and Lieutenant-Governor Harvey was agreed upon, and also as to the present and former state of the buildings there.  The extensive accommodations prepared and preparing at an old and at new stations, the works finished and in the course of construction on the land and on the water, are not in harmony with the assurance that the only object is the preservation of a few unimportant buildings and storehouses for the temporary protection of the number of troops Her Majesty’s ordinary service can require to pass on the road from New Brunswick to Canada.

The undersigned will abstain from any remarks upon these contradictory statements until Mr. Fox shall have had an opportunity to obtain the means of fully explaining them.  How essential it is that this should be promptly done, and that the steps necessary to a faithful observance on the part of Her Majesty’s colonial authorities of the existing agreements between the two Governments should be immediately taken, Mr. Fox can not fail fully to understand.

The undersigned avails himself of the occasion to renew to Mr. Fox assurances of his high consideration.

JOHN FORSYTH.

[Footnote 65:  Omitted.]

Mr. Fox to Mr. Forsyth.

WASHINGTON, March 7, 1840.

The undersigned, Her Britannic Majesty’s envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, has the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the official note of yesterday’s date addressed to him by Mr. Forsyth, Secretary of State of the United States, to which is annexed the copy of a report from Mr. Benjamin Wiggin, an agent employed by the State of Maine to visit the British military post at Lake Temiscouata, and in which reference is made to other papers upon the same subject, which were informally communicated to the undersigned by Mr. Forsyth a few days before; and the attention of the undersigned is called by Mr. Forsyth to different points upon which the information contained in the said papers is considered to be materially at variance with that which was conveyed to the United States Government by the undersigned in his official note of the 26th of last January.

The undersigned had already been made acquainted by the lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick with the circumstance of Mr. Wiggin’s visit to the military post at Lake Temiscouata, where the officer in command very properly furnished to Mr. Wiggin the requisite information upon all matters connected with the British station which he appeared desirous to inquire about.

The alleged points of variance, after deducting what is fanciful and conjectural in the reports now produced and after comparing what is there stated in contradiction to other reports before produced from the same quarters, do not appear to the undersigned to be by any means so material as they seem to have been considered by the Government of the United States.  The British military detachment stationed at Lake Temiscouata,