ith the colonies or of an
honorable peace after all hopes of retaining them in their allegiance
had ceased. They showed on coming into power a laudable anxiety to put
an end to the profitless effusion of human blood, and they wisely saw
that it would be of more profit to their country to convert the new
nation into friends by the free grant of terms which sooner or later
must have been yielded than to widen the breach of kindred ties by an
irritating delay. The debates which ensued in the British Parliament
when the terms of the treaty were made known show the view which the
party that had conducted the war entertained of this question. The
giving up of the very territory now in dispute was one of the charges
made by them against their successors, and that it had been given up by
the treaty was not denied. Nay, the effect of this admission was such
as to leave the administration in a minority in the House of Commons,
and thus became at least one of the causes of the resignation of the
ministry[59] by which the treaty had been made. At this very moment more
maps than one were published in London which exhibit the construction
then put upon the treaty by the British public. The boundary exhibited
upon these maps is identical with that which the United States now claim
and have always claimed.

[Footnote 58: See Note XI, p. 149.]

[Footnote 59: Hansard's Parliamentary Register for 1783.]

The full avowal that the boundary of the treaty of 1783 and of the
proclamation of 1763 and act of 1774 are identical greatly simplifies
the second argument. It has been heretofore maintained on the part of
Great Britain that the word "sea" of the two latter-named instruments
was not changed in the first to "Atlantic Ocean" without an obvious
meaning. All discussion on this point is obviated by the admission.
But it is still maintained that the Bay of Fundy is not a part of the
Atlantic Ocean because it happens to be named in reference to the St.
Croix in the same article of the treaty. To show the extent to which
such an argument, founded on a mere verbal quibble, may be carried, let
it be supposed that at some future period two nations on the continent
of North America shall agree on a boundary in the following terms: By a
line drawn through the Mississippi from its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico
to its source; thence a parallel of latitude until it meet the highlands
which divide the waters that empty themselves into the Pacific Ocean