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TRAVERS TWISS, D. C. L., F. R. S.,

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
AND ADVOCATE IN DOCTORS' COMMONS.

NEW YORK:

·

D. APPLETON & CO., 200 BROADWAY.

PHILADELPHIA:

GEO. S. APPLETON, 148 CHESNUT STREET.
CINCINNATI:-DERBY, BRADLEY & CO., 113 MAIN - STREET.

MDCCCXLVI.

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PREFACE.

THE object which the author had in view, in instituting the accompanying inquiry into the historical facts and the negotiations connected with the Oregon Territory, was to contribute, as far as his individual services might avail, to the peaceful solution of the question at issue between the United States of America and Great Britain. He could not resist the conviction, on reading several able treatises on the subject, that the case of the United States had been overstated by her writers and negotiators; and the perusal of Mr. Greenhow's Official Memoir, and subsequent History of Oregon and California, confirmed him in this impression, as they sought to establish more than was consistent with the acknowledged difficulty of a question, which has now been the subject of four fruitless negotiations. He determined, in consequence of this conviction, to investigate carefully the records of ancient discoveries and other matters of history connected with the North-west coast of America, concerning which much contradictory statement is to be met with in writers of acknowledged reputation. The result is, the present work, which has unavoidably assumed a much larger bulk than was anticipated by

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