The President of the United States, in his message to Congress of the 1st of December, 1845, after briefly reviewing the course of the several negotiations, concludes that portion of his message with these remarkable words:—
“The civilised world will see in these proceedings a spirit of liberal concession on the part of the United States; and this Government will be relieved from all responsibility which may follow the failure to settle the controversy.”
Mr. Buchanan had stated to the same effect, at the conclusion of his letter of August 30, 1845, that not “only respect for the conduct of his predecessors, but a sincere desire to promote peace and harmony between the two governments,” had actuated the President to offer a proposition so liberal to Great Britain.
“And how has this proposition been received by the British plenipotentiary? It has been rejected without even a reference to his own Government. Nay, more; the British plenipotentiary, to use his own language, ‘trusts that the American plenipotentiary, will be prepared to offer some further proposal for the settlement of the Oregon question more consistent with fairness and equity, and with the reasonable expectations of the British Government.’”
It could hardly require a reference from Mr. Pakenham to the British Government at home, to satisfy him that he should at once decline to accept a less liberal offer than that which his Government had already declined on two previous occasions. Surely the meaning of the word “liberal” must have acquired a different acceptation in the United States from what it bears in the mother-country, or the notions of what constitutes “a spirit of liberal concession,” must be very different on the eastern and western sides of the Atlantic; for, in the usual signification of the word in the mother-country, it would be bitter irony to apply such a term to the proposal authorised by President Polk, expressly, as alleged, in deference to what had been done by Presidents Monroe and Adams. It is an offer on the part of Mr. Polk to share a worthless haven with Great Britain, when his predecessors have offered to share the Great River of the West.
The offer of Great Britain, when first made by her in 1824, would have imposed upon her at that time, if accepted by the United States, as likewise at the present time, the necessity of ultimately breaking up four or five settlements, formed by her subjects within the limits that would become prohibited; and which they had formed under the belief of their full right, as British subjects, to settle there. “But their Government was willing to make these surrenders, for so they considered them, in a spirit of compromise, on points where the two nations stood so divided,” (British and Foreign State Papers, 1825-26, p. 519;) whereas the United States would not be required to abandon a single settlement; on the contrary, they would retain the fertile valley of the Willamette, where their settlers are mostly located. The proposal of the United States, on the other hand, would require that Great Britain should abandon the majority of her settlements, and amongst these Fort Vancouver, the dépôt of the Hudson’s Bay Company, from which fourteen other settlements receive their supplies; that she should resign the use of the river, the free navigation of which is absolutely necessary for the transport of outfits and their returns; that she should be precluded, not merely from the harbour within the river, but from the harbours in Admiralty Inlet, the only really valuable harbours on the coast; that she should give up the agricultural district round Puget’s Sound, where the fixed population of British Canadians are located, and which bears a similar relation to the future destinies of Northern Oregon, that the valley of the Willamette does to those of Southern Oregon; and in this proposal Mr. Buchanan, in his letter of July 12, 1845, “trusts that the British Government will recognise the President’s sincere and anxious desire to cultivate the most friendly relations between the two countries, and to manifest to the world that he is actuated by a spirit of moderation.” In return Great Britain is to be allowed to retain a district of barren territory in Northern Oregon, in which Captain Wilkes has officially reported to the United States, that “there is no part on the coast where a settlement could be formed that would be able to supply its own wants,” and which even for hunting purposes is so unproductive, that the Hudson’s Bay Company have found it expedient to lease other hunting grounds within the Russian territories; and this too, when the future value of the country will consist, not in its capability to supply the fur-trader with the skins of the beaver and sea-otter, but in the adequacy of its grazing and agricultural produce to support a fixed body of inhabitants, as well as to victual the ships of various nations engaged in the China trade, and in the fisheries of the South Sea. Harder conditions could not well have been dictated by a conquering to a conquered nation as the price of peace, neither do they accord with that spirit of just accommodation with which Mr. Rush, in 1824, expressly declared the Government of the United States to be animated, nor with those principles of mutual convenience which it was then agreed on both sides to keep in view, in order to further the settlement of their mutual claims.
