346 NEGOTIATION AT LONDON. [1826. 



was not a single British soldier — technically speaking — within 

 its limits. 



Considering this state of things, and also the characters of the 

 two nations engaged in the controversy and of their governments, 

 it may readily be supposed that many and great obstacles would 

 exist in the way of a definitive and amicable arrangement of the 

 questions at issue, between the Americans ever solicitous with 

 respect to territory which they have any reason to regard as their 

 own, and the British with whom the acquisition and security of 

 commercial advantages always form a paramount object of policy. 

 To the difficulties occasioned by the conflict of such material 

 interests, in this particular case, were added those arising from the 

 pride of the parties, and their mutual jealousy, which seems ever to 

 render them adverse to any settlement of a disputed point, even 

 though it should be manifestly advantageous to them both. 



In the first conference,* the British commissioners declared that 

 their government was still ready to abide by the proposition made 

 to Mr. Rush, in 1824, for a line of separation between the territories 

 of the two nations, drawn from the Rocky Mountains, along the 

 49th parallel of latitude to the north-easternmost branch of the 

 Columbia, and thence down that river to the sea ; giving to Great 

 Britain all the territories north, and to the United States all south, 

 of that line. Mr. Gallatin, in reply, agreeably to instructions from 

 his government, repeated the offer made by himself and Mr. Rush, 

 in 1818, for the adoption of the 49th parallel as the line of separa- 

 tion from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, with the additional 

 provisions, — that, if the said line should cross any of the branches 

 of the Columbia at points from which they are navigable by boats 

 to the main stream, the navigation of such branches, and of the 

 main stream, should be perpetually free and common to the people 

 of both nations — that the citizens or subjects of neither party 

 should thenceforward make any settlements in the territories of the 

 other ; but that all settlements already formed by the people of 

 3ither nation within the limits of the other, might be occupied and 

 used by them for ten years, and no longer, during which all the 

 remaining provisions of the existing convention should continue in 

 force. The British refused to accede to this or any other plan of 

 partition which should deprive them of the northern bank of the 



* President Adams's message to Congress of December 28th, 1827, and the ac- 

 companying documents. 



