From the date of the triumphant peace won by Wolfe's victory, the British government became the most active foe of the spread of the English race in America.

This position Britain maintained for many years after the failure of her attempt to bar her colonists out of the Ohio valley.

It was the position she occupied when at Ghent in 1814 her commissioners tried to hem in the natural progress of her colonists' children by the erection of a great "neutral belt" of Indian territory, guaranteed by the British king.

It was the role which her statesmen endeavored to make her play when at a later date they strove to keep Oregon a waste rather than see it peopled by Americans.
In the northwest she succeeded to the French policy as well as the French position.

She wished the land to remain a wilderness, the home of the trapper and the fur trader, of the Indian hunter and the French voyageur.