obvious and undisguised meaning of a noticeable and striking passage in the letter of the British Minister, Mr. Fox, to Mr. Forsyth, dated November 2, 1839, in which he remarks, that "whatever shall be the line of boundary between Her Majesty's possessions and the Republic of the United States, definitely recognized and decided upon by the two Governments, either through the attainment of the true line of the Treaty of 1783, or through the adoption of a conventional line, Her Majesty's Government will have to rely upon the Federal Government of the United States to assist and carry out the decision, whatever may be the views and pretensions of the inhabitants of the State of Maine notwithstanding."

Your Committee may here remark, that when these facts, in regard to the stationing of regular military forces by the British provincial authorities upon Lake Temiscouata, and of their building barracks, as represented, at the confluence of the Madawaska River with the St. John, were brought to the direct knowledge of the National Government, they were pronounced by the President to be a flagrant contravention of the existing understanding between the parties; and those authorities were distinctly and emphatically admonished, through their regular Minister, of the obvious inexpediency and imprudence of such proceedings, and of the effect likely to arise from persistence in them.

The only explanation produced by this expressive remonstrance was conveyed in the shape of a letter from Mr. Fox to Mr. Forsyth, of January 24th, 1840, to the effect that the movement complained of was nothing new, and that it was only a change of force to keep up the station at the Temiscouata post, as it always had been, "for the necessary purpose of protecting the stores and accommodations provided for the use of Her Majesty's troops, who may be required, as heretofore, to march by that route to and from the provinces of Canada and New Brunswick." It was not admitted that any new barracks had been built, or were building, by the British authorities on both sides of the St. John, or at the mouth of Madawaska river, or, in fact, anywhere; and it was declared that no intention existed on the part of those authorities to infringe the terms of the provisional agreements that had been entered into the year before, so long as there was reason to trust that the same would be faithfully adhered to by the opposite party. But it was at the same time plainly avowed, that Her Majesty's authorities in North America, observing the attitude assumed by the State of Maine with reference to the Boundary Question, would, as then advised, be governed entirely by circumstances, in adopting such measures of defence and protection, whether along the confines of the Disputed Territory, or within that portion of it where the authority of Great Britain, according to its own explanation of the existing agreements, was not to be interfered with, as might seem to them necessary for guarding against or for promptly repelling the further acts of what was termed hostile aggression, which it appeared to be the avowed design of the State of Maine, sooner or later, to attempt. Her Majesty's authorities in North America, it was averred, had no intention, on their part, to interfere with the course of pending negotiation, by the exercise of military force; but that they should as then at present advised," consult their own discretion in adopting the measures of defence, that might be rendered necessary by the threats of a violent interruption to the negotiation, which had been used by all parties in Maine, confirmed, it was alleged, by the language employed by the highest official authority (alluding to the recent message and correspondence of the Governor) in that State."

The official reply to this plain note professed to express the satisfaction of the President, that no actual change was understood to have taken place in the attitude of Her Majesty's authorities in the territory, since the date of the arrangements entered into; and that there was no intention to infringe them on their part, so long as their terms were faithfully observed on the side of the United States. It signified, however, much regret, that the British colonial authorities should, without graver motives than a mere possibility of a departure from those arrangements by the State of Maine, thus take upon themselves the fearful responsibility of being guided by circumstances, susceptible as those were of misapprehension and misconception, in regard to measures of precaution and defence, under this exercise of discretion, against imagined acts of meditated aggression on the part of Maine. And the hope was further expressed, with how little effect we have witnessed, that when the British

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Government at home should be apprized of the position assumed in this respect by its colonial agents here, proper steps would be taken to place the performance of express and solemn agreements, in effect, upon a more secure and solid basis than such a precarious sort of contingent colonial discretion.

It could scarcely have escaped notice in regard to the character of this correspondence, that a change had occurred in the style, if not in the attitude, of the British provincial authorities in America. Your Committee, however, are not aware whether the attention of the Federal Government was immediately drawn to the circumstance, that these forces seemed to have been detached and stationed there under the positive orders of the new GovernorGeneral of the British provinces; nor are they apprized of the precise bearing which this circumstance might be considered to have, in the view of the National Government, upon the character of the arrangements deemed to have been subscribed to by the authorities of Maine and New Brunswick under its own high auspices. It has become apparent, at least since then, that the authority of the Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick is rendered subordinate in this respect to that of the Governor-General of Her Britannic Majesty's dominions; that there has been some new partition, or subdivision, by which, while the civil authority to be exercised in that region still resides in the Government of New Brunswick, the military power by which this State was menaced is transferred into other and higher hands; and all that Sir John Harvey can say, when he is apprized of our remonstrances and complaints, is that we must appeal to his superiors.

