the St. Lawrence was an appellation peculiarly applicable to that portion was altogether erroneous. The only colorable authority for the supposition was that of Governor Pownall, who used the terms "height of land" and "highland" synonymously, as generic expressions, descriptive of ground separating the sources of rivers. In every British act designating the southern boundary of the province of Quebec, or of Lower Canada, it was described as being along "the highlands which divide," etc.; yet the committee of the executive council of Quebec, in a report of 1787, spoke of it as "the height of land."

As to the fief of Madawaska, the AmeriFief of Madawaska. can definitive statement denied that a grant to a French subject by a French governor of Canada could affect the limits of the United States founded on the charter of Massachusetts Bay. It was notorious that France, at the time of the British conquest of Canada, claimed the whole of the country watered by the River St. John and its tributary streams as a part of New France, and doubtless many French grants were made below the southern boundary of the British province of Canada. How far these grants were respected was best known to Great Britain. The fact that the last French possessor of the fief of Madawaska had the sagacity to dispose of his claim, just after the conquest, to the first British governor of Quebec probably was the reason why this solitary grant had escaped the general wreck of French concessions in that quarter. But, though the grant was held by a feudal tenure, it did not appear that the British purchasers had ever performed any of the conditions pertaining to such tenure in relation to the government of Quebec or of Lower Canada. No acts of jurisdiction appeared to have been exercised over the fief by either of those governments. In reality, the only basis of the claim of acts of jurisdiction was the fact that certain transfers or leases relating to the fief between British subjects were recorded in an office in Quebec, in which it was shown that French concessions known to be without the boundaries of the province had also been admitted to record.

Examples were quoted from Pownall's Middle British American Colonies, published in 1776, pp. 10, 13, 17, etc. Extracts are also made from McKenzie's History of the Fur Trade, published in 1802, pp. 28, 32, 35, 40, etc.

Madawaska Settle

The Madawaska settlement, which was claimed in the British statement as being

ment. actually under British jurisdiction, afforded,

said the American definitive statement, no evidence of an intention on the part of the government of New Brunswick prior to the Treaty of Ghent to extend its jurisdiction over the contested territory. The French settlers who made it at first established themselves farther down the St. John. When the British, after the Treaty of 1783, extended their settlements up that river the French settlers removed upward to the mouth of the Madawaska. At that time the true St. Croix was unde termined and the situation of the due-north line was unknown. It was only since the survey of the line in 1817-18 that the exercise of jurisdiction by New Brunswick had been complained of. From 1794 to 1814 that government had granted no land in the contested territory to any one. The British agent under Article V. of the Jay Treaty, who was a distinguished inhab itant and public officer of New Brunswick, admitted in his argument that the due-north line must cross the St. John, an admission which, as agent under Article V. of the Treaty of Ghent, he sought to explain away. The pretension of Great Britain to the contested territory was first made known to the United States at Ghent, when the British plenipotentiaries proposed to vary the boundary so as to secure to Great Britain a direct communication between Quebec and Halifax.

The American definitive statement closed with brief discussions of the questions as to the northwesternmost head of Connecticut River and the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude. The second or definitive British statement Second British State- did not follow the controversial form, but in the main presented a supplementary view of

ment.

the British case.

Taking up, as first in order, the question of Intention of the the northwest angle of Nova Scotia, the second Treaty of 1783. British statement observed that the claims of the two governments involved a difference of 105 miles on a due-north line and a tract of territory 10,705 square miles in extent. Both parties agreed that, in order to determine the true situation of the point of departure, the highlands intended by the treaty must first be determined. When the peace was concluded a considerable part of the frontier territory was altogether unknown, or at best imperfectly explored. It was

impossible for the negotiators of 1783 to describe the boundary throughout its whole extent in such terms as to leave no room for hesitation or dispute, but it was not impossible to show what was the intention of the treaty. The intention of the treaty was: (1) To define exclusively the limits of the United States; (2) to define them peremptorily; (3) to define them in such manner as to promote the "reciprocal advantage and mutual convenience" of both countries. Such being the motives of the contracting parties, it was inconceivable that the British Government could have intended to carry the boundary line to the north of the River St. John, thus incurring not merely the loss of a certain number of square miles, but the surrender of direct communication between Nova Scotia and Canada to the United States. The American statement seemed to recognize the justice of leaving to each party its rivers. This was a principle of the utmost importance, and it could be preserved only by establishing the highlands south of the River St. John. With respect to the question of highlands, it sufficed to quote, as to Mars Hill, the statement of the American surveyor that the south peak was "175 feet higher than the north peak, and about 1,000 feet above the general level of the adjacent country." This description was decisive of the superior height of Mars Hill. The question of the northwest angle of Nova Scotia was subordinate to that of the highlands. The place of that angle was unknown in 1783. The charter of Massachusetts, as the United States interpreted it, would fix it on the right bank of the St. Lawrence. The proclamation of 1763, and the Quebec Act, as interpreted by the United States, would place it on certain highlands south of the rivers that fall into the St. Lawrence. The first proposal of the American negotiators at Paris would place it at the source of the River St. John. The fact was that the northwest angle of Nova Scotia was yet to be formed, and this had been admitted by high American authority.

