The translation from which they have thought proper to select two errors for animadversion, was one inserted to an Appendix to a Report made upon the subject of the Boundary by a Committee of the Legislature of Maine, in the year 1828. This Report and Appendix were reprinted by order of the Senate of the United States, and again printed, together with many documents connected with the Boundary, by order of the House of Representatives of the Union for the information of those bodies. Hence it is that this translation is called by the Commissioners an official one. The errors contained in it, if they deserve so serious a name, are only two. The Commissioners complain that versus septentrionem" is rendered "to the north," instead of "towards the north," and that the words "proximam navium stationem" is rendered by "first bay," and not by "nearest road," neither of which is a greater variation from the sense than their own translation of the words "per maris oras littorales" "by the gulf shores," instead of "sea shores," and neither of which deserved to bring on an attack upon the integrity and good faith of the American Government.

But had the errors discovered in this paper been ten times greater than they are, the Government of the United States never should have been made accountable for it by persons who had under their own eye the translation of it, for which it had assumed a direct responsibility before the King of Holland. In that translation the words complained of are rendered exactly as the Commissioners desire them. That they had no knowledge of it is impossible to believe, inasmuch as they quote from the American statement, in which it is contained, a passage which is found upon the very next leaf to the one in which it is inserted. And even without this accidental proof, it could not for a moment be supposed, that persons who designed to present an elaborate review of the American pretensions, as they are called, would not make themselves perfectly familiar with the only volume extant, in which they are set forth at large under the sanction of the Government. What then, your Committee repeat, must be thought of the intentions of individuals who, with the knowledge of all the facts in the case, set their hands to a deliberate perversion of them, merely for the sake of casting a slur upon the honour of a foreign country with which they are in dispute?

The grant to Sir William Alexander is important, as elucidating the origin of the description of the Boundary, as it now stands in the Treaty, but not for any other reason. Your Committee are clearly of opinion, that it does describe the line from the head waters of the St. Croix, as a due north line, and that this construction uniformly put upon it, from the earliest date down to this day, is the natural and just one. It will be perceived, however, by reference to the words, that the territory granted extended on the north to the shores of the St. Lawrence, which is a variation from the present Boundary of Nova Scotia. How that variation was made will be seen in the sequel. For at this time it appears expedient to follow the British Commissioners into that field where they have exhibited their disingenuous policy most strikingly, that is, in the discussion of the Massachusetts title on the west side of the disputed Boundary, now making part of the State of Maine.

On the 12th of March, 1663, Charles II. made a grant to his brother, the Duke of York, of a territory thus described :

"All that part of the main land of England, beginning at a certain place called or known by the name of St. Croix, adjoining to New Scotland in America, and from thence extending along the sea coast, unto a certain place called Pemaquin or Pemaquid, and so up the river thereof to the furthest head of the same as it tendeth northward, and extending from thence to the river of Kennebec, and so up, by the shortest course to the river of Canada northwards."

This is the country which was formerly known under the name of Sagadahoc, and there had always been some question as to the title, between the French, who claimed it as part of Acadia, and the English. Yet, after the Treaty of Breda, in 1667, when Acadia was restored to France by Great Britain, which had taken possession of it during the war, the Duke of York obtained a confirmation of his grant in 1674. And it remained under his authority until, by his accession to the throne, it became vested again in the Crown. Hence it is evident, that it was not then considered as a part of the restored territory.

Your Committee have now reached what they regard to be the most disingenuous suppression of the Report. The new charter of Massachusetts, granted by William and Mary, in 1691, was made to include the Province of Maine, this territory of Sagadahoc, and Nova Scotia itself, as follow:

The colony of the Massachusetts Bay and colony of New Plymouth, the Province of Maine, the territory called Acadia or Nova Scotia, and all that tract of land lying between the said territories of Nova Scotia and the said Province of Maine."

These words are truly quoted by the Commissioners. Then follow in their Report the terms of the grant to the Duke of York, (already quoted by your Committee,) in order to explain what is referred to as "that tract of land," &c. Immediately afterwards is inserted one of the reservations of the charter.

