the British-some saying it was an American question, others turning it into a question of party politics and President-making among the people. Mr. Heywood deprecated the idea of allowing the people to have a share in the treaty-making power, which was reserved by the constitution exclusively for the Executive department of the Government. This was southern democracy; and if it were "Punic faith," they might make the most of it. He denied that the people, organized by factions and instructed by demagogues, had a right to instruct the Senate in the discharge of its public duties. If this was democracy-as was held by some to be it was that democracy that grows at the root, like the potato, and not at the blossom; it was going backward. If it were, however, to be viewed as a national question, he, in common with the Senate, would be found by the side of his country. But according to the terms of the Baltimore Convention -they went by the terms of the Convention for the "reannexation of Texas," and for the "reoccupation of Oregon." The 49th parallel was the highest degree to which any American foot ever went in Oregon. The south would go for that; and if that was "Punic faith" in going for the "reoccupation of Oregon," let them make the most of it. He was in favour of the simple notice, but would not vote in favour of the resolution of the House. He also objected to the propositions contained in the resolutions of some senators in the Chamber, and had a particular objection to the word "forthwith," which accompanied the resolutions from the mittee on foreign relations. He was willing to give the President

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legislative aid if he required it; but if not, and he preferred to manage it himself, he would allow him to do so, for he had a right to do so if he pleased, under the clauses of the constitution. Mr. Heywood, after expounding his objections to the amendment of Mr. Colquitt, recommending negotiations and a compromise, advocated the adoption of the House resolutions as covering an allsufficient ground. He wished no interference or advice with the duties of the Executive, until the case should imperatively demand it. He then extended his thanks to the Senate for their indulgence; and said that if he had, perhaps, wearied the Senate, his heart felt lighter and his conscience easy. He deprecated the consequences which would result from a rash or precipitate, or unwise, or irregular action in any shape, and expressed his faith in the controlling supervision of Providence.

Mr. Hannegan afterwards favoured the Senate with the following tirade:

"If the President did desert the 54° 40′ standard, he would become a traitor to his faith, and would meet with an infamy so profound, a damnation so deep, that the resurrection-trumpet would not wake him! If the President was in the position in which the senator from North Carolina had placed him, then had he spoken the words of falsehood with the tongue of a serpent."

In the course of the same discussion Mr. Calhoun made a powerful speech of which the tone was most pacific. Ile began by an examination of the expediency of the notice. From the recommendations of the President, it was thought, at the beginning of the

Session, that the notice would lead to a series of measures resulting in war. Since that time the phase of affairs had materially changed. There was no more an idea entertained now of war than that our

title was "clear and unquestionable" to the whole territory of Oregon. He opposed, notwithstanding, the unequivocal notice. He was opposed also to the equivocal resolutions of the House; and, if he should advocate the notice in any shape, it would be in the form of the senator from Georgia, (Mr. Colquitt,) embracing a recommendation for the settlement of the controversy by "compromise." There were two alternatives of settlement-war, or a "compromise.' In every point of view the latter was the preferable mode. War would involve us in an inextricable national debt, lead to the establishment of a rotten paper system, concentrate all the powers of the State into a Federal Government, and terminate in a central military despotism. Peace would give momentum to the great work of progress; it would extend our commerce; it would increase our internal wealth; it would erect our roads and canals; it would relieve the States; it would extend our borders; it would preserve us Oregon; it would establish beneficial fraternity of interest between the two great nations upon whose exertions the civilization of the world mainly depends-the United States and Great Britain. Mr. Calhoun regretted the impatience of the senators of the west; but he felt assured that they themselves were, perhaps, beginning to think that our title to the whole territory was not so clear and unquestionable as they had at first imagined, and war was not the

a

pastime of an hour. He earnestly desired a speedy adjustment by compromise; because, among other measures, the settlement of our controversy with Mexico depended upon the adjustment or non-adjustment of the conflicting claims to Oregon between us and Great Britain. In the event of war upon this question, Mexico would at once act upon the offensive; and by Mexico on the south, under the discipline of British officers, and by British steamers along the seaboard, the Canadians on the north, a British fleet upon the lakes, and the Indians on the west, we should be enfiladed on every side.

