that treaty, having, as is admitted,
Mitchell's map before them, speak only of two classes of rivers--those
which discharge themselves into the St. Lawrence River and those which
fall into the Atlantic Ocean; yet upon this map were distinctly seen the
St. John and the Restigouche. The latter, indeed, figures twice--once
as a tributary to the Bay of Miramichi and once as flowing to the Bay
of Chaleurs.[58] It can not reasonably be pretended that men honestly
engaged in framing an article to prevent "all disputes which might arise
in future" should have intentionally passed over and left undefined
these important rivers, when by the simplest phraseology they might have
described them had they believed that in any future time a question
could have arisen whether they were included in one or the other of the
two classes of rivers they named. Had it been intended that the due
north line should have stopped short of the St. John, the highlands
must have been described as those which divide rivers which fall into
the St. Lawrence _and the St. John_ from those which fall into the
Atlantic Ocean. The mouth of the St. Lawrence had been defined in the
proclamation of 1763 by a line drawn from the river St. John (on the
Labrador coast) to Cape Rozier. If, then, it had been intended that the
meridian line should not have crossed the Restigouche, the phraseology
must have been highlands which divide rivers which fall into the river
_and_ Gulf of St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic
Ocean. Where such obvious modes of expressing either of these intentions
existed, it is not to be believed that they would have been omitted;
but had they been proposed to be introduced the American negotiators
would have been compelled by their instructions to refuse them. Such
expressions would have prescribed a boundary different not only in
fact, but in terms, from that of the proclamation of 1763 and the
contemporaneous commission to Governor Wilmot. Either, then, the British
plenipotentiaries admitted the American claim to its utmost extent or
they fraudulently assented to terms with the intention of founding upon
them a claim to territory which if they had openly asked for must have
been denied them. The character of the British ministry under whose
directions that treaty was made forbids the belief of the latter having
been intended. The members of that ministry had been when in opposition
the constant advocates of an accommodation w