66 provisions of the Nootka Convention. By the very terms of that treaty the Sovereignty"-that is, the "Title "— was to remain"in abeyance." The whole question of territorial rights was purposely left-just as it stood-for future settlement. For whatever number of years, therefore, (short of a period sufficient to give a prescriptive right,) England might go on extending trading posts and settlements, it is evident she would acquire only rights of property, no rights of soil:-the sovereignty," the "title," would still remain to be determined. But granting her able entirely to overthrow the original Spanish claim, she must then, by the provisions of the same Nootka Convention for which she contends, allow that we were at equal liberty with herself to plant ourselves upon that coast, in which case superiority of title to more or less of the territory would rest solely upon priority of discovery, exploration, occupancy, with the addition, on our part, of the Louisiana claim and the right by contiguity, as above stated. We propose to make a few remarks, and but a few, respecting the Spanish claim. From the earliest ages of American history, before the commencement of English colonization in Virginia, Spain claimed the entire Pacific coast as a portion of her mighty empire. Her latest assertion of exclusive right was in the negotiation of transfer to us in 1819. How, in the long period that intervened, had she built up and established that claim? In any manner sufficiently in accordance with those rules which nations have agreed to receive as conferring the possession of new territory? Or had she made an empty assertion, to be justly thrown aside whenever she should be unable to maintain it? We cannot do better than just to enumerate the steps of her progress. The Pacific Ocean was first discovered by Spaniards, in 1513, at the extreme Southern limits of the Northern Continent, in the Isthmus of Darien, They immediately began to explore it both north and south for a passage to India. In 1518 Mexico was discovered, lying between the two oceans, but especially stretching along the Pacific. Two years afterwards that great and splendid empire was a Spanish province. Expeditions were immediately fitted out for northern discoveries. In 1528 Monaldo spent six months, surveying the shore as far as the river of Santiago. In 1530 Culiacan was founded at the entrance of the Gulf of California. In 1539 Ulloa, sent out by Cortez, explored both coasts of the entire peninsula of California, as far north as the 32d. In 1542 Cabrillo surveyed the coast of the ocean still farther, reaching the 38th parallel. Falling sick and dying, his pilot, Ferrela, continued the voyage north till he came to a promontory under the 41st, nearly to the southern boundary of Oregon. It is contended, on nearly equal authority, that they reached at that time the 43d degree of latitude. We have no doubt that the account of De Fuca's discoveries in 1592, and sailing through the Straits, which bear his name, is entirely true. The internal evidence is strong. But as the Spanish Government did not make it public, we shall not rely upon it. Hitherto, no English navigator had appeared on the Pacific coast, except the buccaneer, Drake; nor did any English flag float along that coast for nearly two centuries more. Spain, also, for nearly two hundred years after the supposed voyage of De Fuca, made no explorations to the north. But did she, therefore, forfeit her ancient claim, for having neglected it so long, as is urged by Great Britain, and is even allowed by Mr. Gallatin? No. For in the absence of any other title, she could hold her claim, as against other nations, by prescription. 66 Prescription," says the Oregon article, in the Edinburgh Review, "may exist by itself, when the rest of the world has, for a long series of years, allowed a single nation to exclude all others from a territory to which she has no perfect title by occupation, contiguity, or treaty." Now, this is just what Spain could have urged. We have nothing to do here with any reliance of hers on the absurd bull of the Pope, "dividing all the Pagan countries on the globe between her and Portugal--an arrangement giving to Spain both the Americas. We have nothing to do with this. From the earliest conquest of Mexico--from her earliest exploration of the shores of California-Spain had declared to all nations her exclusive claim to the western side of this continent. She was able to do this on the ground simply of discovery, occupation, and contiguity of sea-coast. And she had guarded that claim with jealous watchfulness. She had forborne to publish the accounts of her navigators, lest other nations should take advantage of them. She had forbid other nations to trade with her Mexican Colonies, lest it should open the door to encroachments upon her territory. She had especially declared that alien vessels must not navigate any of those parts of the Pacific seas. And what did the rest of the world do? They acquiesced in this claim for two hundred and fifty years. Was it not then too late for them to demur? The very length of time adduced to show that her title had fallen through from neglect to occupy the entire coast, affords her a secondary title by prescription, from their neglect to deny her claim by practical demonstrations. Nor, indeed, was the nature of that title, by any means, new to Great Britain. It was very much like that which she now asserts to the coast of Labrador, where she has neither courts nor colonies-very much like the title which Don Pedro of Brazil has to those vast regions of his empire, which the foot of the surveyor or the explorer has never trodden, and where the wild inhabitants