wholly inapplicable to nations, which, if they can not agree and will not arbitrate, have no resource left

save war.

But this was not the only consideration which induced the Senate to refuse its assent to that treaty. There were objections to the form of submission.

HISTORY OF THE QUESTION.

The controversy to which these treaties refer is one of the leavings of the last war between the United States and Great Britain, and has its roots far back in the circumstances of the primitive colonization of North America by Europeans.

When the Kings of the little island of Britain, in virtue of some of their subjects having coasted along a part of the Atlantic shores of America, assumed to concede to the Colonies of Massachusetts and Virginia grants of territory extending by parallels of latitude westward to the Pacific Ocean, and covering the unexplored immensity of the Continent, and on the premises of sovereignty and jurisdiction as good as their title to the manor of East Greenwich in Kent,-it was only men's universal ignorance of geography which saved the act from the imputation of wild extravagance.

But such grants, and the pretensions on which they were founded, were the logical consequence of the theories of colonization and conquest pursued in the New World by Spain, Portugal, and France, as well as England, and formed the basis of the power of Great Britain in North America, and eventually of

that of the United States. It was the assumption that discovery by any European State, followed by occupation on the sea-coast, carried the possessions of such State indefinitely landward until they met the possessions of some other European State.

At the same time, France had entered into America by the waters of the St. Lawrence, had ascended that river to the Lakes, had then descended by the Mississippi to the site of the future New Orleans, and had thus laid the foundation of a title not only to the explored territories watered by the St. Lawrence or in front of it on the sea-coast, but also to undefined, because unknown, regions beyond the Mississippi.

Hence arose the first great questions of boundary in North America, those between England, France, and Spain, which were settled by the Peace of Utrecht. France retained possession of the territories on the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi; whilst England retained her country of Hudson's Bay and her Provinces on the Atlantic coast, and acquired Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. [Treaty of Utrecht, March 31– April 11, 1713.]

Subsequently, the fortunes of war made England mistress of the Canadian and coast establishments of France, leaving to the latter only the territory beyond the Mississippi. [Treaty of Fontainebleau, Nov. 3, 1762, and Treaty of Paris, Feb. 10, 1763.]

Meanwhile, Spain continued, with but brief interruption, in undisputed sovereignty of the two Floridas, and of the vast provinces of New Spain, of undefined extension west and north toward the Pacific.

Thus, when the Thirteen Colonies obtained independence, and treated for the partition between them and Great Britain of the British empire in America, each took the part of which they respectively held constructive jurisdiction, according to its recognized limits in time of peace, that is to say, Great Britain retained for herself the territories which she had conquered from France, and relinquished to the Thirteen Colonies all the territory which she had theretofore claimed as hers against France by title of colonization and possession.

The new Republic thus became the sovereign of a magnificent territory regarded in the comparison with European standards of magnitude, and also of intrin sic value and resources unsurpassed by the possessions of any European State.

But, even with such limits, we felt cribbed and confined from the first: for the statesmen of the United States had clear perception not only of what we possessed as territory, but also of what we needed to possess in order to be a first-rate Power in America.

We found ourselves blocked in on the North by the British possessions, which also overshadowed us on the East, and which were at that time of sufficient relative strength to constitute an object of solicitude to us so long as they remained in the hands of Great Britain.

Westward, we were hemmed in along the Mississippi by the French, who also held the mouths of that river, and barred us from access to the sea in that direction.

On the South, Spain shut us up on the side of the Gulf of Mexico.

It was impossible in this state of things that the United States could attain the development to which, in other respects, they had the right to aspire, by reason of the fertility of their soil, their numerous rivers, and their commanding position in the temperate zone of America.

But the cession of Louisiana to the United States by the voluntary act of France,--the most splendid concession ever made by one nation to another, produced a revolution in the condition of America. We thus acquired territory of indefinite limits westward, with such limits on the south as the pretensions of Spain would allow, and with limits north only where superior claim of right on the part of Great Britain intervened, namely, the parallel of forty-nine degrees established between France and Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht.

President Jefferson lost no time in asserting the rights of the United States in the interior of the Union, and at the same time acquiring knowledge of the country by means of the celebrated expedition of Lewis and Clark. Theretofore the only knowledge we possessed of the great chain of the Rocky Mountains, and of the country or even the name of the country of Oregon beyond, was founded on the narration of Jonathan Carver, or other information derived from the Indians.

We were thus enabled to comprehend the relation of Louisiana to the shores of the Pacific, and to see

that the River Columbia, first entered by Captain Robert Gray of the American ship Columbia, of Boston, in 1792, and named by him, and afterward by the English explorer, Captain Vancouver, was "the great river of the West," the Oregon of Carver.

That coast had already been explored with more or less of diligence by Spanish navigators, fitted out by the Viceroys of New Spain, who gave to many of the islands, straits, and channels the names they still retain; and Spain, if any Power anterior to the United States, had title by discovery in those parts of America.

But the earliest settlement on that coast was the factory of Astoria at the mouth of the River Columbia, established by John Jacob Astor.

Then came the war between the United States and Great Britain: the first effect of which, as to the pres ent question, was the military occupation of Astoria and of the country on the banks of the Columbia by British forces: subsequently to which, on the conclusion of peace, although Astoria was surrendered to us in obedience to the stipulations of the Treaty of Ghent, yet Great Britain set up claim to the valley of the Columbia as against the United States, and, indeed, to all the country intervening between the actual occupations of Spain to the south in California, and those of Russia to the north in Sitka.

Claims of Great Britain in this quarter, with but weak foundation, had already been asserted against Spain to the south of the River Columbia.

Controversy on the subject between the United