(No. III.) The joint Address of the Council and House of Assembly of New Brunswick respecting the Boundary between that Province and the United States. "TO THE KING'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY, "The joint Address of your Majesty's Council and House of Assembly, of the Province of New Brunswick, in General Assembly, "Most humbly sheweth, "THAT the Council and House of Assembly view with great surprise and concern the recent attempts made by the Governments of Massachusetts and Maine to disturb the possession of your Majesty, and the jurisdiction of this Province, in a Tract of Country on the Saint John and Madawaska Rivers. "They beg leave humbly to represent to your Majesty that the Inhabitants of this Tract of Country, so far as it is settled, are, with the exception of a few Persons, who have lately become Settlers, French Acadians, and their descendants, the first of whom removed thither from the lower parts of the Country, soon after the Treaty of 1783, and the immediately subsequent erection of this Province, under the full faith that they were planting themselves upon British Territory. That grants of their lands were at the beginning of the settlement made to the Settlers under the Great Seal of this Province. That Militia Companies were organized in this settlement by General CARLETON, the first Governor of this Province, at so early a period as the year 1786. That Magistrates and Parish Officers have been from time to time appointed there under the laws and Institutions of this Province, and the process of your Majesty's Courts in this Province has uniformly run thither. That the Inhabitants vote at elections for the County of York in this Province, and that all the powers of sovereignty and jurisdiction have in fact been exercised by the constituted authorities of this Province, throughout the whole of this Tract of Country bordering on the Saint John and Madawaska Rivers, in the same manner as in any other part of the Province without question or disturbance quite up to the period of the Treaty of Ghent in the year 1814, and from thence until the recent attempts at interference, which it is the present object of the Council and House of Assembly to represent to your Majesty. It is well known that this Tract of Country is included in a claim to a much larger extent made by the Government of the United States, before the Commission that was established under the fifth article of the Treaty of Ghent, for settling the Boundary in this quarter, and was also claimed on the part of your Majesty, before the same Commission, as belonging to your Majesty. It would be out of place on the present occasion to enter upon the grounds upon which the claim on the part of your Majesty may be supported, but as in some official documents which have emanated from the Governments of Maine and Massachusetts, it seems to be held out that your Majesty is claiming a part of the Territory of those States, to the cession of which their consent must be obtained, it is proper to remark that the question of right between the two Governments must be determined by the Provisions of the Treaty of 1783, which prescribes the line of demarcation, and that if what your Majesty claims as your just and undoubted right according to the true construction of that Treaty be finally confirmed, the Tract of Country now in question does not and never did de jure form a part of Massachusetts or of Maine, as de facto it is not and never has been in the possession or under the jurisdiction of either of those States. "The Council and House of Assembly conceive that upon every principle of Justice, and from a due regard to the friendly understanding happily subsisting between the two Countries, the possession and actual ex"ercise of jurisdiction, which existed at the time of making the Treaty of Ghent, the instrument which provided for a decision of any conflicting claims between the two nations in this quarter, should have remained sacred and inviolate until that decision may take place. |