448 PROOFS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [H. 



claims of Great Britain and the United States, in this respect, it will be 

 advisable to dispose of the two other grounds of right, put forward by the 

 United States. 



The second ground of claim, advanced by the United States, is the 

 cession made by Spain to the United States, by the treaty of Florida, 

 in 1819. 



If the conflicting claims of Great Britain and Spain, in respect to all 

 that part of the coast of North America, had not been finally adjusted by 

 the convention of Nootka, in the year 1790, and if all the arguments and 

 pretensions, whether resting on priority of discovery, or derived from any 

 other consideration, had not been definitively set at rest by the signature 

 of that convention, nothing would be more easy than to demonstrate that 

 the claims of Great Britain to that country, as opposed to those of Spain, 

 were so far from visionary, or arbitrarily assumed, that they established 

 more than a parity of title to the possession of the country in question, 

 either as against Spain, or any other nation. 



Whatever that title may have been, however, either on the part of 

 Great Britain or on the part of Spain, prior to the convention of 1790, it 

 was from thenceforward no longer to be traced in vague narratives of 

 discoveries, several of them admitted to be apocryphal, but in the text and 

 stipulations of that convention itself. 



By that convention it was agreed that all parts of the north-western 

 coast of America, not already occupied at that time by either of the con- 

 tracting parties, should thenceforward be equally open to the subjects 

 of both, for all purposes of commerce and settlement ; the sovereignty 

 remaining in abeyance. 



In this stipulation, as it has been already stated, all tracts of country 

 claimed by Spain and Great Britain, or accruing to either, in whatever 

 manner, were included. 



The rights of Spain on that coast were, by the treaty of Florida, in 

 1819, conveyed by Spain to the United States. With those rights the 

 United States necessarily succeeded to the limitations by which they 

 were defined, and the obligations under which they were to be exercised. 

 From those obligations and limitations, as contracted towards Great 

 Britain, Great Britain cannot be expected gratuitously to release those 

 countries, merely because the rights of the party originally bound have 

 been transferred to a third power. 



The third ground of claim of the United States rests on the right 

 supposed to be derived from the cession to them of Louisiana by 

 France. 



In arguing this branch of the question, it will not be necessary to 

 examine in detail the very dubious point of the assumed extent of that 

 province, since, by the treaty between France and Spain of 1763, the 

 whole of that territory, defined or undefined, real or ideal, was ceded by 

 France to Spain, and, consequently, belonged to Spain, not only in 1790, 

 when the convention of Nootka was signed between Great Britain and 

 Spain, but also subsequently, in 1792, the period of Gray's discovery of 

 the mouth of the Columbia. If, then, Louisiana embraced the country 

 west of the Rocky Mountains, to the south of the 49th parallel of latitude, 

 it must have embraced the Columbia itself, which that parallel intersects; 

 and, consequently, Gray's discovery must have been made in a country 

 avowedly already appropriated to Spain, and, if so appropriated, neces- 



