time provinces. Not long after, the British representatives, in a conference with the representatives from the United States, maintained that the line claimed by this country, interrupting the communications between Halifax and Quebec, never could have been in contemplation by the negotiators of the treaty of 1783; and that this view pervaded all the communications between the plenipotentiaries of the two countries at Ghent. It was notorious, he said, that at that time different opinions existed as to a boundary line from the head of the St. Croix. This was "so clearly known and admitted by the American plenipotentiaries" that they offered, as a preamble to their fourth article, these words: "Whereas, neither that part of the highlands lying due north from the source of the river St. Croix, and designated in the former treaty of peace between the two powers as the northwest angle of Nova Scotia, nor the northwesternmost head of the Connecticut river, has yet been ascertained," etc. In other words, the point was pressed by Lord Ashburton that the boundary question was a matter in dispute long before the year 1814, and his only object in referring to it, he said, "was to correct an error that had arisen, which seemed to have been circulated to such an extent as to make some refutation helpful to any attempt to an equitable settlement."

As to the present position of Great Britain, Lord Ashburton had this to say: "The territory in controversy is, for that portion at least which is likely to come to Great Britain by any amicable settlement, as worthless for any purposes of habitation oi cultivation as probably any tract of equal size on the habitable globe; and if it were not for the obvious circumstance of its connecting the British North American provinces, I believe I might venture to say that, whatever might have been the merit of our case, we should long since have given up the controversy, and willingly have made the sacrifice to the wishes of a country with which it is so much our interest, as it is our desire, to maintain the most perfect harmony and good will.'

1House Executive Documents, 27th Congress, Third Session, II, 31–34.

The first of the official interviews between Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton was held on June 18th. At this conference, Mr. Webster requested Lord Ashburton to prepare a formal statement of his views with reference to the negotiations and to the expectations of his government. This Lord Ashburton did in a letter dated June 21st. The case, he said, was one for an agreement by compromise; and he added, as his own conviction, that it was the intentions of the parties to the treaty of peace of 1783 to leave to Great Britain, by their description of the boundaries, the whole of the waters of the river St. John. As to the principles and conditions on which he thought the compromise should be attempted, Lord Ashburton referred to the intentions of the framers of the treaty of 1783 as recorded in the preamble to the provisional articles: "Whereas reciprocal advantages and mutual conveniences are found by experience to form the only permanent foundation of peace and friendship between States," etc. He considered it desirable, therefore, that each government should retain under its jurisdiction such inhabitants as for some time had been so living, and to whom a transfer of allegiance might be distressing. In justification of the necessity he felt for insisting on a line departing to a considerable extent from the line of the river St. John, he referred to the French settlement at Madawaska as originally formed from the French establishments in Acadia and continued uninterruptedly under French or British dominion. The inhabitants there, he said, had professed great apprehension of being surrendered by Great Britain and had lately sent an earnest petition to the queen, deprecating such a surrender. There would be evident hardship, even cruelty, in separating this now happy and contented people, to say nothing of the bickering and probable collisions, by adopting a line which under other circumstances would be satisfactory to his government. Indeed, he would consider such a separation a harsh proceeding. It would be an abandonment of the great object which should constantly be held in view the fixing of such a boundary as would be the least likely to occasion future strife.1

1House Executive Documents, 27th Congress, Third Session, II, 31-34.

In a lengthy reply to Lord Ashburton's notes of June 13th and 21st, Mr. Webster, July 8th, called attention to the fact that both houses of Congress, to say nothing of the sentiments of the governments and people of the states more directly interested, had asserted the validity of the American claims by a unanimity experienced on few other subjects; and he added the reasons that had produced in the country the conviction that a boundary line could be run according to its description in the treaty of 1783. Without considering the arguments and proofs sustaining these reasons, he referred Lord Ashburton to a paper prepared by the commissioners from Maine, "which," he said, "strongly presents the subject on other grounds and in other lights."

Referring to Lord Ashburton's statement in his letter of June 21st, that the St. John River for some distance upward from its intersection by the line due north from the source of the St. Croix would be a convenient boundary, Mr. Webster assented; but how far, and to which of the sources of this river should this line extend, was a very important question. Above Madawaska, the river turns south, leaving far to the north the line of communication between Canada and New Brunswick. To a line south of the St. John, Mr. Webster saw insurmountable objections. A river line, he said, is always clear and comprehensible. If we depart from it, where shall we find another line equally natural? "I cannot hold out the expectation to your lordship that anything south of the river can be yielded."

As to the further extension of the boundary, Mr. Webster said that the United States, having in view proper equivalents, would not object to a line beginning at the middle of the main channel of the St. John, where the river is intersected by the due north line from the source of the St. Croix; thence to a point three miles westerly of the mouth of the Madawaska; thence by a straight line to the outlet of Long Lake; thence, westerly by a direct line to the point where the river St. Francis empties itself into the lake called Pohenagamook; thence, continuing in the same direct line to the highlands dividing the waters falling into