motives that influenced the Senate at that day; but we cannot so easily explain the readiness of Lord Palmerston * to acquiesce in this award. No doubt the precarious state of the country -the general and growing difficulties of the Whig cabinet, and the obvious jealousy of all the Conservative cabinets of Europe, may have made him over-anxious to extract spinis de pluribus unam-but superadded to these motives there was also, we have no doubt, some feeling of respect to the decision of the arbiter, whose award, however erroneous it might really be, would nevertheless have a considerable influence on the public opinion of mankind; and the rather, as the antagonist party appeared to complain of it as unjust towards them. But whatever were his motives, Lord Palmerston, carrying candour and patience to the utmost verge of endurance, continued willing to accept the Dutch decision, till at length, finding that the States would not give way, he, on the 30th of October, 1835, withdrew his consent to the territorial compromise recommended by the King of the Netherlands.' So far, although we think the offer of acquiescence in the Dutch award was impolitic in itself and persisted in too long, we impute no blame to Lord Palmerston ;-but while he was debating this point in a very desultory correspondence, another proposal was interjected by the American government, on which we think his Lordship's conduct is more liable to question, if not to reproach.

The then President, General Jackson, had, we have no doubt, an anxious desire-a laudable ambition we may venture to call it— to settle this boundary question; and when the constitutional difficulties raised by Maine, and sanctioned by the Senate, restricted him not merely from ratifying the King of Holland's arbitration, but from concluding any conventional line whatsoever, by binding him to the strict terms of the treaty, he evinced something, as we think, of his characteristic spirit, by making a proposition whichevading the constitutional difficulty by which he had been just defeated-would have accomplished his object of concluding the affair on terms not more onerous to England, and even less advantageous to Maine, than the award that Maine had compelled him to reject. Our readers will recollect that one of the first difficulties in following out the treaty-boundary was this:-the treaty provided that the boundary-line should run due north from the head of the River St. Croix, till it came to certain Highlands-which were supposed by the British, and, we believe, by the United States, to

Though throughout the article we shall generally use his Lordship's name as the ostensible Minister, yet we are very well aware that he must in strictness be considered as one only of a cabinet, all equally responsible. Against Lord Palmerston individually we can have no personal bias-quite the reverse!

exist south of the St. John's; but when the due north line came to be drawn, it appeared that there were no such Highlands to be found in that line. This was the foundation of all the subsequent difficulty-and this General Jackson professed to obviate by proposing, through Mr. Livingston, his secretary of state, to Sir Charles Vaughan, the British minister at Washington, that a joint commission should be appointed, with a mutual umpire, to make a scientific survey of the country, and if, as was supposed, the due north line did not fall in with the required Highlands, then that such Highlands should be looked for elsewhere, and that, wherever found, a line drawn from them straight to the head of the St. Croix should be taken to be the north-eastern boundary of the United States. This proposition was accompanied by the following diagram,

UNITED STATES.

D

B

NEW BRUNSWICK.

showing that if the Highlands should be found at C or D, the lines AC or A D, as the case might be, should be the northeastern boundary of the United States; and this Mr. Livingston further explained verbally, by exhibiting a map which showed that the probable point of the Highlands was about 50 miles westward of the river St. Francis.

This was the proposition for which the shrewdest and most experienced of the advocates of the United States' claim, Mr. Gallatin, censured the American Secretary of State,

'who, on this very question, did, subsequent to the award, propose to substitute, for the due north line, another which would have given to Great Britain the greater part, if not the whole, of the disputed territory. Why the proposal was made, and why it was not at once accepted, cannot be otherwise accounted for, so far at least as regards the offer, than by a complete ignorance of the whole subject.'-Correspondence laid before Parliament, 1838, p. ix.

We are entirely of Mr. Gallatin's opinion, and so, we think, will be our readers, when they shall have examined and compared Mr. Livingston's proposition and explanation with the subjoined sketch of the country, where we have marked the American

and

and British claims respectively, and the King of Holland's award; and have also applied to the actual locality the lines of Mr. Livingston's diagram:-those lines, be it always remembered, which were to be in the specified cases the north-east boundary of the United States.

