[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 289 
is either in the whole, or with the exception of a mere point, beyond the 
distance of six leagues. (Boundary MS.) 
The American agent responded in a memorial of 459 pages. So 
voluminous are some of these memorials in proportion to their actual 
substance that one sometimes suspects that they were not actually 
intended to be read or listened to in detail, but were to create an 
impression of bigness and importance, and to secure the benefit of 
the doubt which a fair-minded and good-natured auditor nearly 
always grants a pleader when his case is not fully understood. At 
all events many of these boundary documents are appallingly and 
uselessly diffiuse, and it is noticeable that as a rule, the weaker cause’ 
produces the most voluminous arguments, perhaps because language 
is only a fairly efficient instrument for concealing facts. The 
American agent follows up the argument of his earlier claim, main- 
taining at great length that the grant of Alexander was invalid, 
that as Nova Scotia was annexed to Massachusetts by the Charter 
of 1691, all the Passamaquoddy islands came then into her posses- 
sion, that Nova Scotia was not again formally separated from 
Massachusetts but was first described as a separate province in the 
commission to a governor in 1719, and that in it and subsequent docu- 
ments the islands were not formally restored to Nova Scotia and 
hence they remained a part of Massachusetts and do not come within 
the exception made by the treaty. He denies of course that the 
Nova Scotia of 1621 and of 1783 were identical, and maintains that 
Nova Scotia after its disappearance as a province in 1691 only 
become legally a province again in 1783. He makes also much of 
an involved argument as to the relation of the Virginia Charter 
to the Alexander Charter, to the eifect that all of these 
islands were included in the Virginia Charter of 1606, that the 
charter of 1621 took away a part of the earlier grant, but 
that all not specifically included in that charter remained to New 
England, that these islands were not specifically included and hence 
remained to New England. These labored and involved discussions, 
with their great emphasis upon intentions and the elaborate mean- 
ings attributed to omissions, have a familiar ring to one who has 
followed the boundary discussions so far—they are the methods of 
the special pleader doing his best in the defense of a weak case.t 
After hearing these arguments the commission adjourned to 
Sept. 25 to allow the agents time to prepare their rejoinders, which 
were then presented. That of the British agent, of 260 folio pages 


? Yet Austin’s arguments strike me as handled with great ability—it was 
the weakness of his case which was at fault. 
