influence with Mexico, her capitalists having loaned the Mexican government to the amount of $50,000,000 on security of lands in New Mexico, California, and other of her possessions; and England was urgent in all negotiations on the Oregon boundary that she be allowed free navigation of the Columbia, if not that that river be her southern boundary. In the United States, the slave states were desirous of Texas; the Western States pressed for the Oregon Territory at least to the forty-ninth parallel, while there was a growing desire in commercial centers in the North Atlantic States to have in American possession what was then regarded as the only ample and safe harbor on the North Pacific Coast south of the Straits of Fuca. Out of these various interests in England and America, President Tyler and Mr. Webster, his Secretary of State, shaped the policy of the administration. It is not likely that the President and his secretary were in entire accord on the details of the policy; but both alike were desirous that the administration should be signalized by a settlement through negotiation of the questions then pressing upon the country. In its earlier and more comprehensive form, the policy of the administration included all the questions that have been mentioned. These it sought to settle by a comprehension of them all in a tripartite treaty between the United States, Mexico and Great Britain, whereby it was hoped to secure from Mexico the recognition of the independence of Texas, and the cession to the United States of her possessions on the Pacific down to the thirty-sixth parallel. In compensation for her good offices in these matters, the United States was to yield to Great Britain all claim to the Oregon Territory down to the line of the Columbia Kiver. It was thought that the large acquisition thus secured of territory south of the forty-second parallel would compensate for the loss of Oregon north of the Columbia,
