larger representation that a state would have in congress, by the addition of two senators. Nor were ambitious politicians wanting to keep alive this belief and to accept the positions created. There were influences pulling toward the creation of a state government, with its senatorial representation, outside of the community most directly interested. There are always interests to be found in the general drift of political affairs that seek re-enforcement through the admission of new states.
So great, however, was the opposition among the people of the territory, that the calling of a constitutional convention was three times submitted to the people before it was sanctioned. There was opposition from the southern part of the territory where a plan was in contemplation for union with Northern California in the formation of a new state; there was opposition from the whig party which was growing in power and had a vigorous organ to represent it in the Oregonian, and there was a feeling of conservatism which felt that things were not yet ripe for statehood, expressed later so well by Matthew P. Deady, the President of the Convention, in his closing address to that body: "I have not regretted the delay that has occurred, by the country refusing to authorize a convention before this time; but on the contrary, think it has been for the best. As to mere numbers and wealth, we have doubtless sufficient of both to maintain a state government; but a people in my opinion, require age and maturity, as well as wealth and numbers to make them competent to carry on a government successfully. As in the growth of the child and the oak so with a people. Thrown together as we have been, upon this coast, it requires time to knit together in one harmonious whole our diversified elements of population."[1]
- ↑ Journal of the Constitutional Convention.
