REPORT ON

THE BOUNDARIES

OF THE

PROVINCE OF ONTARIO.

The claim of the Dominion Government is understood to be, that the Meridional line drawn due North, from the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, forms the Western Boundary of Ontario, and that the lands' height of the northern watershed of the St. Lawrence, is the Northern Boundary.

The Government of Ontario deny both propositions; and contend, that the Western limit is the Rocky Mountains; that the North-western limitary line lies north of the Ssakatchewan; and that the North-eastern line lies in the vicinity of Hudson's Bay. These limits are hereinafter stated with greater minuteness of detail.

The proper location of the disputed Boundaries depends upon the proper construction of Statutes, Treaties, Orders in Council, and Royal Proclamations, interpreted by the aid of contemporaneous facts, and by well-established principles of public law.

Before citing any of those public documents from which the true limits of Ontario are to be gathered, and in which those limits are, with more or less distinctness, set forth, it will be advantageous to state the boundaries Canada had while in the possession of France, immediately before the seven years' war began. It will also be proper to point out with precision how much of Canada was transferred to England by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, and how much was retained by France. It will be proper to show the actual limits of the Province of Quebec under the Act of 1774; to point out the changes made by the Treaty of 1783, by which the whole of the south-western part of the Province was ceded to the United States; to show how that country was, at the beginning of her national existence, unable to fulfill her treaty obligations; how, in consequence of this failure, the English Government considered themselves in no way bound by the boundary stipulations, but entertained the project of retaining that portion of Canada which had been surrendered to the United States,—a part to be retained as British territory, and a part to be held by mutual arrangement for the benefit of the Indian tribes; how the English Government believed that a large part of the population of the United States would prefer to be subjects of the British Crown rather than citizens of an unsettled and, for a time, somewhat disjointed Republic; to point out that with this object in view the British Government continued to hold possession of the northern portion of the United States Territories, the inhabitants of which were governed under the Crown by the commandants of the various military posts, some of whom were made Lieutenant-Governors, and at whose posts civil governments were established; that with

this object in view it was proposed to divide the old Province of Quebec, leaving the eastern portion to be governed by the civil law of France, and embracing in the western Province not only all of the Province of Quebec, west of the separating line, but all of the country commonly known as Canada, to its utmost limit, whether it was British or United States Territory by the Treaty of 1783; that this policy, so far as it affected the territory which had been ceded to the United States, was abandoned by the Treaty of 1794 (commonly known as Jay's Treaty), in consequence of the war with the French Republic, and the altered position of Spain towards Great Britain and the United States; but that the said policy did not involve any diminution of the territories remaining in the Province of Upper Canada, north of the international boundary. An endeavour will be made to point out the proper location of our north-eastern limit, as provided by the Treaty of Utrecht.

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ENGLISH AND FRENCH CHARTERS.

If we were to look to the charters granted at various times by the Crowns of England and France to navigators and mercantile adventurers, we should discover that there was scarcely any portion of North America, between the Gulf of Mexico and the Polar Sea, which had not been granted by each to some of its own subjects.

In 1496 John Cabot and his three sons obtained from Henry VII. a Patent, empowering any one of them, or their deputies, to sail into the Eastern, Western, or Northern Sea to search for Islands, Countries, or Regions, before unseen by Christian people; to affix the banners of England on any place that they might discover; and to possess and occupy the countries so discovered, as the vassals of the English Crown.*

In 1498 a new Patent was issued by the same Monarch to John Cabot, but containing less ample privileges.†

Under the first of these Patents the coast of Labrador was visited; and under the second, the eastern coast of North America was explored from the northern part of Labrador to the southern boundary of the State of Maryland. The second expedition of the Cabots was connected with plans for settlements. Provision was made for emigration to the new world, and a limited monopoly of the colonial trade was conceded.

A third Patent, with larger concessions, was issued to, in part, the same patentees.

The adventurers derived no profit from their explorations, and navigation for a time languished; yet these expeditions were never entirely relinquished.

The Normans, the Biscayans, and the Bretons frequented the fisheries on the American coast shortly after the discoveries of the Cabots, but from the fragmentary records which have been preserved of mercantile adventures, the English mariners seem not to have wholly resigned to a rival nation the advantages arising from their discoveries.§

* Hakluyt III pp. 25, 26; Chalmers' Political Annals, pp. 7, 8.

+ Hakluyt III. pp. 30, 31.

Charlevoix. Hist. de la Nouv. Fr. Vol. I. p. 3.

§ See the account of the Pirate Nutt, in Forster's Life of Sir J. Elliot. Vol. I., pp. 41-75.

It was about the year 1504 that the fishermen of northern France visited the coasts of Newfoundland.*

In 1523, Jean Verazzano, under a Commission from Francis I., took possession of the country between the thirty-third and forty-seventh degrees of north latitude; and in 1535, Gibault and Laudonniere, by authority of Charles IX., founded Carolina in the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth degrees of north latitude, under a Commission to inhabit and cultivate that country.†

In 1603, Champlain was engaged in the exploration of the St. Lawrence; and in 1609, he, with two other Frenchmen, explored Lake Champlain and the country of the Iroquois, of which he took formal possession in the name of Henry IV. of France.

