1782] FIRST PROPOSED BOUNDARY. 151 are acquainted with Franklin's career must be impressed with the fact, that when he was engaged in any reprehensible transaction, he had always a reason to offer in explanation of his conduct. He argued that much of the merchandise, by the sale of which money would have been obtained to pay the debts, had been destroyed during the war. He did not speak of his own presence in Canada in 1776 as a commissioner, with the design of possessing the province by conquest and living by forced contributions: a project only abandoned when the chance of success was desperate. The first boundary accepted by Oswald was in accordance with the imbecility of his character, which cast a blight on all that was left to his judgment. To the east he consented that the river Saint John should be the boundary. In those days lake Temiscouata was called by the name of the river into which it discharged, the Madawaska, and it was wrongly claimed that the so-called lake Madawaska, with the river of that name, formed the main branch of the Saint John. The sources of the Temiscouata are in the height of land whence the waters likewise descend northerly into the Saint Lawrence, and are within twenty-five miles of the Great River. Taking the northerly point as the beginning of the boundary, Oswald proposed the line should follow the river Madawaska to the Saint John, of which it is a tributary, and thence along the high lands to the head waters of the Connecticut, until it gained the parallel of 45°. This latitude to be followed to Saint Regis on the Saint Lawrence. The supposition seems hardly possible that Oswald should have made the proposition, or that his consent was given to it, that the line from this point should have directly run to the south of lake Nipissing and thence to the north of Saint Joseph's island, thus abandoning to congress the most important part of the present province of Ontario. From Saint Joseph's, the theory was that the line should continue in the same direction to the Mississippi. It appears strange that this line once proposed by Oswald was not insisted upon by the United States * [Ante., Vol. VI., p. 65.] negotiators. The probability is, that their objection to it lay in the fact that it excluded them from lake Superior, for with this boundary that lake would have been a mare clausum within British territory. Had, however, this boundary been established, Western Canada, reduced to the narrow limits it enforced, would have become of little importance. The whole of the upper river Saint Lawrence would have passed through United States territory, and access to lake Superior by water would not have been possible. For the cession of the territory included the navigation of the river; consequently the country must have continued a wilderness, and in the course of no long time must have fallen into the power of the United States. But the prevailing view of the United States commissioners was to obtain possession of the country to lake Erie and to the Mississippi, with the peninsula of Michigan; and to make the Saint Lawrence the common boundary, following the centre of the stream and of the lakes to lake Superior. Such was the western boundary subsequently assented to. Île Royale was, however, included within the United States. The line is described as proceeding to Long lake through the lake of the Woods, on a due east course to the Mississippi. As is now well known, this line would have gone far to the north of the sources of the Mississippi, and there is no such geographical limit as Long lake; on the contrary, the route described consists of several small lakes with no less than forty-six portages. There was no object at this date in advancing undue pretensions in the establishment of a north-eastern boundary: the main condition desirable was, that the frontier should be clearly defined, and no immediate advantage was then sought in its determination. In after years the pretensions of the United States took the form of claiming a frontier which would have virtually divided Canada in half, and have cut off the interior from the sea board; an accession of territory from which they gained no national strength. However dispassionately the claim may be considered, it can only be regarded as an act of aggressiveness. In 1782 the real 1782] BOUNDARY WITH NOVA SCOTIA. 153 question exacting attention was the western boundary, by which the territory, including the possession of the Ohio, should extend northerly to the shore of lake Erie, and be prolonged to the eastern bank of the Mississippi. The United States commissioners knew that France was opposed to this demand, and its acceptance by British commissioners of ability could have been made contingent on reasonable conditions in the establishment of the eastern frontier. The country was unsurveyed, and no definite information was obtainable regarding it, as has been said. In the first instance, the United States commissioners contended that the river Saint John was the natural boundary, to be followed to lake Temiscouata, and thence traced to its source in the northern high lands. Whether Oswald's fatuity led him to accept this view in accordance with his secret instructions to make peace at any price, or from an obtuseness