In the complaints of infractions of the agreements by the State of Maine addressed to the undersigned Mr. Fox has assumed two positions which are not authorized by the terms of those agreements:  First.  Admitting the right of Maine to maintain a civil posse in the disputed territory for the purposes stated in the agreement, he does so with the restriction that the action of the posse was to be confined within certain limits; and, second, by making the advance of the Maine posse into the valley of the Upper St. John the ground of his complaint of encroachment upon the Madawaska settlement, he assumes to extend the limits of that settlement beyond those it occupied at the date of the agreement.

The United States can not acquiesce in either of these positions.

In the first place, nothing is found in the agreement subscribed to by Governor Fairfield and Sir John Harvey defining any limits in the disputed territory within which the operations of the civil posse of Maine were to be circumscribed.  The task of preserving the timber recently cut and of preventing further depredations within the disputed territory was assigned to the State of Maine after her military force should have been withdrawn from it, and it was to be accomplished by a civil posse, armed or unarmed, which was to continue in the territory and to operate in every part of it where its agency might be required to protect the timber already cut and prevent further depredations, without any limitation whatever or any restrictions except such as might be construed into an attempt to disturb by arms the Province of New Brunswick in her possession of the Madawaska settlement or interrupt the usual communication between the Provinces.

It is thus, in the exercise of a legitimate right and in the conscientious discharge of an obligation imposed upon her by a solemn compact, that the State of Maine has done those acts which have given rise to complaints for which no adequate cause is perceived.  The undersigned feels confident that when those acts shall have been considered by Her Majesty’s Government at home as explained in his note to Mr. Fox of the 24th of December last and in connection with the foregoing remarks they will no longer be viewed as calculated to excite the apprehensions of Her Majesty’s Government that the faith of existing arrangements is to be broken on the part of the United States.

With regard to the second position assumed by Mr. Fox—­that the advance of the Maine posse along the valley of the Restook to the mouth of Fish River and into the valley of the Upper St. John is at variance with the terms and spirit of the agreements—­the undersigned must observe that if at variance with any of their provisions it could only be with those which secure Her Majesty’s Province of New Brunswick against any attempt to disturb the possession of the Madawaska settlements and to interrupt the usual communications between New Brunswick and the upper Provinces.