a force not less than
80 guns, to act separately and apart, under instructions from their
respective Governments, and for the enforcement of their respective laws
and obligations." From this it will be seen that the ground assumed
in the message has been fully maintained at the same time that the
stipulations of the treaty of Ghent are to be carried out in good faith
by the two countries, and that all pretense is removed for interference
with our commerce for any purpose whatever by a foreign government.
While, therefore, the United States have been standing up for the
freedom of the seas, they have not thought proper to make that a pretext
for avoiding a fulfillment of their treaty stipulations or a ground
for giving countenance to a trade reprobated by our laws. A similar
arrangement by the other great powers could not fail to sweep from the
ocean the slave trade without the interpolation of any new principle
into the maritime code. We may be permitted to hope that the example
thus set will be followed by some if not all of them. We thereby also
afford suitable protection to the fair trader in those seas, thus
fulfilling at the same time the dictates of a sound policy and complying
with the claims of justice and humanity.

It would have furnished additional cause for congratulation if the
treaty could have embraced all subjects calculated in future to lead to
a misunderstanding between the two Governments. The Territory of the
United States commonly called the Oregon Territory, lying on the Pacific
Ocean north of the forty-second degree of latitude, to a portion of
which Great Britain lays claim, begins to attract the attention of our
fellow-citizens, and the tide of population which has reclaimed what was
so lately an unbroken wilderness in more contiguous regions is preparing
to flow over those vast districts which stretch from the Rocky Mountains
to the Pacific Ocean. In advance of the acquirement of individual rights
to these lands, sound policy dictates that every effort should be
resorted to by the two Governments to settle their respective claims.
It became manifest at an early hour of the late negotiations that any
attempt for the time being satisfactorily to determine those rights
would lead to a protracted discussion, which might embrace in its
failure other more pressing matters, and the Executive did not regard
it as proper to waive all the advantages of an honorable adjustment of
other difficulties of gre