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union. What combination of circumstances is necessary, in order that hostile parties may be come extinguished or abdicate? How long may their opposition last? It is plain that in the infinite variety of human affairs, no fixed rules can be laid down here. - The old Greek theogony represents discord and friendship in the midst of the elements, co-operating in the work of the gods. The one divides the forces of nature, the other restores them to unity, and the two together produce the general harmony of the universe. Opposition, like discord, doubtless has its part to play in the harmony of the life of nations. "Every force in nature is despotic, as is all will in man. A single plant would soon cover the earth, by reproduction, if the other plants allowed it free course." (Rivarol.) Opposition is an obstacle in the way of invading forces, and keeps them within their just limits. It obliges power to keep an attentive watch over its own acts, and, if we may take a witticism for an axiom, we would be obliged to admit even that it is the safeguard of power; since we can lean only upon that which offers resistance. In a regular representative government the opposition is always the minority. As soon as it becomes the more numerous and powerful, it assumes control of affairs, and finds the other party arrayed against it as the opposition. The opposition may be weak, or it may be strong; it may be homogeneous, or be composed of discordant and contradictory elements, united only for the needs of the struggle; in this case it constitutes a coalition. Oppositions usually have a marvelous aptitude for self-discipline; every opposition has a tendency to provide itself with leaders and to become systematic; that is, not to confine itself to criticism of isolated acts of the government, but to condemn them and combat them en masse. In divided countries in which the governing power is not universally accepted, it is rarely the opposition which precipitates revolutions; it prepares the way for them. Most frequently at the last moment it recoils before its own work. It confines itself to paving the road, to preparing the arena into which political parties are about to enter, and in which the forces of insurrection or of the government are to I decide the fate of the state. We are not, however, without examples of oppositions which, victorious and sustained by the people, have succeeded in forcing a constitution upon the government, and in accomplishing a peaceful revolution. - The opposition has more than one advantage over the government party. In the first place, the part it has to play is less difficult: criticism is easy, while art is difficult. The opposition which criticises is not, like the government party, responsible for its acts; its work is collective, and therefore impersonal. Moreover, as the public think that it is more honorable to attack power than to flatter it, and do not see that under many circumstances it requires more courage to defend it than to combat it, the opposition easily obtains the favor of popularity. This popularity sometimes

deludes the minds of even well intentioned men, who allow themselves to believe that the opposition is necessarily in advance of the government, that it is a means and a condition of progress. This is sometimes the case, but not always. The opposition may be more enlightened and liberal than the party in power; but it may be less so. | Reason and truth are no more the exclusive attributes of the governed than of the governing. Hence it can not be said absolutely that the opposition holds in its hands the future of civilization and the destinies of the world. Nevertheless, experience shows that governments, save in exceptional cases which are always rare, in which the head of the state is a man of genius, incline more frequently to immobility than to progress, and generally oppose the force of inertia to the most necessary reforms. The impulse must then come from without, and the motive power is the opposition. The work of oppositions thus partakes both of good and evil. But they number in their history pages of incomparable brilliancy. Posterity should not forget that in the ranks of the opposition there have been found united, courage and virtue; that they have called forth the noblest bursts of patriotism and the sublimest accents of eloquence; that great characters have been formed in them; that generous hearts have fought with them, and with them devoted themselves to humanity. What matters it after this that all the causes favored by oppositions have not triumphed? Doubtless, by the side of oppositions inspired by great principles, we find others petty, mean and retrogressive. Some have marked their passage by fertile ideas; others have by degrees become weakened and finally dropped into silence and forgetfulness. In the work of man error is ephemeral. Truth survives. We must credit opposition, the daughter of free investigation, with its truths, and pardon its errors. (Compare PARTIES, POLITICAL.) EMILE CHEDIEU.

ORDER OF THE DAY. (See PARLIAMENTARY LAW.)

ORDERS IN COUNCIL. (See EMBARGO, in U. S. History.)

