very _sinister_
proposition. We have shown, and, as we think, conclusively, that the
range of highlands is to be looked for on British ground, and nowhere
else, because it is their own boundary, and a line which must, with an
ascertained north line, form the angle of one of their own Provinces.
And yet we are not to examine there at all; we have never explored the
country there, and are expected to yield to such arrogant, extravagant,
and baseless pretensions!

We would ask why, in what justice, if we can not find the object
in the route prescribed, are we to be thus trammeled? Where is the
_reciprocity_ of such a proposition, so degrading to the dignity and
insulting to the rights and liberties of this State? No; the people of
Maine will not now, and we trust they never will, tamely submit to such
a _one-sided_ measure.

The next restriction or limitation with which this negotiation is to be
clogged is an admission that the Restigouche and St. John are not
Atlantic rivers, because one flows into the Bay de Chaleurs and the
other into the Bay of Fundy; yet neither falls into the river St.
Lawrence. They would then find those highlands between the St. John and
the Penobscot. There can not be a more arrogant pretension or palpable
absurdity. Suppose the waters of both these rivers are excluded as
flowing _neither way_, still the waters that flow _each way_ are so far
separated as to leave a tract of country which, if equally divided,
would carry us far beyond the St. John. But we admit no such hypothesis.
The _Atlantic_ and the _sea_ are used in the charters as synonymous
terms. The Restigouche, uniting with the Bay de Chaleurs, which
communicates with the sea, and the St. John, uniting with the Bay of
Fundy, which also communicates with the sea, and that, too, by a mouth
90 miles wide, are both Atlantic rivers. These rivers were known by the
negotiators not to be _St. Lawrence rivers;_ they were known to exist,
for they were rivers of the first class. If they were neither St.
Lawrence nor Atlantic, why were they not excepted? They were not of
the former, therefore they must be included in the latter description.
Indeed, if rivers uniting with Atlantic bays are not Atlantic rivers,
the Penobscot and Kennebec, which unite with the respective bays of
Penobscot and Sagadahock, would not be Atlantic rivers, and then where
are those highlands which divide the waters referred to in the treaty
of 1783? Should we leave this que