If the present convention should be abrogated by either party, the only object of which, according to the express declaration of the two contracting parties, was “to prevent disputes and differences amongst themselves,” the existing condition of common occupancy does not thereby terminate. Each nation will still be bound to respect the settlements of the other. The mutual rights and obligations recognised by Great Britain and Spain in respect to each other, in the Convention of the Escurial, were recognised once and for all. The United States now stands in the place of Spain; she asserts that by the Treaty of Florida she holds in her hands all the Spanish title, but her hands are also bound by the obligations of Spain. By the Convention of the Escurial, the liberty of free access and unmolested trade with the settlements of each other, made subsequent to April 1789, was secured to either party: in other respects their settlements would carry with them the independent rights, which the law of nations secures to the settlements of independent powers. Oregon would thus be dotted over with the settlements of subjects of Great Britain, and citizens of the United States, in juxta-position to each other, like the Protestant and Catholic cantons of Switzerland. The tribunals of the United States have decided in Washbourne’s case (4 John’s C. R. 108) and in other cases, “that the 27th article of the Treaty of 1793, which provided for the delivery of criminals charged with murder and forgery, was only declaratory of the law of nations, and is equally obligatory on the two nations under the sanction of public law, and since the expiration of that treaty, as it was before.” So far the recurrence of mutual outrages might be checked. Still, such a condition of things would leave open, as Mr. Rush observed in 1824, “sources of future disagreement, which time might multiply and aggravate.” It is, therefore, for the interest of both parties, that a line of demarcation should be drawn, to prevent the possible conflict of jurisdiction. A few square miles, more or less, where the entire territory to be shared between the two nations extends over a district of more than 500,000 square miles, can form but a secondary element of consideration in the question. If we look to the original rights of the United States, as founded on use and settlement, they point exclusively to the southern bank, whilst those of Great Britain point, in a similar manner, to the northern. Citizens of the United States first explored the southern branch of the Columbia, whilst subjects of Great Britain first explored the northern. The flag of the United States has been authoritatively displayed on the southern bank alone, whilst the British ensign has exclusively been hoisted on the northern. Whilst the valley of the Willamette in Southern Oregon is cultivated, according to Captain Wilkes, by settlers from other countries besides the United States, the agricultural establishments on the Cowlitz River, and on the shores of Puget’s Sound, in Northern Oregon, are exclusively the creation of British subjects.
Great Britain having expressly declared in 1826, that she claimed “no exclusive sovereignty over any portion of that territory,” it has been thought unnecessary to set out in full her original title, as against the United States. It is impossible in the present day to ascertain how far Drake was authorised to make discoveries in the South Seas on account of his sovereign. We are informed by Stow the annalist, that he had obtained the approval of Queen Elizabeth to the plan of his expedition, through the interest of Sir Christopher Hatton; and the author of “The World Encompassed” affirms that he had a commission from his sovereign, and that she delivered to him a sword with this remarkable speech:—“We do account that he which striketh at thee, Drake, strikes at us.” Captain Burney’s opinion, however, seems most to accord with probability—that he had no written commission. The Queen, however, on his return, after a protracted inquiry before her Council, upon the complaint of the ambassador of Spain, approved and ratified his acts; and in her reply to the ambassador’s remonstrances against Drake’s territorial aggressions, expressly asserted, according to Camden, that as she did not acknowledge the Spaniards to have any title by sanction of the Bishop of Rome, so she knew no right they had to any places other than those they were in possession of, (Cf. supr., p. 161.) Vattel (b. xi., § 74) states the law that, “if a nation or its chief approves and ratifies the act of the individual, it then becomes a public concern.” Drake thus appears to have been recognised as an instrument of his sovereign; and though the moderation of the British Government has led it not to insist upon Drake’s discovery of the northwest coast as far as 48°, though it was coupled with formal acts of taking possession with the consent of the natives, because Great Britain did not follow it up within a reasonable time with actual settlements, still that discovery has not lost its validity as a bar to any asserted discovery of a later period.
On the other hand, the expeditions of Captains Cook and Vancouver satisfied all the conditions required by the law of nations for making discoveries and forming settlements. Unless Captain King, the companion of Cook, had published his account of the high prices which had been obtained by his sailors for the furs of the north-west coast of America in the markets of China, the American fur-trader, as Mr. Greenhow terms Captain Gray, would never have resorted to the coast of Oregon. But before any trading vessel of the United States had appeared off those shores, Captain Cook had traced the American coast, from a little above Cape Mendocino to Icy Cape, in 70° 29′; whilst Vancouver was despatched in 1791 expressly by the British Government, to ascertain what parts of the north-west coast were open for settlement to subjects of Great Britain, in accordance with the 3d article of the Convention of the Escurial; and after an accurate survey reported, that the Presidio of San Francisco, in about 38°, was “the northernmost settlement of any description formed by the Court of Spain on the continental shore of North-west America.” To Vancouver the civilised world was indebted for the first accurate chart of the entire coast. The important services rendered to navigation and science by Vancouver and Lieutenant Broughton, were fully acknowledged by Mr. Gallatin in the negotiations of 1826; yet all these, it is contended by the Commissioners of the United States, are entirely superseded by Captain Gray having first entered the mouth of the chief river of the country.
When Mr. Buchanan, therefore, at the commencement of his letter of August 30, 1845, states, “that the precise question under consideration simply is, were the titles of Spain and the United States, when united by the Florida treaty on the 22d of February 1819, good as against Great Britain, to the Oregon territory as far north as the Russian line, in the latitude of 54° 40′?” and assumes, as a consequence, that if they were, it will be admitted this whole territory now belongs to the United States; he avails himself of the ambiguity of the term title, to infer that the establishment of a common title must lead to the admission of an exclusive title.