A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

‘by a line drawn due North from thence to the Southern boundary of Our colony of Quebec’.

Therefore the Treaty of 1783, in defining the international line as a line drawn from the source of the St. Croix

‘directly North to the aforesaid Highlands which divide the rivers that fall into the Atlantic Ocean from those which fall into the river St. Lawrence’,

used the previous definitions of the Western boundary of Nova Scotia and the Southern boundary of Quebec.

There were only two new points in the wording of the Treaty. The first was that the sea was defined as the Atlantic Ocean, thereby excluding the Bay of Chaleurs, and possibly the Bay of Fundy also, which was, in the Treaty, at any rate according to the British contention, treated as separate from the Atlantic Ocean. The second was the importation of the words ‘the North-West angle of Nova Scotia.’ It was The ‘North-West angle of Nova Scotia’. obvious that wherever the Western boundary of Nova Scotia met the Southern boundary of Quebec there must be such an angle, but the Treaty spoke of it as a fixed starting point from whence to draw the boundary line; it assumed that this angle rested on highlands which divided the waters that flowed into the Atlantic from those which were tributaries of the St. Lawrence; and it assumed also that it would be reached by a due North line from the source of the St. Croix river. So the inaccurate maps of the day testified, and so paper boundaries, already recognized, prescribed. When, however, the matter was put to the test of actual geography, it was found that a line drawn due North from the source of the St. Croix nowhere intersected a water parting between the St. Lawrence basin and that of the Atlantic Ocean. The sources of the rivers which run into the Atlantic were found to be far to the West of the Northern line from the St. Croix river, to the West of that line even if it had been drawn from the source of the South-Western branch of the St. Croix, and not, as the St. Croix Commission had drawn it, from the source of its more easterly branch. It was evident that the earlier documents, which the Treaty of 1783 had followed, were based upon inaccurate information and that it had never been realized that the source of the St. John river, beyond which would naturally be sought the head waters of the streams running into the Atlantic, lay so far to the West, as is actually the case.

The terms of the 1783 Treaty were not in accord with actual facts.

It was therefore physically impossible to mark out a boundary in accordance with the terms of the Treaty. If the due Northern line was adhered to, the Highlands mentioned by the Treaty could not be reached. If those Highlands were adhered to, the due Northern line must be abandoned. In either case the North-Western angle of Nova Scotia, instead of being a fixed starting point, was an unknown factor, an abstraction which could only be given a real existence by bargain and agreement. The matter was one of vital importance to Great Britain, for it involved the preservation or abandonment of communication between the Maritime Provinces and Canada, all important in winter time when the mouth of the St. Lawrence was closed. The direct North line cut the St. John river slightly to the west of the Grand Falls on that river; and, had it been prolonged in the same direction, searching for Highlands till the St. Lawrence was nearly reached, Canada and New Brunswick would have been almost cut off from each other. The longer the controversy went on, the more clearly this result was seen by the Americans as well as by the English, hence the bitterness of the dispute and the tenacity with which either party maintained their position and accentuated their claims.

Attempt at settlement in 1803.

On the 12th of May, 1803, a Convention was signed between Great Britain and the United States providing that the dispute should be left to the decision of an International Commission constituted in precisely the same manner as the St. Croix Commission had been constituted; but the Convention was never ratified, and the points at issue were still outstanding when the negotiations were set on foot which The second American war. ended in the Treaty of Ghent at the close of the second war between the two nations. During the war formal possession was taken on behalf of Great Britain of the country between the Penobscot river and New Brunswick, which included the area under dispute, a proclamation to that effect being issued at Halifax on the 21st of September, 1814;[231] but at the date of the proclamation negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and the only basis on which the Americans would treat was the restitution of the status quo ante bellum, proposals for an adjustment of the boundary between New Brunswick and Massachusetts,[232] of which Maine then formed part, being treated as a demand for cession of territory belonging to the United States. On the British side it was The British Contention. maintained that the line claimed by the Americans

‘by which the direct communication between Halifax and Quebec becomes interrupted, was not in contemplation of the British Plenipotentiaries who concluded the Treaty of 1783’,[233]