Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/430

 402 Documents. The Russians had made many discoveries, and some settlements, in different places on the coast, which it is unnecessary to notice, because, by the treaty of St. Petersburgh, that power relinquished to the United States all right whatever to all that part of the coast south of fifty-four degrees forty minutes north latitude. So that the only nation now claiming, against the United States, and any part of that coast between forty-two and fifty- four degrees forty minutes north is Great Britain. Independent of the fact that both Spain and Prance had better claims than England, both of which claims have been transferred to the United States, and independent of the fact that the coast, as well as the interior of the country, were discovered by Captain Gray, and Dy Lewis and Clark, citizens of the United States, and that England has recognized our right by the surrender of Astoria, after the last war ; there is one point of view in which, so far as regards England, we have an undoubted right: By the grant to Virginia, by Charles I, 1609, the King of England made the limits of Virginia to extend from Old Point Comfort two hundred miles north- ward, and two hundred miles southward, along the sea-coast, and all the land up into the interior, west and northwest, from sea to sea. By the foregoing grant, the southern line of Virginia would extend on or near the thirty-fourth degree of latitude from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the northern line would run across the States of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and include a great part of Upper Canada. This extensive grant to Virginia was afterwards curtailed by several other grants to different persons, and the limits of Virginia were cut down to its present form, as far as related to the lines east of the Alleghany Mountains ; but no subsequent grant or claim of any other colony ever interfered with the claims of Virginia to her possessions west of those mountains. The treaty of peace with England, in 1783, further curtailed her limits, so as to cut off all that part which laid west and north of the lakes, and the forty-ninth degree of latitude, west of the Lake of the Woods, as far as the Rocky Mountains. The treaty of 1783 was not intended, and could not be construed, to deprive any of the then colonies of the limits to which they were entitled by any previous grant, farther than its terms import. That part of said treaty of 1783, which undertook to fix boundaries between the United States and the French and Spanish possessions, was wholly void ; neither of the contracting parties having any right to fix their lines unless they were parties to the treaty. Thus, we see Virginia, after the peace of 1783, claiming all the western country included in her grant, as far as the Mississippi ; and this was undisputed by any other of the United Colonies, until she ceded all her western lands to the United States. I have said that Virginia did not claim west of the Mississippi ; but why did she not? It was not because England had any right whatever to prevent it, but because, until the purchase of Louisiana, in 1803, the claims of Spain and Prance were con- sidered paramount, as well to Virginia as to England, who granted it to Virginia ; and we were not so hardy as to set up the grant of England, who had no title, against Spain and Prance, who, we had the justice to admit, had a better right. But what do we now see? England has the audacity, at this day, to set up a claim not only against the title of Prance, whose title was admitted by the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, but against Virginia, to whom it was granted in 1609. By a subsequent treaty with England, our northern line was fixed on the forty-ninth parallel of latitude, from the Lake of the Woods west, as far as the Rocky Mountains.