THE great difficulty in political, as in religious, polemics is to "be just and fear not"-whether in relation to one's own party or their opponents. It is not easy to withstand the pressure from around of the multitude that are always struggling to get the farthest possible in the advance; and many are seduced into extremity of argument, from the apparent strength, and credit for boldness, which extreme positions give to those who most eagerly occupy them. The numbers are great, moreover, of such as imagine that moderate views imply weakness of character, and that loud and positive assertions are indicative not only of power but of security-borrowing the old war-maxim, that half the effectiveness of a fortress lies in the formidable front it can be made to bear. We have endeavored to show ourselves not of this class. From the commencement of this Review, we have sought to make it evident to the country, that as in literature, and morals, and social interests, we are not the slaves of foregone conclusions, dependent on opinions forged before we were born, but are ready to entertain the possible necessities of change in the forms of thought—so in politics, we engage in no mere partisan warfare, but take our stand on high national questions, considerations of general and abiding importance, yielding ourselves, in the great VOL. III.-NO. III. 15 tide of human affairs, to the current of a wise and constitutional progress. Believing that the views of the Whig Party, in relation to the public interests, are mainly just, their movements honorable and salutary-that, as a body, they are conservative without binding themselves to the past, progressive without destroying-we have taken our stand unalterably with them. So doing, however, we have not held ourselves bound to see no good in any opinions or actions of our opponents. If their courses will really bear the tests of virtue and utility, it shall be sufficient to insure our regard. Acting otherwise, the Journal we have established with some care and labor were worthy of being despised to-day, and of sinking to-morrow. We believe our readers will bear witness, that we have, in some good degree, followed out this course of calm and evenhanded justice. It was certainly in this spirit that the Oregon question was discussed in our last number. On that subject, indeed, it was less difficult to take such ground, since the Oregon controversy was a question purely national, in which, regarding the just maintenance of our rights, the views of the American people were nearly unanimous, and which should never have been dragged into the arena of party politics. For so attempting to monopolize it for future political ef fect, gambling with the common anxiety and interest of the country, the Administration, and especially the leaders of the party supporting it, were, in that argument, severely censured. And they were censured alone. For it cannot be pretended that the Whig party at the Baltimore convention, or at any time before or since, in Congress or out of Congress, made even an incipient movement towards employing this question for political purposes. And as little pretence can there be, that the Administration party did not so employ it. The whole country knows it to be the case, and many of the public journals in their own interest have borne witness to the fact. The war-speeches, also valiant and seasonable-of ambitious orators and presidential aspirants, were somewhat distant from our approbation. But aside from these, we spoke, - according to our convictions, of many things to be commended in the position of the Administration in this controversy -it being, in fact (after the renewed offer of the 49th degree) the position of the country. We especially commended the argument of the Secretary of State, which, on the question of original naked title, (apart from reasonable rights arising from circumstance) we held to be unanswerable. We supported that argument, particularly in relation to the Spanish title, by collateral reasonings against the sophistical attacks of the English press, and what we could not help considering the mistaken views of the venerable and learned ex-diplomatist, Albert Gallatin. Of the motives-the policy-of the Administration, in first assuming the exclusive claim, and, in the very next move, offering to yield four-ninths of it, we said nothing sincerely desiring that on a great national question, our government, of whatever party, should appear to stand well before the world. Thus much, then, of justice, at that position of affairs. We are now disposed to exercise the attribute-"lex summa moralium”—still further. It is a quality, we are aware, less generally appreciated by them than mercy, notwithstanding that they stand in about equal need of the two. But we shall be rewarded in the exercise itself. We will even be liberal: we will endeavor to lay open the entire policy of the Party and its Executive, so that the whole country shall be able to admire. To effect this satisfactorily, it will be necessary to refer to statements and positions employed in our arguments on the question in the last number. We shall not dwell upon them, but simply advert to such as will serve to make