ing to the occupation and settlement of Oregon. These first measures elicited but little debate, and failed of reaching action. They did, however, by bringing out reports from the executive and committees, get before congress and the country a large amount of information on the subject. In the house, after a year of unavailing effort to reach action on the measures introduced, the subject remained again in abeyance for two or three years. In the senate, however, chiefly through the active interest of Doctor Linn, new measures were introduced each session which, though failing in every case of reaching the point of action, gained more and more the ear of the senate and a wider attention in the country. In each of the measures as thus far proposed there was some vitiating clause or provision which to the calmer and clearer minds in the senate made it inconsistent with the terms of the existing convention. It was open to congress to abrogate that convention by giving due notice to Great Britain, and so to open the way for a larger action on the part of the government, and resolutions to this effect were introduced, but neither congress nor the country as yet was ready for this step. Not yet clear as to what action should next be adopted, congress was not prepared to remove this bar to hasty or ill-advised measures. Thus far the convention had certainly been in the interests of peace, and had not seriously interfered with the progress of settlement.
The year 1842 was an important one in the history of the Oregon Question. Early that year Doctor Linn had returned to the contest in the senate with new zeal and determination, and other friends in congress and out of it came to his support. His bill, as heretofore, was a bill for the adoption of means for the occupation and settlement of the Oregon Territory, and the extension of the jurisdiction of our courts over our citizens settled there,
