390 DEBATE IN THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT ON OREGON. [1843. 



V 



and violently rescinded ; and any attempt to enforce the measures 

 would undoubtedly have been resisted by Great Britain. The 

 abrogation of the convention, in the manner therein provided, or 

 in some other way, by common consent of the parties, should 

 precede all attempts, by either, to occupy any spot in the territory 

 permanently ; and whenever the government of either nation 

 considers the time to be near, in which such occupation, by its own 

 citizens or subjects, will be indispensable, it should endeavor to 

 settle, by negotiation with the other power, some mode of effecting 

 that object, before giving notice of its intention to abrogate the 

 agreement ; for such a notice can only be regarded as the an- 

 nouncement of the determination of the party giving it to take 

 forcible possession of the territory at the end of the term. 



The reports of the debates in the American Senate on the bill 

 for the occupation of Oregon, reached England while the treaty, 

 recently concluded at Washington, was under consideration in 

 Parliament ; and they did not fail to elicit some observations in 

 the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston, the late secretary for 

 foreign affairs, and then leader of the opposition, pronounced 

 that, if the bill should pass, and be acted on, it would be equiva- 

 lent to a declaration of war, as it would be the invasion and 

 seizure of a territory in dispute, by virtue of a decree made by 

 one of the parties in its own favor. Mr. Macaulay, who had been 

 the secretary of war under the previous administration, con- 

 ceived that the fact of the passage of such a bill by the Senate, 

 a body comprising among its members a large portion of the men 

 of the greatest weight and most distinguished ability in the United 

 States, showed a highly-excited condition of the public mind in 

 that country. Mr. Blewitt quoted the words of one of the 

 senators in the debate, as being a most violent attack on England : 

 and he regarded the mode in which the matter had been dealt 

 with in the Senate as an insult to his nation. Sir Robert Peel, 

 the premier, in answer, simply stated, that communications of 

 a friendly nature, on the subject of Oregon, were then going 

 on between the two governments, a proposition having been 

 addressed to the United States, for considering the best means of 

 effecting a conciliatory adjustment of the questions respecting 

 those territories ; and that, if the bill introduced into the American 

 Senate had passed both Houses of Congress, it would not have 

 received the sanction of the executive, which had given assur- 

 ances of its anxiety to settle those questions by negotiation. 



