Excerpt from Report: The Committee on Foreign Relations, to Which Was Referred the "Bill to Provide for Surveying the Northeastern Boundary Line of the United States, According to the Provisions of the Treaty of Peace of Seventeen Hundred and Eighty-Three"

The following language is employed, to wit: bounded on the south by aline from thebay of Chaleurs, along the highlandswhich divide the, rivers that empty themselves mm the river St.' Lawrence, from those which fall into the sea, to'a'point in forty-five degrees, of northern latitude on the eastern bank of the river Connecticut).2 In both the proclamation and the act of Parliament, the dividing highlands are described in the very same language The highlands which divide the rivers that empty themselves into the river St, Lawrence from those which fall into the sea. The termini of this boundary are more precisely fixed by the act of Parliament than by the proclamation. This act, make's the southern point of the line commence on the eastern' bank'of the river Connecticut, in latitude forty five, and terminate at the Bayof Chaleurs'. Its extremities are two well known natural objects. This bay is in latitude about forty-eight. {the act of Parliament seems to have been prepared with great deliberation. It 'was intended to fix the boundaries between va'st provinces of the same empire; and no act of legislation demands greater care and'attention. The Bay of Chaleurs on the north, in latitude forty-eight, and a'point'on the Connecti cut, 'in latitude forty five at the south, were to be the two extremities; and the intermediate line was to pass along the highlands running between these two points, which divide the rivers that empty themselves into the St. Lawrence on the one side, from these falling into the sea upon the other. After this act of Parliament, is it possible to conceive of a more extra ordinary pretension, than it would have been in the Government of Quebec! Tobave claimed jurisdiction, not only to these dividing highlands whence streams flow into the St. Lawrence, but a hundred miles south and east of them, embracing a region of country watered by a large river, the St. John, and its numerous tributaries flowing into' the sea? Such a claim would have broken down the barriers between these provinces, erected 'with so much care by the act of Parliament, and made rivers running north into the St. Lawrence, mean the same thing as rivers running south into the ocean. And yet the present attempt of the British Government to make Mars hill the northwest angle of Nova Scotia rests upon no Other or better prin ciple, as will be shown hereafter.

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