After quoting further from the Shortess petition, Thurston said: "Now, Mr. Speaker, all this was before the Provisional Government was in operation--before the treaty, when no man had any right to meddle with the soil. Who can contemplate the helpless condition of these few and feeble American citizens, at that time and place, struggling for life, and for subsistence, thus kicked and buffeted round at the mercy of one of the most powerful corporations on earth, headed by a man whose intrigues must have furnished Eugene Sue with a clue to his 'Wandering Jew,'--who, I say, sir, can thus contemplate our flesh, and blood, and kindred, with their land, their houses, their all, thus posted up, and declared subject to _any_ disposition this unfeeling man might make of them without shedding tears of pity for their distress.... Now, sir, just turn to my correspondence in letters one and two, where he tells you, if a man settled where the company did not allow him to, he paid the _forfeiture with his life_, or from _necessity_ was compelled to yield. And here, again, the names of Wait and Thornton rise up before me, and while reading their laudations of McLoughlin, I can think of nothing but two Jews lauding Judas Iscariot.... "This petition is signed by many persons, many of whom I know, who are now living in Oregon. I can bear unqualified testimony to their character in society, to their honor and to their veracity. I undertake to say, that not a word is uttered in it but the truth, and it is susceptible of any reasonable proof. I know the gentleman who wrote the original, whom to know is to respect, to listen to, to believe. He is a gentleman of the highest standing in Oregon, of some twelve or fourteen years' residence, and who would be universally believed on any subject on which he would presume to speak. That gentleman informs me that every word of it is true to the letter.... If in the mouth of two or three witnesses all things are established, then surely sixty-five men are good evidence of the facts stated in the petition to which their names were attached, and, then, you and the country can judge whether this man McLoughlin, by whom all the abuses here complained of were dictated, is entitled to receive gratuities of the American Government for such rascalities, or whether the people of Oregon owe him a debt of gratitude which they refuse to pay."