COKRESPONDENCE OF 1822-1825. 151 



Mr. Canning' repeated that lie had not invited me to call upon him 

 with any view to discussion at present, but only to obtain from me a 

 statement of the points, in anticipation of the opening of the negotiation, 

 from iliQ motive that he had mentioned of waiting to Mr. Bagot. Yet 

 my statement naturally led to fnrther conversation. He expressed no 

 opinion on any of the points, but his inquiries and remarks under that 

 Y>^hich proposes to confine the British settlements within 51° and oo^ 

 were evidently of a nature to indicate strong objections on his side, 

 though he professed to speak only from his first impressions. It is 

 more proper, I should say, that his objections were directed to our pro- 

 posal of not letting Great Britain go above 55° north with her settle- 

 ments, whilst we allowed Russia to come down to that line with hers. 

 In treating of this coast he had supposed that Britain had her northern 

 question with Russia, as her southern with the United States. He 

 could see a motive for the United States desiring to stop the settle- 

 ments of Great Britain southward; but he had not before known of 

 their desire to stop them northward, and, above all, over limits con- 

 ceded to Russia. It was to this effect that his suggestions went. He 

 threw out no dissent to the plan of joint asufruction between the three 

 powers of the country westward of the Stony Mountains for the period 

 of time proposed. 



In the course of my remarks I said that the United States no longer 

 regarded any part of that coast as open to European colonization, but 

 only to be used for purposes of traffic with the natives and for fishing 

 in the neighboring seas; that we did not know that Great Britain had 

 ever advanced any claim whatever to territory there founded on occu- 

 pation prior to the Nootka Sound controversy; that under the treaties 

 of 1763 her territorial rights in America were bounded westward by the 

 Mississippi; that if the ISTorth west and Hudson's Bay Companies now 

 had settlements as high uj) as 54° or 55° we suppose it to be as much 

 as could be shown, and were not aware how Great Britain could make 

 good her claims any further; that Spain, on the contrary, had much 

 larger claims on that coast by right of discovery, and that to the whole 

 extent of these the United States had succeeded by the Florida treaty; 

 that they were willing, however, waiving for the present the full ad- 

 vantage of these claims, to forbear all settlements north of 51°, as that 

 limit might be sufiicient to give them the benefit of all the waters of 

 the Columbia River; but that they would expect Great Britain to ab- 

 stain from coming south of that limit or going- above 55°, the latter 

 parallel being taken as that beyond which it was not imagined that she 

 had any actual settlements. The same parallel was proposed for the 

 southern limit of Russia as the boundary within which the Emperor 

 Paul had granted certain commercial privileges to his Russian Ameri- 

 can Company in 1799; but that, in fixing upon this line as regarded 

 Russia, it was not the intention of the United States to deprive" them- 

 selves of the right of traflic with the natives above it and still less to 

 concede to that power any system of colonial exclusion above it. 



Such was the general character of my remarks which Mr. Canning 

 said he would take into due consideration. In conclusion I said to him 

 that I should reserve myself for the negotiation itself for such further 

 elucidations of the subject as might tend to show the justice and rea- 

 sonableness of our ijropositious. 



I have the honor to be, etc., 



EiCHAED Rush. 



Hon. John Qutncy Adams, 



Secretary of State. 



