The Secretary admitted that if the American proposition should be acceded to by His Majesty’s Government and the commission hereafter to be appointed should result in ascertaining the true situation of the boundary called for by the treaty of 1783, that it would be afterwards necessary, in order to ascertain the true line, to settle the other two points according to which it should be traced.  He therefore offered, if the American proposition should be acceded to, notwithstanding the obligatory effect of the decision of the arbiter on the point is denied, “to take the stream situated farthest to the northwest among those which fall into the northernmost of the three lakes, the last of which bears the name of Connecticut Lake, as the north-westernmost head of the Connecticut River according to the treaty of 1783;” and as it respects the third point referred to the arbiter, the line of boundary on the forty-fifth degree of latitude, but upon which he failed to decide, the President would agree, if the proposition as to the first point was embraced, to adopt the old line surveyed and marked by Valentine and Collins in 1771 and 1772.

The Secretary then proceeded to state further and insuperable objections to an acquiescence by the United States in the opinions supposed to have been pronounced by the arbiter in the course of his reasoning upon the first point submitted to him.  He remarked that the views expressed by the arbiter on these subordinate matters could not be regarded as decisions within the meaning of the reference, but rather as postulates or premises, by which he arrived at the opinion expressed in regard to the point in dispute.  By an acquiescence in them, therefore, as required by Great Britain, the United States would reject as erroneous the conclusion of the arbiter, whilst they would adopt the premises and reasoning by which it was attained—­that the seven postulates or premises presented as necessary to be considered by the United States are but part of those on which the arbiter was equally explicit in the expression of his views, that on others his reasoning might be considered as more favorable to the pretensions of this Government, and that no reason was perceived why an acquiescence in his opinions upon them should not equally apply to all the premises assumed by him and be binding upon both parties.  Mr. McLane was, however, persuaded that there was no obligation on either Government to acquiesce in the opinion of the arbiter on any of the matters involved in his premises; that such acquiescence would defeat the end of the present negotiation, and that as it appeared to be mutually conceded that the arbiter had not been able to decide upon the first and most material point so as to make a binding decision, there could certainly be no greater obligation to yield to his opinions on subordinate matters merely.  The Secretary further observed that the most material point of the three submitted to the arbiter was that of the highlands,