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Senator inadvertently fell, not at all affecting, it is true, the immediate discussion. Eager as he was to show that the American government had never slept upon our rights, because this seemed to controvert a position I had never taken, he could not deny himself the pleasure of conjecturing that in 1842 the then Secretary of State had proposed the parallel of 49° north as the boundary; and this conjecture he founded wholly upon a sentence contained in the speech from which I have just been reading. The sentence is this:

"I desired chiefly to assure the Senator and the senate that the apprehension intimated by him, that a disclosure of these informal communications would disgrace the American Secretary, by showing that he had offered a boundary line south of the parallel of forty-nine, is totally unfounded. He would be glad to hear me say that I am authorized and desired to declare, that in no communication, formal or informal, was such an offer made, and that none such was ever meditated."

From this he infers that the degree of 49 was proposed. Certainly, Sir, his inference is wholly groundless. The facts are these. The Senator from Missouri, [Mr. Benton,] whom the senate with a general and sincere pleasure have seen resume his seat this morning, had at the last session made a speech, the main effort of which was to prove that Great Britain had no color of title, at least south of 49°. He did not, certainly, concede her title so far as 49°, but his argument was almost exclusively directed to a vindication of the American title up to that parallel; that is, to the whole valley of the Columbia River. In the course of his remarks he observed that our government had steadily refused to concede a particle of right to Great Britain south of 49°, but that he feared that a proposition had been made by the American negotiator of the treaty of 1842 to fall below that degree; and thereupon he used this language, which I read from "The Congressional Globe: ""And now if, after all this, any proposition has been made by our government to give up the north bank of the river, I for one shall not fail to brand such a proposition with the name of treason."

The object of his denunciation, the senate perceive, was a supposed proposition to run a line south of 49°. Of any proposition to adopt 49° itself, or any higher parallel, he was not thinking, and did not speak. Intending to participate in

that discussion, I addressed a note to the Secretary of State, inquiring simply whether a proposition had been made to take a line south of the 49th degree? The answer was immediate, and to the precise question, that none such had been made or meditated. Not another syllable was said or written; and the writer of neither note, I may venture to say, intended to ask or answer anything but the precise question, or had any other subject in his mind at all. I well remember that when this was announced, in the terms which the honorable senator has read, the Senator from Missouri audibly expressed his satisfaction. Surely those terms, upon this explanation, cannot be thought to afford the slightest evidence that this government proposed the 49th degree for a boundary; and I have been recently assured, and from high authority, that such is not the fact.

Returning from this digression, Sir, and taking leave, once and for all, of the treaty of 1842, I may repeat that the assertion which I actually made in debate the other day was only, that we have continued this convention as a means of enabling us, in one mode or another, to secure and enforce those very rights in the Oregon Territory which we have always asserted. We have kept up the convention, not because we were asleep, but because we were awake. All the reasons now urged by senators for abrogating it we have known perfectly well, and long ago. In 1818, we made the convention. In 1827, we renewed it. In 1829, in February, just upon the accession of General Jackson, that celebrated letter of Messrs. Clark and Cass to the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Benton] was written, from which is derived the fact, thrice repeated, I believe, by the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania, that five hundred of our citizens, hunters, traders, and trappers, have been murdered by Indians among and on each side of the Rocky Mountains, and about the upper Missouri and Mississippi, and perhaps by the instigation of British traders. That letter was written then. This fact was made known to congress and the country then; yet you did not abrogate the convention. In 1838,

the Hudson's Bay Company obtained a renewal of its charter for twenty years, the British government reserving, however, the right, as against the company, of colonizing the territory embraced by the charter; which is another of the honorable

Senator's reasons for abrogation. This was six years ago, in Mr. Van Buren's term; yet you did not abrogate it. In 1839, during the same administration; elaborate reports were made to congress from the department for Indian Affairs, upon the precise subject on which the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Allen] has called for and obtained information at this session, to wit: the practice of the British government and British companies to make presents to Indians residing within our territory, and their general Indian policy, its principles, and its workings. This whole subject was fully laid open before you then, and yet you did not abrogate the convention. Ten years ago, just as well as to-day, you knew that our hunters and trappers could not and did not contend successfully with the Hudson's Bay Company for the furs of the Oregon. Yet you did not abrogate it.