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Provided, alwaise, that the said lands, islelands, or any premises by thê said letters patent, intended or meant to be granted, were not then actually possessed or inhabited by any other Christian prince or state."

Three pages forward (p. 18) another reservation is quoted, as follows:

"By the charter of 1691, Massachusetts was forbid to issue grants in the Sagahadoc territory; it declared them not to be

"Of any force, validity or effect, until we, our heirs and successors, shall have signified our or their approbation of the same.'"

Now it appeared singular, to say the least of it, that by the peculiar arrangement of these paragraphs, the general phrase of "the Sagadahoc territory" should have been made to refer back to the old grant of the Duke of York, with which the present charter had no sort of connexion, and the terms of that charter itself, which very exactly describe the territory to which the clause of limitation was to apply, were wholly overlooked. But your Committee had no cause for surprise when they perceived what those terms were. The provision of the charter so disingenuously quoted, runs thus:

"That no grant or grants of any lands, lying or extending from the river of Sagahadoc to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Canada rivers, and to the main sea northward and westward, to be made or passed by the Governor or General Assembly of our said province, be of any force," &c.

Very unfortunately for the Commissioners, these words marked in italic letters cut off their argument, that Nova Scotia extended, by a north-west line, to the Chaudière River, and hence, that the subsequent cession of that territory, by Great Britain, back to France, in 1697, shut out Massachusetts from the St. Lawrence; hence they determined to suppress them without ceremony, and by this mode of proceeding, and by this alone, have they been able to place in their recapitulation the following proposition :

"VII. It is shown that the charter of William and Mary, of 1691, does not extend the grant of the Sagadahoc country to the St. Lawrence, but only grants the lands between the said country or territory of Nova Scotia and the said river of Sagadahoc, or any part thereof;' so that the extreme interpretation of this grant would require, for the northern limit, a line passing between the head water of the St. Croix River and the source of the Sagahadoc or Kennebec River, which would nearly coincide with a line passing between the western waters of the St. Croix and the Highlands which divide the Kennebec from the Chaudière."

Upon similar principles of quotation to those here used, it would be perfectly easy to show almost any proposition to be drawn from almost any book.

But this is not all. It is well known that Nova Scotia was restored to France in 1697, as already stated, and was, therefore, separated from Massachusetts. But in order to prove that her title to Sagahadoc also was shaken by

act, the British Commissioners quote an admission, as they call it, made in the official American statement, drawn up for the arbitration of the King of Holland. The true passage reads as follows:

"Great Britain, however, agreed by the Treaty of Ryswick of the 20th September, 1697, to restore to France all countries, islands, forts, and colonies, wheresoever situated, which the French did possess before the declaration of war.' Acadia or Nova Scotia being clearly embraced by those expressions, and being thus severed from the British dominions, the clause of the Massachusetts charter, which annexed that territory to Massachusetts, was virtually repealed, and became a nullity. The understanding of the British Government of the extent of that restitution, will be found in the following sentence of a letter from the Lords of the Board of Trade, dated 30th October, 1700, to the Earl of Bellamont, the Governor of Massachusetts, viz.: 'as to the boundaries, we have always insisted, and shall insist upon the English right as far as the River St. Croix.'"

This extract is quoted in the Report as an admission, only because the very significant sentence in italic letters is utterly omitted. A sentence which precludes at once all question respecting the opinion of the grantor of the charter, of the extent of the cession. And it is against that grantor alone that the United States have at this time their right to defend. Your Committee must be allowed here to express the opinion that a cause must be believed to be weak indeed which is found to need support of this kind. It can scarcely be thought that Her Majesty's Commissioners who drew up this Report could have had much confidence in the natural strength of the position of Great Britain, when they strive so sedulously to keep out of view every trace of authority that bears against it.

Your Committee do not deem it expedient to go into the history of the transitions from British to French anthority, and back again, which the country called Acadia underwent, for the simple reason that, however strongly they might furnish arguments upon questions when agitated between the British and the French Government, they can have but a secondary and trifling application to those between Great Britain and the United States. But they would be understood as protesting against the right of the first of these Powers to vary its tone according to no principle, but simply as its interest may dictate. It is not fair for the same Government to insist in 1700 upon claiming against France the territory as far east as the St. Croix, when it held jurisdiction only on the west side of that river, and to insist that the moment its position is changed, and it stands to the United States in the very position that France held relatively to itself, the old claim of France to go to the Penobscot which it once strenuously resisted should inure to its present benefit.

