Mr. Buchanan to Mr. MacLane.
Sir: The President communicated to the Senate, on the 10th instant, a confidential message, of which I transmit you a copy, asking their previous advice in regard to the Projet of a Convention for the adjustment of the Oregon question delivered to me by Mr. Pakenham on the 6th instant.
On yesterday the Senate adopted the following resolution:
Resolved, (two-thirds of the Senators present concurring,) That the President of the United States be, and he is hereby, advised to accept the proposal of the British Government accompanying his message to the Senate dated 10th June, 1846, for a Convention to settle boundaries, &c., between the United States and Great Britain, west of the Rocky or Stony Mountains.
The vote of the Senate stood 371 1 to 12.
I have learned from the best sources that the Senate gave this advice under the conviction that, by *the true construction of the second Article of the Projet, the right of the Hudson’s Bay Company to navigate the Columbia would expire with the termination of their present license to trade with the Indians, &c., on the northwest coast of America on the 30th May, 1859. In a conversation with Mr. Pakenham to-day I communicated this fact to him, and requested him to state it in his dispatch to Lord Aberdeen.[xxxviii]
[Page 252]The Treaty will be signed and sent to the Senate on Monday next; and it is more than probable that they will, in some form or other, place upon their records their understanding of its true construction in this particular.
I have, &c.
- So, in the letter as officially printed in the United States.↩