*No. 52.
Mr. Bancroft to Mr. Campbell.[64]
Sir: Your letter of May 27 has but just reached me, in consequence of my absence from home on a long journey.Mr. Bancroft refers Mr. Campbell to his correspondence with Lord Palmerston.
I was in the administration of Mr. Polk at the time when Mr. Buchanan perfected the treaty for settling the boundary of Oregon. The basis of the settlement was the parallel of 49°, with the concession to Britain of that part of Vancouver’s Island which lies south of 49°. The United States held that both parties had a right to the free navigation of the waters round Vancouver’s Island, and therefore consented that the British boundary should extend to the center of the Channel of Haro. Such was the understanding of everybody at the time of consummating the treaty in England and at Washington. The Hudson’s Bay Company may naturally enough covet the group of [Page 151] islands east of that channel, but the desire, which never can amount to a claim, should not be listened to for a moment.
While I was in England no minister was preposterous enough to lend the authority of the British government to the cupidity of the Hudson’s Bay Company in this particular. I think you must find in the Department of State a copy of a very short letter of mine to Lord Palmerston, inclosing him a chart of those waters as drawn by our own Coast Survey. I think in that letter I mentioned the center of the Straits of Haro as the boundary. That chart would show by the depths of the soundings that the Straits of Haro are the channel intended in the treaty, even if there had not been a distinct understanding on the part of the British government as well as the American at the time of the signing of the treaty. Lord Palmerston, in his reply acknowledging the receipt of the chart, made no pretense of adopting the wishes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and he never did so, even in conversation. I never had occasion in England to make any peremptory statement on the subject, because nothing was ever said or hinted there which required it; but whenever conversation turned upon the subject, whether with Lord Palmerston or with the Under Secretary of the Colonial Office, *I always spoke of the Strait of Haro as undeniably the channel of the the treaty, and no member of the British government ever took issue with me. In running the line through the center of the Straits of Haro there may be one or two small islands about which a question might be raised, but as to the important group that the Hudson’s Bay Company covet, the demand, if made, should be met at the outset as one too preposterous to be entertained as a question.[65]
Yours, sincerely,
Archibald Campbell, Esq., Commissioner, &c.