The Sun.
London, England, 1845-07-22 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 22, 1845.

The Lords met at a Quarter before Five.
The Royal Assent was given by Commission to various
Bills.

The Duke of RICHMOND, on the presentation of their
petition, drew the attention of their Lordships to the
case of the officers in the Peninsula, who, after being
in sixteen engagements, were left without any other de-
coration than their wounds, while those who had served
at Waterloo, India, and China, had been decorated with
medals.
The Duke of WELLINGTON said that the battle
of Waterloo was fought under peculiar circumstances—
it was the last of a series, and had produced peace. He
bore his testimony to the valour and good conduct of
the Peninsular army, but regretted that they should
have petitioned the House on this subject.
The Marquis of LONDONDERRY considered the prayer
of the petition was unconstitutional.
The Duke of BUCKINGHAM thought that the prayer
of the petition should be granted.
The petition was ordered to lie on the table.
Lord STANLEY moved the second reading of the Irish
Colleges Bill. The Noble Lord addressed the House at
great length in support of the measure.

A lei ;;tll, ned debate ensued, in the course of which
their Lordthips were addressed by the Earl of SHREws-
NU', Lord BROUGHAM, the Earl of CARNARVON, the
Marquis of LANSDOWNE, Lords CLIFFORD, BEAUMONT,
and LYTTELTON, and the Bishop of NORWICH, after
which the motion for the second reading was agreed to
without a division. _ _ _

The C",,mmons met at Twelve o'clock.
Several unopposed Bills were forwarded a stage.
On the order of the day being read for the third read-
ing of the Scotch Poor-law Bill,
Mr. ITAsnE complained of the manner in which the Bill
had been hurried forward, and moved that it be read a
third time that day week.
The LORD ADYOCATE objected to any delay.

After a bhort discussion the House divided, when there
appeared, for the third reading, 33 ; against it, 7 ; ma-
jority in favour of the third reading, 26.
Sir J. GRAHAM moved the second reading of the
Games and Wagers Bill.
Mr. HAWES, Mr. C. BERKELEY, Mr. WAKLEY, and
several other Members, having expressed their opinion
that the Bill pressed unfairly upon licensed victuallers,
Sir J. GRAHAM said that if the Bill were read a second
time, pro forma, he would consider the objections which
had been made to it, for the purpese of obviating them
in Committee.
The Bill was then read a second time.

The House re-assembled at Five o'clock.

In answer to a question from Mr. HAwES, on the sub.
ject of the report of the South• Eastern Railway Com
mittee,

Sir R. PEEL stated that Captain BOLDERO and Mr.
BoNnem had resigned the offices which they respectively
held, and that their resignations had been accepted—that
Mr. WRAY had been called upon by the Secretary of
State for the Home Department to explain his conduct
in relation to the matters alluded to in the report of the
Committee, and that Mr. HIGNETT had been dismissed
her MAJESTY'S service.

Captain BOLDERO, who seemed greatly affected, then
entered into a lengthened explanation of his conduct ;
after which the House was addressed by Lord J. Rus-
SELL, COl. SIBTHORP, and Mr. WARD, and the subject
dropped.
Mr. C. BULLER then brought forward his motion on
the subject of New Zealand, which gave rise to a length-
ened debate, in the course of which the House was ad-
dressed by Mr. G. W. Hopi, Mr. ROEBUCK, Lord J.
RUSSELL, and Mr. LA.BOUCHERE, after which the debate
was adjourned.
The orders of the day were then disposed of, and the
House adjourned at Two o'clock.

The adjourned debate on the New Zealand question last
night will, as a matter of course, prevent the case of the
Danish claimants from being discussed this evening. The
delay which has taken place in bringing the case forward
has, no doubt, arisen from the various other matters
to which Mr. ILLwEs had to give his attention, but it has
been unfortunate for the cause that he should, as a matter
of courtesy, have given precedence to Lord PALMERSTON'S
motion on the Cuba sugar on Tuesday, the 15th inst.
This is the more to be regretted, as, owing to the session
being now drawing to a close, many Members
have gone out of town, and only the usual working majority
of Ministers remain. The question must, therefore, be post-
poned till early in the next session. In the meantime,
claimants must not despair—they have only to persevere,
and, notwithstanding the unjust opposition of the Govern-
ment, they must ultimately succeed.

