Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/321

FEDERAL RELATIONS OF OREGON 303 from the nature of things the whole question would be solved within fifty years and any treaty would be a dead letter. "From the rapid strides with which the American population are advancing along the Missouri, there is no risk in saying that masses of that population will have passed the Rocky Mountains before there is a single Canadian settlement within five hundred miles of them." But if the British people wanted a quarrel here was a pretty good pretext. "That a proposition should be seriously entertained in America, and by her legislators, for sending an armed force to occupy the Oregon Territory, while her right to do it is under discussion^ is such an act of insolence as one state can scarcely be supposed to offer to another, unless with the design of provoking war." The "strong red line" incident, with the feeling in England that Lord Ashburton had been overreached by Mr. Webster in the Maine boundary settlement, served as a warning to some Britons. "Let us not negotiate with a people devoid of the commonest principles of honor;" said the Times. "We must act; and before we have any tricks played upon us in Oregon, let us send a fleet of heavy armed and well manned steam- boats to protect our rights in the fertile and valuable valley of the Columbia." 31 It was not alone in the public prints that the action of the Senate aroused comment in England. Lord Palmerston, then leader of the Opposition, in a long speech in Parliament at- tacking the Washington (Webster- Ashburton) Treaty, re- ferred to the Oregon bill. He saw in it and still more clearly in the speeches accompanying its passage an indication of an overweening arrogance which had been fostered by the weak yielding of the British government. "It is impossible," he said, "I confess, that this bill should pass the other branches of the legislature ; but, if it were to pass, and to be acted upon, it would be a declaration of war. It would be the invasion and seizure of a terri- tory in dispute, by virtue of a decree made by one of the parties in its own favor. Thus, even before this vaunted 31 In Register, n Mar., 1843, from Times of 4 Feb.