If it should be admitted, for argument’s sake, that the claim of Massachusetts, as inherited by the State of Maine, to the disputed territory is unfounded, it is a circumstance that can not enter into a discussion between Great Britain and the United States of America.  Massachusetts did claim, under at least the color of a title, not merely to “the highlands,” but to the St. Lawrence itself, and the claim was admitted as far as the former by the treaty of 1783.  If it should hereafter appear that this claim can not be maintained, the territory which is not covered by her title, if within the boundary of the treaty of 1783, can not revert to Great Britain, which has ceded its rights to the thirteen independent States, but to the latter in their confederate capacity, and is thus the property of the whole Union.  As well might Great Britain set up a claim to the States of Alabama and Mississippi, which, although claimed by the State of Georgia, were found not to be covered by its royal charter, as to any part of the territory contained within the line defined by the treaty of 1783, under pretense that the rights of Massachusetts are not indefeasible.

While, therefore, it is maintained that whether the title of Massachusetts be valid or not is immaterial to the present question, it may be further urged that not even the shadow of a pretense existed for divesting her of her rights by the proclamation of 1763, except to territory which by neglect she had permitted France to occupy.  On this point the French are the best authority, for it can not be pretended that the Crown of England intended in forming the Province of Quebec to go beyond the utmost limits of the claim of France to her colony of Canada.  The assertions on the part of France in the argument preceding the War of 1756 were: 

First.  That both banks of the St. Lawrence are included in Canada.

Second.  That with the exception of Miscou and Cape Breton, her grants extended 10 leagues from the river.

Third.  That the commissions of the governors of Canada in the most formal and precise manner extended their jurisdiction to the sources of the rivers which discharge themselves into the St. Lawrence.

Now the distance of 10 French leagues and that of the sources of the rivers, on an average, are nearly identical, and this narrow tract, of which alone the Crown could with any shadow of justice assume the right of disposing, is that of which Massachusetts was intended to be divested by the proclamation of 1763.

It was because Great Britain held that these claims on the part of France were too extensive that the War of 1756 was waged.  In this war at least one-half of the force which under Wolfe took Louisburg and reduced Quebec, and under Amherst forced the French armies in Canada to a capitulation, was raised and paid by the colonies.  The creation of the Province of Quebec, covering a part of their chartered limits, was therefore a just subject of complaint.