ORDERS, Religious. (See CONGREGATIONS.)

ORDINANCE OF 1787 (IN U. S. HISTORY). The organic law under which took place the organization of the territory west of Pennsylvania, east of the Mississippi, and north of the Ohio. — The acquisition of the "northwest territory" by the United States is elsewhere given. (See TERRITORIES.) After the completion of the Virginia cession, Jefferson, as chairman of a committee of three on the subject, reported to the congress of the confederation a plan for the temporary govern ment of the western territory. As the conflicting claims of the partisans of Jefferson, Rufus King and Nathan Dane are apt to confuse the reader, it seems best to give the peculiar features of Jeffer

son's report, which was adopted April 23, 1784. 1. It covered the whole western territory, ceded or to be ceded, south as well as north of the Ohio. 2. Seventeen states, each two degrees in length from north to south, were to be gradually formed from it; one between Pennsylvania and a north and south line through the mouth of the Great Kanawha; eight in a north and south tier, bounded on the west by a north and south line through the great falls of the Ohio; and the remaining eight in a corresponding tier bounded west by the Mississippi. Even the names were to have been provided for the prospective states of the northwest, including such singular designations as Chersonesus, Sylvania, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Polypotamia and Pelisipia, together with the less remarkable titles of Saratoga, Washington, Michigania and Illinoia. 3. "After the year 1800 there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states other than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." This prohibition, therefore, was to have been prospective, not immediate, and to have applied to all new states from the gulf of Mexico to British America. This proviso was voted on, April 19. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania voted for it; Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina, against it; North Carolina was divided; and New Jersey, Delaware and Georgia were unrepresented. Not having seven states in favor, the proviso was lost. Delaware and Georgia were entirely unrepresented; New Jersey had one delegate present, who voted for the proviso, but a state was not "represented" except by at least two delegates. The language of the proviso, however, became a model for every subsequent restriction upon slavery. (See COMPROMISES, IV.; WILMOT PROVISO; CONSTITUTION, Amendment XIII.) 4. The states were forever to be a part of the United States, to be subject to the government of the United States, and to the articles of confederation, and to have republican governments. 5. The whole was to be a charter of compact and fundamental constitutions between the new states and the thirteen original states, unalterable but by joint consent of congress and the state in which an alteration should be proposed to be made. With the adoption of the report, except the anti-slavery section, Jefferson's connection with the work ceased. He entered the diplomatic service in the following month, and remained abroad until October, 1789. - March 16, 1785, Rufus King, of Massachusetts, afterward of New York, offered a resolution that slavery in the whole western territory be immediately prohibited. The language is Jefferson's, excluding the words "after the year 1800," and changing "duly convicted" into "personally guilty." By a vote of eight states to three this was committed, and a favorable report was made, April 14 (probably); but it was never acted upon. In September, 1786, congress again began to consider the government of the territory, and a com

