Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/428

400 Documents. maintain peace with the Texans without a common Government? Could we not, with the same reason, hope to prevent war between a northern and southern Government divided by the Potomac? Those who suppose so, must suppose against the opinions of the wisest and best of men as well as against actual experience. I assert, therefore the seeds of discord are now being- sown by our enemies and rivals ; and that, if we do not apply a timely remedy, we must come to suffer all that we have ever feared from disunion. But it may be said that the Oregon is in dispute, and that we must take care how we tread, or we will have war with Englana. War has no terrors for the people of this country. The time has gone by when this nation shall agree to surrender a solitary just right to avoid war. If we are to surrender a solitary undoubted right through fear of war, the principle is the same as if, through fear of war, we were to surrender our independence. It is an old saying and a true one, that if we have our hands in the lion's mouth, we should get it out the best way we can. If a nation is weak and defenseless, and unjust and unreasonable demands are made upon it by a powerful nation, I admit that good policy and sound wisdom would justify the weaker nation in making the best terms possible, and even surrendering some of its undoubted rights, to preserve the rest. But is it not shameful, yes, disgraceful, for an American to hold such language? Are we that weak and defenseless people that would hesitate, and offer to give up one right to preserve another? Are we not strong enough to preserve all our rights? I must confess, that when I hear an American talking of surrendering our just rights "for the sake of peace," or, in other words, surrendering them through fear, I feel somewhat indignant. I have never, in the whole course of my life, felt so sensibly any act of our Federal Government as that which surrendered to the British a part of the undoubted territory of the State of Maine. The agreeing to one unjust demand always invites another. There is no stopping place. The encroaching power is encouraged by one concession to demand another, until all is gone. If we are ignorant of the character of that power to which we have lately ceded a part of the State of Maine, it is our own fault ; we have sufficient evidence of that grasping people, who will not stop short of surrounding us with enemies. Mexico is now our enemy, not by nature, but made so by the intrigues of that very people who now border us on the north, and wish to join Mexico on our western frontier. The same mail which brought to us the treaty ceding part of Maine, brought news, also, of ships sailing to the Pacific with the obvious intention of occupying the Oregon, or, at least, of preventing us from doing so. There never was, in my opinion, a greater mistake than to suppose that concession procures peace ; the reverse is the truth. If, when the Barbary powers undertook to commit depredations on our commerce in the Mediter- ranean sea, we had bought peace by tribute, we would not only have been compelled to pay immense sums from time to time, but even that would not have protected us. We then took a different course. We asserted our rights at the mouth of the cannon, and no nation in the world has ever since carried on commerce in that country with so little interruption. I will now proceed to state what I consider, not to be the foundation of our claim, but the proof of our undoubted right to the territory said to be disputed by the British. The French, Spaniards, Russians, and British, have all laid claim, from time to time, either to the whole or part of the northwest coast of