know about as little of him and his edicts as of the fabulous blue laws of Connecticut. Spain had never made a treaty with England, or with any other power, in which her claim to the western coast of North America was in any form surrendered. And when, near the close of the last century, some British subjects under the flag of Portugal, and some American citizens under the flag of the Union, began to resort to that coast, for the purpose of purchasing furs of the natives, the Spanish government in Mexico and at Madrid, immediately took the alarm, and asserted its sovereignty over that coast up to Prince William's Sound, in the same tone which England would now use, if her sovereignty over the Hudson's Bay Territory were called in question. And what if that ancient claim had been entirely lost, by two centuries of neglect to explore farther, and to occupy the higher latitudes ? Was it not also entirely re-assumed and reëstablished by her final prior discoveries and surveys along the whole coast? Unquestionably it was; and we wonder that Mr. Gallatin, of all men, should have overlooked the force of that circumstance, We greatly dislike to be found not agreeing with that venerable and distinguished ex-diplomatist, on a subject so peculiarly his own, and on which he has, within a few days, at the age of eighty-five, surprised the public with such remarkable communications. But we certainly think him in the wrong here, as have been all the British Plenipotentiaries. Cook did not sail into the Pacific till 1776. But in 1774, Perez, and in 1775, Heceta and Bodega, sent out on purpose by the Spanish Government, explored the coast in various parts, as high as the 58th degree, passed through the great Northwestern Archipelago, discovered the islands now called " Queen Charlotte's " and "Prince of Wales'," and made note of many high mountains, bays and headlands. Perez is believed to have even discovered Nootka Sound, though it cannot be fully authenticated. It was entirely competent to Spain, therefore, to base then, if she chose, an exclusive claim on those discoveries alone. No one can show that she could then feel it necessary for her to go back to anything antecedent-to the Pope's bull, to early explorations, to California settlements involving right of contiguous coast, or to title by prescription. If exploration and discovery can ever confer a claim to territory, this was a case. They were characterized by every requisite circumstance. They were authorized, governmental, projected for the purpose, and what is more, made in a region not only already claimed for two centuries by the nation sending them forth, but never yet coasted by the ships, or seen by the subjects, of any other Power. In what way, then, could Spain forfeit that claim? In one way only--by neglecting to occupy. But how long must such neglect continue, to make the forfeiture good? Two years? Three years? Five or ten times such a period? If, in ten or twenty years after the English had discovered New Holland, while they were delaying to occupy, some other nation had begun to colonize its coasts, what would they have done? England knows that she would have driven them away at once. She knows she would not have suffered so short a period of apparent neglect to cut her off from so great an acquisition. And how long was Spain indolent, before England set a mailed foot upon her territory? Perez and Bodega sailed up the coast in 1774 and 1775. In 1776-only two years afterCook followed in their track; and the same year, Meares set up a shantee," and began to trade with the natives of Nootka Sound. Spain immediately took the alarm. She had, for two centuries, permitted no nations" to trade in her American possessions." She knew, besides, that this trading-hut might grow into a settlement, a settlement be called occupancy, and occupancy create a title. The Spanish authorities in Mexico endeavored to If that title could be overthrown, we can then, as we have before shown-on England's own assumption-fall back on the discoveries and explorations of the Columbia, the Louisiana Purchase and the broad contiguity of our territory along the Rocky Mountains-all of which considerations would unite to give us Oregon up to the 49th degree. forestall such a result, by seizing Meares' Sound Convention, and even then in no vessel. The English Government, though degree compromised-is the basis of our Meares had come there under a Portu- claim. guese flag, with Portuguese sailing-papers, Portuguese sailors everything Portuguese but himself-demanded in stant restitution. Pitt and Fox talked scornfully in Parliament of the Pope's bull and Spain's antiquated title-of Cook and Vancouver-but little of that title's having never before been disputed, or of Perez and Heceta. Spain responded with dignity, and sent a "Circular of Rights" to every European Court; but she at last yielded, and assented to the Nootka Convention. And by so doing, did she confess her sense of the real weakness of her claim, as England alleges? No. The chief infirmity of the Spanish title to the North-west in 1790, was just the infirmity of the Chinese title to HongKong in 1840,-the want of power to resist the British navy. The paramount law of nations, as evinced by all the precedents of history, is that sovereignty over any country belongs to those who have it, and who by force or by skill can keep it. In 1790, Spain was beginning to feel in all her members, and at her heart, the impending dissolution of that mighty empire which even then overshadowed the world, but is now numbered with the things that were. At the demand, therefore, of Great Britain-then in the act of acquiring in India more than all that she