in question by the resort to diplomatic discussions, treaty arrangements, and foreign arbitration in which Maine was not permitted to speak; for having entered into a stipulation without her consent purporting to preclude the State from retaining her rightful jurisdiction pending a negotiation, and for the continuance of it after that negotiation was supposed to have been concluded, and for an omission on the part of the Executive of the United States to comply with an application of the State made through her legislature to have the boundary line between Maine and the British North American possessions explored, surveyed, and monuments erected thereon in pursuance of the authority conferred on the President by Congress and of a request made by your excellency, which is now renewed.

The views which your excellency has been pleased to take of the subject at this time embrace measures some of which have long since ceased to be operative and reach back to the propriety of the stipulations entered into by the treaty of Ghent, also of the subsequent negotiation designed to bring those stipulations to a satisfactory result in the mode prescribed by that treaty—­that of arbitrament.  It being, as your excellency states, the opinion of Maine that those proceedings were unjust and unwise, it is, in a matter in which she is so deeply interested, her undoubted right to say so; yet the President thinks that he can not be mistaken in believing that no practical good can at this time be expected from discussion between the Federal and State Governments upon those points.  That the measures referred to have not been as fortunate in their results as was hoped is entirely true, but your excellency may nevertheless be assured that they had their origin in a sincere desire on the part of the Federal Government to discharge all its duties toward the State of Maine as a member of the Union, and were resorted to in the full belief that her just rights would be promoted by their adoption.

In speaking of the restrictions imposed upon Maine in reclaiming her rightful jurisdiction your excellency doubtlessly refers to the understanding between the Federal Government and that of Great Britain that each party should abstain from the exercise of jurisdiction over the disputed territory during the pendency of negotiation.  Unless it be correct to say that the controversy was one that did not admit of negotiation, and that the duty of the Federal Government consisted only in an immediate resort to maintain the construction put by itself upon its own rights and those of the State of Maine, there would seem to be no reasonable objection to such an arrangement as that alluded to, whether it be viewed in respect to the interests or the pacific and just characters of the respective Governments.  That this arrangement was not abrogated at the period at which your excellency is understood to suppose that it ought to have been done, viz, upon the failure of a settlement of the controversy by