348 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Brunswick is in the Crown Land Office at Fredericton! They form, of 
course, the originals of our present maps for the region they cover. 
Reviewing the boundary given by the Ashburton Treaty to New 
Brunswick, [ am of opinion that, from the point of view of the imme- 
diate legal rights in the case, it was a favorable one for Great Britain. 
It is unfortunate, however, that the whole of the Madawaska settlement 
could not have been saved to New Brunswick in order that this compact 
and homogeneous settlement need not have been divided between two 
governments. From the broadest point of view, however, that is, from 
the point of view of the most natural boundary, and the one which would 
be chosen by a disinterested arbitrator thoroughly knowing the country 
and unhampered by historical conditions, the boundary is a very bad one. 
The intrusion of Maine between New Brunswick and Quebec is not 
merely a sentimental disadvantage, but a very practical one as the history 
of railroad building in Canada will show. The most natural boundary 
would have been one formed by the extension of the boundary of the par- 
allel of 45° to the sea, in other words, the old northern boundary of 
Virginia in 1606 (map No. 30). If, when Nova Scotia was set off out of 
the New England grant of 1620, the old northern boundary of that grant 
had been restored instead of establishing a new boundary, the 
St. Croix, it is very probable that the parallel of 45° would have been 
the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick to-day. But such 
speculations are more interesting than important. The question is 
closed, and we hope forever. May a question of their boundaries never 
again disturb the friendship of these two great and kindred nations. 
Tur NEw BRUNSWICK JUDGMENT UPON THE ASHBURTON TREATY. 
The Ashburton Treaty was received with well-nigh universal con- 
demnation by all parties. In New Brunswick this feeling persists to 
the present day. Not only do most prominent men of the province, 
whenever the subject comes up in conversation, vigorously assert that 
the province was robbed of her rights by that treaty, but the same state- 
ment is made from time to time by public speakers and by the news- 
papers? It may be said that this view is well-nigh universal in the 
province. Few, if any, of these speakers, however, have ever examined 
into the subject in the least, nor can they even mention where the evi- 
dence upon the subject is to be found. Obviously this view is by no 

1 The American set was destroyed by fire (Richardson’s ‘ Messages and 
Papers of the Presidents,’ IV., 170), but presumably a duplicate set is in the 
Department of State at Washington. 
? As I write these words I find in a St. John newspaper a paragraph 
on the Alaskan boundary headed, ‘‘ No more Ashburton Capitulations for us.” 
