No. 43.
The Earl of Aberdeen to Mr. Pakenham.
The boundary (said Lord Aberdeen) having been fixed by the convention of 1818, between the possessions of Great Britain and the United States, and the line of demarcation having been carried along the forty-ninth parallel of latitude for a distance of eight hundred or one thousand miles, through an unfrequented and unknown country, from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains, it appeared to the Government of the United States that it was a natural and reasonable suggestion that this line should be continued along the same parallel for about half this distance, and through a country as little known or frequented from the Rocky Mountains to the sea. And, indeed, with reference to such a country, the extension of any line of boundary already fixed might equally have been suggested, whether it had been carried along the forty-ninth or any other parallel of latitude.Lord Aberdeen offers the forty-ninth parallel, retaining the whole of Vancouver Island for England.
[Page 52]On the other hand, however, it may justly be observed that any division of territory in which both parties possess equal rights ought to proceed on a principle of mutual convenience rather than on the adherence to an imaginary geographical line; and in this respect it must be confessed that the boundary thus proposed would be manifestly defective. It would exclude us from every commodious or accessible harbor on the coast; it would deprive us of our long-established means of water-communication with the interior for the prosecution of our trade; and it would interfere with the possessions of British colonists resident in a district in which it is believed that scarcely an American citizen, as a settler, has ever set his foot.
*You will accordingly propose to the American Secretary of State that the line of demarcation should be continued along the forty-ninth parallel, from the Rocky Mountains to the sea-coast, and from thence, in a southerly direction, through the center of King George’s Sound and the Straits of Juan de Fuca, to the Pacific Ocean, leaving the whole of Vancouver Island, with its ports and harbors, in the possession of Great Britain.[50]