the ground we are to assume thoroughly understood. We have, however, another object in view, and that is, to state some points for our title itself more clearly than was done in the former article. We begin, then, with reiterating our opinion, that the argument of the Secretary of State respecting the superiority of the American claim, considered as an abstract title, based on the conventional admissions of international law, remains impregnable. We have seen no counterstatement in foreign journals even tending successfully to overthrow it. On this side of the Atlantic several arguments have been constructed against itespecially against the validity of the Spanish title-from well-informed and most able pens. These have, of course, come from the Whig side of politics. We do not regret it. It is well that the strong, inquiring and fearless minds of the Whig party should be divided on such a question. A corresponding phase of things has been seen on the opposite side. Many intelligent writers and journals belonging to the party in power, have taken the ground, that there are considerations naturally restricting our ultimate reasonable claim to the 49th parallel. This division has taken place on both sides, because men have felt that it is a national question, and ought to be lifted out of the mud and fog of partisan politics into an atmosphere where one can breathe with some freedom, and find that not all political illumination comes from one direction. Who could regret such a result? And if the division of Whig opinions on the subject has at all tended to this, we rejoice at it. In none of these arguments, however, has the American title been on the whole successfully invalidated. A skillful writer in the North American Review, following the able disquisition in the Edinburgh, attempted to show, that neither nation has a ground of claim sufficient to base a title of absolute possession to any part of Oregon, so that there can be nothing in the way of making between them any kind of partition of the territory. Now we are not disposed to deny that the conventional canons which nations have agreed upon respecting the territorial rights conferred by prior discovery and exploration, by contiguity, occupancy, and prescription, have, from the very first, been open (in the wide application allowed them) to various objections. Nor can it be denied, that all these conventional rules were laid down by Christian nations with a singular disregard to the fact, whether any savage tribes, or how populous, might for centuries have inhabited the coasts or rivervalleys, islands, or continents, which they so coolly partitioned among themselves, as if the earth were not, on the whole, intended for all who live on it. There are not, indeed, forcible arguments wanting for the doctrine, that the law of progress-improvement-is the only law which the Human destinies can acknowledge; that savagery, therefore, must be subject to civilization, and the wilderness can be left for wild tribes to roam over no longer than till it is wanted for the uses of cultivated society. Still, we confess we should be glad to know at what grade of barbarism the dividing line is to be drawn, across which the civilized foot cannot step upon an occupied soil as it it had no owner. If the savages of North America, of Southern Africa, of New Zealand, of Australia, whose simple arts had not extended beyond the bow and arrow, the stone kettle, the feathered dress, and the tent of skins, could be subjected to English sway without hesitation and as a matter of course, why should English writers be troubled that the Spanish dominion was with like indifference and violence extended over the ancient empires of Mexico and Peru, whose inhabitants had attained to but certain forms of a sombre and barbaric civilization; or that the French are wetting the Desert with the blood of Abd-elKader's indomitable Arabs, because the Desert should be civilized; or that the Czar of Russia is sending his armies to make the half-cultivated mountaineers of Circassia acquainted with Russian refinement? Why should not the English Government, having subdued, with a due mixture of craft and carnage, all the provinces of Lower India, finish the bloody reduction of Nepaul among the mountains, and then advance, with the complaisance of a nation that is doing its duty, upon Mahometan Persia on the one hand, upon the spacious empires of heathen Burmah and Siam on the other, or commence a better order of things in Tartaric China? Or what should hinder the "Holy Alliance" from proceeding to their intended partitioning of Turkey, whose mosques, palaces, populous cities and manufactures do not quite redeem her from the reproach of barbarism? The Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope are the lowest of mankind; one step above these are the ice-housing Esquimaux of Labrador and the Polar Sea; one step above these the miserable Root-diggers of the Pacific Coast; one or two removes from these, the hunting tribes of the Prairies and the Atlantic regions-tentbuilders and planters of Maize; while all the Indian races of the North were considerably less advanced in modes of living than the Mobilian tribes formerly