[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 349 
ce 
means an “opinion” as the holders believe ; it is simply an inherited 
unreasoning prejudice. On the other hand, the few New Brunswickers 
of the present time who have examined the original sources of informa- 
tion have come to the conclusion that, in the question of the north-west 
angle, Maine was technically right and New Brunswick wrong, and that 
the Ashburton Treaty took from Maine and gave to us a great territory 
to which we had not a technical right. Thus Mr. James Hannay, our 
best known New Brunswick historian, has expressed this view more than 
once in his articles in his newspaper, the St. John Telegraph. Again, 
Rey. W. O. Raymond, who has investigated the whole boundary ques- 
tion with a richer collection of original materials before him than any 
other of our writers has had, has long since come, as shown in his cor- 
respondence with me, to the same conclusion.” Again, in my own case, 
as a thorough New Brunswicker, I inherited the old prejudice, assuming 
as a matter of course that we must be right and the other party wrong, 
and I have abused Lord Ashburton as roundly as anybody for what I 
supposed was his betrayal of the interests of the province. But when I 
began to examine for myself the original documents, and maps, I found 
difficulty in reconciling them with this view, a difficulty which increased 
with further examination, until finally T was forced to the belief that in 
this dispute Maine was technically right and New Brunswick wrong, and 
that the Ashburton Treaty gave us a territory to which we were not 
entitled under the treaty of 1783.2 And I would ask my countrymen 
whether we have not advanced far enough from the partizan passion 
inseparable from the active debate upon such a question, to suspend our 
prejudices and replace them by opinions based upon an inquiry into the 
evidence. TL by no means maintain that such an examination will neces- 
sarily lead to the view I myself take, but I do maintain that it is the 
only proper method for reaching a conclusion worthy of reasonable and 
fair-minded men. 
Since the evidence upon the subject is widely scattered in the pre- 
ceding pages, I shall here summarize it, and follow it by a brief of the 

1 Thus, in the Daily Telegraph of Nov. 28, 1898, he writes: ‘The Ash- 
burton Treaty. There is no historical subject on which so much utter ignor- 
ance exists as this, the majority of people being too much under the influence 
of prejudices instilled into them in their youthful days to listen to argument 
on the subject . . . . . as the Telegraph has frequently shown, the 
boundary obtained by Lord Ashburton was far more favourable to New 
Brunswick than we had any right to expect, and gave us territory to which 
our title was by no means clear. =? 
? I have not been able to see the paper of 1885 of Sir Francis Hincks, a 
Canadian, upon the subject, but according to Winsor (America, VII., 182), 
this same view is taken by him. 
*I have expressed this view in these Transactions, III., 1897, Sect., ii, 
383 ; and in the New Brunswick Magazine, I., 1898, 297. 
