With respect to this Convention, it is to be observed:

1. That it is an executory agreement, one of that class which is annulled by war; and which lasted, therefore, only so long as peace was preserved between England and Spain, which was six years.

It is not an acknowledgment of an existing right, but an engagement between the parties that "their subjects should not be molested in landing on the coasts, not already occupied, for the purpose of carrying on commerce or making settlements"; an engagement of the same class with treaties for the regulation of navigation, tariffs, or fisheries.

In the analogous case of the Newfoundland fisheries, Great Britain herself insisted that the liberty given us to fish and land on the coasts of Newfoundland was annulled by the War of 1812, taking occasion at the same time to declare that she "knows of no exception to the rule, that all treaties are put an end to by a subsequent war between the same parties."

* That our readers may be better able to compare the two conventions, we subjoin the third article of the definitive treaty of peace of 1783:

"It is agreed that the people of the United States shall continue to enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of any kind on the Grand Bank, and on all the other banks of Newfoundland; also in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and at all places in the sea where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish; and also that the inhabitants of the United States shall have liberty to take fish of every kind on such part of the coast of Newfoundland as British fishermen shall use (but not to dry or cure the same on that island), and also on the coasts, bays, and creeks of all other of his Britannic Majesty's dominions in America; and that the American fishermen shall have liberty to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled; but, so soon as the same or either of them shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such settlement, without a previous agreement with the inhabitants, proprietors, or possessors of the ground."

The American plenipotentiaries insisted that these provisions were of perpetual obligation, for the reason that they were the acknowledgment of a previous right, common to all the persons composing the British Empire before its dismemberment, and made part and parcel of their partition of territory and of common rights at the peace; but the British plenipotentiaries, on the other hand, maintained that they were concessions depending for their continuance upon the continuance of the engagements between the two contracting parties, and revoked by that which revokes all contracts, a subsequent war; so that, while the positions then taken by the American Government do not contradict those which they now take respecting

It has been said, indeed, on the part of the British Government that the engagements of this treaty, even if revoked by the war, were renewed by the following stipulation between Spain and England made in 1814, viz.: "It is agreed that, pending the negotiation of a new treaty of commerce, Great Britain shall be admitted to trade with Spain upon the same conditions as those which existed previously to 1796, all the treaties of commerce which at that period subsisted between the two nations being hereby ratified and confirmed." To this position there are two answers: first, that the liberty to settle on the northwest coasts was not part of a treaty of commerce; and, second, that the stipulation obviously related only to the European dominions of Spain.

2. If no war between Spain and Great Britain had intervened, still the engagements of the Nootka Treaty were in their nature temporary; intended to provide for a state of things where there were no permanent settlements, and quite unsuited to, indeed incompatible with, a real occupation of the country by permanent civilized communities with an established government and a system of laws to be administered. The things contemplated by the Convention were rather trading-posts and a commerce in furs than any such permanent occupancy as we have been mentioning.

To carry out and perpetuate the treaty, according to the British interpretation, would be to condemn the whole country to eternal waste, except for the purpose of hunting and trading with the natives, or to place there, side by side, American citizens and British subjects, to cultivate the earth, build towns, and carry on a traffic through the Pacific, each class governed by a different system of laws, different sets of magistrates, and

the Nootka Treaty, the British Government then maintained and adhered to a doctrine of public law wholly irreconcilable with their present pretensions.

The reader who is curious in such matters will find some observations respecting the kind of conventions which survive a war, in the cases of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel vs. the Town of New Haven, in 8 Wheaton's Reports, 464, and Sutton vs. Sutton, 1 Russel and Mylne, 663.

The distinction between what is called by the publicists transitory conventions and other national compacts may be illustrated by the distinction somewhat analogous between a conveyance, by which a title is actually vested in a grantee, and a contract, which gives no title, but a claim on the contracting party.

owing allegiance to different governments. That surely is a state of things which we should be slow to admit was agreed upon, and slow to submit to.

There are some minor arguments brought forward by each party which we do not think it necessary here to mention. They do not change the aspect of the case as we have presented it. If the main arguments which we have examined do not decide it, the smaller ones will not.

The last propositions between the two parties for the settlement of the controversy were, on the American side, that the line of the forty-ninth parallel, the boundary on this side of the mountains, should be continued to the Pacific; and on the British side, that the line should be continued only to the headwaters of the river Oregon, and then down that river to the sea, the stream being the boundary, and to continue for ever common to the two nations. Whether in the late negotiations different terms have been proposed on either side, we are not informed.