According to the American statement, said Ancient Boundaries. the second British statement, the line due north from the source of the River St. Croix extended 144 miles north of that point. It intersected the main channel of the St. John and several other streams, and terminated at a place destitute of any marked elevation between one of the branches of the Restigouche and the source of a stream falling into the St. Lawrence, and presumed to be the

River Metis. The United States had labored to show that this line and the line mentioned in the treaty were identical with the boundaries that subsisted between the British provinces of Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Massachusetts Bay. But this supposed identity was a mere matter of conjecture. The object of the treaty of peace was to settle the boundaries of the United States without regard to British boundaries. If the negotiators of the treaty had intended to adopt a line supposed to have previously existed, they might have satisfied themselves with running the line due north from the St. Croix River to the southern boundary of the province of Quebec; but they resolved not to trust to any such vague and arbitrary line, but to establish peremptorily a new line based on real interests. Had they adhered to the basis of the ancient boundaries, in regard to which there had been many disputes, the negotiations might have been protracted to an indefinite length.

1783.

To the allegation in the American statement Maps from 1763 to that the maps comprehending the disputed territory which were known to have been published between 1763 and 1783 carried the boundary line, as described in the royal proclamation of the former year, along the highlands to which the claim of the United States particularly applied, the second British statement replied: (1) That in these maps the highlands were represented by a line of visible elevation contrary to the true character of the country, as since ascertained; (2) that in some of them the line of visible elevation was made to intersect waters of the St. John, or of the St. Lawrence, or of both, thus disproving any intention of its having been traced upon the principle of dividing those waters; (3) that no maps were to be received as authority but Mitchell's map and the map A; (4) that the old maps were copied from one another, so that no additional evidence could be drawn from their coincidence; and (5) that the selection by the negotiators of Mitchell's map, which was published before the proclamation of 1763, materially contributed to show that the line found on the later maps was not that on which the boundary, as defined in the treaty, was meant to be established.

The second British statement laid great stress on the prejudice which would be occasioned to the British provinces by allowing the American claim.

In respect of the question of the northwesternmost head of Connecticut River, the second British statement added nothing material to what was set forth in the first.

Forty-fifth Parallel of North Latitude.

As to the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude, the second British statement said that Great Britain did not deny that the old line between New York and Quebec was considered accurate in the year 1774, when it was finished. But it was capable of proof that, long before the conclusion of the Treaty of Ghent, both governments had received information which must have altered their opinions respecting the correct execution of the line. The State of Vermont seemed to have been the first to suspect the accuracy of the line. In 1806 the government of that State engaged Dr. Williams, the historian and philosopher of Vermont, to, ascertain the correctness of its northern boundary. He reported that the line as drawn deviated to the southward of the true parallel, and that it cut off in its eastern prolongation more than 600 square miles of Vermont's territory. No reluctance was shown on the part of the United States to the establishment of the true line till some time after it was known that the changes produced by the operation would be mainly against their interests, principally by the loss of the fortifications at Rouses Point.'

On the 10th of January 1831 the arbitrator rendered the following award:

trator.

"Nous, GUILLAUME, par la grace de Dieu, Award of the Arbi- Roi des Pays-Bas, Prince d'Orange-Nassau, Grand Duc de Luxembourg, &c. &c. &c. "Ayant accepté les fonctions d'arbitrateur, qui Nous ont été conférées par la note du Chargé d'Affaires des Etats Unis d'Amérique, et par celle de l'Ambassadeur extraordinaire et plenipotentiaire de la Grand Bretagne, à Notre Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, en date du 12 Janvier 1829, d'après l'art: V. du traité de Gand, du 24 Décembre 1814, et l'art: I. de la convention conclue entre ces Puissances à Londres le 29

"When at Ghent it was not known to me, and I believe my colleagues to have been also unacquainted with the fact, that the boundary-line between the then provinces of New York and Quebec had been officially surveyed, with the sanction of the Crown and by the competent provincial authorities. The treaty accordingly assumes and declares as a fact what was not really true, that no part of the line from the source of the river St. Croix to the river St. Lawrence had been surveyed. I perceive no other circumstance on which to ground our claim to the old line; and the argument, founded rather on equitable considerations, is far from being conclusive. I need hardly add that the pretension drawn from the geocentric latitude is altogether untenable, and that it is a matter of regret that it ever was advanced." (Mr. Gallatin to Mr. Van Ness, March 22, 1829, Adams's Writings of Gallatin, II. 406.)