We are glad to find the protest entered by us, in a former
paper, against the tone assumed by a very distinguished
periodical on the merits and bearings of the Oregon ques-
tion corroborated by an able and influential Contemporary.
In an article on this subject, on Saturday last, the Times
attributes, fairly enough, its due weight to any political
statement of the Edinburgh Review, as having been for many
years a recognised organ of Whig opinions. On the same
ground, we shall require no apology, we believe, with our
readers, for resuming and concluding the notice we have pro-
posed to take of this remarkable—and perhaps eventful—
controversy. In arguing the case for the title of Great
Britain to the territory in question, we shall assign the rea-
sons that appear conclusive to us against the disparaging
estimate which the Reviewer has formed of that title ; and
those reasons will probably be found equivalent to a demoli-
tion of the title which has been so broadly affirmed by the
Government of the United States.
In order to form a comprehensive estimate of the general
outlines of the controversy, let us see what the territory is
over which " the very doubtful advantage of sovereignty "
(to use the Reviewer's words) is claimed; what are the
leading epochs and events in the history of its discovery, and
partial occupation, from the first accounts that we possess of
those matters to the present time ; what the titles respec-
tively advanced to this territorial sovereignty by Great Bri-
tain, and by the United States, are. We shall thus be
enabled to arrive at conclusions founded, at least, on evidence
common to the two parties, and upon which the mind of
every reader will be competent to form its own unbiassed
judgment.
The north-west coast of America, in its broadest geogra-
phical designation, may be said to be possessed, rather than
occupied, between the shores of the Arctic Ocean and Ist,
23, or about the southern extremity of California, by
Russia, England, and Mexico; the boundary of the United
States territory is in the vicinity of these vast regions. Their
territory is inland only, comprising all that is east of the
Rocky Mountains from lat. 49 to 42 deg., from which latter
parallel it runs in a south-easterly direction, until it reaches
the rivers which form the boundary of the Texas. All that
is south of the 42d parallel belongs to Mexico. The Russian
boundary begins at the southernmost point of Prince of
Wales' Island, lat. 54.50, thence tending N. W. and W. to
the Arctic Ocean. Between the limits thus assumed as the
boundary of the United States on their extreme N. W. fron-
tier and the 42d parallel on the south,—lat. 54'40 on the
north, and the Rocky Mountains on the east, lies the Oregon
country. The whole of the Oregon coast lies between the
42d degree and 48th degree N. lat. It is about 650 miles long,
of 550 miles average breadth ; contains about 360,000 square
miles, or more than three times the surface of the British
islands. The northern part of the coast above lat. 48 is
protected by many islands, the largest whereof, Vancouver's
Island, is two-thirds of the size of Ireland. The only use
hitherto made of it, until within these four years, has been as a
mart for the purchase of furs and skins, although it cannot be
doubted that both its rivers and its coast fisheries, which are
eminently productive, will prove very profitable substitutes
for its commerce in peltry, at no distant day, when the fur
animals shall have become exhausted, or have removed far
from the lands on which they are the objects of incessant and
reckless extirpation. In the meantime the expansion and
facilities of British trade with China render:this commerce
an object of especial importance, independently of all State
and political considerations whatsoever which attach to its
possession. Of this commerce the great Colombia River,
whose sources are in the Rocky Mountains, and whose em-
bouchure is, or about, 46.18 N., is at once the seat and, as it
were, the port.

