Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/285

Rh which it was plain that congress meant to confer upon the alien population of Oregon the privileges of citizenship without delay, and to cement the population of the territory as it stood when it asked that its provisional laws should be adopted.

The meaning of the 5th section of the organic act should have been plain enough to any but prejudiced minds. In the first place, it required the voter to be a male above the age of twenty-one years, and a resident of the territory at the time of the passage of the act. The qualifications prescribed were, that he should be a citizen of the United States of that age, or that being twenty-one he should have declared on oath his intention to become a citizen, and have taken the oath to support the constitution of the United States and the provisions of the organic act. This gave him the right to vote at the first election, and made him eligible to office; but the qualifications of voters and office-holders at all subsequent elections should be prescribed by the legislative assembly. This did not mean that the legislature should enact laws contrary to this which admitted to citizenship all those who voted at the first election, by the very terms required, namely, to take the oath of allegiance and make a declaration of an intention to assume the duties of an American citizen; but that after having set out on its territorial career under these conditions, it could make such changes as were found necessary or desirable thereafter not in conflict with the organic act. The proof of this position is in the fact that after and not before giving the legislature the privilege, comes the proviso containing the prescribed qualifications of a voter which must go into the territorial laws, the same being those which entitled any white man to vote at the first election. Having once taken those obligations which were forever to make him a citizen of the United States by the organic act, the legislature had no right, though it exercised the assumed power, to disfranchise those who voted