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mittee, of which Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, was chairman, framed the "ordinance of 1787," which was finally adopted, July 13, 1787. The fairest view is that Jefferson's report was the framework on which the ordinance was built: the general scheme was that of the former, but the provisions were amplified, and the following changes and new provisions were made: 1. The prohibition of slavery followed Jefferson's, excluding the words "after the year 1800," thus making it immediate, and adding a fugitive slave clause. (See SLAVERY, V.) This article, says Dane, in a letter of July 16, 1787, to King, "I had no idea the states would agree to, and therefore omitted it in the draft; but, finding the house favorably disposed on this subject, after we had completed the other parts, I moved the article, which was agreed to without opposition." 2. On the other hand, as this was an ordinance for the government only of the territory northwest of the Ohio, its prohibition of slavery was territorially only about half as large as Jefferson's; and this may help to explain the different fates of the two. A further explanation of the passage of Dane's ordinance, even with a prohibition of slavery, has recently been brought to light by Mr. W. F. Poole (see • North American Review," among the authorities): in 1787 Dr. Manasseh Cutler, agent of the Ohio land company in Massachusetts, was ready to purchase 5,000,000 acres of land in Ohio if it should be organized as a free territory, and his judicious presentation of this fact to congress had a powerful influence upon the result. 3. Article III., and the conclusion of article IV., guaranteeing the freedom of navigation of the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, were new, and seem to have been due to Timothy Pickering, of Massachusetts. The ordinance proper began by securing to the inhabitants of the territory the equal division of real and personal property of intestates to the next of kin in equal degree; and the power to devise and convey property of every kind. Congress was to appoint the governor, the secretary, the three judges, and the militia generals; and the governor was to make other appointments until the organization of a general assembly. The governor and judges were to adopt such state laws as they saw fit, unless disapproved by congress, until there should be 5,000" free male inhabitants of full age" in the district: a curious slip, considering the prohibition of any other than "free" inhabitants. On attaining this population the territory was to have a general assembly of its own, consisting of the governor, a house of representatives of one to every 500 free male inhabitants, and a legislative council of five to be selected by congress from ten nominations by the lower house, and to serve for five years. The assembly was to choose a delegate to sit, but not to vote, in congress; and was to pass laws for the government of the territory, not repugnant to the principles of the following "articles of compact between the original states and the people and states in the said territory," which were to "forever

remain unalterable, unless by common consent." I. No peaceable and orderly person was ever to be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments. II. The people were always to enjoy the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, trial by jury, proportionate representation in the legislature, bail (except for capital offenses, in cases of evident proof and strong presumption), moderate fines and punishments, and the preservation of liberty, property and private contracts. III. Schools and the means of education were forever to be encouraged; and good faith was to be observed toward the Indians. IV. The territory, and the states formed therein, were forever to be a part of "this confederacy of the United States," subject to the articles of confederation, and to the authority of congress under them. They were never to interfere with the disposal of the soil by the United States, or to tax the lands belonging to the United States; and the navigation of the Mississippi and St. Lawrence was to be free to every citizen of the United States, "without any tax, impost or duty therefor." V. Not less than three nor more than five states were to be formed in the territory. The boundaries of three of these, the “western, middle and eastern" states, [subsequently Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, respectively], were roughly marked out, very nearly as they stand at present; and congress was empowered to form two states [Michigan and Wisconsin] north of an east and west line through the southern end of Lake Michigan. Whenever any of these divisions should contain 60,000 inhabitants it was to be at liberty to form a state government, republican in form and in conformity with these articles; and was then to be admitted to the Union "on an equal footing with the original states, in all respects whatsoever." VI. "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, other wise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: provided always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid." This proviso was the first instance of a fugitive slave law; it was afterward added to the constitution. (See COMPROMISES, III.; FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS; SLAVERY, V.)- The general scheme of the ordinance, with the exception of the prohibition of slavery, was the model upon which the territories of the United States were thereafter organized. (See TERRITORIES.) Upon the inauguration of the new government under the constitution an act was passed, Aug. 7, 1789, recognizing and confirming the ordinance, but modifying it slightly so as to conform it to the new powers of the president and senate. When the territory south of the Ohio came to be organized, the organization was controlled by the stipulation of the ceding states that slavery should not be prohibited; and in the case of other territories the

