Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/273

267 ASPECTS OF OREGON HISTORY BEFORE 1840. 267 to any part of the territory of the United States on the Pacific Coast north of the forty-second parallel. 11 In December, 1822, Mr. Floyd made a very powerful argument in favor of his bill, which shows the results of painstaking investigation. For those who deemed the proposal ''fanciful," and him a "bold projector," he re- called the rapidity with which population had spread westward between 1779 and 1822. Within the memory of living men it had moved westward upwards of a thousand miles. For those who thought Oregon too remote he as- serted that now that steamboat navigation had been in- vented it was not farther distant in time than St. Louis had been from Philadelphia only twenty years before. For the economist and merchant he presented an elabo- rate study of the trade of the United States with China and the Orient, of the export trade of China, of the in- creasing possibilities of the fur trade, of the growing whale fishery in the Pacific. His far-seeing vision not only em- braced the commerce of his own time but penetrated the future and predicted what has only recently been realized. "The lands of the Oregon," he wrote, "are well adapted to the culture of wheat, rye, corn, barley, and every species of grain; that position will enable them to sell their sur- plus produce with certainty, and purchase the manufac- tures of China * * *." In regard to the political expansion of this country, Mr. Floyd said : "All contemplate with joy the period when these States shall extend to the Rocky Mountians. Why not then to the Pacific Ocean?" 12 The territory will inev- itably be occupied either by us and our children or by the English, Russians, or French. Niles, Weekly Register, xxi, 400. ^Annals of Congress, 17th Congress, 2d session, 408-409. The whole speech covers columns 396-409.