In the subsequent cessions to France after its occupations by the arms of Massachusetts, and in its final cession to Great Britain by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the country ceded is described as Acadie or Nova Scotia, with its ancient bounds (cum finibus antiquis).  The uncertainty arising from this vague description became in 1750 a subject of controversy between France and England, and was one of the causes which led to the war of 1756.  In this discussion both parties admitted that the names Acadie and Nova Scotia were convertible terms.  England maintained that the territory thus named extended to the St. Lawrence; the French, on the other hand, insisted that their Acadie had never extended more than 10 leagues from the Bay of Fundy; while by geographers, as quoted by the British commissioners, the name was limited to the peninsula which forms the present Province of Nova Scotia.[62] If Acadie had been limited to the north by the forty-sixth degree of north latitude, as expressed in the charter of De Monts, that parallel is to the south of Mars Hill.  The British Government, therefore, derives no title to the disputed territory from this source, as the title of Massachusetts and of Maine as her successor is admitted to all country south of that parallel.[63]

[Footnote 62:  Report of Featherstonhaugh and Mudge, p. 8.]

[Footnote 63:  It can not be seriously pretended that when by the treaty of St. Germains, in 1632, Acadie was restored to France the intention was to cede to her the colonies already settled in New England.  Yet the language of the British commissioners would imply that this was the case were it not that they evidently consider the forty-sixth parallel as the southern boundary of the grant to De Monts, whereas it is the northern.]

It is very easy to tell what country was actually settled by the French as Acadie.  Its chief town was Port Royal, now Annapolis, at the head of the Bay of Fundy.  Nearly all the settlements of the Acadians were in that vicinity, and for the most part within the peninsula.

From these seats they were removed in 1756 by Great Britain, and to them a remnant was permitted to return.  The most western settlement of Acadians was on the St. John River near the present site of Fredericton, and no permanent occupation was ever made by them of country west of the St. Croix.  It is even doubtful whether the settlement near Fredericton was a part of French Acadie, for it seems to have been formed by persons who escaped from the general seizure and transportation of their countrymen.

This settlement was broken up in 1783, and its inhabitants sought refuge at Madawaska; but it can not be pretended that this forced removal of Acadians subsequent to the treaty of 1783 was an extension of the name of their country.  The whole argument in favor of the British claim founded on the limits of ancient Acadie therefore fails: 

First.  Because of the inherent vagueness of the term, on which no settled understanding was ever had, although England held it to be synonymous with Nova Scotia and France denied that it extended more than 10 leagues from the Bay of Fundy.