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298 LESTER BURRELL SHIPPEE reading and passage the real discussion took place. 26 While the debate naturally brought up the question of title this feature was not particularly emphasized. Those who were for the bill as it stood relied upon the assertion that the territory belonged to the United States at least as far as 49 and to them that point was not a subject for discussion. They supported this stand by the further assertion that it was the policy of Great Britain to let time work in her favor and strengthen her pretensions. To this end they made land grants, in fact if not in form, to the Hudson's Bay Company, an organization which was gradually bringing under its influence the whole region, even south of the Columbia. The western note was heard when Benton charged that the Ashburton treaty in effect paci- fied the North while it left the South and West in the lurch; that the American Secretary of State had been willing to sac- rifice other parts of the nation provided he could secure com- mercial and other advantages desired especially by New Eng- land and then by the northern States generally. Scarcely consistent with this view was a point brought up both by Tap- pan and Benton : Great Britain had won what she wanted in the treaty, at least so far as territory was concerned ; now it behooved the United States to see that she did not play the same game and oust her opponent from Oresron. Benton's criticism of the failure to have the Oregon Question settled by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty was severe ; he characterized it as the third blunder the United States in dealine with the Northwest Coast after the War of 1812. 27 No better time, he thought, would come to settle the matter because Great Britain was likely to have been in a compliant mood owing to her success in gaining a part of Maine for Canada. The matter of the land grants provoked the most heated discussion. Those who were opposed to any action at all called this provision a palpable infraction of the convention, and even those who were not opposed to occupying the region 26 Those active in opposition to all or part included Calhotm (S. C.), Choate (Mass.), Huntington (Conn.), McPuffie (S. C). Ben-Jen (Gi.), and Archer (Va.). Linn and Benton (Mo.), Tappan (O.). Sevier (Ark.), Young (111.), Phelps (Vt.), and Walker (Miss.), argued for the bill. 27 The other two were the two conventions for joint occupancy. See his Thirty Years' Vitw, II, 469-