338 CLAIMS OF THE U. STATES AND OF GREAT BRITAIN. [1824. 



rendered up to the United States at the return of peace," and — of 

 the transfer by Spain to the United States of all her titles to those 

 territories, founded upon the well-known discoveries of her navi- 

 gators ; and he insisted, agreeably to express instructions from his 

 government, " that no part of the American continent was thence- 

 forth to be open to colonization from Europe." In explanation and 

 defence of this declaration, Mr. Rush " referred to the principles 

 settled by the Nootka Sound convention of 1790, and remarked, 

 that Spain had now lost all her exclusive colonial rights, recognized 

 under that convention : first, by the fact of the independence of the 

 South American states and of Mexico ; and next, by her express 

 renunciation of all her rights, of whatever kind, above the 42d 

 degree of north latitude, to the United States. Those new states 

 would themselves now possess the rights incident to their condition 

 of political independence ; and the claims of the United States 

 above the 42d parallel as high up as 60 degrees — claims as well 

 in their own right as by succession to the title of Spain — would 

 henceforth necessarily preclude other nations from forming colonial 

 establishments upon any part of the American continents." 



Messrs. Huskisson and Canning, in reply, denied that the 

 circumstance of a merchant vessel of the United States having 

 penetrated the north-west coast of America at the Columbia River, 

 could give to the United States a claim along that coast, both 

 north and south of the river, over territories which, they insisted, 

 had been previously discovered by Great Britain herself, in expe- 

 ditions fitted out under the authority and with the resources of the 

 nation. They declared that British subjects had formed settle- 

 ments upon the Columbia, or upon rivers flowing into it west of 

 the Rocky Mountains, coe al with, if not prior to, the settlement 

 made by American citizens at its mouth ; and that the surrender of 

 that settlement after the late war was in fulfilment of the treaty of 

 Ghent, and did not affect the question of right in any way. They 

 treated as false or doubtful the accounts of many of the Spanish 

 voyages in the Pacific; alleging, as more authentic, the narrative 

 of Drake's expedition, from which it appeared that he had, in 

 1579, explored the west coast of America to the 48th parallel of 

 latitude, five or six degrees farther north than the Spaniards them- 

 selves pretended to have advanced before that period : and they 

 refused to admit that any title could be derived from the mere fact 

 of Spanish navigators having first seen the coast at particular spots, 

 even when this was capable of being fully substantiated. Finally, 