On the 30th of March during a debate on the following resolution moved in the Senate by Mr. Clayton :

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Resolved, That the President of the United States be requested to communicate to the Senate copies of any correspondence that may have taken place between the authorities of the United States and those of Great Britain since. the last document transmitted to Congress, in relation to the subject of the Oregon territory, or so much thereof as may be communicated without detriment to the public interest.' Mr. Webster rose and said, there could be no doubt that letters had been received from Mr. M'Lane; but as the chairman for the committee for foreign relations had opposed the resolution, he presumed that Government found it inconvenient to communicate those letters to the Senate at the present moment. A great mistake had been committed in calling on Congress to authorize notice to England of the discontinuance of what has been called the joint occupation, until negotiation had been exhausted,

Negotiation should have been tried first; and when that had failed, and finally failed, then and not till then should Congress have been called upon. Great embarrassment had arisen from the extreme pretensions and opinions put forward by the President in his inaugural Address, and in his Message of last December. But for these, notice would have been harmless, and perhaps would have been authorized by both Houses without much opposition, and received by England without dissatisfaction. But the recommendation of the notice, coupled with the President's repeated declarations that he held our title to the whole of the territory to be "clear and unquestionable," alarmed the country. Congress was not prepared, and he did not think the country was prepared to make the President's opinion of a clear and unquestionable right to the whole territory an ultimatum. Did the President mean to adhere to that, even to the extremity of war? If so, he should have known that, after what has happened in years past, the country was not likely to sustain him. Did he mean to say this, and afterwards recede from it? If so, why say it at all? When the President declared that, in his judgment, their title to the whole of Oregon was "clear and unquestionable," did he mean to express an official or a mere personal opinion? If the latter, it certainly had no place in an official communication. If the former-if he intended a solemn official opinion, upon which he was resolved to act officially-then it is a very grave question how far he is justified, without new lights, or any change of circumstances, to place the claims of this country in this reVOL. LXXXVIII.

spect on other grounds than those which they had stood on under his predecessors, and with the concurrence of all branches of the Government for so many years; for it is not to be doubted that the United States Government has admitted, through a long series of years, that England has rights in the northwestern parts of this Continent, which are entitled to be respected.

"One who has observed attentively what has transpired here and in England within the last three months must, I think, perceive that public opinion in both countries is coming to a conclusion that this controversy ought to be settled, and is not very diverse, in the one country and the other, as to the general basis of such settlement. That basis is the offer made by the United States to England in 1826. It appears to me that there is a concurrence of arguments, of considerations, in favour of regarding the 49th parallel as the line of demarcation, which both countries might well respect. It has for many years been the extent of our claim. We have claimed up to 49 degrees, and nothing beyond it. We have offered to yield everything north of it. It is the boundary between the two countries on this side of the Rocky Mountains, and has been since the purchase of Louisiana from France.

"The Government of the United States has never offered any line south of 49 degrees, (with the navigation of the Columbia,) and it never will. It behoves all concerned to regard this as a settled point. As to the navigation of the Columbia, permanently or for a term of years, that is all matter for just, reasonable, and friendly negotiation. But the 49th parallel must be regarded as the general [Y]

line of boundary, and not to be departed from for any line further south. As to all straits, and sounds, and islands, in the neighbouring sea, all these are fair subjects for treaty stipulation. If the general basis be agreed to, all the rest, it may be presumed, may be accomplished by the exercise of a spirit of fairness and amity.

And now, Mr. President, if this be so, why should this settlement be longer delayed? Why should either Government hold back longer from doing that which both, I think, can see must be done, if they would avoid a rupture?"

