THE FEDERAL RELATIONS
OF OREGON
175
of the 30th of August, and say, it has been at your option with a perfect liberty to propose any proposition you thought proper, and you had no reason to conclude from what had occurred here that the Government would not have treated such a proposition with respectful consideration when made. You have made no new proposition, & the question therefore stands in its present attitude."
Four days
later the
formal offer of arbitration was received.
Buchanan, when he received the note, agreed with Pakenham that he would like to see the question settled; although he would present the British proposition to the consideration of the President he must say that both he and the President thought a negotiation appeared the better way to go about After learning that the arbitration proposal the business.
would find little favor, P'akenham proceeded to comment on some of the bills introduced in Congress, particularly the ones which would make land grants to settlers; such measures, he believed, were in contravention of the terms of the convention of 1827. The proposed fortification of the Columbia River brought up the subject of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Buchanan understood from the drift of the conversation that the rights of this company formed one of the most serious obstacles to a settlement of the question. 4 In Cabinet it was discovered that the British proposition was to submit to an impartial tribunal not the question of title,
Oregon country, and all were in accord could not be accepted. As Buchanan wrote McLane, 5 to accept this basis would be to acknowledge that the President had been in error in asserting the title on the part of the United but of division of the
that
it
States, and it would be an admission that Great Britain had good title to some part of the territory. On this ground, then, Buchanan notified Pakenham that the proposition was inadmissible. The British minister this time was not inclined to balk at trifles and on his own authority, subject to the approval of 4 Pakenham to Buchanan, S. Doc. No. 117, agth C. ist S. Pakenham to A Memorandum to the Aberdeen, 29 Dec., Br. & For. S. Papers, 34:-i37-8. conversation is in Works of Buchanan, VI, 350-3. ist. Sea. See Polk, Diary, I, 1475 29 Dec., Sen. Doc. No. 489, 29th Cong
1
,
149.
