It may, however, be asked whether, if this be the inevitable consequence of the continuance of the convention, England will not herself give notice that it shall be abrogated. It might be sufficient to answer that we must wait till that notice shall have been given, and the subsequent measures which England means to adopt shall have been made known to us, before we assume rashly a hostile position. The United States may govern themselves; although they may irritate Great Britain, they cannot control the acts of her Government. The British Government will do whatever it may think proper; but for the consequences that may ensue it will be alone responsible. Should the abrogation of the convention on her part be followed by aggressive measures; should she assume exclusive possession over Oregon or any part of it, as it is now proposed that the United States should do, America will then be placed in a defensive position; the war, if any should ensue, will be one unprovoked by her, a war purely of defence, which will be not only sustained, but approved by the unanimous voice of the nation. We may, however, be permitted to examine what motive could impel England, what interest she might have, either in annulling the convention or in adopting aggressive measures. When it is recommended that the United States should give notice of the abrogation of the convention, it is with the avowed object of adopting measures forbidden by the convention, and which Great Britain has uniformly declared she would resist. But, according to the view of the subject uniformly taken by her, from the first time she asserted the rights she claims to this day, the simple abrogation of her convention with the United States will produce no effect whatever on the rights, relations, and position of the two Powers. Great Britain, from the date at least of Cook's third voyage, and prior to the Nootka convention, did deny the exclusive claim of Spain, and assert that her subjects had, in common with those of other States, the right freely to trade with the natives, and to settle in any part of the Northwestern coast of America, not already occupied by the subjects of Spain. The Nootka convention was nothing more than the acquiescence, on the part of Spain, in the claims thus asserted by Great Britain, leaving the sovereignty in abeyance. And the convention between the United States and Great Britain is nothing more nor less than a temporary recognition of the same principle, so far as the two parties were concerned. England had, prior to that convention, fully admitted that the United States possessed the same rights as were claimed by her. The abrogation of the convention by her will leave those rights precisely in the same situation as they now stand, and as they stood prior to the convention. It cannot therefore be perceived what possible benefit could accrue to Great Britain from her abrogation of that instrument; unless, discarding all her former