No. 3.
LETTERS OF MR. CRAMPTON SHOWING MR. BUCHANAN’S OPINIONS.
Mr. Crampton to Viscount Palmerston.
My Lord: On the receipt of your Lordship’s dispatch No. 21, of the 17th ultimo, by which I am instructed to communicate with the United States Government with a view to the adoption of early measures for laying down such parts of the line of boundary between the British and United States territory in North America, described in the Convention of the 15th June, 1846, as the two Governments may, upon mutual consultation, deem it advisable to determine, I waited upon Mr. Buchanan for the purpose of putting him in possession of the views of Her Majesty’s Government upon the subject.
After having read to him your Lordship’s dispatch, together with the draught of instructions to the two Commissioners to be appointed in case the views of Her Majesty’s Government were coincided in by the Government of the United States, I proceeded to inquire of Mr. Buchanan whether the manner suggested by your Lordship of bringing the matter under the consideration of the President of the United States, by reading to him your Lordship’s dispatch and presenting to him a copy of the proposed draught of instructions, would be admissible.
*To this course Mr. Buchanan objected, as being informal, and contrary to the practice of the United States Government, which coincided, he added, in that respect, with that of the Government of Great Britain, and he requested me, in case your Lordship’s instructions did not preclude me from so doing, to communicate to him in writing the present proposal of Her Majesty’s Government, together with the considerations upon which it is founded, as explained in your Lordship’s dispatch. He might otherwise, he said, find it difficult to convey to the President and to his colleagues in the Cabinet as clear an exposition as he could wish of the views of Her Majesty’s Government upon [Page 247] the subject, adding that these appeared to him to be so fair and unobjectionable that he could conceive no possible case in which any inconvenience to either Government would result from an unreserved communication of them in writing.[xxxv]
I trust that your Lordship will not disapprove of my having, under these circumstances, so far departed from the course pointed out by your Lordship’s instructions as to comply with Mr. Buchanan’s request by addressing to him the note of which I have the honor to inclose a copy, and in which I have embodied the substance of your Lordship’s dispatch.
With respect to the expediency of laying down that part of the boundary line suggested by your Lordship’s dispatch, Mr. Buchanan said that he coincided in opinion with Her Majesty’s Government, but he added that it was his own “impression,” although he had not examined the subject with sufficient attention to enable him yet to say that it was his “opinion,” that it would be desirable to go further, and to proceed to mark out on the ground, without unnecessary delay, the boundary line from the point where the forty-ninth parallel of latitude meets the shore of the Gulf of Georgia, eastward to where it strikes the Columbia River, (the portions for which an estimate is made in the third section of Colonel Estcourt’s Memorandum,) and this appeared to him to be advisable from the reports he had lately received of the rapid manner in which colonists from the United States are spreading in that direction.
Speaking of the word “channel,” as employed in the Convention of June, 1846, Mr. Buchanan said that he himself, and he presumed Mr. Pakenham, in negotiating and signing that Convention, had always conceived “channel” to mean the “main navigable channel,” wherever situated, but he admitted that he had never himself examined, nor did he even recollect ever to have seen, Vancouver’s chart; and although he did not seem prepared to contest the probability of the channel marked with soundings by Vancouver in that chart being, in fact, “the main navigable channel,” he evidently hesitated to adopt that opinion without further geographical evidence, throwing out a suggestion that it would perhaps be better that such instructions should be given to the naval officers to be employed as Joint Commissioners, as would enable them both to determine which of the channels was, in fact, the main navigable channel, and to mark the boundary down the middle of that channel so soon as ascertained.
The subject, Mr. Buchanan assured me, should receive the immediate attention of the United States Government, with every disposition to avoid delay or difficulty in the accomplishment of an object which he felt to be extremely desirable for both Governments.
I have, &c.,