had lost in America-she conceded in North-western America certain rights which she had always before refused. And what were those? Rights of dominion-rights of soil-as England has assumed? We have shown that they were not so. Spain did not surrender to Great Britain one inch of her sovereignty; she only conceded to British "subjects" the privilege of fishing and trading on the north-west coast, and of “making settlements there;" not a word in the treaty concedes to the British King the right of establishing his jurisdiction there. Whatever her claim was worth in 1790, so much is it worth to-day. That ancient Spanish title, then-commencing in discovery, kept up by the continued exercise of authority in repelling all foreigners from those seas, confirmed by centuries of prescription, still farther strengthened by later and indisputable explorations and discoveries, never distinctly called in question till the altercation which led to the Nootka There is another view of the whole subject, quite independent of all historical questions, and little connected with those dogmas of international law which have been vaguely consented to by European monarchies, who have taken it for granted that because Europe was theirs, therefore the world was theirs, and they had only to agree how to divide it among themselves. The American law of nations is, that God made the world not for Europe but for the world-Europe for EuropeAsia for Asia, and America for America ; that the earth is given to man, not for a hunting-ground, but for a plantingground-not to build wigwams, but to build houses and cities--not to live in the debasement of savage life, contending with wild brutes for dominion over the wildness of nature, but to live in the comforts and refinements of civilization, and in the peace and abundance of wellordered society. So long as Oregon was to remain a hunting-ground, so long the right of British subjects to hunt there, and to buy skins of the native hunters, and the right of the British government to prevent its subjects in those forests from wronging each other and from wronging the natives, could not be reasonably denied. But the time has now come when Oregon must be occupied for other uses; and the question is, whether the British right of hunting there shall stand in the way of cultivation, and shall exclude those who are ready to fill those valleys with the beauty of civilized society. But it may be asked, Has not England as good a right to colonize the North-west coast as we have? No. For-without referring to the historical question at all on which the argument for us is shown, we think, to be impregnable-the fact that where Oregon is colonized it must be settled by an American and not a British population, is conclusive on that inquiry. But if such and so fortified is our naked title to Oregon, are there no rights, no claims on the side of Great Britain? no "considerations" in her favor? no thrice renewed the convention conceding these rights-and three different Administrations, including the present, have offered to compromise with Great Britain, by a line that would leave her fourninths of the whole territory. We do not see how any American could ever think of overlooking these things, urging our claim to the last foot of wilderness soil covered by an abstract naked title. The duty of the Whig Party, at least, is neither doubtful nor difficult. They are the maintainers of moderate counsels, the conservators of the rights of Order and Reason, in this country. They will maintain the just ground already compromised. And it will not be difficult to lead Great Britain, also, to a just concession. She has no thought of sending her convicts or her paupers, or any other class of her superfluous population, to inhabit Oregon. Her sole interest there is the interest of the Hudson's Bay Company, which has acquired the monopoly of the rights conceded to her subjects in that region. Her tenacity in the controversy is simply the tenacity with which she always contends for commercial privileges, and especially when those privileges have become the vested rights of men that know how to influence her counsels. Satisfy the British government on this point, and at the same time let the British people see that we have no intention either to cheat them or to bully them, and there will be little difficulty. circumstances surrounding the whole matter from the Nootka Convention to this day affording ground in reason why we should make her some liberal concessions? Most certainly there are. For if the Spanish title be entirely valid, she has one counter-claim of considerable value. The English discovered and first explored the second great river of Oregon-Fraser's River. It rises above the 54th degree, and runs directly south in a valley parallel to that of the North Branch of the Columbia, and empties into De Fuca's Straits, just above the 49th degree. Now, as we argued above that the discovery and exploration of the Columbia must be, in the eyes of other nations, and of England, a most important" consideration" in our favor supporting the exclusive Spanish title when assailed by England, so her discovery of Fraser's River is a just "consideration" in her favor against that title, as urged by us. Again, by the Nootka Convention, Spain confessedly did concede to England important privileges-the right of hunting and fishing in that region, of trading with the natives, and of establishing settlements" for that purpose. During the long series of wars originating in the French Revolution, the British privileges in Oregon had become, in a degree, prescriptive; and when we became the purchasers of the Spanish title, we acquired that title under