caring even to pass at the head of streams, and consequently divides no rivers whatever, he is not induced to trouble himself with the arguments respecting the effect of the substitution in the treaty of" the Atlantic" for "the sea," and by which his predecessors labored to distinguish the rivers falling into the Bay of Fundy from those emptying into the Atlantic Ocean generally. Puzzled, however, to find land answering his own views of highlands, even on his pretended line, towards the Bay des Chaleurs, and which must of course be a continuation of the same range that forms our northern boundary, he is obliged to resort to the declaration that, notwithstanding the alleged identity of the treaty and the provincial lines, we have nothing to do with the continuation of the highlands east of the St. Croix. Mr. Featherstonhaugh comes to his conclusion not by carrying Maine to the highlands, which both parties have hitherto admitted to be the boundary of Quebec under the proclamation of 1763, and which we assert to be also that of the United States, but he brings the southern boundary of Quebec down to the vicinity of the line running from Mars Hill, and which the British have heretofore contended for as the line of the treaty, but not of the proclamation. Having already treated the subject so much at length, it is not our intention to enter on an examination of those points in the former British argument which have been discussed. A few references to the errors in fact will enable the public to judge how much confidence is to be put in a report which has, on the other side of the Atlantic, been so much vaunted. Having pronounced the identity of the provincial boundary with that of the treaty, it became necessary to curtail the limits of the old colony of Massachusetts' Bay, and of course to deny the right which she possessed to extend to the River St. Lawrence until restricted (if indeed that proceeding was binding upon her) by the royal proclamation of 1763. The report, therefore, attempts to show that the grant to the Duke of York of Sagadahok, in 1664, was done away by the restoration of Acadia to France in 1667, by whom it was claimed as a part of that province, though it admits the exercise of British jurisdiction by the erection of the fort at Pemaquid, under the authority of the Duke's governor, (Andross,) subsequent to the second grant to the Duke of 1674, and which, equally with the former, extended to "the river of Canada, northwards." This matter is wholly immaterial, as respects the provincial boundaries in 1783; nor is it necessary to answer the remark that the second grant of Sagadahok was made in 1674, and with all the minuteness of the former, merely in order to reconvey, by some general terms, a separate territory, the Duke's title to which might have been questioned by the temporary re-occupation of New Amsterdam by the Dutch. The charter of William and Mary of 1691, under which Massachusetts held at the time of the revolution, is sufficiently explicit. And here we come to a case of suppressio veri, which is the first in the chain of those incidents which, we presume, no honorable man will deny fully justifies any apparent harshness with which we have alluded to the presumed author of the British paper. Mr. Featherstonhaugh quotes in his argument, and again refers to it in his general summary, the charter of Massachusetts granting to that province the lands between Nova Scotia and the River Sagadahok; and at the same time declares that the charter does not extend that territory to the St. Lawrence, but that "the extreme interpretation of this grant would require for the northern limit a line passing between the head waters of the St. Croix and the source of the Sagadahok,"-a line which, he says, would nearly coincide with the highlands dividing the Kennebec from the Chaudiére. Would any one suppose that the above remark could have been made by an individual invested with the character of a public agent of Great Britain, when he must have read in the same document the following clause, "it is our royal will and pleasure that no grant or grants of any lands lying or extending from the River of Sagadahok to the Gulf of St. Lawrence or Canada Rivers, and to the main sea northward and eastward, . . . be of any force, validity or effect until we, our heirs and successors shall have signified our or their approbation of the same?" Indeed, the last clause requiring the royal approbation to the grants of land in Sagadahok, is also quoted in another connection by Mr. Featherstonhaugh, but suppressing what precedes, and shows the extension of that territory to the St. Lawrence. By the terms of the charter itself, it must have been seen by the writer of the report that both Nova Scotia and the Sagadahok territory extended to the St. Lawrence, and that the whole of these countries was held by Massachusetts by one and the same tenure, while with respect to the lands included in the territory of the old colonies of Massachusetts' Bay and New Plymouth, she retained more extensive powers under the former charters. The report also cites, with a view to extend the effect of that cession to the Sagadahok territory, the remark of the American statement laid before the king of the Netherlands that the grant of Nova Scotia to Massachusetts became a nullity by the treaty of Ryswick. The author forgets to add what follows, and which was conclusive on Great Britain so far as regards the point under consideration,-a letter from the board of trade to the governor of Massachusetts in 1700. That paper states that, "as to the boundaries, we have always insisted, and shall insist, on the English right as far as the St. Croix." In connection with this matter, we may refer to the citation, accompanied with encomiums on the writer, of an obvious error in a despatch from Mr. Gallatin to his own government, dated at Ghent in 1814. The commissioners omit all reference to the explanation which was before them, and which shows that that minister inadvertently stated that Massachusetts had no claim, under her charter, north of the forty-fifth degree and east of the Penobscot, when he had in view Gorge's grant of the territory west