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302 LESTER BURRELL SHIPPEE There the matter rested for three days until the committee again took it up. Everett, then present, agreed with the majority about rejecting both bills, but there was a unanimous rejection of Adams' motion for instruction on the slavery issue "as it was from the Northwestern Territory," although two of the committee, Granger and Everett, said they would sup- port Adams if he moved the amendment as an individual. The recommendation of the committee was favored by the majority of the House, and the bill was not referred to again during the session. Nor did the Oregon Question appear again in any guise during the remainder of the Congress. Very little newspaper comment was roused by the failure of Linn's measure to become law, although there were numer- ous references to other Oregon matters. The American press, however, was interested to print English comments upon the proposed law. Some of these indicate the feeling aroused on the other side of the Atlantic as reports of the progress of the measure were received. The London Times said: 30 "It is not easy to believe people in earnest in such a grotesque proposal. We should as readily expect Lord Ellenborough to establish a line of sentry boxes from Calcutta to Candahar, or Sir Charles Metcalfe from Mon- treal to the North Pole. But the truth probably is that it was never really intended. The whole affair was and almost professed to be, a discharge of blank cartridges to intimidate Lord Aberdeen. The speakers 'wanted to see the bill passed by a unanimous vote. * * * If this were done, we should never hear another word of the right of Great Britain to the Territory of Oregon/ This is the whole truth. They wanted it passed, though they knew its execution to be impracticable. They thought they could bully, and tried to do so to the best of their power; and Mr. McDuffie honest man has in the sim- plicity of his heart taken some pains to expose their simplicity . . ." The Scotsman was less inclined to think that the whole thing had been a bit of empty thunder, but it considered that 30 Quoted in Niles Register, 22 April, 1843. See also the violent article, "The North-West (American) Boundary," in Frazer's Magazine (Apr., 1843), 27:484-502; also one in the Dublin University Magazine (Mar., 1843), 21:377-94.