Next day General Cass addressed the Senate in a speech of great length. He began by defending himself, and those who thought with him, from the charges of ultra policy and intemperate zeal in this Oregon matter. He quoted from a speech of Lord Brougham, in which abusive allusions to him (Mr. Cass) were made; and expressed his belief that on the score of decorum the debate in the Senate would compare favourably with that in the British Parliament. In alluding to the wide difference between the President's friends in their construction of his Message, he said "Non nos componere tantas lites;" but he thought that no one could have read the Message without feeling, what he did at the time he introduced his resolutions, that the foreign affairs of the country, as regarded this subject, were in a critical juncture. With regard to the parallel of 49 degrees as the boundary of our claim, he believed that it had only been fixed upon from an erroneous impression that it was settled by the treaty of Utrecht. Not believing himself that it was thus settled, he intended

to place himself among those who marched up to the Russian boundary. Mr. Cass then took a cursory review of many of the speeches that had been made, and devoted especial attention to that of Mr. Calhoun. He upbraided the senator from South Carolina for having said, and said in the Senate, that a war with England would require from us 200,000 men, every dollar we could raise, and that it would last for ten years. If, said Mr. Cass, we could not drive England out of her colonial possessions on this continent in one quarter of the time named, we should be unworthy of our name and birthright, and, having done this, the rest of the contest would be little else than predatory excursions upon the sea. But it was said that two great nations, in this enlightened age, could not go to war. What were two great nations now doing in La Plata? What was France doing in Africa, and England in India? Human nature was much the same now that it was when we had our two wars-we were not so much better than our fathers as some seem to think-the time had not come when the Lion and the Eagle could lie down together. He referred to a distinguished and venerable man of a past generation, as having waked up from a political slumber of a quarter of century, to oppose a war, and believed that the same individual (Mr. Gallatin) had tried to damp the zeal of his country in the last war.

On the following day Mr. Benton, one of the committee on military affairs, spoke, taking the more moderate side of the question. He said, the senator from Michigan (Mr. Cass) had promised yesterday that he would be governed by the fact of the establish

ment, or non-establishment, of the line of 49 degrees by the treaty of Utrecht. If it could be proved that this line had been adopted, he promised to abandon his present position. Mr. Benton said he was desirous of fixing this point, and feared that the character of the Senate for sense and intelligence would be cheapened in the eyes of the world by leaving it longer in doubt. In the very first despatch to our Minister at London, after the acquisition of Louisiana, Mr. Madison being then Secretary of State to Mr. Jefferson, it was assumed as certain that the line of 49 degrees was the established boundary, but, ignorant of the particulars, our Minister was directed to examine what had been done by the commissioners appointed to run this line. (IIere Mr. Benton read numerous extracts from a volume of the State Papers, all bearing upon this point, and showing that the 49th parallel was the line of the treaty referred to, and that Mr. Jefferson had earnestly pressed its final adoption, thinking it a great object to secure this boundary as against Great Britain.) He claimed now that the senator from Michigan should redeem his pledge by reversing his opinion. This pledge had been given in a speech made after three months' deliberation, well studied, and almost committed to heart-a speech on the darling side of the question, and well mixed with other topics calculated to inflame the country. This, then, was the condition into which he had brought himself Ulysses was caught in his toils. The Agamemnon himself was a prisoner upon the 49th parallel, and (looking on each side at Messrs. Allen and Hannegan) the Ajaxes and Achilles, great

and small, must share his fate. His great speech now disappears, and with it he and they. There is no longer occasion for warlike preparations. The inaction of the committee upon the 30,000,000 dollars of military estimates is now proved to have been, if not masterly, at least lucky. War was no longer inevitable, but clearly evitable-peace, peace, is now inevitable-there is no way to avoid it. In conclusion, Mr. Benton said he was an adherent of this Administration, and, as soon as he knew the position of the President, meant to sustain him, if in his conscience and judgment he could; but he would neither put himself before him, nor attempt to lead him.

Mr. Hannegan then rose and delivered a short but severe philippic against Mr. Benton. He (Mr. Hannegan) would not have spoken at all but for the unkind allusion to himself. For thirty years he had looked up to the senator from Missouri, and from him he had learnt his principles about Oregon -he learnt them from the speech of that senator upon the Ashbur ton treaty, in which he denounced, with a bitterness not yet assuaged, the negotiator and all who voted for it. The senator from Missouri was the Gamaliel at whose feet he had sat to be taught, but he could not unlearn him. In this contest, said Mr. Hannegan, I am not even Ajax, but an humble, private soldier; and far rather would I be such than one (looking towards Mr. Benton) who holds himself so high that he hardly deigns to observe those beneath him who carries himself so loftily that the very earth he treads seems to him too mean for his footstep, and one who is so greedy for fame that he