198 VERNE BLUE
would be better protected and provided for by instruct- ing them in agriculture and the minor branches of the mechanic arts, the committee ask leave to present a bill."
Accordingly their bill was presented, 10 but so busy was the Congress in straightening out the last tangles of the Missouri question that no further attention could be given to the bill for that session. While Congress is deferring consideration it may be well enough to do like- wise and notice two or three aspects of the report. One clue to John Floyd's political thinking offers itself im- mediately.
His minute examination of the Mexican boundary which he places definitely at the Rio Grande can only mean a covert attempt to revive the American preten- tions to the Texas country that were lost by the San Ildefonso treaty of 1819. In a report on the Oregon Country it is purely a digression, but certainly not pur- poseless. It will not do to say that Floyd was simply offering the Oregon project as a blind to a move on Texas; future events refute such a charge. But it is safe to assume that expansion Oregon-wards would be accompanied by a companion movement toward the South, if the public mind should be propitious. Or, if Congress should prove cold to Oregon there was a chance that they might be moved to an interest in this other di- rection. Nothing came of the suggestion ; but there it stands as a clear index to Floyd's interests. It is true that it may have been merely intended to be a covert slap at Adams for surrendering Texas. Nevertheless, had the nation been in a different mood interesting de- velopments might have followed.
Secondly, Floyd's suggestion that a Chinese immigra- tion be encouraged smites oddly on present day ears. No doubt the Virginian runs the risk of the charge of not being a hundred per cent American. Undoubtedly it was in his mind that they should form a middle class
10 Bill presented Jan., 1821.