The Treaty of Paris signed on the 10th of February, 1763, to which Great Britain, France, and Spain were the parties, secured to the first-named final and undisputed authority over all the territories in the vicinity of the land now in question. Canada and Nova Scotia fell into the same hands which controlled Massachusetts and the other North American colonies. Of consequence the duty devolved upon the British Government of organizing the possessions newly acquired in some definite shape under its authority, and of defining the limits between them and such as it formerly held. That duty was performed by a proclamation issued under the King's name on the 7th of October of this year. And in that proclamation the new Government of Quebec was declared to be

"Bounded on the Labrador coast, by the River St. John*, and from thence by a line drawn from the head of that river through the Lake St. John to the south end of the Lake Nipissin, from whence the said line crossing the River St. Lawrence and the Lake Champlain, in forty-five degrees of north latitude, passing along the High Lands which divide the rivers that empty themselves into the said River St. Lawrence from those which fall into the sea, and also along the north coast of the Bay des Chaleurs and the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Cape Rosières," &c.

Now that part of the description thus made, which relates to the line sepa*This is another and a different River from the St. John that flows into the Bay of Fundy.

rating Quebec from Nova Scotia and Massachusetts, is the only one of importance to the present question. By that it will be perceived a material variation was made from all preceding deeds, by which Nova Scotia and Massachusetts, which had formerly extended to the St. Lawrence, were now shut out from it just so far as the Highlands referred to might happen to lie on the south side of its bank. And this variation is admitted by Her Majesty's Commissioners to furnish the first traces of the language used in the Treaty of 1783.

The questions immediately occur: "Was not this a deliberate change made by the British Government for some specific purpose?" And if so, "what could have been the nature of that purpose?" And very fortunately your Committee are not without a clue to the explanation of them both.

Almost at the same moment that this proclamation, defining the boundaries of Québec in the north was dated, a Commission of Governor of Nova Scotia, the adjoining province on the south, was issued to Montague Wilmot, containing a description of its boundaries. They are as follows:

"To the northward, our said province shall be bounded by the southern boundary of our Province of Quebec, as far as the western extremity of the Bay des Chaleurs. To the eastward by the said Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, &c., &c.

"To the westward, although our said province hath anciently extended and doth of right extend as far as the River Pentagonet or Penobscot, it shall be bouuded by a line drawn from Cape Sable across the entrance of the Bay of Fundy to the mouth of the River St. Croix, by the said river to its source, and by a line drawn due north from thence to the southern boundary of our colony of Quebec."

Two things are remarkable in this Commission: the first, a variation of the words from those contained in the old grant to Sir William Alexander, by the entire omission of the direction "towards the north," in describing the line from Cape Sable to the mouth of the St. Croix, and by the substitution of the words, “a line drawn due north," for "towards the north," in the last part; the second, the insertion of that saving clause by which the old French claim, that Nova Scotia extended beyond the St. Croix to the Penobscot, was kept up. It is not probable that any of this language was adopted without a reason.

But when your Committee turn from this commission to those of five successive governors who came after Mr. Wilmot, and perceive that, although the general provisions are exactly the same in all, this little saving clause, as marked in italic letters, is entirely omitted, it appears to them plain enough that this omission is an indicative of some marked design as was the original insertion. The great difficulty in the way is to know, at this remote period, the precise motive of this singular variation. And it is scarcely probable that any one could ever divined it, if it had not been for the discovery of a passage in a letter from Jaspar Mauduit, agent of Massachusetts Bay, to the Secretary of said province, dated London, 9th June, 1764, which fully explains the cause of the whole proceeding. It runs as follows: :

"Sir,-It is with pleasure that I now write to inform the General Court, that their several grants of lands to the east of Penobscot, are in a fair way of being confirmed.

