No. 146.
Mr. Bancroft to Mr. Fish.
American
Legation,
Berlin,
September 1, 1873. (Received September
18.)
No. 516.]
Sir: I am very sensible of the most friendly and
approving language in which Mr. Cushing writes of my labors in the San Juan
arbitration.
But I must ask leave to correct one grave error into which he has fallen. Mr.
Cushing has observed that in my memorial on the Haro as our boundary I made
no use of the pretended settlement of the
[Page 298]
boundary-line between Canada and the possessions of
the company of Hudson’s Bay; and, condemning my conclusions as to that
settlement, elsewhere expressed, he writes that I was misled by Mr.
Greenhow. In Mr. Greenhow’s History of Oregon, second edition, page 436, he,
in a note marked by thorough research, just criticism, and good judgment,
establishes, as I think, that the forty ninth parallel of latitude was not
selected as the line of separation between the French and British
territories in North America by commissaries appointed agreeable to the
treaty of Utrecht. In the passage of my writing which Mr. Cushing quotes, I
named Mr. Greenhow as an authority, because he was the first who put the
matter before the public in a clear light. Additional grounds existed for
the statement which I had made. A search in the French archives had failed
to find any evidence of the appointment of a boundary commission under the
treaty of Utrecht. Further, the most thorough search has now been made in
the British archives on the question, and the result establishes the
statement of Mr. Greenhow, in which I concurred. After the treaty of
Utrecht, “in the Northwest, where Canada joined the possessions of the
company of Hudson’s Bay, no treaty, no commission appears to have fixed the
limits of the possessions of France.”
I remain, &c.,
I.
Extract from a letter from Lord Tenderden to
Mr. F. O. Adams, August 11, 1873.
I have had a hunt made for the report of the commissioners under the
treaty of Utrecht which Mr. Bancroft wishes to refer to, but we have not got it
here, and have asked the rolls to look for it in the record office, as
every one who knows anything about anything is out of town. This may
take time. We will root it up somehow.
II.
Mr. Adams
to Mr. Bancroft.
British
Embassy, Berlin,
August 30, 1873.
My Dear Mr. Bancroft: I beg to inclose to you herewith a
copy of a letter which has been forwarded to me by Mr. Hammond in the
absence of Lord Tenderden, respecting the matter about which I inquired
according to your wish.
Believe me, &c.,
III.
Mr. Sainsbury to Sir Thomas D.
Hardy.
Public
Record Office, August 16,
1873.
Dear Sir: With reference to Lord Tenterden’s
letter to you of the 8th instant, requesting that a search be made in
the French correspondence relating to the treaty of Utrecht, a list of
which is contained on page 94 of the catalogue of foreign-office records
in the custody of the record office, and to ascertain whether
commissaries were ever appointed under the 10th article of the treaty of
Utrecht, and if so, whether they came to any final arrangement with
regard to the boundaries between Hudson’s Bay and the places
appertaining to the French, and in accordance with your instructions, I
have the honor to report that I have made a careful search through the
correspondence
[Page 299]
in question,
but do not find that commissaries were appointed under the 10th article
of the treaty of Utrecht, up to August, 1714, the last date of the
correspondence in question, although the time “within a year” had long
expired, when, by the terms of the 10th article of the treaty, “the
commissaries were to be named by each party.” In a memorial of the
governor and company of adventurers of England, trading into Hudson’s
Bay, to the lords of trade and plantations, in reference to the
surrender of the Straits and Bay of Hudson, the settlement of the limits
between the said bay and the places appertaining to the French, and
satisfaction for depredations committed by the French, the memorialists
state that the first of these articles, the surrender, has been made
according to the tenor of the treaty, but that “the other two, viz, the
running a line betwixt the English and French’ territories and the
making reparation to the company for their losses and damages, yet remain to be done.”
This memorial is indorsed as received on the 13th August, 1719, more than
six years after the signing of the treaty of Utrecht.
I have, &c., &c.,