language often differed widely from that of the ordinance of 1787; but in all cases the underlying principles have been identical, so that the ordinance might be called the magna charta of the territories. The difference in statemanship between the British and the American methods of dealing with problems closely similar is elsewhere. noted. (See REVOLUTION, I.; TERRITORIES, I.) -In the organization of the five states which have been formed under the ordinance, the privileges secured by it to the inhabitants of the territory have been imbedded in the state constitutions, usually in the preliminary bill of rights. In Indiana, in 1802, a convention, presided over by Wm. H. Harrison, sent a memorial to congress, asking a temporary suspension of the sixth article; but a select committee, John Randolph being chairman, reported that such action would be highly dangerous and inexpedient. In 1805-7 successive resolutions of Gov. Harrison and the territorial legislature to the same end were followed in each year by favorable reports from the committees to which they were referred; but congress took no action. In the summer of 1807 the effort was again renewed; but the new committee reported, Nov. 13, 1807, that a suspension of the article was not expedient. By this time opposition to the suspension was growing stronger in the territory itself, so that the attempt was not renewed. But the legislature, the same year, passed laws allowing owners of slaves to bring them into the territory, register them, and hold them to service, those under fifteen years to be held until thirtyfive for males and thirty-two for females, and those over fifteen for a term of years to be contracted for by the owner and the negro. In the latter case, if the negro refused to contract, he was to be removed whence he came; and in both cases the children of registered servants were to be held to service until the ages of thirty for males and twenty-eight for females. Illinois, being then a part of Indiana territory, lived under these laws until her admission as a state, in 1818, when she enacted in her constitution that "existing contracts" should be valid. In this way slavery remained practically in force all over Illinois, and the pro-slavery party controlled the state. In 1822 an anti-slavery man was elected governor, by divisions in the pro-slavery ranks, and in his inaugural he reminded the pro-slavery legislature of the illegal existence of slavery in Illinois. That body retorted by an act to call a convention to frame a new constitution. The act had to be approved by popular vote, and, after a contest lasting through 1823-4, was defeated by a vote of 6,822 to 4,950. In both states provisions forbidding future contracts for service, made out of the state, or for more than one year, gradually removed this disguised slavery. — The preambles to the constitutions of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois all recite that the prospective state "has the right of admission to the Union" in accordance with the constitution, the ordinance of 1787, and the enabling act. In the case of Michigan congress long

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neglected to pass an enabling act; the people of the territory, therefore, resting on the fifth article of the ordinance, and claiming that the only condition precedent to admission (the increase of the population to 60,000) had been fulfilled, formed a constitution, and were admitted without an enabling act. (See MICHIGAN.) It should also be noticed that the extreme northwestern part of the territory, south and west of the head of Lake Superior, was not finally included in any of the five states named, but is now a part of Minnesota. -The second of the articles of confederation declares that each state retains "every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States in congress assembled." The power to acquire, the jurisdiction to govern, and the right to retain, territory outside of the limits of the states, are nowhere in the articles, even by implication, given to the United States. Whence, then, did congress draw the power to vest in itself the title to the northwest territory, to frame this ordinance for its government, to abolish slavery therein, and to provide for the admission to the confederacy of five new states? The Federalist" answers the question thus briefly: "All this has been done, and done without the least color of constitutional authority; yet no blame has been whispered, no alarm has been sounded." In other words, we are to suppose that the states, tempted partly by a willingness to despoil Virginia of her vast western claims, and partly by a desire to share in the proceeds of the western territory as a common stock, were willing to allow their imbecile congress to appropriate a source of revenue to which it had no shadow of claim, and which, as it then seemed, would so increase in a few years as to make congress independent of the states. Such a supposition does far less than justice to the acuteness of the state politicians who were then the controlling class; they would have been glad to withhold the power to govern the territories from congress, and yet how were they to avoid granting it? The reason for their "whispering no blame, sounding no alarm," lay in the patent necessity of the case, in the political law which finally forces a recognition under any form of government, that it is only in non-essentials that a limitation on sovereignty can be deduced by implication, and that there are certain essential attributes of sovereignty which can only be restricted in express terms. (See also Hamilton's argument in BANK CONTROVERSIES, II.) The right to acquire property is as much the natural right of a government, however limited, as of an individual; and a government, if restricted so far as to be denied this right, is either non-existent or impotent. It is not true that circumstances, in this case, compelled the states to allow a violation of the articles of confederation; it is rather true that circumstances, in this case, compelled the state politicians to respect the natural rights of the national government, which, in so many other cases, they had attempted to limit by the 3

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VOL. III.

