[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 329 
of the character of the negotiators of the treaty, of the legal bound- 
aries of Nova Scotia, Massachusetts and Quebec, when all were under 
one government, there seems no doubt that the negotiators did 
choose the old line between Massachusetts and Nova Scotia and hence 
had to run the boundary as the Americans have always claimed. 
It is a fact that the boundary between Massachusetts and Nova Scotia 
did, in pre-revolutionary times extend to these highlands. This was 
through no virtue or merit of Massachusetts nor the reward of any 
exertion of hers, but purely the result of the way in which the 
boundaries happened to be drawn by the authorities at a time when 
both were under the same government, and when it appeared to 
matter very little to which of the two provinces of the Empire this 
small portion of unsettled wilderness belonged. In other words, it was 
a pure piece of luck for Massachusetts that at the time of the revolu- 
tion her boundaries did extend so far north. It turned out, however, 
that this luck-boundary of Massachusetts, of no particular consequence 
before the revolution, became of immense consequence to Great 
Britain after it, for it happened to cut across the invaluable line of 
communication between two of her remaining provinces, and, indeed, 
for a part of the year, across the only communication of one of them 
with Great Britain. The territory in question, therefore, while of 
very slight value to Massachusetts, who had there no settlers and no 
interests, was of immediate and immense importance to Great Britain. 
Great Britain then hoped to secure a readjustment in this region for 
an equivalent elsewhere, but Massachusetts showed from the very 
start that she intended to insist upon her pound of flesh. The con- 
sideration of the great value of the region to Great Britain for her 
communication from province to province, and its comparative 
worthlessness to her, weighed not in the least with Massachusetts, 
nor would it weigh with any other nation of the time, nor with any 
nation to-day; for nations, in their dealings with one another are not 
guided by the commendable Christian sentiments expressed in the 
preambles to their treaties. All of the men interested in this sub- 
ject in New Brunswick, and the British government itself down to 
1814, appear to have taken it as a matter of course that so anomalous 
an arrangement from the point of view of convenience could be in 
some way adjusted by negotiation on the basis of quid pro quo. But 
all such hope was dispelled by the preliminaries to the Treaty of 
Ghent, and it became evident that if Great Britain was to preserve 
her interests in this corner, it must be by her wits. With nations the 
end usually justifies the means, and here was a case in which the end 
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