The Committee on Foreign Relations, to whom was referred the Message of the President of the United States dated the 16th instant, with the documents accompanying it, have had the same under consideration, and now report.
The Treaty concluded between Great Britain and the United States on the 15th of June, 1846, provided in its first Article that the line of boundary between the territories of her Britannic Majesty and those of the United States, from the point on the 49th parallel of north latitude, to which it was ascertained, should be continued westward along this parallel, “to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver’s Island, and thence southerly, through the middle of said channel and of Fuca’s Straits, to the Pacific Ocean.” When the commissioners appointed by the two Governments to mark the boundary line came to that part of it required to run southerly through the channel dividing the continent from Vancouver’s Island, they differed entirely in their opinions, not only concerning the true point of deflection from the 49th parallel, but also as to the channel intended in the Treaty. After long discussion, producing no result, they reported a disagreement to their respective Governments. Since then the two Governments, through their ministers here and at London, have carried on a voluminous correspondence on the matter in controversy, each sustaining the conclusion of its own commissioner, and neither yielding in any degree to the other. Meanwhile the unsettled condition of this question produced serious local disturbance, and on one occasion threatened to destroy the harmonious relations existing between Great Britain and the United States, causing serious anxiety.
If our construction of the Treaty be right, the island of San Juan, with other small islands, will fall to the United States, while, if the British interpretation be adopted, these islands will be on their side of the line. President Buchanan, in his Message to the Senate of February 21, 1861, declared his conviction that the territory thus in dispute “is ours by the Treaty fairly and impartially construed.” But the British Government, on their side, insist that it is theirs. The argument on both sides seems to have been exhausted.
Under these circumstances, it appears from the correspondence submitted to the Senate, that General Cass, Secretary of State, by letter of June 25, 1860, to Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Washington, invited the British Government to make a proposition of adjustment. Here are his words:—
“And I have it further in charge to inform your Lordship, that this Government is ready to receive and fairly to consider any proposition which the British Government may be disposed to make for a mutually acceptable adjustment, with an earnest hope that a satisfactory arrangement will speedily put an end to all danger of the recurrence of those grave questions which have more than once threatened to interrupt that good understanding which both countries have so many powerful motives to maintain.”
The reply of the British Government to this invitation was communicated by Lord Lyons, in a letter to General Cass, dated December 10, 1860, in the course of which he uses the following language.
“In reference to the line of the water boundary intended by the Treaty, with respect to which also her Majesty’s Government have been invited by the United States Government to make a proposition for its adjustment, I am instructed to inform you that her Majesty’s Government are glad to reciprocate the friendly sentiments expressed in your note of the 25th of June, and will not hesitate to respond to the invitation which has been made to them.
“It appears to her Majesty’s Government that the argument on both sides being nearly exhausted, and neither party having succeeded in producing conviction on the other, the question can only be settled by arbitration.”
Lord Lyons then proceeds to details connected with the offered arbitration, and, in behalf of his Government, proposes that the King of the Netherlands, or the King of Sweden and Norway, or the President of the Federal Council of Switzerland should be invited to be arbiter.