[Footnote: Annals of Cong., 17 Cong., 2 Sess., 397.]
Against the proposal, his opponents argued inexpediency rather than
our treaties with Great Britain. Tracy, of New York, doubted the
value of the Oregon country, and, influenced perhaps by Long's
report, declared that "nature has fixed limits for our nation; she
has kindly introduced as our Western barrier, mountains almost
inaccessible, whose base she has skirted with irreclaimable deserts
of sand."[Footnote: Ibid., 590.] In a later debate, Smyth, of
Virginia, amplified this idea by a proposal to limit the boundaries
of the United States, so that it should include but one or two tiers
of states beyond the Mississippi. He would remove the Indians beyond
this limit, and, if American settlements should cross it, they might
be in alliance with, or under the protection of, the United States,
but outside of its bounds. [Footnote: Register of Debates, 18 Cong.,
2 Sess., I., 37.]
Baylies, of Massachusetts, declared that there were living witnesses
"who have seen a population of scarcely six hundred thousand swelled
into ten millions; a population which, in their youth, extended
scarcely an hundred miles from the ocean, spreading beyond the
mountains of the West, and sweeping down those mighty waters which
open into regions of such matchless fertility and beauty.
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