"If the present state of occupancy is urged on the part of Great Britain, the probability of the manner in which the territory west of the Rocky Mountains must be settled belongs also essentially to the subject. Under whatever nominal sovereignty that country may be placed, and whatever its ultimate destinies may be, it is nearly reduced to a certainty that it will be almost exclusively peopled by the surplus population of the United States. The distance from Great Britain, and the expense incident to emigration, forbid the expectation of any being practicable from that quarter but on a comparatively small scale. Allowing the rate of increase to be the same in the United States and in the North American British possessions, the difference in the actual population of both is such that the progressive rate which would, within forty years, add three millions to these, would within the same time give a positive increase of more than twenty millions to the United States. And if circumstances, arising from localities and habits, have given superior facilities to British subjects of extending their commerce with the natives, and to that expansion which has the appearance, and the appearance only, of occupancy, the slower but sure progress and extension of an agricultural population will be regulated by distance, by natural obstacles, and by its own amount." There was no exaggeration in that comparative view; the superiority of the progressive increase of population in the United States was, on the contrary, underrated. The essential difference is, that migration from the United States to Oregon is the result of purely natural causes, whilst England, in order to colonize that country, must resort to artificial means. The number of American emigrants may not, during the first next ensuing years, be as great as seems to be anticipated. It will at first be limited by the amount of provisions with which the earlier settlers can supply them during the first year, and till they can raise a crop themselves; and the rapidity with which a new country may be settled is also lessened where maize cannot be profitably cultivated. Whether more or less prompt, the result is nevertheless indubitable. The snowball sooner or later becomes an avalanche: where the cultivator of the soil has once made a permanent establishment game and hunters disappear; within a few years the fur trade will have died its natural death, and no vestige shall remain, at least south of Fuca's Straits, of that temporary occupancy, of those vested British interests, which the British Government is now bound to protect. When the whole territory shall have thus fallen in the possession of an agricultural industrious population, the question recurs, by what principle will then the right of sovereignty, all along kept in abeyance, be determined?