144 Ncrlh-Easl Boundary of America. [FEB. 



I reach the head of the Connecticut ; and thus I conceive I fulfil the 

 intention of the treaty. 



No, no, replies the British commissioner. To the equity of this course 

 we can never submit. It is in the very teeth, if not of the words of the 

 treaty, yet of the principles and implications of the treaty. It is a first 

 principle of the treaty, that of each river which falls to each country, the 

 whole, from source to mouth, shall belong to the same country. This 

 principle is not only obviously implied in the treaty, but it has been 

 explicitly admitted as conducive "to the reciprocal advantage and mutual 

 convenience of both nations ' " to exclude partial advantages, those seeds 

 of discord 1 ' Now in pursuing your north line, before you have gone fifty 

 miles, you cross the river St. J ohn ; and, regardless of that impediment, 

 you still advance along a beautiful and well-wooded country, of gentle 

 undulations of hill and dale, crossing again other streams that fall into 

 the Chaleur, a branch of the St. Lawrence gulf, nor indeed stop till you 

 come within a few miles of the St. Lawrence ; and then, at last, but not 

 till then, you stop : because then, and not before, you arrive at the banks of 

 a stream which falls into the St. Lawrence. We go with you, in your 

 line till you come to the St. John ; but beyond that point we budge not, 

 We say there are highlands, before you come to that point lands 

 sufficiently elevated to be regarded as those contemplated by the treaty. 

 But beyond the St. John we budge not. You can have no legitimate 

 pretence for going beyond. The St. John's is our river ; it falls into the 

 Atlantic to be sure, but within our territory ; and it was manifestly the origi- 

 nal intention of the treaty, and indeed its admitted principle, that the 

 country which has the mouth of a river shall have its source. By crossing 

 the stream, and attempting to go beyond that point, you cut off our stream, 

 and thus violate the principles of the treaty. 



No, says the American, the words of the treaty are expressly in our 

 favour ; the rivers which flow into the Atlantic are ours ; the rivers that 

 flow into the St. Lawrence are yours. This, replies the Briton, is but a 

 quibble. The St. Croix is your eastern boundary ; you can have no 

 pretence to any thing more easterly. The mouth of the St. John is more 

 easterly, and in our admitted territory; and by the principles of the 

 treaty, and the received interpretation of it, we claim the source as well 

 as the mouth. 



It is seriously to be regretted that the terms of the treaty so specifically 

 marked highlands as the boundary ; but then it should be remembered, that 

 highlands are not the only mark by which that boundary was to be 

 determined. The sources and mouths of rivers were manifestly intended 

 to go together. The boundary was not to cut through any stream ; but 

 the boundary drawn by the American does cut through many streams. 

 The treaty gives two directions, hills arid rivers ; if the hills, as is alleged, 

 fail, the rivers do not ; and where there are two conditions, the failure of 

 the one does not surely involve the annihilation of the other. If we give 

 up the highlands, which we do not, but for the sake of argument, we 

 should abide by the principle of alloting mouths and sources of rivers to 

 the same country, and that principle will bring the matter very much to 

 the same thing. It will not suffer the American to protract his north line 

 across the St. John's; and observe, a line drawn from the head of the Con- 

 necticut to the point of the St. John's, when that north line comes, will 

 pass, a considerable space, along acknowledged highlands, cutting between 

 the streams that flow right and left ; and we see not why the direction of 