It may be recollected that inquiry was made soon afterward by the Senate of the United States, at its session a year ago, whether any measures had been taken under the Act of Congress, of March 3, 1839, or otherwise, to cause the removal or expulsion of the British troops which had taken possession of this portion of the territory of Maine, or whether any military posts had been established in Maine, or any other measures of a military nature, adopted preparatory to a just vindication of the honour and the rights of the nation and of Maine. The reply to this inquiry from the Secretary of War through the President was, that the circumstance of the occupation of the territory by British troops had been but recently communicated; and, having been made a subject of remonstrance and so become a matter of discussion between the two Governments, no measures had been taken of the character. referred to under the Act of Congress or otherwise. To the residue of the inquiry it was answered, that no contingency contemplated by the Act of 1839 having occurred, no military measures had been thought necessary; repeating what had been previously stated by the President in his annual message to Congress. The Secretary further stated, that a military reconnoissance had been made in 1838, of the undisputed boundary of Maine, of which the result had been transmitted to the Senate the following session, but that there being no appropriation made, no fortifications were commenced. It will be understood that the other appropriations have expired.

From the parting communication made by our late Chief Magistrate, at the commencement of the present session, the Legislature is informed, that Maine is again subject to the mortification of having fresh troops quartered upon her territory. The causes alleged for this renewed outrage, and the circumstances by which it is attempted to be palliated in the letter of Sir John Harvey are so trivial, as justly observed by Governor Fairfield, to hardly afford a decent pretext for thus adding another to the catalogue of wrongs and injuries which the people of this State have so long been compelled to endure at the hands of the British Government. So sensible was Sir John Harvey himself, we may remark, of the slenderness of this pretence, and of the superfluousness of this further force, that in conveying this information, as he claimed to do with his accustomed frankness, of the recent arrival of a new detachment of Her Majesty's troops at Madawaska, he avowed he had not hesitated to give his opinion at once to the Governor-General that it was unnecessary, and that he had no doubt that the Governor-General, on this suggestion, would forthwith give directions for withdrawing the troops. This communication came dated December 10th last; and the same, together with the Governor's reply, requesting further information upon the subject, were transmitted to the President within a few days after; and the former ex

pressed his full reliance, that if the suggestion of Sir John Harvey to the Governor-General should prove unavailing, the Executive Government of the United States would forthwith take measures for the withdawal or expulsion of these troops from our territory. Since this last period the Legislature has received no official information from any source. Nothing has reached us but rumours from the adjacent provinces, that the military position in question was intended to be maintained; and there has nothing yet come from any quarter to tranquillize and assure us further.

The Committee have gone into these details more fully, in order to place the subject in all its extent before the Legislature, for their consideration at its present session. The Resolves passed the last day of the session, March 23rd, 1839, pledged the power of the State to the protection of its territory up to its extremest limits, and asserted the right of exclusive jurisdiction over the whole extent of it. And they denied the efficacy of any agreement entered into by the Government of the Union to impair her prerogative to be the sole judge of the time and manner of enforcing that right. The State had, however, the guarantee of the General Government at that time, that if it would withdraw her military force from the frontier, the adverse military power, with which it was threatened, should immediately be caused to cease upon the other side. This guarantee the State afterwards accepted: and in consequence of this, and of the agreement to that effect entered into by the Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, Maine did promptly and unhesitatingly withdraw her advanced military force. That pledge has not been performed; or if apparently so for a brief period, it has not been fulfilled; but it has been openly and deliberately violated. We may have been slow in coming to this conviction; but the fact cannot be concealed, and is hardly attempted to be disguised. As the matter now stands, the State is without any barrier, or boundary, against the Provinces of Great Britain, not even where the north line crosses the St. John. Barracks have been erected above that point; boats have been built upon the Lake; troops stationed at different posts, stores and munitions of war collected, constituting an actual military and naval armament; which is at this moment established upon the shores and waters of the Madawaska region, contrary to all the stipulations and mutual engagements of the two Governments. And Maine is compelled to forget, if she can, that all this is done within a precinct specially incorporated by an act of her Legislature, the validity of which is also recognized and confirmed by an Act of Congress.