as to the interests of the one American province which had remained British, must remain a matter of speculation. This view was, however, set aside, Strachey claimed by his exertions, and the boundary was transferred to the river known as the Saint Croix. There had been previous attempts to establish the boundary between Nova Scotia and the French Acadia. They were matters of Massachusetts history, and were well known to Franklin; it may be assumed that lord Shelburne's negotiator was ignorant of, or indifferent to them. In 1749 after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, a commission had been named to settle this question, and it met at Paris. Shirley and Mildmay represented the interests of Great Britain and the provinces, de la Galissonière and de Silhouette those of France. The conflicting character of the claims. made any arrangement impossible. Nothing was effected, although the conferences were continued until 1753; a consequence easily understood, when it is known that de la Galissonière advocated the retention of a strip of territory along the eastern coast of Nova Scotia, to obtain access by land to Cape Breton, which had been restored to France. In May, 1762, after the conquest of Canada, Belcher, then lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, submitted to the house of assembly a communication from the governor of Massachusetts. It enclosed a resolution of the house of assembly of that province, recommending that proceedings should be taken in connection with the government of Nova Scotia, to establish a settlement of the boundary between the provinces. The house of assembly of Nova Scotia, however, voted, that it was a matter proper for the consideration of his majesty only; "for the lands now claimed by the government of Massachusetts are within the boundaries of Nova Scotia, or Acadia, and the property of the crown." In the same year Bernard, then governor of Massachusetts, wrote to Belcher that he accepted the assurance, that no grants should be made west of the Saint Croix, and that he would not consent to grants being made from his province, until the question had been determined. One of the most important considerations in the determination of the boundary was the identification of the natural landmark chosen to constitute it. Franklin had designated the Saint Croix, but the river was not definitely known, for the name had been only kept in remembrance as a tradition of the days of Champlain, in the settlement attempted by him in 1603. In modern times, it is generally supposed that the island on which he established himself was at the mouth of the river now known as the Shoodic, but in those days there was much uncertainty as to the locality, and the designation had been given at random to other rivers. The Penobscot had even been called the Saint Croix, and had been held to be the boundary of Nova Scotia. I have related that in 1779* Sir Francis Maclean, in command at Nova Scotia, founded a settlement at Penobscot bay, with the view of obtaining ship-timber for the navy yard at Halifax. An attempt was made by Massachusetts to prevent the *[Ante., Vol. VI., p. 353.] 1782] RIVER SAINT CROIX. 155 undertaking being carried out, when the Massachusetts fleet was destroyed. It was, indeed, annihilated. The fact is important, as showing the claim which had been advanced for the Penobscot as the Nova Scotia boundary. In 1764 a royal proclamation had been issued, typical of the ignorance which then, and for many years subsequently prevailed with public men in London, with regard to the affairs of the American provinces. In describing the limits of Nova Scotia, it was set forth that although Nova Scotia. had extended to the Penobscot, and by right did so extend, the province should be bound by a line drawn from cape Sable to cross the entrance of the bay of Fundy to the mouth of the river Saint Croix, the boundary to follow that river to its source, and thence by a line north to the southern boundary of Quebec, as established by the proclamation of 1763; the high lands which divide the rivers that empty themselves into the Saint Lawrence and the sea. Anyone who places the map before him can perceive, that the modern Schoodic could not have been meant; for the mouth of that stream makes the line described impracticable. I do not desire to complicate the question by any idle theories, but it may be said, that the description points to one of the streams between the river Machias and the Penobscot. The question, indeed, at that date was, what modern river could be identified as the river Saint Croix. Franklin, on assigning this river by name as the boundary, during the negotiations, proposed that commissioners should subsequently determine the line. He knew, however, that before the revolution the Penobscot had been held to be the boundary of Massachusetts, and it would have been just and fair on the part of the United States commissioner to have named as the dividing line the river and its main tributary to the height of land which separated its waters from the tributary streams of the Saint John. In 1784 the province of New Brunswick was established within its present limits distinct from Nova Scotia, Thomas Carleton having been named lieutenant governor. British |