Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/404

Rh especially interesting. But from the remarks of Wright of Maryland it evidently awakened no enthusiasm in the minds of his listeners; and it is shown by Floyd's admissions that he had been called fanciful and a bold projector, that few persons either in or out of congress were as yet much agitated over the United States claim to the Oregon Territory.

The second speech of importance was by Mr Baylies of Massachusetts, who began by saying that all the objections to the bill which he had heard had been outside of the house; and of these he was willing to admit that some were weighty, and all plausible. The first, that of the expense of the territorial establishment with no immediate prospect of a revenue, was, he thought, not valid: to prove which position he offered a correspondence with the collector of customs at New Bedford, showing the profits of the whale-fishery, and estimating its annual value in the Pacific, with the vessels already employed, at $500,000, while the profits of the same business to Nantucket were not short of $1,000,000 annually. "A settlement on the Columbia," said this correspondent, "if properly conducted, would insure to our nation an immense source of wealth," not only on account of the whale-fisheries, but of the lumber trade, it being known that a vessel loaded with spars from the Columbia River had recently arrived at Valparaiso.

The objections that by extending the territory of the United States too far it would be exposed to dismemberment, and that by occupying the Columbia the chances of war would be increased, were met by Baylies with arguments not necessary to be reproduced here. He supported the position taken by Floyd of the value of the fur trade on the Northwest Coast, and advanced many proofs of the advantage of colonies to an empire; the arguments in favor