It may properly be avowed, that Maine may still consider herself to stand pledged for the present, by the course that has been pursued by her authorities under the sanction of the General Government, not to disturb by any active proceedings of her's the British Provincial, that is to say, local possession at Madawaska; while, at the same time, she must be allowed to extend her civil power, for the protection of her territory against devastation, without any limitation as to the sphere of its operation, within the bounds of the Treaty of 1783; but that to suffer a military occupation of any portion of it, is incompatible with her existence and character as an independent State. She may well submit to the moral and self-imposed restraint of forbearing to exercise her given faculties, and to exert her lawful rights up to their full extent; but she cannot, with the same comfort or consistency, yield a silent and unresisting submission to the operation, until it becomes overwhelming, of absolute superior force. She may accord a loyal and becoming obedience to the graver authority of the Union; but she cannot without extreme, unmitigated pain, see any part of her soil subtracted and reduced to exterior colonial subjection; nor can she bear to have a foreign military force planted upon her with any more patience than our fathers could endure the same species of intolerable oppression. She acknowledges faithfully her obligations to the Union, and that she is bound to consult the feelings and opinions of the county, and to make no further movement, moreover, without invoking its aid, or asking its authority. But this is the point at which she unavoidably stands, and her fidelity entitles her to its confidence, and her necessity to its constitutional support.

Now all this, it may be admitted, might be tolerated perhaps by the Union, for the sake of tranquillity, if it was not pregnant with such real danger, and did not involve so much evil in the way of injury and sacrifice,

to the prospects and peace of Maine. Winter, which shuts up the St. Lawrence, and pours hosts of trespassers and marauders into our woods and forests, closes down upon us with an increased pressure from the military power of Great Britain. Between the Government of Canada above, and that of New Brunswick below, we are pressed as between the upper and the nether millstone. We are thus obviously exposed to a double increased damage from our open and unguarded situations upon the borders of these different dependencies upon a distant foreign Government; so far off, and thus situated in regard to us, that "oceans roll and seasons pass between the order and the execution; or possibly the advice and recal. Our territory is now more than made a complete thoroughfare for the passage of British troops; while we have even no projects of national fortifications to protect us any further than Houlton, nearer than at the Forks of the Kennebec, or the mouth of the Mattawamkeag.

Even the military road which was authorized by Cougress so long ago as 1828, to be laid out to the mouth of the Madawaska river, in virtue of what the succeeding President, General Jackson, declared to be an unquestionable right, the exercise of which the American Government would not allow to be restrained by the protest of the Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, but only to be postponed for the time being-as expressed by the then Secretary of State, Mr. Van Buren, to the British Minister, as a proof of forbearance, intended in an amicable spirit of conciliation-has so continued ever since, and it would almost seem to be, indefinitely. The appropriations of 1836 and 1839, by Congress, were suffered to expire; but this authority has only been suspended; and it is for the Executive Government to determine, whether the period has not arrived at which the execution of it ought to be resumed. The present condition of the State of Maine certainly demands it.

The Committee are here induced to omit much they might otherwise be disposed to say on this subject, and in relation to all its immediate and future bearings upon the public peace and welfare; and which they are constrained to do, as well in consequence of the length to which their remarks have already been extended, as from considerations of a serious kind which are not without due weight upon their minds. Perhaps they ought to say more in regard to the neglect of preparations for defence, in our exposed and unprotected position, the necessity of which has long been pointed out and felt, and the power to provide for them, even when put in force, suffered to stand a dead letter. The State of Maine has had its virtue put to the severest test, until even the very length of time that the Government has delayed its duty, and she has been obliged to endure its omission, is liable to be turned against her, and set up as on her part a prescriptive sufferance.

