so much mutual interest, and they
learn with satisfaction that their sentiments upon this point are fully
shared by the actual President of the United States.

The communications which during the last few years have taken place
between the two Governments with reference to the present subject, if
they have not led to the solution of the questions at issue, have at
least narrowed the field of future discussion.

Both Governments have agreed to consider the award of the King of the
Netherlands as binding upon neither party, and the two Governments,
therefore, are as free in this respect as they were before the reference
to that Sovereign was made. The British Government, despairing of the
possibility of drawing a line that shall be in literal conformity with
the words of the treaty of 1783, has suggested that a conventional
boundary should be substituted for the line described by the treaty, and
has proposed that in accordance with the principles of equity and in
pursuance of the general practice of mankind in similar cases the object
of difference should be equally divided between the two differing
parties, each of whom is alike convinced of the justice of its own
claim.

The United States Government has replied that to such an arrangement it
has no power to agree; that until the line of the treaty shall have been
otherwise determined the State of Maine will continue to assume that the
line which it claims is the true line of 1783, and will assert that all
the land up to that line is territory of Maine; that consequently such a
division of the disputed territory as is proposed by Great Britain would
be considered by Maine as tantamount to a cession of what that State
regards as a part of its own territory, and that the Federal Government
has no power to agree to such an arrangement without the consent of the
State concerned.

Her Majesty's Government exceedingly regrets that such an obstacle
should exist to prevent that settlement which under all the
circumstances of the case appears to be the simplest, the readiest,
the most satisfactory, and the most just. Nor can Her Majesty's
Government admit that the objection of the State of Maine is well
founded, for the principle on which that objection rests is as good
for Great Britain as it is for Maine. If Maine thinks itself entitled to
contend that until the true line described in the treaty is determined
the boundary claimed by Maine must be regarded as the right one,