general phrases of the second article. (See NATION.) We are therefore to take the sovereign right to acquire territory as the justification of the ordinance of 1787, just as in the case of the annexation of Louisiana, which was equally unauthorized by the constitution. (See CONSTITUTION, III., B, 2.) — Undoubtedly the greatest benefit of the ordinance to the territory which it covered was its exclusion of slavery from it. It thus received the full sweep of that stream of immigration, foreign and domestic, which so carefully avoided slave soil; the strictness with which this westward stream confined itself to the comparatively narrow channel bounded by the lakes and the Ohio, is of itself a testimony to the wisdom of the sixth article. Beyond this, however, there were countless other benefits. The enumeration of the natural rights of the individual was a political education for the people of the new territory, as well as a chart for the organization of the new state governments. The stipulations for the encouragement of education, though too indefinite to be binding, have exerted an enormous influence upon the demands of the people and upon the policy of the legislatures. This whole section was thus, from the beginning, the theatre of a conscious and persistent attempt to combine universal suffrage and universal education, each for the sake of the other; and the success of the attempt, though still far from complete, has already gone far beyond any possible conception of its projectors. Most important of all, from a political point of view, the ordinance was the first conscious movement of the American mind toward the universal application of the federal principle of state government to the continent. The original states owed their formal individuality to accident or the will of the king; the inchoate states of Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee were the accidents of accidents; here, in the northwest territory, the nation first consciously chose the state system for its future development. (See NATION, III.)- Major General Arthur St. Clair, a delegate from Pennsylvania, and president of congress during the adoption of the ordinance, was the first governor of the territory, 1788-1802. His biography, cited below, is the best exposition of the practical workings of the ordinance. When the portion of the northwest territory outside of Ohio was organized as Indiana territory (see that state), William H. Harrison became its governor, 1800-11, and was succeeded by John Gibson, 1811-13, and Thomas Posey, 1813-16, until Indi ana became a state. When the separate territory of Illinois was organized (see that state), Ninian Edwards became its governor, 1809-18. Michigan, as a territory, had as governors William Hull 1805-13, Lewis Cass 1813-31, Geo. B. Porter 1831-4, and Stevens T. Mason 1834-5. When Wisconsin was separated from Michigan as a territory, its governors were Henry Dodge, 1836-41 and 1845-8, James D. Doty 1841-4, and N. P. Tallmadge 1844-5. The small remainder of the territory, after the admission of Wisconsin as a

