332 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Oswald and Strachey were the British negotiators of the treaty of 
1783, and this letter of Addington’s, practically granting the technical 
correctness of the American claim, lays the blame for the (to Great 
Britain) unfortunate boundary upon the negotiators, a judgment 
which has been expressed by other students later, but which seems to 
me, as elsewhere shown,’ not fully justified, for the boundaries were 
really predetermined in this region by the old relations of Massachu- 
setts and Nova Scotia.? 
The following letter of Addington to Chipman, March 31, 1829, 
seems to refer to the argument on whether the Bay of Fundy is part of 
the Atlantic Ocean. 
“TI have decidedly determined on retaining the whole of the argu- 
ment on geographical practice, in relation to Bays and Gulphs as believing 
it to tend strongly to illustrate the question in a clear and simple manner 
and to diminish the apparent severity of what must seem to any man at first 
Sight a paradox.”’ 
As would be expected from the ability of the authors of these state- 
ments, and from the thoroughness with which the whole subject had 
been investigated and discussed, the statements are remarkably strong 
presentations of the respective cases. A summary of their contents is 
given by Moore (“Arbitrations,” 100-119), and it is needless to attempt 
such a summary here, the more especially since, so far as I can find, they 
present on neither side anything substantially different from what had 
already been adduced by the respective agents under the preceding com- 
mission. But it is not to be supposed that they are simply repetitions of 
the arguments of the agents ; they are, rather, independent arguments 
based upon the same data. These statements were printed in small folio 
form, but never published, and, as Moore says,* but a few copies are 

1 Earlier, page 304, and later, page 353. 
? With this, as further showing the attitude of the British in private 
towards the case they were called upon to defend, the following letter by 
Tiarks, the British Astronomer, and one of the surveyors and explorers in 
connection with the Commission, written to Chipman, Jan. 25, 1826, is of 
interest. It is among the Chipman papers in possession of Mr. Raymond. 
“The N.W. angle of N.S. is of the greatest consequence to the Provinces 
and I am of opinion that Col. Barclay is right that securing the latter is 
worth sacrificing the others [points of boundary in dispute elsewhere]. 
Much depends of course on the view which one takes of our argument on 
that point. I think it strong—and just in its nature, but—by no means 
absolutely perfect. It has its defect, but the Treaty contains several geogra- 
phical blunders and we may say it contains one at the N.W. angle of N.S.” 
3 TI have the good fortune to possess, bound up in cne volume, perfect 
copies of both of the American and both of the British statements together 
with a copy of the original edition of the award of the King of the Nether- 
lands, and I possess also one of the original Ms. maps on which the award 
was represented. 
