Even now a British minister, whose past career gave hope of a greater
fairness, is renewing the old system of experiments on the possible
contingency of the pusillanimity, the indifference, or the ignorance
of some future American administration, and disputes our boundary
in the Northwest, though the words of the treaty are too plain to
be perverted, and though the United States claims no more than the
British secretary of state, who offered the treaty, explained as
its meaning before it was signed. British soldiers are now encamped
on part of our territory which bears the name of Washington. With
a moderation that should have commanded respect, the United States
waived their better claim to Vancouver, and even to any part of
it, thinking it conducive to peace to avoid two jurisdictions on
different parts of the same island; and in return for this forbearance
the British Minister, yielding perhaps to some selfish clamor of a
trading company, as much against British interests as against American
rights, reproduces on an American island the inconvenience of divided
occupation, which it was the very purpose of the treaty to avoid.
If the hum of the American seaboard is in part the echo of sentiments
from abroad, here the unmixed voice of America may be heard, as it
pronounces that it is too late to wrest territory from the United
States by prevarication, by menace, or by force. From the English
dockyards it is a long voyage to San Juan; the only good land route
across the continent lies south of Lake Superior; in a few years there
will be three Ohios on the shores of the Pacific. It is England's
interest as well as duty to give effect to the treaty as it was
interpreted by her own minister to ours. Your voices on this memorable
day give the instruction to our own Government to abide by the treaty
faithfully, on the condition that Britain will do the same; but the
treaty must bind neither party or both--must be executed in good faith
or canceled. The men who honor the memory of Perry will always know
how to defend the domain of their country.
Has any European statesman been miscounting the strength of this
nation, by substituting a reminiscence of our feeble confederation
for the present efficient and almost perfect organism of the body
politic? Has any foreign ruler been so foolish as to listen with
credulity to the tales of impending disunion? Every man of the people
of Ohio, this great central highway of national travel, will, without
one exception, tell the calumniator or the unbeliever that the
voices of discontent among us are but the evanescent vapor of men's
breath; that our little domestic strifes are no more than momentary
disturbances on the surface, easily settled among ourselves; that
the love of Union has wound its cords indissolubly round the whole
American people.
So, then, our last word shall be for the Union. The Union will guard
the fame of its defenders, and ever more protect our entire territory;
it will keep alive for mankind, the beacon lights of popular liberty
and power; it will dissuade nations in a state of unripeness from
attempting to found republican governments before they spring up
naturally by an inward law; and its mighty heart will throb with
delight at every true advance in any part of the world, toward
republican happiness and freedom.