PREFACE. 



which he has quoted (page 37,) as an important passage of 

 that treaty from Bradford's History of the Federal Govern- 

 ment ; nor would he have reprehended the author of this 

 history, for failing to notice that passage, nor would he 

 have founded upon its supposed stipulations, many pages 

 of argument very logically drawn, but unfortunately vain, 

 to prove the premeditated bad faith of the American gov- 

 ernment. Had he in like manner examined the collection 

 of documents presented by the English and French com- 

 missaries, appointed under the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle, 

 in 1743, to settle certain disputed questions of boundary in 

 America, he would not have mistaken those commissaries, 

 as he has, for the plenipotentiaries who signed the Treaty 

 of Paris, in 1763 ; nor would he, on the faith of the inex- 

 plicable assertions of M. Duflot de Mofras, have triumph- 

 antly cited the map of Northern America, in the fourth 

 volume of that Collection, as proving that Canada formerly 

 extended to the Pacific, and that the Columbia river was dis- 

 covered by French officers and traders, early in the last cen- 

 tury. (See note at page 159 of this volume.) He should, 

 also, in justice to those whose arguments he opposes, quote 

 their expressions correctly ; that is, quote their words, and not 

 omit important passages, which are indispensable to show 

 their true meaning, as he* has done, (in his pages 65 to 68,) 

 with regard to the views of the rights derived from discovery 

 and occupation, presented in pages 1 87 et seq. of this his- 

 tory. Lastly, he should not attempt to controvert precise 

 statements, expressed in exact terms, by vague and general 

 assertions. Thus had he succeeded in proving that Can- 

 ada extended to the Pacific — which he has most signally 

 failed to do — he would still have been very far from re- 

 deeming the pledge given in his page 85, " to demonstrate 

 most distinctly, that there is not the slightest foundation," 

 for the statement in page 276 of this history, (misquoted 

 by him,) that at the- beginning of the present century, 

 " Louisiana stretched northward and north-westward to an 



