Already the navigation of Maine is estimated at more than 300,000 tons, and exceeded by only two States in the Union, and her increase annually of tonnage is greater than that of any other State.
The abundance of building materials, believed to be inexhaustible, her great conveniences for shipbuilding along her extended seacoast, her numerous bays, rivers, and harbors, render it highly probable that the day is not far distant when the maritime interests of Maine will exceed that of any of her sister States; and if reliance can be placed upon the statements of a scientific engineer of high respectability and standing, who has during the past year, under the direction of the government of this State and our parent Commonwealth, made a geological survey of a portion of our State, it may be doubted whether the same extent of territory on the continent contains more real value viewed in all its bearings (the facilities of quarrying, manufacturing, exporting, and its influence upon the great interests of the State and nation) than is contained in our inexhaustible quarries of granite, lime, marble, slate, etc., mines and minerals in which large and profitable investments are already made. Some of these branches of business have been carried on for many years, and others to a large extent are commencing under the most favorable auspices.
These, together with our agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing interests, our immense forests of invaluable timber, with a water power of vast extent and value, giving us the means of laying the seaports of the Union under a contribution for ages to come, and warranting the belief that our present shipping interest will be sustained and employed and a great increase required.
About one-third of the most valuable portion of our territory is claimed by Great Britain, and the history of this protracted controversy from its commencement to the present time is such as to awaken general anxiety. We are admonished by recent events that we have not yet reached the termination of our toils and embarrassments, and they have awakened the painful apprehension that our just rights may not be secured by honorable negotiation or patient submission to unprovoked injuries. These considerations, in the opinion of your committee, call loudly for the interposition of the General Government, and require at their hands all needful preparation for possible contingencies. The late Governor Lincoln nearly ten years since called the attention of the Government to the importance of erecting a strong fortification in some eligible position on the confines of that portion of our territory to which an adverse claim is set up by Great Britain. In the opinion of your committee, the subject has lost none of its interest since that period, but, on the contrary, the events to which we have alluded give to it vastly augmented importance; and to our view, irrespective of any conditions growing out of the present controversy, a strong fortification upon the northeastern boundary of the United States, situated far in the interior and upon the confines of a foreign country, and surrounded by millions of acres of fertile land, destined soon to be peopled with a numerous population of hardy yeomanry, is of high importance.
Our isolated situation, being the northeastern boundary of the nation, with an interior frontier upward of 600 miles upon a foreign country and a large proportion of our territory lying between two Provinces of Great Britain and so situated as to render it greatly to the advantage of that nation to possess it; the inflexible determination which she manifests to pursue the course which interest dictates should not be forgotten; the extent of our seacoast; the exposed situation of our seaport towns, lying within a few hours' sail of the British naval depot in the neighborhood of Maine; the disastrous consequences of our defenseless situation during the last war; the great and increasing maritime interests which we have at stake without one single point where a ship, if dependent upon the United States fortifications, would be safe from the attacks of a frigate—these and the consideration that little, comparatively, has yet been done for Maine seem to our view to constitute irresistible reasons why Maine should no longer be forgotten or neglected in the common defense of the country.
Through all the long-protracted struggles, difficulties, and embarrassments of our infant Republic this portion of our Union has never been urgent or importunate in pressing its claims, but has submitted patiently to the force of circumstances which rendered it necessary to defer them.
But in the present altered condition of the country—the national debt paid off at a season of universal peace and unexampled prosperity, with an overburthened Treasury, and when it is deemed necessary to dispose of it to resort to measures which many eminent statesmen consider unwarranted by the Constitution and which a great portion of the people of the Union consider of doubtful policy—at such a period and under such circumstances it is difficult to perceive the justice of longer withholding suitable appropriations for the defense of Maine, and to our view it can only be withheld by doing violence to the principles of equal rights and by neglecting a plain constitutional duty.
Your committee therefore submit the following resolutions.
STEPHEN C. FOSTER,
Chairman.
STATE OF MAINE.