312 BRITISH VIEWS OF NATIONAL FAITH. [1818. 



tation of the arrival of an overpowering British force, sold their 

 " establishments, furs, and stock in hand," to the North- West Com- 

 pany ; but they did not, nor could they, alienate the right of domain 

 of the United States, which continued as before that transaction 

 until the British forces arrived, and took possession of the country 

 by right of conquest. The same circumstances might have oc- 

 curred with regard to places near the head of the Mississippi, or in 

 Maine ; and Great Britain would not have been bound more strong- 

 ly by the treaty of Ghent to restore places so situated than to restore 

 the establishments on the Columbia. 



The two documents, which the British plenipotentiaries consider 

 as putting " the case of the restoration of Astoria in too clear a 

 light to require further observation," are wholly inadmissible as evi- 

 dence in " the case," being simply despatches from British ministers 

 to their own agents, intended exclusively for the instruction of the 

 latter, and with which the United States have no more concern than 

 with the private opinions of those ministers. The attempt to rep- 

 resent such communications as reservations of right on the part of 

 Great Britain to the very territory which she was then in the act of 

 restoring to the United States, expressedly in pursuance of a treaty, 

 is alike at variance with the common sense and the common morals 

 of the day ; and no arguments are required to show that, if such 

 reservations were allowable, all engagements between nations would 

 be nugatory, and all faith at an end. The statement respecting 

 the assertion of the British claim to Astoria, verbally made by Mr. 

 Bagot to Mr. Adams, is incomplete ; for, as Mr. Gallatin justly ob- 

 served in answer, " it is not stated how the communication was re- 

 ceived, nor whether the American government consented to accept 

 the restitution with the reservation, as expressed in the despatch to 

 the envoy ; " * and it is, moreover, by no means consonant with the 

 usages of diplomatic intercourse at the present day, to treat verbally 

 on questions so important as those of territorial sovereignty, or to 



* Mr. Gallatin's Counter- Statement, accompanying the president's message to Con- 

 gress of December 12th, 1827. Upon the subject of this verbal communication, the 

 following may be found in Mr. Adams's despatch to Mr. Rush, of July 22d, 1823, 

 accompanying the same message : — 



" Previous to the restoration of the settlement at the mouth of the Columbia River, 

 in 1818, and again, upon the first introduction in Congress of the plan for constituting 

 a territorial government there, some disposition was manifested, by Sir Charles Bagot 

 and Mr. [Stratford] Canning, to dispute the right of the United States to that estab- 

 lishment, and some vague intimation was given of the British claims on the north- 

 west coast. The restoration of the place, and the convention of 1818, were consid- 

 ered as a final disposal of Mr. Bagot's objections, and Mr. Canning declined 

 committing to naper those which he had intimated in conversation." 



