States, who returned for an answer that the legislature had a right to locate the seat of government without the consent of the governor, but that the governor's concurrence was necessary to make legal the expenditure of the appropriations, which reply left untouched the point raised by Gaines, that the act was invalid because it embraced more than one object. With regard to this matter the attorney-general was silent, and the quarrel stood as at the beginning, the governor refusing to recognize the law of the legislature as binding on him. His enemies ceased to deny the unconstitutionally of the law, admitting that it might prove void by reason of non-conformity to the organic act, but they contended that until this was shown to be true in a competent court, it was the law of the land; and to treat it as a nullity before it had been disapproved by congress, to which all the acts of the legislature must be submitted, was to establish a dangerous precedent, a principle striking at the foundation of all law and the public security.

Into this controversy the United States judges were necessarily drawn, the organic act requiring them to hold a term of court, annually, at the seat of government; any two of the three constituting a