the incumbrance of those somewhat undefined British privileges, just as we acquired it under the incumbrance of the right of the natives to roam through the forests, to fish in the streams, and to build their wigwams in the valleys. That incumbrance was accordingly recognized and imperfectly defined in the Convention of 1818. The Nootka Sound Convention, though never formally renewed between the original parties, had never been disclaimed by Spain in the negotiation of new treaties. Magnanimity on our part, and a patriotic regard for our national Hardly any arrangement could be prohonor, to say nothing of justice, required posed for the settlement of this dispute, us to recognize that incumbrance. On that would not be in all respectsthe same grounds, we should recognize cheaper and wiser, and more honorathe incumbrance still, and negotiate, not ble to both parties, than War. It is not in a chaffering or bullying temper, but in to be endured, that War, between two generous spirit for its removal. The such nations, should be thought ofBritish have, under guaranty of a treaty, much less resorted to-on a question like acquired rights of property in Oregon, this, which reason and right can settle, which cannot be disregarded. and which arms cannot. War on such a question, between two Powers so related to each other and to the welfare of the Human Race, would be the greatest calamity that could befall the world at this crisis of the world's history. Moreover, we have for a quarter of a century, since 1818, consented to their being joint tenants with us of the whole territory, with rights of settlement and trade coequal with our own-we have It is therefore to be looked upon as a duty incumbent upon the Whigs, to encourage and sustain every proposition that looks to renewed negotiation; or, that failing, to ultimate final arbitration. To refuse this common alternative of arbitration, would betray, on our part, an extraordinary distrust in the justice of our claim, or an extraordinary and unreasonable distrust in the capacity or the disposition of any foreign nation, or other third party, to do us justice. BIRDS AND POETS ILLUSTRATING EACH OTHER. "We will entangle buds, and flowers, and beams, "Oft on the dappled turf, at ease, I sit, and play with similies Prometheus Unbound. Loose types of Things through all degrees." We love our own face in a mirror, and, like a second Narcissus, we grow amorous over it, shadowed in the burnished lapsing of a fountain-we love the stars sleeping in deep waters, too, (happy association!) and the pageantry of cloud, and rock, and tree, reversed in a still, liquid sky-in a word, we love all similitudes! Perhaps this is because they illustrate to us a power of reproduction external to ourselves, and this is such an approach to that creative faculty which belongs to the "big imagination" in us, that, having no jealousy in our temper, we are charmed to see, even in "dumb nature," something like a rivalry of this "bright particular"— gift-we own. In truth, there is something worth following up in this idea. We should like to see the painter or the poet who could ever produce a landscape so cunningly, even to the last minutest tracery of its lines and shades, as we have seen the unruffled surface of a lake do it some clear, calm morning before sunrise-not one twisted fibre of the grass, one knotted eccentric twig, one blue-eyed, dewy-lipped violet but hung there-upside down, to be sure-perfect as it came from God's hand! "What is this? Does it not mock our pride of art, and crumble its dedicated altars down?" "It is God's handy-work through his natural laws!" "Ah! But the picture is not always there. Does God (in reverence) with his own personal hand paint the landscape in the lake whenever it is seen? Is it a special act?" "No; it is consequential upon an arrangement of laws fixed since the birth of time." “You are smiling! was that smile now upon your face pre-ordained since the same period?" "So far as we know, it was, equally with the other, consequential." "That smile was a physical expression of a mental condition or humor Wordsworth-To a Daisy. in yourself, was it not?" "Ay." "It might have been a frown, or varied by other external modification?" 'Ay." Might not the landscape in the lake have been a storm-shaken blurr ?" "Granted." "Is it not quite as consequential,' then, that earth has her physical expressions of certain conditions and humors of the vital force in her which are affected by external relations ?" "What external relations can you mean?" First, those to her solar system; next, those to the other systems which make up the universe. These relations may determine in her all the action of elemental expression-variations of the seasons, &c., &c." "Pshaw! fogmatic !" Guilty; but still, we love similitudes."" It is an old fancy of that science of seeing deepest into the millstone, called Metaphysical Philosophy, that the earth is an animal-a living thing-of course, insensate brute and huge to our apprehension, but to the vision of Higher Intelligences an appareled creature in its robes of cloud and light-swung on its orbed circuit, amid traveling peers: that to them its vast calm front must be forever pregnant with a meaning of its own; and they can, to "the dumbness of its very gesture," interpret-that it has articulations, "joints and motives” to its body, which must move, act and obey the impulse of the life within it. This active impulsecall it the galvanic fluid, or the principle of life-lives through and animates its own great bulk, as well as through every modification of its aggregate mass which we see as forms, and know as existences: "One sun illumines heaven; one spirit |