reavement, we are not informed. Historians record that when Calais was finally wrested from the grasp of the British crown, in whose possession it had been for more than two hundred years, Queen Mary, in the bitterness of her sorrow for the event, never smiled afterward; and that, only a brief space before the close of her mortal career, she remarked, "When I am dead, the name of Calais will be found engraven on my heart." More manly, but scarcely less intense, have we supposed the grief of Mr. Douglas to be at the loss of a portion of the Oregon Territory. Nor do we transcend our license when we imagine the possibility that, when his race shall have been run, deeply imprinted on the moldering fabric of his heart may be found the words "fifty-four degrees forty minutes north latitude."

The point has been much disputed whether, by sanctioning a treaty on the basis of forty-nine, the President violated his faith with the Democratic party. The question was distinctly put to Mr. Douglas in debate, with reference to the proposition rejected by the British ministry, when the following colloquy took place. The answer is as near to being specific as any thing that has been elicited in the House.

"Mr. Douglas resumed his remarks in comment upon these topics and the points which had been evolved, particularly urging the position that no Democrat could, consistently with the resolution of the Baltimore Convention, consent to any thing less than 54° 40' in Oregon.

"Mr. Seddon interfered, and inquired if he understood the gentleman to say that the Democratic party were committed, by the resolution of the Baltimore Convention, to go for 54° 40', and never yield any thing south of that under any circumstances? Did he hold the Democratic party pledged to that line?

"Mr. Douglas replied that he did understand the Democratic party to be solemnly pledged, at the Baltimore Convention, by a unanimous resolution of the Democratic party, to stand by 54° 40', and never to yield one inch.

"Mr. Seddon. Does the gentleman, then, understand the President of the United States, nominated by that convention, and representing that creed, to have violated the Democratic creed in offering the parallel of 49° ?'

"Mr. Douglas's hour here expired.

"Mr. J. W. Houston obtained the floor, and yielded, in com

pliance with what seemed to be the very general desire of the House, for the purpose of reply, to Mr. Douglas, who again referred to the speech of Mr. Polk in the House of Representatives in 1828, in favor of our title to 54° 40', and who traced the unity of position occupied by him from that period down to his inaugural address, in which he had declared our title to the whole of Oregon 'clear and unquestionable.' But when Mr. Polk came into office, he found a protocol signed, pledging his government to the principle of compromise pending that negotiation; but for that fact, which committed him during that one negotiation, Mr. Douglas would, before this, have pronounced that proposition of 49° a treasonable proposition, as he had pronounced the same offer on the part of Mr. Clay. He did understand Mr. Polk in his inaugural address as standing up erect to the pledge of the Baltimore Convention; and he now said that, come what may, let who may do it, whenever the proposition of 49° should again be offered, he would never take back the declaration he had made, that it was a treasonable proposition. The negotiation which Mr. Polk found in progress when he came into office, and by which he was embarrassed, was now ended; and if ever it was commenced again upon that principle, in violation of the pledges given by the Democratic party to the American people, sooner let his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth than he would defend that party which should yield one inch of Oregon.

"Mr. Seddon asked leave to make a further remark. "Mr. Houston declined to comply with the request." As part of the history of this controversy, we copy from the "National Intelligencer" of August 25th, 1847, the following extract from a New York journal, taken from an English paper, and which discloses the particular instrumentality of Mr. Webster in bringing about the overture and pacification which followed:

"The Oregon Territory.—In reply to a question put to him in reference to the present war establishments of this country, and the propriety of applying the principle of arbitration in the settlement of disputes arising among nations, Mr. M'Gregor, one of the candidates for the representation of Glasgow, took occasion to narrate the following very important and remarkable anecdote in connection with our recent, but now happily-ter

minated difference with the United States on the Oregon Question. When our embassador at Washington, the Hon. Mr. Pakenham, refused to negotiate on the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude as the basis of a treaty, and when, by that refu sal, the danger of a rupture between Great Britain and America became really imminent, Mr. Daniel Webster, formerly Secretary of State to the American government, wrote a letter to Mr. M'Gregor, in which he strongly deprecated Mr. Pakenham's conduct, which, if persisted in and adopted at home, would to a certainty embroil the two countries, and suggested an equitable compromise, taking the forty-ninth parallel as the basis of an adjustment.

