Thurston then proceeds to pettifog about his injunction to keep his letter to Congress about the Donation Land Bill "dark till next mail." He had to pettifog or say it was a forgery. He said he wrote this as he feared the bill "never would pass, and I dreaded the effect the news of its failure, on the first day, would have on business of the territory.... It was to avoid the general panic that I adopted this course and this is why I requested to have nothing said till the time of trial might come."[67] Thurston was compelled to admit that he knew that Dr. McLoughlin had taken the oath of allegiance to the United States prior to the election in June, 1849, but Thurston said he did not know that Dr. McLoughlin had filed his intentions to become a citizen. Thurston endeavored to justify himself by technicalities. He knew that the Circuit Courts of the Provisional Government had ceased to exist May 13, 1849, or prior thereto. It was on that day that Governor Lane assigned the Territorial judges, appointed by the President, to their respective districts. Yet Thurston asserted that "The court, or the tribunal, in which Dr. McLoughlin took his oaths was not such a court as the law requires, but was a creature of the Provisional Government." He asserted that George L. Curry, the Clerk of the court, before whom Dr. McLoughlin took the oath of allegiance and filed his intentions to become an American citizen, did it in his capacity as a clerk of a court of the Provisional Government (which was no longer in existence), instead of in the capacity of a clerk of the new Territorial court, and said that Judge Bryant informed him that this was the case. May 30, 1849, George L. Curry, if not the _de jure_ clerk, was the _de facto_ and acting clerk of the Territorial District Court, before whom it was lawful and proper to take the oath of allegiance under the United States naturalization law. If, for any reason, Dr. McLoughlin did not comply technically with the law, it was nevertheless his intention to do so. He subscribed and filed two oaths on May 30, 1849. In these he swore it was his intention to become an American citizen and that "I renounce all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign Prince, Potentate, State and Sovereignty, whatsoever and particularly to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the provisions of 'An Act to establish the Territorial Government of Oregon.'" Under these oaths, or one of them, Dr. McLoughlin became a citizen of the United States September 5, 1851. In admitting him to citizenship the Judge must have found that Dr. McLoughlin's original declaration was sufficient and was filed in a court of competent jurisdiction. And yet Thurston had said in his letter to the House of Representatives and in his speech of May 28, 1850, that Dr. McLoughlin "refuses to become an American citizen."