In the years 1611 and 1612 he explored Lake Huron, entered Saginaw Bay, visited the various .bes of Indians upon the lake, passed down the Detroit River, explored Lake Erie, and, throughout this extent of country, laid the foundation of French sovereignty in the valley of the St. Lawrence. Champlain, for many years, prosecuted the fur trade where Boston now stands; and also to the eastward along the coast, towards the Bay of Fundy, for at least ten years before any English had settled there.‡

It was not until 1606 that a Charter was granted by James I. to Sir Thomas Gates and his associates, for the territories between the 34th and 35th degrees of north latitude. The associates had excepted from their grant all territories in the actual possession of other Christian Princes.

No Charter granted by the Crown of either England or France recognised in the natives of the continent any right which the grantees were bound to respect. §

In November, 1603, Henry IV. granted to Sieur de Monts a Patent for North America. between the fortieth and forty-sixth parallels of north latitude; and in the following year an exclusive charter for the fur trade of Canada up to the fifty-fourth degree of north latitude.||

As early as 1620, the English Parliament and the English Courts had refused to recognize the validity of a title to vast regions, founded upon a grant from the Roman Pontiff, or upon discovery, unless followed by occupation and settlement. The practical recognition of this principle prevented conflicts for the exclusive possession of the whole eastern shore of the Continent.¶

England, in time, obtained undisputed possession of the country from the sea coast to the Alleghany Mountains and from the Kennebec river in Maine to the St. Mary's river on the northern boundary of Florida.*

In 1604, Poutrincourt established a colony at Port Royal (now Annapolis) in Acadia, which was surprised and broken up by Samuel Argall, in 1613.+ In 1608, the French occupation of the valley of the St. Lawrence was renewed. The King issued a new Commission to De Mouts to plant a settlement in Canada.

He also gave him a monopoly of the Fur

*Thorne. Divers Voyages, Hakluyt Society. pp. 43-47.

+Chalmers, 81, 82. Hakluyt, III. pp. 250-297. N. Y. H. Soc. Col., Vol. I. pp. 45, 46. 2nd ser. Voyages de Champlain. Hazard I. p. 45.

§ Champlain, 42. Hazard, 1.p. 45.

L'Escarbot, 1. Chalmers, 82. Champlain, 99.

Debates House of Commons, 1620, 1621. Vol. I. 250, 251.

*See Robertson's History of America, Bks. 9 and 10.

† Argall's expedition. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Vol. I N. S.

Bancroft's History of U. S. Vols 1 and 2.

Trade for one year. * Quebec was founded one year after the Plymouth company had planted a colony of forty-five persons on the Kennebec river. Chief Justice Popham, the principal patron of the colony, died the same year; Raleigh Gilbert withdrew to England to take possession of some property, of which he had become heir; and the colony at once returned to England.†

The London Company obtained a new Charter the following year, which gave them, so far as the King could give, an absolute title to a strip of territory 400 miles in width, and stretching from the Atlantic westward to the South Sea. The Plymouth Company enjoyed a nominal existence until 1620, but they did not succeed in planting, in their American possessions, a permanent colony.§

EXTENT OF THE FRENCH POSSESSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA.

France, early in the seventeenth century, obtained possession of the whole valley of the St. Lawrence, and before the close of the century she had taken formal possession of the whole country from the shores of Hudson's Bay to the Alleghany Mountains, and the whole valley of the Mississippi from the source of that river to the Gulf of Mexico.

L'Escarbot, an advocate of Paris, in his "Histoire de la Nouvelle France," published in 1609, defines the boundaries of the French possessions in North America, as extending "on the west to the Pacific Ocean, on the south to the Spanish West Indies, on the east to the North Atlantic, and on the North to the Frozen Sea."||

Baron La Honton, whose "Memoirs of Travels in North America" embraced the decade between 1683 and 1693, says :-"All the world knows that Canada reaches from the 39th to the 65th degree of north latitude, that is, from the south of Lake Erie to the north side of Hudson's Bay, and from the 284th to the 336th degree of longitude, viz., from the River Mississippi to Cape Race....... Were I to reckon in all the countries that lie to the north-west of Canada, I should find it larger than Europe; but I confine myself to what is discovered, known, and owned-I mean to the countries in which they have forts, magazines, missionaries, and small settlements."¶

Captain Vetch, (a British officer, at one time Governor of Nova Scotia,) writing in 1708, says: "As to the situation of the country possessed by the French in North America, and commonly all comprehended under the prevailing name of Canada, the seat and residence of their Governor-General being upon the place properly so called-its situation is from about 54 degrees of north latitude to the eastward of Port Nelson, in the country of the Escimoes, extending itself all the way south-west to the mouth of the Mississippi river, which falls into the Bay of Appalachio, in the great Bay of Mexico, about the latitude of 28 degrees and 30 minutes, comprehending as it goes,

*Chalmers, 82.

Doc. History N. Y. Vol. III. pp. 1-9.

Chalmers, 25. Hazard 1, pp. 58-72.

§ Bancroft's Hist. U. S., vol. 1. Mass. Hist. Col., vol. xix., 5-11.

Histoire de la Nouvelle France, Marc L'Escarbot.

Pinkerton's Collection, Vol. xiii.