[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 353 
for Great Britain, and enabled her to avoid granting the line of the 
treaty, and to keep the question open. 
(8) Great Britain then set up an extreme claim in opposition to 
that of the United States ; it was advocated by her ablest diplomatists, 
and after prolonged discussion she succeeded in 1842 in securing a deci- 
sion which gave her, not the most advantageous line, nor her full claim, 
but one which secured the communication between her two provinces. 
But while I think that Maine’s legal right to her claim is clear, I 
can by no means justify the conduct of Maine in endeavoring to force 
those extreme rights. Her right to the territory in dispute was not due 
to her discovery, exploration or settlement of it ; it was purely acci- 
dental. Moreover, the territory was of comparatively shght value to 
her; she had not a settler upon it nor a road to it for half a century 
after the treaty was signed. On the other hand, it was settled in good 
faith by British subjects, and was not simply valuable, it was invaluable 
to Great Britain. That under these circumstances Maine insisted upon 
the uttermost letter of her rights, refusing all accommodation until any 
other settlement was hopeless, is by no means to her credit. If Great 
Britain appears to disadvantage in employing diplomacy to save what 
she legally had lost, in another way Maine appears to at least equal dis- 
advantage in her Shylockian even though legal policy. This, however, 
is the altruistic view of the case, and by no means the one which nations 
take of such questions. 
Lf, however, the view here taken is correct, it is plain that Lord 
Ashburton, so far from deserving the abuse of New Brunswick, is 
entitled to her gratitude. Nor is it fair to blame too severely for this 
boundary, as is often done, the British negotiators of the treaty of 1783. 
If the line adopted by the treaty in this region had been a new one, then 
indeed they would deserve the severest censure for such a boundary as 
the treaty gave us. But, as the testimony summarized earlier in this 
paper shows (page 296), it was no new line that was chosen, but the old 
line between Nova Scotia and Massachusetts, and that had been fixed 
by valid legal enactments long prior to the treaty. A proposal by the 
British commissioners for a line more favorable to Great Britain would 
have been equivalent to a proposal for a cession of a part of the territory 
of Massachusetts to Great Britain. It is true the British negotiators 
(especially the principal one, Oswald) were far inferior in ability to the 
Americans, but I cannot believe that under the conditions of the case, 
the ablest diplomatists that Great Britain has ever produced could have 
persuaded the American negotiators to cede part of the now free and vic- 
torious state of Massachusetts to her recent enemy. That the bound- 
aries ran so badly for Great Britain was, as we have seen, not bad 
management so much as bad luck. 