So true it is, Sir, that without a particle of evidence of one single new reason against the convention,—without producing one single fact not perfectly well known for years, senators now, now, just when, upon the proofs which I have laid and shall lay before you, it is conclusively evinced that the convention is operating in your favor in the Oregon far more energetically and far more palpably than ever before, multiplying your numbers, extending your influence, now, too, just when for the first time you are able to sit down to a negotiation on this single subject, disembarrassed of all other elements of controversy, this well-chosen moment is that which senators seize on to take the first step towards abrogation. I said the thing was incomprehensible and capricious; and I say so still.

So much in correction of the misapprehension of the honorable Senator.

Well, then, why would the honorable Senator give the notice of abrogation?

Sir, he tells you why. It is to induce Great Britain to make a good Oregon treaty. It is for the sake of influencing that government to do what it would not do without. If you do not give the notice, he will risk his life that she will not give you a good treaty. If you do, she will or she may. This is his exact and exquisite reason.

But, Sir, when we, wondering and incredulous, ask how

the notice is to exert so desirable an influence upon Great Britain, the honorable Senator seems to me to become far less explicit than could be wished, or than was to have been expected. What is the precise information which the notice is to give her? What is it to tell her that we mean to do? The honorable Senator does not say. I miss something here of his habitual directness and clearness of speech, and frankness of explanation. May I not even complain of this? True, we have no great difficulty in making out the ominous and energetic meaning of the notice. We make out well enough, upon the whole, that it is a declaration that unless within a year Great Britain yields a satisfactory treaty, we will at the end of that time assert by force the exclusive occupation of the contested region. This we see. But we have to make it out by argument and inference, and by putting this part of the speech of the honorable Senator with that part, and reasoning up from consequences to causes. Sir, I complain of this. Surely, surely in a matter of such transcendent importance, those who influence the public councils and hold the public fortunes in their hands owe the country the utmost possible frankness and truthfulness of dealing. This notice, in the opinion of all here, is to work a great change in your relations to one of the first Powers in the world; it is to modify a pending negotiation, on the course and issue of which many anxious hearts, many vast and delicate interests, are suspended; it may in its results leave you in all things worse than it found you: it may give you, for peace, a sword. Then, Sir, you owe to the people the most unreserved declaration of your opinion of its exact and entire meaning; of the exact extent and nature of the information which it conveys to Great Britain; of the degree, and the way in which it commits you; of how far and in what direction it engages your pride and honor to go, if it does not happen to produce the treaty which you expect. Sir, this business of war and peace is the people's business. measures legislative in their nature, as you assume this to be, at all tending to endanger the state of peace, are for them to judge on, from the beginning to the end. Yes, Sir, this all is their business. It is the business of the farmer, preparing to scatter his seed with tears, and looking forward to the harvest when he may come bearing his sheaves with joy, his happy

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household unsevered around him; it is the business of the planter; it is the business of the merchant in his countingroom, projecting the enterprises that bind the nations together by a thousand ties; it is the business of the fisherman on the deck of his nigh night-foundered skiff; of the minister of the gospel, and of all good men; of the widowed mother with her sailor child, the only son of his mother, and she a widow, the stay and staff of her declining age, whom the stern call of a country in arms may summon to the deck on which his father has fallen; it is their business! and if we deal fairly and frankly with them, excellently well will they perform it!

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Nevertheless, Sir, it must be admitted that senators tell us enough to enable us to interpret the whole language which the notice speaks to Great Britain. It is exactly this: give us the Oregon by a treaty, or in a year we will take it ourselves,— for the honorable Senator informs us that it is to apprise the British government "that we at last are in earnest. In earnest, indeed! Well, what may that mean? Does not the Senator himself insist upon it, that we have been continually asserting our rights, by diplomacy and otherwise, for six-andtwenty years; that we have never slept upon them an hour; that, in and out of congress, we have been "earnestly agitating" the question, and "earnestly urging" an adjustment of it? When he advises, therefore, to a new measure, which shall admonish England that we are indeed and at last in earnest, he means that it shall announce something more than continued assertion of title on paper, more than the harmless and vain quart and tierce of diplomatic conflict; he means that it shall tell her we have talked enough, and written enough; we now mean to act. I arrive at the same conclusion by an analysis of other portions of the Senator's argument. Great Britain, he says, will make no treaty while she retains possession and enjoyment, as now she does, of all she wants. She has the whole country now; and what more should she desire, and how can she improve her case by a treaty? We must tell her, then, he urges, that she shall no longer continue to have all or anything that she desires; that the existing status must and shall be displaced; that the possession is to change hands, if she does not treat in a twelvemonth. Certainly, this is reasonably clear, after all; and I

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