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north of 49°, how can the British government invite Your Majesty to say that the straits of Rosario form the line of boundary established by British and American negotiators in that year between the United States and the British territory?

How and why the British unmoored the name from the waters to which they themselves had consigned it, and where it remained for just half a century, I leave them to explain and to justify. I remark only that they cannot produce a map, English, French, Spanish, or German, older than 1848, on which the passage which they now call the Straits of Rosario bears that name. On Spanish maps the name is applied only to the very broad channel lying north of the Canal de Haro and of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude.

Map B.

Map D.

Further the so-called Straits of Rosario are not straits at all. It is the track of Vancouver on his way from Admiralty Inlet to the north, as his map shows; but it received from him no name whatever. On British maps it never bore a name till after the British government introduced a new interpretation of the treaty of June, 1846.

Again-and this remark is of conclusive importance, by itself alone sufficient to decide the question-the line of the treaty must run from the middle of "the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island." Now, the so-called Straits of Rosario neither touch the continent nor Vancouver Island. They divide small islands from small islands, and nothing else; they have no pretension to divide Vancouver from the continent, or the continent from Vancouver.

Moreover, the water-line of the treaty must be a channel which makes a continuous line with Fuca's Straits; for the words of the treaty are, "through the middle of the said channel and of Fuca's Straits." Now, the so-called Straits of Rosario lead only to a sound, which

Spanish voyagers called the Bay of Santa Rosa; they

Map A.

[30] do not connect with Fuca's Straits, which cease at the southeastern promontory of Vancouver Island. Reversing the track of Vancouver, and following the so-called straits of Rosario southerly, the mariner would enter Admiralty Inlet; he never would reach the Straits of Fuca.

Then, too, compared with the Canal de Haro, the so-called Strait of Rosario is, as we have seen, a narrower passage, a shallower passage, and a roundabout passage.

CONCLUSION.

But enough: the rights of America cannot be darkened except by an excess of words. The intention of the parties to the treaty is made plain by its history, and the boundary which we claim is clearly set forth in its words, taken collectively and taken separately. I will close by citing general principles of interpretation established by international law.

Appendix No. 49,

A party offering the draught of a treaty is bound by the interpretation which it knew at the time that the other party gave to it. Lord Aberdeen cannot have doubted how the treaty was understood by Mr. MacLane, by Mr. Buchanan, and by the Senate of the United States. "Where the terms of promise," writes Paley, whose P. 56. work was long a text-book at Oxford, "admit of more senses than one, the promise is to be performed in the sense in which the promiser apprehended at the time that the promisee received it.' This will not differ from the actual intention of the promiser, where the promise is given without collusion or reserve; but we put the rule in the above

Ed. 1867.

form to exclude evasion, wherever the promiser attempts to make his escape through some ambiguity in the expressions which he used." Again: "Where a right admits of different degrees, it is only the Heffter's Volker smallest degree which may be taken for granted." "Ist ein recht, 395, p. 176. Recht verschiedener Abstufungen fähig, so darf zunächst nur die geringste Stufe als zugestanden angenommen *werden." This rule of Heffter fits the present case so aptly that it seems made for it. There being degrees in the departure from the parallel of 49°, it must be taken that only the smallest degree was conceded.

[31]

Finally and above all: there is a principle which not only controls the interpretation of treaties, but the results of investigation in every branch of human knowledge. A theory which implies confusion and contradiction is at once to be rejected; of two rival theories, that which most nearly reconciles all phenomena is to be preferred; the theory that reconciles all appearances and all circumstances is to be received as true. The British interpretation of the treaty implies that the British, who exclusively draughted it, sowed the seeds of future dissensions in the very instrument by which they proposed to settle every boundary question forever; that among the negotiators of the treaty there were those who duped, and those who were dupes. Lord Aberdeen ceases to be the "straightforward" man of Mr. MacLane's report. On the American side the statesmen appear void of spirit and of common sense, and easily circumvented. The historical process by which the treaty was arrived at becomes incomprehensible. The names on maps must be changed; the conformation of islands and continents and the highways of the great deep are made to expand and contract so as to suit the cavils of a government which does not profess exactly to understand the true meaning of the treaty, for every word of which it is itself responsible. Take the other theory; interpret the treaty as the Americans accepted it, and there are no statesmen on the British side who attempted to dupe, and no dupes on the American side. The history of the nego tiation becomes clear, and is consistent with its result. Mr. MacLane retains the reputation for prudence and clear perception and careful statement which has always been attributed to him. All words that fell

from the pen or lips of every one concerned in framing, accepting, [32] or approving the treaty, agree together and *bear the stamp of

good intention and uprightness. Everything that was uttered by Mr. Everett, Mr. MacLane, and Mr. Buchanan, by Lord Aberdeen, Mr. Benton, or Sir Robert Peel, is perfectly reconciled, without even the semblance of contradiction. The straits and channels may rest where nature has set them, and old names may be restored to their rightful places. The completion of the treaty does honor to the labors of honest and able statesmen, bent on establishing friendship and peace between "kindred nations." Persons and history, and reports of conversations and the words of the treaty, all chime together in the most perfect harmony, inviting an award which will command ready aquiescence, and leave nothing to rankle in the wound which it heals.

APPENDIX.

No. 1.

Extract from the treaty of Washington, of June 15, 1846.

Boundary estab

ARTICLE 1. From the point on the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, where the boundary laid down in existing treaties and conventions between the United States and Great Britain ished in 1846. terminates, the line of boundary between the territories of the United States and those of Her Britannic Majesty shall be continued westward along the said forty-ninth parallel of north latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island, and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of Fuca's Straits, to the Pacific Ocean: Provided, however, That the navigation of the whole of the said channel and the straits south of the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude remain free and open to both parties.

No. 2.

Extract from the treaty of Washington, of May 8, 1871.

THE NORTHERN BOUNDARY.

arbitration,

ARTICLE 34. Whereas it was stipulated by Article 1 of the treaty concluded at Washington on the 15th of June, 1846, between Matter and form of the United States of America and Her Britannic Majesty, [4] that the *line of boundary between the territory of the United States and those of Her Britannic Majesty, from the point on the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, up to which it had already been ascertained, should be continued westward along the said parallel of north latitude "to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island, and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of Fuca Straits, to the Pacific Ocean ;" and whereas the commissioners appointed by the two high contracting parties to determine that portion of the boundary which runs southerly through the middle of the channel aforesaid were unable to agree upon the same; and whereas the government of Her Britannic Majesty claims that such boundary-line should, under the terms of the treaty above recited, be run through the Rosario Straits, and the Government of the United States claims that it should be run through the Canal de Haro, it is agreed that the respective claims of the government of Her Britannic Majesty and of the Government of the United States shall be submitted to the arbitration and award of His Majesty the Emperor of Germany, who, having regard to the above-mentioned article of the said treaty, shall decide thereupon finally and without appeal which of these claims is most in accordance with the true interpretation of the treaty of June 15, 1846.

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