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mate progress of mankind-the natural increase of populationthe development and gradual emancipation of colonies-the activity of trade the protective influence of peace-and generally the extension of civilisation and Christianity. Neither Mr. Coleridge nor we ever thought of such means as were employed in Texasor attempted in Canada—or are now menaced in Oregon. These are modes of carrying out the august conception' which good faith and good feeling equally repudiate. England has reluctantly acquiesced in the annexation of Texas, because the peculiar circumstances of that case gave her no direct or special right of interference distinct from that of the other nations of the world. But this question of Oregon is one which immediately and deeply and exclusively affects our own honour and interests, and from which we cannot recede.

We are glad, however, to be able to persuade ourselves, that there is a solution of the difficulty consistent with the original claims, and consequently with the interest and honour of both parties; no other can, we readily acknowledge, have any chance of success.

By a singular coincidence, and one, we hope, of happy omen, after we had written the greater part of this article, and, in this place, explained our proposition, we received (28th February) through the American journals the account of a motion proposed in Congress by Mr. Dargan, of Alabama, which so nearly approaches to what we had proposed, that we gladly adopt it as expressing, with a more weighty authority, our own preconceived opinion:

"That the differences existing between the Government of the United States and the Government of Great Britain, in relation to the Oregon territory, are still the subject of honourable negotiation and compromise, and should be so adjusted.

That the line separating the British provinces of Canada from the United States should be extended due west to the coast south of Fraser's river, and thence through the centre of the Straits of Fuca to the Pacific Ocean, giving to the United States that portion of the territory south, and to the Government of Great Britain that portion of the territory north of said line.'

This proposition narrows the question to its true issue; and on it, or something like it, the case, as we shall show, must be ultimately, and may be honourably, decided. All that has hitherto passed is really and for any practical purpose obsolete: and the whole Oregoniad is in this nutshell. But as we have heretofore

given our attention to several parts of this subject, and as we find our authority frequently quoted by the United States' advocatessometimes adopting and sometimes impugning it-we think that

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our readers will expect from us something of an historical view of this curious and, by the introduction of collateral details, complicated case. We shall endeavour to state the facts with brevity, and to condense the argument to its conclusive bearings; but we protest at the outset at being supposed to abandon either claims or arguments which, for the sake of compression, we may refrain from producing. Those who may wish for the fuller details which, however interesting they may once have been, seem now merged in the great issue at which we are arrived, will find them best stated on the part of the United States by the elaborate productions of Mr. Greenhow, who has long been officially charged by that Government with the duty of collecting and publishing all the materials of their case, which he has done in a variety of forms, and with more of art and diligence, we must say, than of candour or accuracy. What he calls Memoirs, Historical and Political,' and his Geography of Oregon,' and the History of Oregon,' are nothing more than the brief of the American case prepared by its official advocate, and produced and reproduced in those various forms ad captandum. Nor can we omit to mention that a portion of a large edition of the History' printed at Boston, it seems at the expense of the American Government, was sent to London, and here issued with a London title-page. In short, all possible means seem to have been employed to give colour and vogue to these ex parte statements.* Indeed we are sorry to say that a more unsafe if not faithless guide we have seldom met; and this is the more to be regretted, as it is, we think, evident that his misstatements have tended very much to mislead the minds not merely of the people, but of the government and diplomatists of the United States. Mr. Greenhow's work has been exposed and answered ably and succinctly by Mr. Falconer, and more at large by Dr. Twiss of the Commons, whose work is and will continue to be valuable, independently of the Oregon question, as an able discussion of several important points of the law of nations. Mr. Greenhow on one side, Mr. Falconer and

* We may notice as one specimen out of many of the arts employed to colour the American pretensions, the allegation produced by the American Secretary of State, Mr. Buchanan, in his official despatch to Mr. Pakenham, dated the 30th of August last, that Even British geographers have not disputed our title to the territories in ques tion. There is a large and splendid globe now in the Department of the State, recently received from London, and published by Maltby and Co., "manufacturers and publishers to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,” which assigns this territory to the United States. It turned out on inquiry that the globe had been ordered for the United States Government by the American minister at this Court, and that the boundary was so marked by the maker, from his desire to please the purchaser. Mr. Everett, the late American minister, a high-minded and honourable gentleman, has disclaimed having had any personal share in this imposition; but the reprehensible part of the affair is not the having ordered the boundary to be so exhibited on a globe belonging to the American government, but-the disingenuous purpose and false colouring by which the fact was perverted.

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Dr. Twiss on the other, afford in extenso all that can be said on every point of the subject. Our more limited object is to bring before our readers a much more summary view of the controversy.

