Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/282

264 seal and clerk; and the declaration might be made before the clerk of one of the courts as well as before the court itself. The only question was whether the circuit court of Clackamas county, in the district of Oregon, was on the 24th of March, 1849, or about that time, a territorial court of the United States.

Congress alone had authority to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory and other property of the United States, and that power was first exercised in Oregon, and an organized government given to it by the congressional act of August 14, 1848. It went into effect, and the territory had a legal existence from and after its passage, and the laws of the United States were at the same time extended over the territory, amongst the others, that of the naturalization of aliens. But it was admitted that the benefits to be derived from proceedings under these laws would be practically valueless unless the machinery of justice was at the same time provided to aid in their administration and enforcement. Congress had not omitted this; but there existed an extraordinary state of things in Oregon which made it unlike other territorial districts at the date of its organization. Unusual means had therefore been provided to meet the emergency. Without waiting to go through the ordinary routine of directing the electing of a legislative body to assemble and frame a code of statutes, laws were at once provided by the adoption of those already furnished to their hand by the necessities of the late provisional government; and in addition to extending the laws of the United States over the territory, it was declared that the laws thus adopted should remain in force until modified or repealed. Congress had thus made its own a system of laws which had been in use by the people before the territory had a legal existence. Among those laws was one creating and establishing certain courts of record in each county, known as circuit courts; and one of those courts composing the circuit was that of