of the British ministry under whose directions that treaty was made forbids the belief of the latter having been intended.  The members of that ministry had been when in opposition the constant advocates of an accommodation with the colonies or of an honorable peace after all hopes of retaining them in their allegiance had ceased.  They showed on coming into power a laudable anxiety to put an end to the profitless effusion of human blood, and they wisely saw that it would be of more profit to their country to convert the new nation into friends by the free grant of terms which sooner or later must have been yielded than to widen the breach of kindred ties by an irritating delay.  The debates which ensued in the British Parliament when the terms of the treaty were made known show the view which the party that had conducted the war entertained of this question.  The giving up of the very territory now in dispute was one of the charges made by them against their successors, and that it had been given up by the treaty was not denied.  Nay, the effect of this admission was such as to leave the administration in a minority in the House of Commons, and thus became at least one of the causes of the resignation of the ministry[59] by which the treaty had been made.  At this very moment more maps than one were published in London which exhibit the construction then put upon the treaty by the British public.  The boundary exhibited upon these maps is identical with that which the United States now claim and have always claimed.

[Footnote 58:  See Note XI, p. 149.]

[Footnote 59:  Hansard’s Parliamentary Register for 1783.]

The full avowal that the boundary of the treaty of 1783 and of the proclamation of 1763 and act of 1774 are identical greatly simplifies the second argument.  It has been heretofore maintained on the part of Great Britain that the word “sea” of the two latter-named instruments was not changed in the first to “Atlantic Ocean” without an obvious meaning.  All discussion on this point is obviated by the admission.  But it is still maintained that the Bay of Fundy is not a part of the Atlantic Ocean because it happens to be named in reference to the St. Croix in the same article of the treaty.  To show the extent to which such an argument, founded on a mere verbal quibble, may be carried, let it be supposed that at some future period two nations on the continent of North America shall agree on a boundary in the following terms:  By a line drawn through the Mississippi from its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico to its source; thence a parallel of latitude until it meet the highlands which divide the waters that empty themselves into the Pacific Ocean from those which fall into the Atlantic.  Could it be pretended that because the mouth of the Mississippi is said to be in the Gulf of Mexico the boundary must be transferred from the Rocky Mountains to the Alleghanies?  Yet this would be as reasonable as the pretensions so long set up by the British agents and commissioners.