[Footnote 50:  See Note VII, pp. 147, 148.]

In defiance of this charter the French proceeded to occupy the right bank of the St. Lawrence, which at the time of the capture of Quebec and the cession in the treaty of 1763 was partially held by settlements of Canadians.  The Crown therefore acted upon the principle that the right of Massachusetts to the right bank of the St. Lawrence had thus become void, and proceeded by proclamation to form the possessions of France on both banks of the St. Lawrence into a royal colony under the name of the Province of Quebec.

This was not done without a decided opposition on the part of Massachusetts, but any decision in respect to her claims was rendered needless by the breaking out of the War of Independence.  It is only proper to remark that this opposition was in fact made and that her claim to the right bank of the St. Lawrence was only abandoned by the treaty of 1783.  The country of which it was intended to divest her by the proclamation of 1763 is described in a letter of her agent, Mr. Mauduit, to the general court of that colony as “the narrow tract of land which lies beyond the sources of all your rivers and is watered by those which run into the St. Lawrence.”

It is assigned by him as a reason why the Province of Massachusetts should assent to the boundary assigned to the Province of Quebec by the proclamation that “it would not be of any great consequence to you” (Massachusetts), “but is absolutely necessary to the Crown to preserve the continuity of the Province of Quebec.”  The part of the Province of Quebec whose continuity with the rest of that colony was to be preserved is evidently the district of Gaspe, of which Nova Scotia, a royal colony, was divested by the same proclamation.  For this continuity no more was necessary than a road along the St. Lawrence itself, and the reason would have been absurd if applied to any country lying beyond the streams which fall into that river, for up to the present day no communication between parts of Canada exists through any part of the disputed territory.  The narrow territory thus advised to be relinquished extends, according to the views of Messrs. Mudge and Featherstonhaugh, from the Great Falls of the St. John to Quebec, a distance in a straight line of 160 miles.  It has a figure not far from triangular, of which this line is the perpendicular and the shore of the St. Lawrence from the Chaudiere to the Metis the base.  It contains about 16,000 square miles.  It would have been a perversion of language in Mr. Mauduit to describe this to his employers as a narrow tract.  But the space whose cession he really intended to advise is in every sense a narrow tract, for its length along the St. Lawrence is about 200 miles, and its average breadth to the sources of the streams 30.  It contains 6,000 square miles, and is described by him in a manner that leaves no question as to its extent being “watered by streams” which “run into the St. Lawrence.”  It therefore did not include any country watered by streams which run into the St. John.