THE ROARING FORTIES 103 



uted to increase the wide-spread ill feeling al 

 ready caused by the incidents of the rebellion 

 in Canada. The British and American foreign 

 offices quickly took charge of the affair and 

 soothed the inflamed susceptibilities of Maine 

 and New Brunswick. President Van Buren felt 

 obliged to rebuke the rather high-handed way 

 in which the governor of Maine had begun to 

 make war on the British Empire. It was clear 

 in this matter, however, as became even clearer 

 a little later in the case of McLeod, that the 

 constitutional partition of authority between 

 the States and the Federal Government in the 

 American system must often cause great em 

 barrassment to the United States in its rela 

 tions with foreign powers. 



The most important practical result of this 

 so-called &quot;Aroostook war&quot; was the impulse it 

 gave to serious efforts toward the settlement of 

 the boundary. Negotiations had lagged in a 

 spiritless way ever since the failure of the arbi 

 tration. Maine was justified at least in her 

 complaints on this score. The administrations 

 of Jackson and Van Buren on the one side, and 

 the cabinet of the Melbourne Whigs on the 

 other, found subjects much more to their taste 

 than the exhausted and exhausting question as 



