224 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 
northyvest coast of America, Vancouver's Island and 
British Columbia can not ever be of special impor. 
tance to.her either as a military post or as a colony. 
Nor can they 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 which, 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 power 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 
Oregon, and the great 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 present affords 
assurance of stable peace. 
Happily the United States and Great Britain are 
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 1846, the United States had made to Great 
