These complaints on both sides, arising, as the undersigned believes, from acts which do not on either side indicate an intention to disregard the existing understanding, but are attributable to the unsettled state of the boundary question, and which should therefore be viewed with mutual forbearance, furnish increased reason for a speedy adjustment of that interesting matter; and the President looks with great solicitude for the answer, which is daily expected, from the British Government to the proposition submitted on the part of the United States, in the hope that it may soon set all those difficulties at rest.

The undersigned has the honor to renew to Sir Charles R. Vaughan the assurance of his distinguished consideration.

LOUIS McLANE.

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS,

November 1, 1833.

Hon. LOUIS McLANE,

Secretary of State of the United States.

SIR:  I have to acknowledge the honor of the receipt of your letter of the 23d of October, covering a copy of a note addressed to you by Sir Charles R. Vaughan, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of His Britannic Majesty, accompanied also by copies of certain documents conveying complaints on the part of the authorities of His Majesty’s Province of New Brunswick “of the conduct of certain land agents of the States of Maine and Massachusetts on the territory in dispute between the United States and Great Britain.”

Permit me to assure you that I shall lose no time in making inquiry of the land agent of this Commonwealth into the supposed occasion of the complaints of His Majesty’s provincial officers, and in transmitting to the Department of State such information as I may receive in reply.

Prejudicial as the delay in the settlement of this long-vexed subject of boundary is to the rights of property which Massachusetts claims in the disputed territory, and impatient as both the government and the people have become at the unreasonableness and pertinacity of the adversary pretensions and with the present state of the question, yet the executive of this Commonwealth will not cease to respect the understanding which has been had between the Governments of the two countries, that no act of wrong to the property of either shall be committed during the pending of measures to produce an amicable adjustment of the controversy.

In the meantime, I can not but earnestly protest against the authority of any appointment on the behalf of His Majesty’s Government which may be regarded as a claim to the executive protection of this property or be deemed an acquiescence on the part of the United States in an interference, under color of a “wardenship of the disputed territory,” with the direction to its improvement which the governments of Massachusetts and Maine, respectively, may see fit to give to their agents.  The rights of soil and jurisdiction over it are in the States, and forbearance to the exercise of these rights for a season, from mere prudential considerations, a respectful regard to the wishes of the General Government, or amity toward a foreign nation is not to be construed into a readiness to surrender them upon the issue of any proposed negotiation.