frequent coming of vessels to the Columbia and the Willamette to bid for their surplus products. The awful experience of the Tonquin in entering the mouth of the Columbia had been widely advertised in Irving's "Astoria," and several vessels had more recently been wrecked there, notably one belonging to the Hudson Bay Company, and another belonging to Commodore Wilkes' squadron. A pilot was needed.[1] In 1846 a licensed pilotage was established and two years later the commissioners of pilotage received an appropriation.[2]
The manufacture, introduction or sale of ardent spirits was first tabooed under public opinion and then prohibited by law until 1846. From that time the license fees from the sale of them figure prominently among the revenue items.[3] In 1846 it was again the express declaration of the people that the sale of them should be prohibited, but the Legislature went no further than to make the law more stringent against sales to Indians. No other subject had a larger share of the attention of the Legislature.
The radical character of the legislation in the matter of the currency and the legal tender has already been noticed. The classes of expenditures that comprise four-fifths of the whole,[4] the line of legislation that monopolizes the major portion of the compilation of its laws and a review of the leading activities of the officials of the Provisional Government—all show that the main function served by it was that of representing the agency and symbol of social control. It existed mainly to promulgate the inherited standards of right and justice as to person and property adapted to and applied to conditions as they were found in this frontier community. Either because the self-control and peaceable dispositions of the individuals were so well developed or because public opinion was so effective, the mediation of the
