The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-25 00:00:00

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THE OREGON TERRI).

Intl%
DI3

In an article on this subject in The ....
28th of December, we remarked on thet,TnelatiSMaV
cious nature of the whole statements contained )
in the President's Message relative to the pre-
tensions of the United States touching the terri-
tory in question. " The United States," said
Mr. President Tyler, "have always contended
that their rights appertain to the entire re-
gion lying on the Pacific, and embraced
within the 4(1 deg. and 54th deg. 49 min. of N.
latitude." On that statement we then observed,
" This is not even true. The original and subse-
quent pretensions of the United States on the
territory were not at all to this extent." We
had not, at the time, immediate access to the
documents, but felt assured of our correct.
ness in impeaching the veracity of the
American State Paper. In the last pub-
lished (January) Number of the Quarterly
British and Foreign Review, we find not only
a remarkable confirmation of our objection, but
of all the views which The Sun has announced
within the last two or three months on this very
" Oregon" question ; and so valuable a summary
of the past history of the whole_ case, that we
shall unhesitatingly avail ourselves of it in
reclaiming the reader's attention to the course
of transactions connected with it. The matter,
always one of extreme intrinsic importance,
has been so absurdly postponed, as to a final
and definitive adjustment, by the diploma-
tists of this country, in their negotiations
with Spain and with Russia of half a cen-
tury ago, that it is not to be wondered at if the
United States have cunningly endeavoired to
found, on the very fact of this protracted unsettle-
ment between two or three great European
Powers, a fictitious and extravagant claim, on the
usual Yankee principle of taking a large
margin to allow of future abatements. It
is not very likely that the absorbing interest
even of .the Irish State Trials, and other domestic
questioni; which press for the immediate atten-
tion of Parliament, will induce the Legislature
to allow this affair to remain over, many weeks,
without placing it on a sound and becom-
ing footing,. This footing we must rigor.
ously maintain and sternly enforce. In the
matter of the Gorth-eastern boundary, we have
had enough of .übitrations, and of the utter
worthlessness of American undertakings, to
abide by the result of their own proposals for
such reference. On the Oregon question the
Reviewer remarks:—" Recent movements in
America now show that England has not a day
to lose in deciding upon her course of action with
respect to this unadjusted dispute, which is, in
fact, rath6r a question of territorial right, than of
undetermined boundary."
It may not be generally recollected, that, by
the Convention of the Escurial between the Mi-
nisters of Spain and England, in October, 1790,
neither of those Powers (which alone, of all the
Governments of the civilised world could, at that
time, affirm a right or title to the territory now
in dispute), affected any exclusive sovereignty
over it. The Convention stipulated that the res-
pective subjects of the two contracting parties
should not thereafter be disturbed or mo-
lested, " either in navigating or carrying
on their fisheries in the Pacific Ocean or the
South Seas, or in landing on the coasts of these
seas, in places not already occupied, for the pur-
pose of carrying on their commerce with the na-
tives of the country, or a making settlements
there." At the present moment the United
States, which, at the date of this Convention were
a recognised Government two' years old, and
which affect to claim through a%derivative right
by treaty with Spain, have the effro. ntery.to claim
that " exclusive sovereignty" .which neither
Spain nor Great Britain ever pretena:ed the one
to set up against the other! It is in' 0. reover a
clear, distinct, and irrefragable fact, pla-
ced by
themselves on record in their public act `a and
State Papers, and especially thus limited and
pressed on the part of the United States, in the
Convention between those States and his B. 's-
tannic Majesty-, relative to the territory on th,
North-west coast of America, signed at London.
in August, 1827 ; and again in the elaborate.
" Memoir, Historical and Political, on the North-.
west Coast of North America, and the adjacent ter-'
ritories, by Robert Greenhow, translator and
librarian to the Department of State (New
York, 1840)"—that the country, so claimed by
the States, throughout the negotiations on the
subject up to the last message of the President,
was that territory lying between the Rocky
Mountains and the Sea (tie Pacific), and com-
prised between the parallels of 42 deg. and 49
deg. North latitude. The claim of the United
States, as first agitated in Congress in 1806—the
subject of negotiations between America and
Great Britain in 1807; and again, at Ghent, in
1814 ; of the Convention with England in 1818
of Lord Castlereagh's dispatch of February,
1818, expressly instructing our Minister at
Washington that, in fulfilling the present
stipulations of that Convention, he WAS on no ac-
count to concede the claim of Great Britain to
the territorial district of-Oregon, on which Anne.
rican settlements had been made; the dispatch
of Earl Bathurst to the North-West Company,
of January, 1818, emphatically refusing the con-
cession of that claim to the United States; the
subsequent negotiations between America and
Great Britain of 1824; and the whole correspon.
deuce both of the British Commissioners (the
late Mr. Huskisson and Mr. Addington, now
one of our Under Secretaries of State, and of
Mr. Gallaton, the Plenipotentiary of the United
States, in 1827, related to the region comprised
between these parallels of 42 deg. and 49 deg.
North latitude. Even in the ridiculous proposal
of the American General, Jessup, to Congress, in
1823, to take up the military occupation of the
Oregon territory ; and the unprincipled mem..
mendation of the President, Mr. Munro, to adopt
that piratical scheme of outrage upon the'pos-
sessions of an-ally, at a time of:profound peace ;
all these equally relate to the same specific geo.
graphical limits. In 1843, President Tyler has
the assurance to talk,.as we have seen, of these
pretensions having always extended to 54 deg.
North latitude.

But the same want of honesty and decent pre.
cision of statement pervade that functionary's
description of the territory itself. It will be re-
membered that he spoke of its agricultural ca.
pabilities and healthfulness, ;and eligibility for
settlement, in terms of eulogy which Mr.
George Robins could hardly have heightened
for him, had he been at his elbow. Now, we
have the authority of the American Memorialist
for saying that it is divided into three regions :
the first from the sea to the California Range ; the
second, from that chain to the Blue Mountains;
the third, from these to the great range of the
Rocky Mountains in which the Oregon, or Co-
lombia, and its tributaries, have their sources.
The climate of the first region is not fertile ; the
summer is immoderately dry, the winter ex-
tremely humid ; no rain falls from April to Oc-
tober; it is excessive in the other months.
The yield of wheat does not average more
than fifteen bushels per acre, which is but
inconsiderable for a virgin soil in the new world.
The uplands are heavily timbered, and the forests
very fine. The California mountains rise to the
height of 16,000 feet above the level of the sea.
The superficies of the whole territory is " about
350,000 square relies? It is drained by the
Oregon or Colombia and its tributaries, the
former being navigable as far inland as 125 miles
from the ocean, having a width, for about 6
miles from its mouth, varying from one to seven
miles. " The Colombia" (according to the Brit:,
ea
fish and Foreign Reviewer) "falls into then s
Cape Disappointment
and Cape
which a sand bar
e=
tends; and over these the waves of the ocean, •
between
breakte tAwdoam headlands,
from
nids, each
of
with terrific violence as they meet the
discharging torrent of the river. The entrance
is consequently hazardous at all times, and
scarcely passable when the winds are high."
The second region is more elevated and less fer.
tile than that near the coast; the land not fa.
vourable tbr agriculture, bu Might Wirer cos