state (see WISCONSIN; MINNESOTA), was added to south to latitude 42°; on the south, latitude 42°; Minnesota. For the cessions of the various states and on the west the Pacific ocean. These differed which went to make up the northwest territory, from those claimed by the state constitution in see TERRITORIES. The text of the ordinance is only one respect: the latter took as a northern in 1 Poore's Federal and State Constitutions, 7; 1 boundary the Columbia and Snake rivers, thus Stat. at Large (Bioren and Duane's edition), 475; including the territory between latitude 46° and Duer's Constitutional Jurisprudence, 512; An- the Snake river, which congress preferred to drews' Manual of the Constitution, App. xiii.; assign to Washington territory.— CONSTITUTION. see also North American Review, April, 1876; The first constitution is still in force. It restricted Hildreth's Pioneer History, 193 (Ohio Company); suffrage to whites, on six months' residence and Taylor's History of Ohio. 493; 1 Bancroft's Forma one year's declaration of intention to become a tion of the Constitution, 177, and 2:98; H. B. Ad- citizen; authorized the legislature to prohibit the ams' Maryland's Influence in Founding a National immigration of persons not qualified to become Commonwealth; Coles' History of the Ordinance of citizens of the United States; provided for a leg1787 (read before the Penn. Hist. Soc., June 9, islature of two houses, the senate to consist of 1856); 4 Journals of Congress, 373, 379; 3 Hil- sixteen members, chosen by districts for four dreth's United States, 449; 1 von Holst's United | years, and the house of representatives of thirtyStates, 286; 1 McMaster's History of the American four members, chosen by districts for two years; People, 505; 1 Schouler's United States, 98; 2 Pit- forbade the passage of special or local laws in a kin's United States, 210; 1 Curtis' History of the number of specified cases; gave the governor a Constitution, 291; 1 Draper's Civil War, 180; 1 term of four years, and made him eligible not Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, 31; 1 more than eight in twelve years; provided that Greeley's American Conflict, 38; 2 Holmes' Annals, he should be chosen by popular vote, or, in de354; 1 Stat. at Large, 50 (act of Aug. 7, 1789); fault of a popular majority, by a joint vote of Smith's Life of St. Clair; Burnet's Settlement of the legislature; forbade the legislature to charter the Northwest Territory; Washburne's Sketch of any bank, to subscribe to the stock of any comEdward Coles; Story's Commentaries, § 1310; pany, or to charter any corporation otherwise The Federalist, xxviii. (by Madison); and author- than by general law; and ordered the state capiities under articles referred to. For Jefferson's tal to be fixed by popular vote. Two other quesclaims to the authorship of the ordinance, see 1 tions were submitted to popular vote, with the Benton's Thirty Years' View, 133; 1 Randall's following result: by a vote of 7,727 to 2,645, Life of Jefferson, 397; for Dane's, see 3 Webster's slavery was prohibited in the state; and by a vote Works, 397; for Dane's, King's and Pickering's, of 8,640 to 1,081, free negroes or mulattoes not see 2 Spencer's United States, 202; Pickering's then resident in the state were forbidden to Life of Pickering. ALEXANDER JOHNSTON. "come, reside or be within this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract, or maintain any suit therein," and the legislature was authorized to pass laws for their removal and exclusion, and for the punishment of persons who should employ or harbor them. The constitution has not since been amended in any particular. In 1882 the legislature changed the time of inauguration of state officers from September to January, so that the new governor holds from September, 1882, to Jan. 1, 1887.-GOVERNORS. John Whittaker, 1859-62; Addison C. Gibbs, 1862-6; Geo. L. Woods, 1866-70; Lafayette S. Grover, 1870-78; Wm. W. Thayer, 1878-82; Zenas F. Moody, 1882-7. - POLITICAL HISTORY. The long interval between Oregon's adoption of a constitution and its admission as a state was due mainly to the "anti-negro clause" of the constitution, which made republicans in congress very unwilling to vote for a ratification of the instrument. The clause was due to the existence of three parties in the state, one in favor of slavery, a second opposed to it, and a third opposed to negro immigration. The last two united to prohibit both slavery and negro immigration; but the first was sufficiently strong to compel the convention to submit to the people the question of "slavery or no slavery." After the ratification was complete, and the state admitted, the first and third factions united against the second, and made Oregon a

OREGON, a state of the American Union. It was claimed to have been rightfully a part of the Louisiana purchase, as its western boundary was defined in 1819 by the Florida treaty (see ANNEXATIONS, I., II.), and it was evidently under this claim that Lewis and Clarke first explored it in 1804-6, by direction of President Jefferson. The conflicting claims are elsewhere given. (See NORTHWEST BOUNDARY.) The people of Oregon, without waiting for action by congress, formed a provisional government in 1843. After several failures to pass an act for the organization of the territory (see WILMOT PROVISO), an act for that purpose became law, Aug. 14, 1848. It covered all the territory of the United States west of the Rocky mountains and north of latitude 42° north (see WASHINGTON TERRITORY), and prohibited slavery by putting in force the provisions of the ordinance of 1787. No enabling act was passed by congress, but a state convention at Salem, Aug. 17-Sept. 18, 1857, under authority of the territorial legislature, adopted a state constitution. Under this the state was admitted Feb. 14, 1859. — BOUNDARIES. The boundaries fixed by the act of admission were as follows: on the north, the Columbia river and latitude 46° north; on the east, the Snake river from latitude 46° north to its junction with the Owyhee, and thence directly

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