do away with the record which I have only tersely recited.
A volume could be written, along the same line, to prove the utter lack of interest in that country. But if statesmen, in Congress and out, and the press had been silent, the single official act of the government, in signing the treaty of 1818, giving entire control of the land to England (for the Hudson Bay Company represented England), would tell the whole story of the neglect of Oregon. When ever before or since has the United States made such a deal, giving by solemn treaty, a country thirty times as large as Massachusetts, for a full twenty years and more, without a dollar of compensation, to a great foreign nation, and unresistingly seen American traders driven out or starved out of the entire country? Those making the charge of "no danger of losing Oregon by the United States" would do well to explain this one act, which was official, even if they make light of the utterances of the men who refused, for more than fifty years, to legislate by a single act for Oregon. It is true the treaty said:
"It should not be to the prejudice of either of the high contracting parties, the only object being to prevent disputes and differences among themselves!"
Who does not see and acknowledge that the treaty was a virtual acknowledgment of England's
