had guided the nation to an honorable place among the nations of the earth, but they were, after all, willing to stand still, and let well enough alone. They regarded their territory as already vaster and larger than would ever be peopled. The readers can best understand the canny sentiment of the period by a few quotations from speeches made in Congress from time to time when the Oregon question was brought before them. Senator Winthrop of Massachusetts, in one of his great speeches, said:
"What do we want with Oregon? We will not need elbow room for a thousand years."
Another senator, second to none in influence, Benton of Missouri, in a speech, while in Congress in 1825, said:
"The ridge of the Rocky Mountains may be named as a convenient, natural, and everlasting boundary. Along this ridge the western limits of the Republic should be drawn, and the statue of the fabled god Terminus should be erected upon its highest peak, never to be thrown down."
In justice to Benton, we may observe he later on was convinced of the unwisdom of the sentiment, and became, with his co-worker, Senator Linn of Missouri, an ardent friend of Oregon. But his colleague, Senator Winthrop of Massachusetts, as late as 1846, when the Oregon treaty was before the Senate, and when the question had reached almost a war stage, repeated the words of
