ghts of Massachusetts are not indefeasible.

While, therefore, it is maintained that whether the title of
Massachusetts be valid or not is immaterial to the present question,
it may be further urged that not even the shadow of a pretense existed
for divesting her of her rights by the proclamation of 1763, except to
territory which by neglect she had permitted France to occupy. On this
point the French are the best authority, for it can not be pretended
that the Crown of England intended in forming the Province of Quebec
to go beyond the utmost limits of the claim of France to her colony of
Canada. The assertions on the part of France in the argument preceding
the War of 1756 were:

First. That both banks of the St. Lawrence are included in Canada.

Second. That with the exception of Miscou and Cape Breton, her grants
extended 10 leagues from the river.

Third. That the commissions of the governors of Canada in the most
formal and precise manner extended their jurisdiction to the sources
of the rivers which discharge themselves into the St. Lawrence.

Now the distance of 10 French leagues and that of the sources of the
rivers, on an average, are nearly identical, and this narrow tract, of
which alone the Crown could with any shadow of justice assume the right
of disposing, is that of which Massachusetts was intended to be divested
by the proclamation of 1763.

It was because Great Britain held that these claims on the part of
France were too extensive that the War of 1756 was waged. In this war at
least one-half of the force which under Wolfe took Louisburg and reduced
Quebec, and under Amherst forced the French armies in Canada to a
capitulation, was raised and paid by the colonies. The creation of the
Province of Quebec, covering a part of their chartered limits, was
therefore a just subject of complaint.

The bounds assigned to the new Province of Quebec to the south by the
proclamation of 7th October, 1763, are as follows:

"The line, crossing the river St. Lawrence and the Lake Champlain in 45 deg.
of north latitude, passes along the highlands which divide the rivers
that empty themselves into the St. Lawrence from those which fall into
the sea, and also along the north coast of the Bay des Chaleurs and the
Gulf of St. Lawrence to Cape Rosieres," etc.

In the same month of October, 1763, the limits of the royal Province of
Nova Scotia are fixed, in the commission to Governor Wilmot, on the west
"by the sai