inhabiting along the Gulf-if superior to these in knowledge and the arts of life, the Araucanians of Chili were yet inferior to the Peruvians and Mexicans; these to the inhabitants of India; these, in some respects, to the Chinese, who, also, on the whole, are decidedly less civilized than the Persians, the Turks, and the ancient Moors. Where, then shall the dividing line be drawn? Shall it depend upon the amount of population, whether a people can consider as its own the territory it inhabits? But the confusion of lines here is greater than among degrees of barbarism. Some of the most savage tribes of American Indians were quite numerous, yet occupied a limited soil; others, in small and scattered bands, wandered over immense regions of wilderness. The Mexicans and Peruvians were populous nations, living in cities, and cultivating nearly all the country they possessed; while large portions of Turkey and Persia are nearly as destitute of inhabitants as were the wildest parts of North America: and India and China, again, are the most crowded countries of the Globe. Perhaps, then, to profess the Christian religion may entitle a government to overrun, despoil, and appropriate the territory and homes of a people whom Heaven has seen fit to leave a little longer in darkness! But all such objections are nothing here. The original injustice, or defectiveness and uncertainty, of the conventional principles so long admitted by civilized nations, as pertaining to the discovery and occupation of new countries, it is quite too late now for them to regard in controversies among themselves. The laws which Christendom has laid down, Christendom, within itself, must abide by; unless, indeed, it is now thought well to abrogate the whole system, because that government which has taken advantage of its indefinite provisions seven times as often as any other, finds it possible, in a present case, to do better without it. But if these principles were ever fit to be employed, or are not now to be suddenly abrogated, we affirm that there has never been a case in which they could more clearly apply, than in the Oregon question. Every one of the received grounds of claim exists here, except legitimate Occupancy. And they are found, on a just consideration, to be of unusual distinctness. Some one nation, it is clear, must have made the first discoveries on that coast; unless two had chanced to make the same or equal discoveries at the same time-which, we know, was not the case; and a title resting upon them, provided they were published to the world, must, it is equally evident, have belonged to that nation. That there is a claim by contiguity is manifest, since the dominions of the only claimants in the case border, contermiusly, on the entire region of Oregon. By treaty, also, between us and Spain, there is a ground of title of great importance, unless the validity of the Spanish claim, not only as exclusive, but as to any portion of that territory, can be entirely done away; and we showed, in our argument on this question, that Spain (if driven to such a reliance) could also advance a title by two centuries of prescription. To urge, then, that there is no title at all for any party-or other than the very feeble one" by contiguity" is simply absurd, unless we choose to fling aside, for the occasion, all the principles of international law touching such questions. We shall not repeat the evidences respecting the preponderance of claims on these grounds, between England and the United States. They were set forth at some length in our last number; and it was shown conclusively, we think, that nearly every point makes for the American right. It was shown that Spaniards first discovered the Pacific Ocean, in 1513; that as early as 1542 they had explored, by Governmental authority, the whole coast from Panama northward to the 41st, more probably to the 43d parallel, which is one degree within the actual limits of Oregon; that beyond the doubt of any intelligent student in geographical history, De Fuca, in 1592, discovered and sailed through the Straits, which have ever since borne his name, separating Vancouver's Island from the continent; that they had established settlements at several points, as high up as the shores of California; that though they occupied no part of the coast farther north, and made no additional explorations, for nearly two centuries, yet they constantly asserted a claim to regions northward, on the ground of contiguity of sea-coast to the parts already explored and occupied-which claim was never called in question, by other nations, in the way of practical denial, (as alone it could legitimately have been done,) no foreign vessel venturing forbidden traffic on those shores, nor even a foreign flag, during all this period, once entering those seas; that this long period of sufferance of an asserted claim gave them that title by prescription which they had lost by neglect to occupy; that, even throwing aside all these grounds of sovereignty in that region, the fact, that at the end of this long interval, the Spanish Government sent out three different expeditions, for the express purpose of exploring the whole northern coast-which expeditions |