of the Kennebec. The philological disquisition on Sir William Alexander's grant, and by which Mr. Featherstonhaugh expects" entirely to change the nature of the northern boundary of the United States from that which has hitherto been understood to be its direction," is alluded to by us principally on account of its being connected with a false declaration, tending not only to assail American scholarship, but what is infinitely more important, by implication, the good faith of our country. We are charged with using an imperfect translation, which the report describes as official upon no other ground than its being transmitted to Congress with voluminous documents from the executive of Maine, of which it formed a part, inserted as an appendix to a report of a committee of the legislature of that state. The errors, however, in the extract from the grant, (which consist mainly of rendering versus septentrionem, to the north, instead of towards the north, and of translating proximam, first, instead of nearest, and which, by the bye, do not in the slightest degree alter the sense,) will not be found in either of the really official translations, namely, in the one which was presented to the Ghent commission, or in that which was laid before the king of the Netherlands. Nor is statio navium in these cases rendered otherwise than as a road or roadstead, which we still deem correct, even after perusing the report. In the case in question, as the termination of the line from the St. Croix at the St. Lawrence might as well be at the nearest river or spring, ad proximam navium stationem, fluvium vel scaturiginem in magno fluvio de Canada sese exonerantem, as at the nearest roadstead or naval station, it is not very important for Mr. Featherstonhaugh's purpose how statio navium is translated. The use of the words in the other parts of the grant, where they are applied to St. Mary's Bay and the Bay of Fundy, will also show that they could not be construed, even if they stood alone, to mean Quebec, as contradistinguished from Gaspe, which is designated by the authors of the report as ultima statio navium. It is very true that our agents never conceived of the idea, believed to be original with the translator of Cicero de Republica, that the western boundary of Sir William Alexander was a straight line from the source of the St. Croix to the Chaudiére, which empties into the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec, nor have they, for that purpose, transposed words from one sentence to another, (a course which the parliamentary printer seems to have been unwilling, in Mr. Featherstonhaugh's case, to sanction,) nor did they suppose that versus septentrionem could be tortured to mean either a westerly course, or a course inclined from a due north course at a greater angle than forty-five degrees. We may, on our part, before concluding this matter, perhaps be permitted to inquire why the words per maris littorales ejusdem fluvii de Canada are rendered" by the gulf shores of the River of Canada?" Is that done to help out the discovery as to the northwest, or rather west, line? But the meaning of Sir William Alexander's grant is a matter of pure curiosity at the present day, and so we have heretofore considered it, the line, as well of the provincial boundary of Nova Scotia as that of the treaty of 17S3, being in terms a due north line. The new translation, however, is brought forward to sustain an imaginary understanding said to exist in the seventeenth century between England and France as to the limits of their respective dominions, and to support those accurate maps of Coronelli and De l'Isle which are adduced to combat the overwhelming evidence of this nature that has been arrayed against the British pretensions. To sustain their line, the commissioners have also put in requisition the authority of Governor Pownall, with what justice we shall endeavor to see. A reference to his "Topographical Description of North America" will show that the two heights of land, heretofore respectively claimed as the boundary of the United States and Great Britain, are both spoken of. While, however, what is said of the southern ridge forming the height of land between the Kennebec and the Chaudiére is quoted in the report, and made the basis of the boundary of 1763, there is no allusion, in that connection, to his remarks respecting any other height of land. In examining his work, however, we find that Pownall, after describing "the rivers rising amidst the south and southeast ridges," and which, he says, "generally spring from lakes, great ponds, or boggy swamps," observes that "all the rivers which arise among the northern ridges fall into the St. Lawrence, and (that) the heads of these two sets of water interlock with each other."* This latter circumstance, by the bye, the British commissioners somewhere adduce as an objection to our line, which we, however, never pretended was a straight one, nor was it required by the treaty so to be. Again; Pownall says, what we should think from such a source would dispose of the commissioners' axis of maximum elevation, "the southern ridges are much lower than the northern ones." We will also extract what the same author remarks as to his edition of Evans' map, of which we shall directly speak, and which will show why we have the southern and not the northern ridge delineated on it. "I have struck out of the map," says he, "most of the hills which I found drawn in the surveys, when I had the rivers copied, as I suspected that they were laid down too much ad libitum. I will not in these parts vouch for even those which remain, except within the line of my scouting parties from Penobscot to Kennebeag, and on the back of the settlements of the counties of York and Cumberland.”† Disregarding all that is said as to any highlands, except those at the sources of the Penobscot and Kennebec, the commissioners gravely tell us that the proclamation of 1763 was "an abbreviated method of copying the information given by Pownall." It is true that his book did not appear till thirteen years after the proclamation; but it is gratuitously * Pownall's Topographical Description, p. 17. + Id. p. 18. |