THE OREGON QUESTION 1818-1828 203
Oregon river returning with "the rich exchange" after Oregon furs have turned the balance of trade in China to us and have stopped what many have been bemoaning a flow of specie Chinawards.
It is interesting and revelatory to observe the interest which motivated these "fathers" of a century ago. Their vision for the future was inevitably in terms of their own days ; is it true then that legislation other than from day to day can be nothing much beyond a series of lucky or unlucky guesses? Statesmen have been wise have been "seers" because their projects happened to work, when as a matter of fact their purposes and motives have not actually been at all the same as those apparently impelling them to their designs. There is a large prag- matic element in history. To one looking back across the developing roll of events and seeing exactly how things did, it is easy to endow the men of a past time with the ability to foresee what for him is a matter of retrospect, and to assume that the factors making for success or failure were the same as those actuating them.
As a matter of fact many paths of action turn out to be blind alleys. Many of the arguments urged by Floyd and his supporters, indeed many that they con- sidered most important and conclusive, as well as those of their opponents have not at all been justified by time. It is a commentary on the futility of dogmatic, final decisions and a warning that neither in princes nor con- gressmen can a trust as to utter wisdom be reposed. At the same time it is not impossible that in some of their plans the "fathers" were wiser than their children who have departed from them. The importance of the China trade bulked large in the minds of these men of the first half of the nineteenth century. 20 It would seem that it has taken a hundred years to bring their descendants even to a near acceptance of their views.
The topics of Floyd's remaining arguments will be
20 Op. fit., 398.
