Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/228

216 would not agree to any boundary that did not give to Great Britain a harbor at the mouth of the Columbia River in common with the United States. The American representatives not consenting to this, after further proposals and counter proposals, none of which were acceptable to both governments, it was finally agreed to adopt the now celebrated plan of joint occupation as that plan is embodied in the third article of the convention of that year.

Thus it is that the order of the British government for the restitution of Astoria at the opening of the year 1818, taken in connection with all the circumstances of the case, and the convention of joint occupation made by the two governments at the close of the year, taken in connection with concessions in conferences made by both parties, make this year an era in the history of the Oregon Question. In particular, two important lines had been proposed and discussed, each proposal showing an important concession, on the part of the party making it, and each line proposed practically setting a limit for the future, in its direction, to the territory that remained in question. For it may safely be said that from this time the extreme limits of the claims of the several parties were fixed; that henceforth the United States would not press their claim to territory north of latitude 49, nor would Great Britain press hers to territory south of the Columbia. The territory longer in question lay between these two lines, and it is doubtful if ever after this year there was a time when the question might not have been settled by Great Britain's consenting to the line of the forty-ninth parallel, or by the United States' consenting to that of the Columbia. With these limits to their several claims practically agreed upon by Great Britain and the United States, and a plan of joint occupation adopted at the close of the year 1818, it remained only to eliminate claims of other na-