The very inspection of this little map will satisfy our readers of the many great advantages which this proposition opened to us; but let us observe specifically,-first, that whatever might be the result of the new survey, it must be of great value to us in ulterior negotiation, that the United States, while stickling for the strict terms and very letter of the treaty, should have voluntarily departed from the only terms of the treaty that were undisputed and undisputable-the due north line :-secondly, any alteration which could have been made on Mr. Livingston's prin

ciple in the original American line must have been to our certain advantage; every degree of deflection to the westward was so much ceded of the American claim, and so much clear gain to us the gain might be more or less, as the Highlands might happen to be found more or less to the southward of the American claim, or more or less to the westward of the due north line; but it must always be a gain, and in no possible circumstances could be a loss. The result might have been that we should, as Mr. Gallatin thought, have obtained the whole of our claim, or if Mr. Livingston's anticipation-of carrying the line fifty miles westward of the St. Francis-should be fulfilled, something as good as our claim; but in no event could the United States have gained an additional inch upon theirs.

ness.

This, as it seems to us, most conciliatory proposition-accompanied by the strongest professions, and, we may say, proofs of General Jackson's sincere hope and wishes for the success of the expedient-Lord Palmerston treated with unaccountable coolFor six months he took no notice whatsoever of it; and then only after the American Secretary of State had jogged Sir Charles Vaughan, and Sir Charles Vaughan had jogged his lordship; and when at last he did answer, it was-to use a common but expressive phrase-by throwing cold water upon it. He began, by objecting that if the President could not ratify the King of Holland's deviation from the terms of the treaty, how could he ratify the greater deviation suggested by Mr. Livingston? This seems to us to have been exceedingly strange. It would have been an excellent objection in Mr. Livingston's mouth if the proposition had been made by Lord Palmerston; but was certainly not so appropriate as a reply of Lord Palmerston's to Mr. Livingston.

General Jackson, however, still persisting in thinking that he best knew his own power and position, Lord Palmerston was driven to find other difficulties, and amongst them he suggests the delay and expense of a new survey-as if any probable delay and expense could be worth consideration in so momentous an affair, which had already lasted so long and cost so much:-but, admitting that the delay and expense of a new survey were likely to be more considerable than we suppose-what then? The rejection of Mr. Livingston's proposition did in fact occasion, some years after, the expense of a new survey, which was ordered by Lord Palmerston himself in 1839-it has caused a delay in settling the question of nearly nine years-and, finally, it has settled the question by forfeiting more than half the territory which that proposition-as far as we can judge-would have secured to us.

But Lord Palmerston's main point, and that on which the

proposition

proposition ultimately failed, was, that his lordship required as a preliminary to his accepting Mr. Livingston's proposition, that the President should admit, as adjudicated and settled, so much of the Dutch award as intimated an opinion that the St. John's and Ristigouche were not Atlantic rivers in the meaning of the treaty. We have not the slightest doubt of the fact itself, nor of the King of Holland's opinion having been with us on that point-but it is not expressly stated; and Lord Palmerston never could have expected the President to make such an admission, or to accept an unfavourable fragment of an award of which he had rejected the whole-even if its meaning were unquestionable. The impression on our minds from this part of the correspondence, coupled with Mr. Livingston's explanations, is, that the President expected that the survey would give those rivers, or at least the greater part of them, to England, and was very reluctant to be forced to say beforehand anything that might trammel his future decision, and probably defeat his ultimate object. It may be very reasonably doubted whether the President would have had influence enough to have carried a boundary-line westward of the due north, and of course giving up more or less of the American claim. But General Jackson was a man of resolution and sagacity, and not likely to have taken this course if he had not seen his way through it;-he had, we are satisfied, a strong and laudable ambition to settle the question-he thought he had found a mode of neutralising the-we must call themfactious difficulties raised by the state of Maine;-and having in former days gallantly defeated us in the field, he was stronger in public opinion than any other statesman would have been for now doing us justice in the cabinet. It was therefore, we must always think, highly impolitic in Lord Palmerston to push him to the wall by this preliminary sine quâ non, which he could not possibly concede. But, however all that may be, even if General Jackson's proposal had been either insincere (which we cannot suspect) or unsuccessful-if he had failed to make, or been unable to ratify, a satisfactory treaty, or if any other impediment had intervened,still the very fact of a negotiation on such a basis,-particularly if the arrangement should be accepted by the Executive, even though it were to be afterwards negatived by the Senate,-would have been of the greatest eventual advantage to us, and must have, sooner or later, led to our ultimate success:-just as Lord Palmerston's protracted acceptance of the King of Holland's award has obtained for the United States the acquisition of the greater part of the territory so awarded-and would have insured the WHOLE of it, and probably more than the award contemplated, but for the concurrence of favourable circumstances by