"Mr. Jackson and I have sought all opportunities of bringing this business forward; but the Board of Trade has been so much engaged, that they could not before attend to it. In the course of the affair the chief things insisted on were, that the Lords, notwithstanding the opinion formerly given, are still disposed to think the right of the province doubtful as to lands between Penobscot and St. Croix, because the case was misstated to the Attorney and SolicitorGeneral, and that, whatever be the determination on this head, yet the Lords think that the province can claim no right to the lands on the River St. Lawrence, because the bounds of the charter are from Nova Scotia to the River Sagadahoc; so that this right cannot extend above the head of that river. That, however, if the province will pass an act, empowering their Agent to cede to the Crown all pretence of right or title they may claim under their charter to the lands on the River St. Lawrence, destined by the royal proclamation to form part of the Government of Quebec; the Crown will then waive all further dispute

concerning lands as far as St. Croix, and from the sea-coast of the Bay of Fundy to the bounds of the Province of Quebec, reserving to itself only the right of approbation as before. Mr. Jackson and I were both of us of opinion, that the narrow tract of land, which lies beyond the sources of all your rivers, and is watered by those which run into the River of St. Lawrence, could not be an object of any great consequence to you, though it is absolutely necessary to the Crown, to preserve the continuity of the Government of Quebec, and that therefore it could not be for your interest to have the confirmation of those grants retarded upon that account.""

From this very satisfactory explanation, your Committee think it may clearly be inferred,

1. That the variation in the boundary of Quebec, so as to include the south bank of the St. Lawrence, was deemed by the British Government absolutely

necessary.

2. That the great obstacle in the way of such variation consisted in the claim of the Province of Massachussetts to extend her limits to that river.

3. That in order to bring about an inclination on the part of Massachusetts to cede her claim to go to the St. Lawrence, it was deemed advisable to revive the old French title now vested in Great Britain through the acquisition of Acadia to the lands of Sagadahoc.

4. That a compromise was afterwards made, by which Great Britain, in consideration of the lands on the south side of the St. Lawrence, claimed by Massachusetts, being ceded without dispute to Quebec, agreed to waive all further question respecting the jurisdiction of Massachusetts as far east as the St. Croix.

5. That the evidence of the establishment of such a compromise consists of the Proclamation of 1763 further confirmed by the Quebec Act of 1774, on the one side, and the omission of the saving clause in the Commission of all the governors of Nova Scotia subsequent to 1763 on the other.

6. That the land thus ceded by Massachusetts was considered by the agents of the parties at the time as a narrow tract of land, and of no great consequence.

Yet directly in the face of all this, Her Majesty's Commissioners now pretend that the Proclamation of 1763 took at one grasp a territory extending more than a hundred miles on the south side of the river, and that this narrow tract of land, of no great consequence to be ceded, is an immense territory, watered by the St. John and its tributaries, larger than the present State of Massachusetts.

If the whole of these proceeding of 1763 and 1764 be considered entire, your Committee think they will show that the British Government at that time being stimulated by the recent acquisition of Quebec, did deliberately and intentionally, and with their assent, make a distinct repartition of the several provinces under their jurisdiction, so that the boundaries of each might thereafter be perfectly established, and no unsettled claims be longer agitated between them. The boundaries of Massachusetts, therefore, at the period of the Revolution, were admitted by these acts of the Government to be those described in her charter of 1691, modified only by her tacit assent to those terms of the Proclamation of 1763, which shut her out from the River St. Lawrence. The British Government is therefore estopped, by her free and unconstrained assent to those boundaries in 1783 as the same that were acknowledged by her in 1763, from ever going back into the history of ancient titles, French or English, to rake up matter with which to defend her present claim.

The British Commissioners of Survey, finding themselves somewhat embarrassed by the uniform tenor of the ancient maps of the Disputed Territory, all of which favour the American demarcation of the boundary, have, with commendable industry, turned their attention to the means of counteracting this influence. The result has been the discovery in the British Museum, of an old map, by an Italian named Coronelli, published in 1689. And as it happened that this old map marked a curved line of separation, which could be made to correspond, in a degree, with the position assumed by them, these gentlemen very gravely bring it forward as an important part of their case. It is melancholy to see the nature of the devices to which they stoop in defence of the British position. This map, such as it is, places Nova Scotia upon the west side, instead of the