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HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA. 121 



for the existing system, and to establish tribunals for 

 their proper and faithful administration. 



"In obedience, therefore, to the extraordinary 

 exigencies of their condition, the people of the city of 

 San Francisco elected members to form a legislature, 

 and clothed them with full powers to pass laws. 



" The communities of Sonoma and of Sacramento 

 city followed the example. 



" Thus were three legislative bodies organized ; the 

 two most distant being only one hundred and thirty 

 miles apart. 



" Other movements of the kind were threatened, 

 and doubtless would have followed, in other sections 

 of the territory, had they not been arrested by the 

 formation of a State government. 



" While the people of California were looking to 

 Congress for a territorial government, it was quite 

 evident that such an organization was daily becoming 

 less suited to their condition, which was entirely differ- 

 ent from that of any of the territories out of which 

 the new States of the Union had been formed. 



" Those territories had been at first slowly and 

 sparsely peopled by a few hunters and farmers, who 

 penetrated the wilderness, or traversed the prairies, 

 in search of game or a new home ; and, when thus 

 gradually their population warranted it, a government 

 was provided for them. They, however, had no foreign 

 commerce, nor any thing beyond the ordinary pui'suits 

 of ajzriculture, and the various branches of business 

 which usually accompany it, to induce immigration 

 within their borders. Several years were required to 

 give them sufficient population and wealth to place 

 them in a condition to require, or enable thera to sup- 

 port, a State government. 



11 