Most of the writers on the Oregon Question have thought it necessary to accompany their argument with a map, and we too believe that some sketches which we have prepared will enable our readers to follow our observations with greater facility,

By this sketch our readers will see that the territory which has been recently called Oregon is the larger portion of that region of the north-west coast of America extending in longitude from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, and in latitude from California to the Russian settlements-which has been generally known and exhibited by writers and geographers, as NEW ALBION; so called, in honour of his country,' by Sir Francis Drake, who,

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in 1579, first discovered the land in about the latitude of 48o,* and thence coasted down to about 38°, where, in a fair and good baye,' to the northward of S. Francisco, he refitted his ships, and, accepting from the natives the sovereignty of the territory in the name and for the use of the Queen of England, he erected a pillar, bearing an inscription commemorative of this cession of sovereignty' (Greenhow). This barren sovereignty was soon forgotten, but the name of New Albion remained; and it was not till about 1832 that it began, as Mr. Greenhow tells us, to be called Oregon, from a name vaguely attributed by Carver, in his Travels (published 1778), to some Great River in the West,' which had been recently, and without any better authority that we can discover, applied to the Columbia. Our readers will see the motive of the United States for superseding the name of New Albion, and the still deeper and stronger one, for distinguishing by a peculiar name, derived from the river, all the country watered by the Columbia. Their first claim went no further than a common right to occupy a share of the region, which they afterwards enlarged to an exclusive sovereignty and dominion over all the territories watered by the river or its tributaries.

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But even this unheard-of principle of appropriation has not satisfied the exigence of l'appétit qui vient en mangeant'

'A river or a sea

Is to them a dish of tea,

And a kingdom bread and butter;'

for the United States now claim the whole region-two degrees further north than any source of the Columbia-even up to the Russian boundary in 54° 40'; thus wiping out New Albion from the map of the world, and altogether excluding British America from those seas into which Drake had guided the first European ship, and from those shores where he had planted the name of Albion in honour of his country,' and of which our Queen's subjects now are, and have been for thirty years, in undisturbed, and till very recently exclusive, possession.

Before we enter into the detail of the claims on which America may found her pretensions to such exclusive sovereignty, let us state one remarkable fact, which of itself would, in a court of justice, if there were one for nations, and ought, in the court of reason and public opinion, completely to bar those preten

There has been a vast deal of controversy raised by the Americans on this point; they insist that Drake reached no higher than 43°, instead of 48°; and this because one anonymous account of his voyage, interpolated into Hakluyt, says 43° by, probably, an error of the press or the copyist, while the authentic account published from the notes of Drake's chaplain, by his nephew, and repeated by all his companions and contemporaries, gives the true reading of 48°. See Dr. Twiss for a full exposure of this crotchet,

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sions. When the question of territorial right in New Albion was for the first time mooted in the conferences of London, subsequent to the treaty of Ghent, the American plenipotentiaries admitted that the United States did not assert a perfect right' to any portion of territory westward of the Rocky Mountains. England likewise had always professed that she did not pretend to an exclusive right: and on this mutual admission of imperfect, or to speak more exactly, common titles a convention was signed at London on the 28th of October, 1818, to the following effect :

The country to the westward of the Rocky Mountains, claimed by either party, with its bays, harbours, navigation of rivers, &c., shall be free and open for ten years to the two powers; it being well understood that this agreement shall not prejudice any claim of either party, or of any other power or state, to any PART of the said country: the only object of the parties being to prevent disputes and differences amongst themselves.'

Is it possible that either of the parties signing this acknowledgment of a claim, joint with respect to themselves, and common as to others, could have had any idea of advancing an exclusive one? But it will be answered, the saving clause preserves the right waived for the moment. It certainly does the right that was so waived; but what was that?-the right to any part of the said country to which they may have claims '—not the whole or any part' (which is the invariable phraseology when there is a mixed question of a whole or of parts)—but any part of the said country to which they may have claims: thus solemnly acknowledging by treaty what their ministers admitted in statement-that it is a question of mixed rights, and negativing any possible pretension to the whole. And if it should be said that the United States did not at that time possess the right of Spain (the real tenant in common with England), which they obtained only the year after by the Florida treaty, there is this conclusive reply, that in 1827 the United States renewed for an indefinite period, in its specific terms, that very convention of 1818-which had been originally made for only ten years-and even repeated the saving clause as to the clains of the parties to any part of the country; with, however, one remarkable and important variation. The former convention saved also the claims of other powers,' but in the interval between the two conventions, the Florida treaty with Spain (1819) and the British treaty with Russia (1825)-the only other powers who could pretend to any part of the territory-had disposed of their claims, and therefore the new convention preserved to England and the United States only, their respective claims to parts—although the United States were at that very time in full possession of every right to the

whole

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