Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/373

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Finances of Provisional Government.
367

individual members of this committee subscribed on the spot sums equal to their compensation and as entertainment and a meeting place were offered free,[1] and no other salaries fixed, the financial obligations were for the time met.

The provisions of the organic law adopted at the meeting on July 5 that related to finances made voluntary contributions the sole reliance for securing general funds for the support of the newly established government. Fees were fixed for special services performed by the territorial recorder and the treasurer, and the officers of the judiciary should receive a dollar for every marriage service that they might be called on to perform.[2]

The executive committee (for the tripartite makeup Of the community was still in evidence in the election of a plural executive—an executive committee of three) in its message to the Legislature at its first annual meeting recommended that "it take into consideration the propriety Of laying a light tax for the support of government."[3] The committee of ways and means of the Legislature, after hearing the report of the treasurer who had been financing the government for a year with a subscription paper, was not slow in bringing in bills for raising revenue by taxation, for fixing salaries and for making appropriations to pay them.[4]

Before tracing the development of the finances of this government on their new basis of taxation it will be in order to take note of some available resources for public expenditures which were naturally very convenient while an income from taxes was being developed.

THE ESCHEAT FUNDS FROM THE ESTATE OF EWING YOUNG.

In a message to the Legislature at an adjourned meeting in December of the same year (1844) the executive committee reported that it had "in possession, notes given by dif-


  1. J. Quin Thornton's History of the Provisional Government, p. 62, in Proceedings of the Oregon Pioneer Association, 1875.
  2. Oregon Archives, pp. 27 and 30, and see Appendix to this paper. Document A.
  3. Archives MS. and Brown's History of Provisional Government, p. 131.
  4. See Appendix, Document B.