The legislature and people of Maine, we believe, will not contend that the treaty-making power of the United States does not extend to a final adjustment of a disputed and undefined line of boundary between a State and a foreign nation; but we do insist that no power is granted by the Constitution of the United States to limit or change the boundary of a State or cede a part of its territory without its consent.  It is even by no means certain how far such consent would enable the treaty authority to exert its powers. Citizens might be made the subjects of a treaty transfer, and these citizens owing allegiance to the State and to the Union, and allegiance and protection being reciprocally binding, the right to transfer a citizen to a foreign government, to sell him, might well be questioned as being inconsistent with the spirit of our free institutions.  But be this as it may, Maine will never concede the principle that the President and two-thirds of the Senate can transfer its territory, much less its citizens, without its permission, given by its constitutional organs.

Your committee, however, deem it but fair to admit that they have discovered no inclination in the General Government, or any department of it, to assume this power.  On the contrary, the President has repeatedly declined the adoption of a conventional line deviating from the treaty of 1783, upon the express ground that it could not be done without the consent of Maine.

It is due, nevertheless, to the State of Maine to say that the committee have no evidence that any conventional line has been proposed to them for their consent.  It indeed appears that the consent of Maine had not been given to the adoption of any other boundary than that prescribed by the treaty of 1783 up to the 29th February, 1836, and we are well assured that no proposition for a different boundary has since that time been made to any department of the government of this State.

The President of the United States on the 15th June last communicated to the Senate, in compliance with their resolution, a copy of the correspondence relative to the northeastern boundary.  This correspondence embraced a period from the 21st July, 1832, to the 5th March, 1836.

The opinion and advice of the King of the Netherlands, to whom the controversy was referred by the provisions of the treaty of Ghent, was made on the 10th January, 1831, and of the three questions submitted, viz, the northeastern boundary, the northwesternmost head of Connecticut River, and the forty-fifth parallel of latitude, he seems to have determined but one.  He did decide that the source of the stream running into and through Connecticut Lake is the true northwest head of that river as intended by the treaty of 1783; and as to the rest, he advises that it will be convenient (il conviendra) to adopt the “Thalweg,” the deepest channel