"Mr. M'Gregor, agreeing entirely with Mr. Webster in the propriety of a mutual giving and taking to avoid a rupture, and the more especially as the whole territory in dispute was not worth twenty thousand pounds to either power, while the preparations alone for a war would cost a great deal more before the parties could come into actual conflict, communicated the contents of Mr. Webster's letter to Lord John Russell, who, at the time, was living in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, and in reply received a letter from Lord John, in which he stated his entire accordance with the proposal recommended by Mr. Webster, and approved of by Mr. M'Gregor, and requested the latter, as he (Lord John) was not in a position to do it himself, to intimate his opinion to Lord Aberdeen. Mr. M'Gregor, through Lord Canning, Under Secretary for the Foreign Department, did so, and the result was, that the first packet that left England carried out to America the proposal, in accordance with the communication already referred to, on which the treaty of Oregon was happily concluded."

The following letter from Mr. M'Lane forms also an important link in the chain of this history. It was written in reply to an address presented to him by the New York Chamber of Commerce, in September, 1846, on his return from the court of Great Britain, acknowledging his eminent services in the negotiations, "and the utility, zeal, and firmness, commingled with amenity, by which his course had been distinguished."

"MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,-It is so difficult as almost to discourage the attempt to find adequate words in which to make you my thanks for the sense you entertain of my public

services, and for the flattering terms in which you have been pleased to give it expression. Such a compliment, proceeding from such a body of my countrymen, would be an ample reward for greater merit than I could possibly pretend to, and I will not attempt to disguise the sincere gratification it has afforded me. Highly as I value it, however, it gives me great pleasure to acknowledge that, being myself, upon the occasion to which you particularly refer, only an instrument in assisting the purposes of others, the great share of your approbation is due to those with whom I co-operated.

"Omitting for a moment a more particular reference to the conduct and dispositions of our own government, I may, without impropriety, assure you, that your reference to the distinguished British statesman by whom the negotiation on the part of that government was directed is fully merited, and that, upon any occasion of congratulation upon the result, too much praise can not be bestowed upon his manly sense and unwavering determination to promote an amicable settlement of the question.

"I am free, at the same time, to assure you, gentlemen, that no one can be more sensible of the importance of peace to all interests of the country, and especially to those which you so worthily represent, than I am. Of course, where the honor of the country is involved, no one would stop to count the cost, or estimate the evils of war; but it is a gratifying evidence of the advance of the age in which we live, that the rulers of states are not afraid to acknowledge that the national honor is more apt to be committed by hasty and impracticable demands, than by wise and timely concessions.

"Governments, like ours especially, can rarely disturb the peace of the world without incurring a weighty responsibility to the cause of civilization and human happiness, and, if not hazarding their own stability, without seriously impairing their moral influence.

"I certainly could not have been induced to return to political life as the representative of my country abroad, unless I had been persuaded that, in the crisis to which you have referred, the views of my own government had been entirely consistent with such a settlement of the Oregon Question as ought to have secured an honorable peace, and unless I had entertained the

hope that I might be enabled, in some degree, to co-operate to

that end.

"For myself, after our several conventions of 1818 and 1828 for the joint occupation of the territory (the latter of which received my support as a senator of the United States), I had always regarded the Oregon Question as less dependent upon the force of title than upon the principles of an equitable partition. "It would have been unreasonable to expect, after such acknowledgments of the right of joint occupancy, that either party would be permitted wholly to dispossess the other, at least without some regard to interests which had grown up during their mutual possession. It appears to me, also, that all the previous acts of our government had not only been consistent with, but affirmatory of this view; and I could see nothing in the national honor that would justify, much less demand, a departure from it. Possessing before, in as great a degree as after, the treaty with Spain in 1819, all the title to which, on the ground of discovery, we could assert to the country drained by the waters of the Columbia, and which, if good for any thing, was valid beyond the fifty-second parallel degree of latitude, our government at no time proposed a more northern boundary than the parallel of fifty-one, and never demanded more than that of forty-nine. Having some knowledge, from my official position at that time, of the policy and objects of the convention of 1828, I am quite persuaded that its main design was to lead, in a future partition of the territory, to the recognition of our claim to the country, not north, but south of the forty-ninth parallel, and between that and the Columbia River. A division of the country upon that principle, with a reasonable regard to rights grown up under the joint possession, always appeared to me to afford a just and practicable basis for an amicable and honorable adjustment of the subject. Such, also, I was satisfied, were the views of our government at the time I engaged in my recent mission; and in earnestly and steadily laboring to effect a settlement upon that basis, I was but representing the policy of my own government, and faithfully promoting the intentions and wishes of the President.

"It must be very rare if, in complicated differences between great nations, peaceful relations can be preserved without some modification of extreme pretensions; and upon the present oc