The disputes were to a certain extent inevitable. When the Treaty of 1783 was signed, half North America was unknown; while within the colonized or semi-colonized area, the coast-line, the courses of the rivers, the lie of the land, had never been accurately mapped out. There were well-known names and phrases, but the precise points which they designated were uncertain. It was easy to use geographical expressions in drawing up a treaty, but exceedingly difficult, when the treaty had been signed, to decide what was the correct interpretation of its terms. The matter was further complicated by the fact that in 1783, and for many years afterwards, until the Dominion Act was passed, Nova Scotia was a separate colony from Canada; while in the year The disputes were between provinces as well as nations. after the treaty, 1784, New Brunswick was carved out of Nova Scotia and also became a separate colony. Similarly the United States, though federated, were still separate entities, and Maine was in 1820 separated from Massachusetts, just as New Brunswick had been cut off from Nova Scotia. Thus on either side there were provincial as well as national claims to be considered and adjusted; and it resulted that the Treaty of 1783, which was to have been a final settlement of the quarrel between Great Britain and her old North American colonies, left an aftermath of troublesome questions, causing constant friction, endless negotiations, and a succession of supplementary conventions. A summary of the controversies and conventions, out of which the International Boundary was evolved, will be found in the Second Appendix to this book. There is more than one reason why such a multiplicity of disputes arose, why the disputes were so prolonged and at times so dangerous, and why the issues were as a rule unfavourable to Great Britain and to Canada.
The Treaty of 1783 made a precedent for future American successes in diplomacy.
First and foremost, not only was the original Treaty of 1783, in the then state of geographical knowledge, or rather of geographical ignorance, necessarily both inadequate and inaccurate, but in addition those who negotiated it on the British side, in their anxiety to make peace, were, as has been stated, completely outmatched in bargaining by the representatives of the United States. The result was that the weak points of the treaty, and the conspicuous success of the Americans in securing it, infected all subsequent negotiations. The wording of the document was played for all and more than it was worth, and there grew up something like a tradition that, as each new issue arose between the two nations, the Americans should take and the English should concede.
Great Britain was more weighted by foreign complications than the United States.
In the second place, Great Britain was always at a disadvantage in negotiating with the United States, owing to her many vulnerable interests and her complicated foreign relations. The American Government was, so to speak, on the spot, concentrating on each point exclusive attention and undivided strength. The British Government was at a distance, with its eyes on all parts of the world, and remembering only too well how the first great quarrel with the United States had resulted in a world in arms against Great Britain. At each step in the endless chaffering British Ministers had to count the cost more anxiously than those who spoke for a young and strong nation, as a rule untrammeled by relations to other foreign Powers and as a rule, though not always, assured of public support in America in proportion to the firmness of their demands and the extent of their claims.
Lastly, it has often been said that Canada has grievously suffered through British diplomacy. This is to a large extent true, but one great reason has been that Canada, as it exists to-day, was not in existence when Canada was not one nation. most of the boundary questions came up for settlement. The interests of a Dominion—except in potentiality—were not at stake, and there was no Canadian nation to make its voice heard. For two-thirds of a century after the United States became an independent nation, in the North-West the Hudson’s Bay Company or its rivals in the fur trade, on the Pacific coast the beginnings of a small separate British colony, were nearly all that was in evidence. Boundary questions in North America between Great Britain and the United States could be presented, and were presented, as of unequal value to the two parties. Any given area in dispute was portrayed as of vital importance to the United States, on the ground that it involved the limits of their homeland and their people’s heritage. The same area, it would be plausibly argued, was of little consequence to Great Britain as affecting only a distant corner of some one of the most remote and least known of her many dependencies. This was inevitable while Canada was in the making. Yet in spite of errors in diplomacy, and in spite of what on a review of all the conditions must fairly be judged to have been great and singular difficulties, the net result has been to secure for the Canadian nation a territory which most peoples on the world’s surface would regard as a great and a goodly inheritance.
The second article of the Treaty of 1783, which attempted to define the boundaries of the United States and therefore of Canada also, was by no means the only provision of the treaty which affected Canada. The third article was of much importance, giving to American fishermen certain fishing rights on the coasts of British North America; but the fourth, fifth and sixth articles require more special notice, inasmuch as, though Canada was not actually mentioned in them, their indirect effect was to create a British population in Canada, to make Provisions in the 1783 treaty which referred to the Loyalists. Canada a British colony instead of a foreign dependency of Great Britain, and to strongly accentuate the severance between those parts of North America which held to the British connexion and the provinces which had renounced their allegiance to the British Crown.
The fourth article provided ‘that creditors on either side shall meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value in sterling money of all bonâ fide debts heretofore contracted’.
The fifth article, while discriminating between those who had and those who had not borne arms against the United States, was to the effect that Congress should ‘earnestly recommend’ to the several states restitution of confiscated property and rights, and a revision of the laws directed against the Loyalists of America. The sixth article prohibited future confiscations and prosecutions in the case of persons who had taken part in the late war.[166]
Bitter feeling in the United States against the Loyalists.