The leading epochs and events in the history of its disco-
very may be thus succinctly stated. There seems no valid
authority for disputing the fact that our illustrious DRAKE,
after getting a glimpse of this coast in lat. 43 N., ran up it
to lat. 48, in the year 1580. No steps were taken by this
country to improve that discovery, and for nearly two centu-
ries the north-western coast of Africa remained unvisited. It
was in 1774 and 1775 that two expeditions to explore it
were dispatched by BUCARELLI, Viceroy of Mexico. In
1774 the Commodore JUAN PEREZ MARTINEZ, was the first
European navigator who anchored in San Lorenzo (after-
wards called King GEORGE'S Sound, and did no more. In
1775 HECETA, the commander of the expedition, discovered
the mouth of the Colombia River, and explored adjoining
portions of the coast. In 1778 Captain Coors explored the
whole coast of the Pacific, up to the 48th degree, followed at
intervals by Captains BERKELEY and DIXON, Lieut. ME.A.np...s,
Captain VANCOUVER, and Lieut. BROUGHTON. " Mamma
and BROUGHTON (we are told by the writers of a very able
and well-reasoned paper in the Foreign Quarterly), the
former at Nootka Sound in the north, the latter on the Co-
lombia River on the south, taking possession of the territory
in the name of the Sovereign of England. Now the Go-
vernment of Spain never made any settlement north
of Cape Mendocino, in lat. 49-29. They abandoned
the country, after the voyages of PEREZ and HECETA, just as
we abandoned it after the voyage of DRAKE. They neither
occupied the country, nor annexed it to their territories, nor
took formal possession of it. In the meanwhile we had taken
possession of the country in a legal and formal manner, and
we were the only power that did take formal and legal pos-
session of Oregon." The facts connected with this posses-
sion taking are so strong that we cannot imagine how the
Edinburgh Review can have brought itself to advance a doc-
trine so dangerous and a mistatement so palpable as this—
namely, " During his voyage in 1794 VANCOUVER, we trust
without instructions was guilty of an assumption of sove-
reignty more ridiculous than even the average absurdity of
such transactions. He first took possession in the name
of England of all the country from 39.20 to the
Straits of Fuca, and afterwards from these Straits to the 59th
parallel. That is to say, the treaty to superintend the exe-
cution of which he was dispatched (by order of his Sove-
reign) having stipulated that the whole coast should be
open to settlement by England and Spain, he took
exclusive possession of nearly the wh )le on
the part of England. Now the Oregon question
being one essentially of preferable title, this is to treat a
matter which may one day involve the pacific relations of
mighty States with absurd levity, to say the least of it. But
let us see how grave and pregnant a fact does this act on
the part of VANCOUVER, become when connected with its pre-
cedents. What were those precedents? The Spanish Govern-
m en tbe ing alarmediby the continued residence of that en terpris.
ing officer, Lieutenant MEARES, and his companions at Nootka
Sound (in 1788), where they were trading with the natives,
after having built for themselves a large sloop upon the
coasts, dispatched MARTINEZ with three armed vessels to
dismiss the English interlopers. MARTINEZ, on his arrival
at the Sound (in 1789) erected a fort, seized MEARES'S ves-
sels and sloop, and sent off some of his men towards Europe
in the American ship " Colombia," Captain GRAY, and sent
the others to San Bias as prisoners. Spain demanded satis-
faction for MEARES'S intrusion into her north- western
settlements. England would not allow the fact of the
intrusion, and insisted on reparation from Spain, be-
cause she had thus taken the law into her own hands.
The two countries took up arms, but after some expensive
preparations on either side, an indemnity was given by Spain
to 111Eauns, and the future was provided for by the Conven-
tion of the Escurial, known as the Nootka Sound treaty,
dated 28th October, 1790, By article 1 the buildings and
tracts of land on the north-west coast, of which British
subjects had been dispossessed, were to be restored; by article
3 subjects of England and Spain respectively were not to be
disturbed in navigating or fishing in the Pacific or the South
Seas, or landing on the coasts of those seas not already occu-
pied, for purposes of commerce with the natives, or inmakin
settlements there. By article 5, in all places on the north-
west coast, to the north of the parts efthatcoast
thalereiaudb.y
occupied by Spain (that is of ltd. 38), wherever

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