Excerpt from The Protocol Question: Originally Published in the National Intelligencer, August 18, 1849

This view of the nature and official value of a Protocol is confirmed by the prao tice of all the most celebrated negotiations in which they have been employed. A most striking 1nstance of the importance attached to the contents of such a document is afforded'in the negotiation at London on the Oregon territory in 1827, between our Minister Plenipotentiary Mr. Gallatin and the Commissioners of the British Government; in the course of which long discussions took place, and long and labored memorials were presented on each side, with regard to the right claimed by the British Plenipotentiaries to insert, in the Protocol [containing the minute of the agreement for extending the'period of the joint occupation of the territory, a declaration of their views of the nature of that Occupation. Mr. Gallatin positively refused to admit any such addition to the Protocol, as it appeared to him tanta mount to the insertion in the convention of [the same provisions which the Uni ted States had already refused to admit. No one can doubt the propriety of Mr.

Gallatin's refusal in this case. The agreement made in the conference was entered on the Protocol, as a record of the proposition which was to be submitted to'each Government for its approval and ratification as a treaty; it was drawn up in the most general terms, and if the British Commissioners had been allowed to inscribe and leave on the Protocol their interpretation of the meaning and extent of those terms, which was entirely in favor of Great Britain, the United States, after its ratification of the agreement, of which the Protocol was the sole official record, would have been as fully bound to act according to the interpretation as if it had been in setted word for word in the treaty. In negotiations between plenipotentiaries of Governments in which treaties are made and executed by the will of the Sovereign alone, the Protocols of conferences may, on being signed by the parties, become in effect actual treaties; and this was the case not only at Vienna in 1824, but during the conferences of the five great Powers of Europe at London on the Bel gian question in 1831, where the Protocol of each conference embraced resolutions which were immediately carried into execution. Messrs. Sevier and Clifford were neither plenipotentiaries of an absolute Sovereign, nor were they in the same posi tion in which mr.gallatin stood in 1827. They were sent simply to exchange the ratifications of a treaty already completed on our part, and were authorized merely to give explanations on such points as the Mexican Government might possibly misapprehend. They were to give explanations, not interpretations for' the treaty was clear and unambiguous in all the points to which our amendments related.

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