Page:The Whitman Controversy.pdf/33

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

28

duction by him to many members of the House and listening to the honorable delegate's speech about giving a territorial government to what is now Washington Territory.

Mrs. Victor makes a tirade against the missionaries, and especially against Gray, for approving Rev. Spalding's congressional document, which was certified to by more than one hundred honorable and Christian citizens of Oregon to contradict the slanderous statements of Vicar General Brouilett and J. Ross Browne's congressional document. It does not please her. It was not presented to me—it it had been I would have signed it. I ask the reader to note and read No. 4, for I have copied it so as not to misrepresent her. She tells us of the arrival of Lord Ashburton, and of Fremont being sent to collect information concerning the Platte Valley, South Pass, etc. Then comes No. 4. She says: "It was one of the methods adopted by government, of showing Great Britain that although the United States bided their time, they were informing and preparing themselves against the final struggle for the possession of the Oregon territory. I need not say more in this place of the opportunities enjoyed by Webster of forming an opinion and a policy concerning Oregon or of the policy formed. The proofs are voluminous and open to any reader of the congressional debates or documents, and the American state papers."

Under this (No. 4) we are referred to a big Oregon historical rat's nest, not surpassed in egotism by any other sacred or profane writer in history. We yield in silent awe at the mighty nest, so kindly mentioned for the information of the dumb-heads of Oregon, and we can but smile at the mild insinuation that there is in that great rat's nest at Washington all the wisdom she has so elaborately referred to, and advised her readers to do the same.

While we stop to digest the wisdom in No. 4, we must leave friend Spalding in his grave at Lapwai mission and pass on, leaving Simpson in London, Dr. McLoughlin in his grave in the front yard of the Catholic church at Oregon City, Webster to manage the cod fishery in No. 6 (and also No. 7, including part of No. 8)—here is a fifty years' nest to dispose of, "too big to be embraced in the Ashburton treaty," and too big for Webster to handle, as subsequent developments have proven. As we have our learned lady's statement we give it verbatim. She says:

"For fifty years the two governments had been negotiating boundaries, without being able to settle this small portion satisfactorily. It stood in the way of the Oregon Question and other im-