388 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
or by a continuation westward of the line of the Restigouche River, until it 
strikes the River Saint John’s ; any conventional line under Imperial sanction 
to connect the two above points, which are by no means very distant, cannot 
be made to widen again into a circle so as to comprehend an immense district 
totally disconnected with New Brunswick. (Northern Boundary, CXYV). 
This statement by Quebec is notable in that it yields her earlier 
claim for a boundary on the southern highlands, substituting for it the 
Restigouche and a short nearly direct line to the international boundary. 
No doubt she was influenced to this change by the fact that it had pre- 
viously been held by her that the continuation of the international 
should form the interprovincial boundary, and the removal of the for- 
mer from the southern highlands to the St. John River rendered her 
claim to the highlands, while theoretically as good as ever, practically 
untenable. Naturally, then, she fell back upon the Restigouche, and a 
continuation to the nearest part of the international boundary, being 
influenced both by the fact that such a line was nearly a continuation 
of the international line and also by the fact that it had become prac- 
tically recognized as the boundary, and so appeared on all maps.) at 
will be noticed, however, that no evidence for such a boundary is here 
given by the committee, nor is the boundary spoken of as legal or right- 
ful, but only as clearly defined. 
The New Brunswick claim is officially expressed in a report of a 
committee of the Executive Council of New Brunswick on Nov. ill 
1843 (Northern Boundary), when they simply refer to the Quebec act, 
but it is again expressed in a letter of Governor Colebrooke to Governor 
Metcalfe of Nov. 14, when he says :— 
I regret that it is impracticable to reconcile the views of the two Provin- 
cial Governments ; but as a decided opinion is here entertained, that Canada 
possesses no claim whatever to any Territory South of her Southern Bound- 
ary, as defined in the Quebec Act, by the range of Hills extending Westward 
from the Head of the Bay of Chaleur; and there being in fact no other 
line of Hills northward of the Saint John, or which could by any possibility 
constitute her Southern Boundary, the intermediate Territory in question, 
which was claimed by the Americans, necessarily reverted to this Province 
when that claim was relinquished by the Treaty of Washington. (Northern 
Boundary, CXXT). 
Thus stood the claims of the two provinces shortly after the Treaty 
of Washington in 1842. New Brunswick still claimed to the northern 
watershed on the ground of ancient legal right, but she claimed also the 
whole of the disputed territory saved to Great Britain on the score that 
it fell to the southward of the southern boundary of Quebec, and hence 
belonged to her, completely ignoring the fact that exactly the same 
legal argument which denied to Quebec any territory south of the 
northern watershed, at the same time denied to New Brunswick any 
