if left entirely to them might be more objectionable than the present offer.
These considerations were certainly not without weight, and President Polk hastened to lay the matter before the senate, and to seek its advice. In his message on this occasion he declared: "My opinions and my action on the Oregon Question were fully made known to congress in my annual message of the 2d of December last, and the opinions therein expressed remain unchanged. Should the senate, by the constitutional majority required for the ratification of treaties, advise the acceptance of this proposition, or advise it with such modifications as they may, upon full deliberation, deem proper, I shall conform my action to their advice. Should the senate, however, decline by such constitutional majority to give such advice, or to express an opinion on the subject, I shall consider it my duty to reject the offer."[1]
In asking the advice of the senate on a matter of so much importance as a war with Great Britain, the president only discharged his duty; in taking its advice he was relieved, not only from the responsibility of war, but also from the terms of the treaty to which no important alterations were proposed by the president's advisers.
There were many, indeed, outside of Oregon, who shared the somewhat unintelligent and extremely partisan feelings of the late immigrants, who thought the president had betrayed the party which elected him. It was, besides, the general impression that the Hudson's Bay Company arranged the terms of the treaty, which was another affront to those who had ever regarded that company with hatred and distrust. There was at once truth and error in the surmise. The governor[2] of the Hudson's Bay Company,
