22i THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 



nortliwest coast of America, Vancouver's Island and 

 Britisli Columbia can not ever be of special impor- 

 tance to lier either as a military post or as a colony. 

 Nor can tliey be of any military advantage to the 

 Canadian Dominion, and may, on the contrary, con- 

 stitute in her hands a temptation to needless expense 

 in fortifications, notwithstanding w^hich, owing to the 

 remoteness of those countries by land and their in- 

 accessibility to her by sea, the Dominion would find 

 them quite untenable in the presence of the powerful 

 American States on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. 



To the United States, on the other hand, it is im- 

 portant to have had the question decided in our favor. 

 We are now a real j^ower on the Pacific coast, which 

 Great Britain is not and can not be. Holding the 

 Territory of Alaska to the north of the British pos- 

 sessions, the Territory of Washington, the State of 

 Oreiron, and the OTeat and rich State of California 

 ceded to us by the Mexican Republic, with the grow- 

 ing States and Territories on their rear, it would have 

 been to us intolerable to be excluded from the great 

 channel between Vancouver's Island and the main- 

 land, or to traverse it only under the guns of British 

 fortresses on that island. Such a settlement would 

 have had in it the germs of war : the j^resent affords 

 assurance of stable peace. 



Happily the United States and Great Britain ai'e 

 now delivered from the complications in their rela- 

 tions occasioned by the exorbitant power of the Hud- 

 son's Bay Company. By other provisions of the same 

 Treaty of 18-4G, the United States had made to Great 



