Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/682

 persons other than white men from giving evidence in the courts.

The subject of the equality of the races had not lost its importance. The legislature of 1862, according to the spirit of the constitution of Oregon, which declared that the legislative assembly should provide by penal codes for the removal of negroes and mulattoes from the state, and for their effectual exclusion, enacted that each and every negro, Chinaman, Hawaiian, and mulatto residing within the limits of the state should pay an annual poll-tax of five dollars, or failing to do so should be arrested and put to work upon the public highway at fifty cents a day until the tax and the expenses of the arrest and collection were discharged.

By the constitution of Oregon, Chinamen not residents of the state at the time of its adoption were forever prohibited from holding real estate or mining claims therein. By several previous acts they had been "taxed and protected " in mining as a means of revenue, the tax growing more oppressive with each enactment, and as the question of Chinese immigration was more discussed, the law of 1862 being intended to put a check upon it. All former laws relating to mining by the Chinese having been repealed by a general act in 1864, the legislature of 1866 passed another, the general features of which were that no Chinamen not born in the United