Upon the whole matter, we have formed an opinion the most decided, that the American claim is founded in law and justice; and we think we do but declare the decision of the American people when we say that the forty-ninth parallel is a reasonable and proper compromise, and the southernmost limit which America ought to concede.

With respect to the mode of dealing with the British Government hereafter, we must say, in the first place, that we should be slow to submit to the arbitrament of a European sovereign. There are many reasons of a political nature why a claim of this country to territory should not be decided by any potentate. Our rights are now in our own keeping, and we prefer that they should remain so; but at the same time, notwithstanding this disinclination to the arbitrament of a foreign prince, we would take that much sooner than incur the chances and calamities of war. We would, moreover, on no compromise, recede from the line of the forty-ninth parallel. That divides the territory into two nearly equal parts: it carries our northern boundary in a straight line from the Lake of the Woods to the South Sea, and it secures to us what we most want, the noble harbors about the Strait of Fuca and the exclu

sive control of the river Oregon in its whole course. But we would not close the door upon negotiation. We would endeavor to persuade Great Britain that our rights were perfect, and that we were unanimous in maintaining them. We would not be in haste to close the negotiation, satisfied that every day adds strength to our possession. We would afford protection to our countrymen who may go there to settle or to trade; and for that purpose a law ought immediately to be passed, extending the jurisdiction of our courts over American citizens in that country. So long as there was any hope of an amicable arrangement, we would not terminate the joint occupancy provided by the conventions of 1818 and 1827, believing that to do so would but irritate, and might break off negotiation. But, if negotiation does not promise favorable results, and as soon as a reasonable prospect of adjustment by that means was past, we would terminate the joint occupancy, in the mode provided by the conventions, and establish a territorial government. If, then, Great Britain chose to resist, we would meet force by force.

If that day should ever come (which may God avert !), the consequences of the struggle are beyond the reach of human eyes. Some of them, however, we may reasonably anticipate; and, in regard to all, our countrymen have no just cause for apprehension.

The final result of the warlike operations would probably be the extinction of British power on this continent. At first, no doubt, we should suffer immensely from want of adequate preparation to meet the vast disposable force under the control of Great Britain. It seems a weakness of republican government not to prepare itself for such emergencies. Jealousy of great establishments, especially those which are supported by the state, seems inseparable from popular institutions. Such, at least, has been our experience. Great Britain, on the other hand, is thoroughly prepared: with well-disciplined and numerous armies, with ships of war hovering on every sea, with warlike stores and munitions, collected without stint of expense or labor, for many years. She has naval stations on every coast, fortresses and troops wherever there are islands which she could seize—a belt of frowning fortresses all round the

globe. With these well-appointed means at hand, she would strike heavy blows in the first year of the war, inflicting upon us greater sacrifices, probably, than it would have cost us to keep adequately prepared for half a century.

But the vigor and elasticity of this people would bear them up against these assaults and losses; their resources, almost boundless, would be developed with greater rapidity than the calm times of peace could have produced; all kinds of manufactures possible to us would take root; and every means which this people could command would be brought out to serve the purpose of defense and annoyance. Every element of disaffection in the neighboring provinces would be nourished into rebellion. Republican armies would plant the standard of revolt in their soil. We should offer their inhabitants freedom from the galling colonial yoke, exemption from the swarms of foreign officers who infest their homes, self-government in its best and truest acceptation, and a union with our circle of free States. We should point out to them—if indeed it be not already impressed on their minds-the difference between the two systems, as they appear upon the opposite sides of the St. Lawrence and the lakes. If they did not profit by the lesson and the occasion, they would prove themselves of a different spirit from what we take them to be.

On our southern border, Mexico would probably be stimulated by the offers of England, added to the irritation which she now naturally feels, to join in the war; and the consequences of it would be that that country would be overrun by invaders from the South and Southwest. What means of defense she has on her open frontier, we do not see. A Western hunter will carry provisions enough on his back to subsist him ten days, and by that time he would place himself in the habitable and fruitful parts of Mexico. All the efforts of England, both at the South and the North, would be exhausted upon the seacoasts. She could make no impression on the interior; and from the interior would be organized forces which, aided by the disaffected population north of us, and the weakness of the races south, would carry American dominion from the ancient seat of the Aztecs to the Arctic Sea.

Upon the ocean itself, the contest would be long and bloody;