352 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
The legal claim of Maine, therefore, seems to me justified by the 
documents in the case, by the opinion of contemporary New Brunswick 
and British authorities, and by the decisions of eminent Englishmen 
since. 
We may now summarize the subject in the following brief :— 
(1) In the early part of the seventeenth century, when this region 
was wholly unsettled, Great Britain made grants to her subjects here, 
with generalized boundaries based: upon imperfect knowledge, but ample 
for the purposes of the time. 
(2) After many vicissitudes the whole country passed again into 
the possession of England in 1763 ; the region with which we are con- 
cerned was little more settled than earlier, and, to make convenient divi- 
sions, Great Britain, while establishing some new boundaries, reaffirmed 
the old boundaries as far as they existed. 
(3) These boundaries, old and new, however, happened to so run 
that one of the three provinces thus bounded in 1763 lay in between the 
other two lke a wedge, even cutting across the only possible line of com- 
munication between those two. As long as the country was a wilderness, 
or as long as the three provinces remained under one government, this 
did not matter. 
(4) The revolution came, two of the provinces remained loyal, but 
the one between them joined those in successful revolt. When peace 
came, the boundary between the latter and the former naturally became 
the international boundary line. 
(5) But now that they belonged to different nations it was found 
that the angle of Massachusetts, while of slight value to her, was invalu- 
able to Great Britain, because through it only could her two provinces 
communicate. Obviously that Massachusetts possessed this angle was 
through no merit or foresight on her part, it was a pure piece of luck 
falling to her because of the way the old boundaries had happened to 
run ; that Great Britain did not possess it was no demerit or lack of 
foresight on her part, it was a pure piece of bad luck over which she 
had no control. 
(6) England naturally made overtures to have some readjustment 
made which would give her a free communication between her provinces, 
but the United States took full advantage of her accidentally acquired 
rights and refused any accommodation whatever. 
(7) An accommodation being found to be impossible, Great Britain 
had to win the invaluable territory by diplomacy. An examination of 
the words of the treaty showed that while their intention was plain, they 
were drawn in ignorance of the true topography of the country, and did 
not exactly fit it ; this defect in the wording was a pure piece of luck 