The principal view which the Committee have had in preparing this Report, has been to present a further vindication of the rights and principles of the State in regard to this subject, and to the course which her people and authorities have hitherto pursued, and the position which they now maintain in respect thereto. They would wish not to make a mere appeal to the sympathy and fellow-feeling of her sister States, and to the patriotic sensibility of the people of the United States upon points apart from public right and national honour; but they would be no less desirous to extend it to the justice of England and the judgment of Europe, nay, of the whole world, if so remote a portion of it, as the inhabitants of Maine could hope to have their cause heard before so vast and elevated a tribunal. Nor would they shrink from submitting it to the future judgment of posterity and the final sentence of mankind, upon its real merits, (not as they may have presented them,) when the present age shall have passed away, and the accounts of the present questions shall have all been closed. They would not refuse to commend it to the native "nobleness and manliness of Englishmen,"-to the generosity which was manifested in the last painful effort of separation,—to that magnanimity displayed by the Monarch in proclaiming, as he did, with profound emotion, the great dismemberment of the empire, concerning, that is to say, this long pending question with Great Britain, in reference to the true right of a territory which is and was always ours, infinitely more than it was ever hers; ours, no less in the first place, by the strength of primeval right; ours, also, by the Acts of Crown and Parliament, as well as by our own energies and achievements, when our sires were the loyal subjects of a common Sovereign; ours,

if she still chooses, by the terms of her own free and full assignment at the partition of that empire, originally divided by the ocean; ours, in fine, by the ancient honour of Great Britain, by all the faith of treaties, by the sacred principles of public laws, and eternal truth and justice. There is no wish in this part of the Union for extension of territory; we are content with our own limits. If injustice has heretofore been done us, if justice has not been done us in that respect, or any misfortune has attended the decision of points that have already been determined unfavourably to us, we are disposed to abide by it, and do not now seek to remedy it. We are only solicitous to enjoy the rights and advantages which the laws of nature and nations have secured to us, and to realize the benefit of that condition which Providence seems to have designed for us upon the foundation of State and national independence.

There is one circumstance also, in regard to which your Committee believe that the people of Maine would be willing that their course and principles should not be misunderstood; although they would not be under any solicitude respecting it. It is now a well known fact, not only that Maine has not in any manner intermeddled, but that she has uniformly abstained from any intermixture of her own causes of complaint with those of an exciting nature that have prevailed along further portions of the frontier, and has faithfully kept aloof from mingling her concerns with other distant and disturbing questions with Great Britain. And this, although she has one interest of great importance, much involved in the present issue, which has not been distinctly developed in the immediate connection with it. The circumstance above alluded to, not perfectly perceived and even at first distrusted, was afterwards freely confessed by that vigilant and virtuous observer of our course, Sir John Harvey, who will retire from his station, when he shall be called away by his Sovereign, with the esteem of the people of Maine. Although inclined at first to credit opposite surmises, he soon became convinced of the truth, and, with his characteristic candour, communicated it to his own Government. Nor is it at all unlikely, that a persuasion of this integrity of our purpose entered into the exercise of that high prudence and proper discretion, by which his judgment was determined in a delicate and critical emergency. But while it may be well, it should be understood that Maine has not been disposed to compromit her cause with any foreign matter, your Committee would be far from wishing to enter into any vindication upon this point, or be anxious that the State should set itself apart from the just and common feeling of kindred humanity which pervades this vast hemisphere.

Resolutions of the Legislative assemblies of some of our sister States have reached us now, or lately, in response to our own former proceedings and resolves, and have been referred to this Committee. Those of the State of Indiana were transmitted at the late adjourned session, being a special one for the general revision of the laws, and may be deemed to have been postponed to the present, not having been before printed; and, having been recalled from the files, they will, with your permission, form part of this report. The Committee accordingly refer to them with feelings of mingled gratitude and pride. These Resolves of Indiana are echoes of those of Ohio, formerly received, which they recite, and which likewise recited, in the spirit of that immortal ordinance upon which the original constitution of the whole north-west territory (once a single government) was framed, the grounds of our just territorial right, and the indefeasible character of our title to the soil of the State and nation.

The Indiana Resolutions cherish the hope, that in the adjustment of this question of our national boundary, the integrity of our soil, and the national honour may be preserved inviolate, without an appeal to arms. They further express, that they highly approve the efforts made by the now late President of the United States to avert from the country the calamities of war. Yet ever preferring honourable war rather than dishonourable peace, in case of unavoidable collision in settling the pending dispute, they join with Ohio in the declaration she had made, and the generous oblation of her whole means and resources to the authorities of the Union in sustaining our rights and honour.

The Resolutions of the General Assembly of Alabama, transmitted at the