l obstacles which had opposed
themselves to such an arrangement; and he further intimated that the
new negotiation would naturally embrace the important question of the
navigation of the river St. John.

In April, 1833, Sir Charles R. Vaughan, the British minister,
addressed a note to the Department of State, in which, hopeless of
finding out by a new negotiation an assumed line of boundary which
so many attempts had been fruitlessly made to discover, he wished to
ascertain, first, the principle of the plan of boundary which the
American Government appeared to contemplate as likely to be more
convenient to both parties than those hitherto discussed, and, secondly,
whether any, and what, arrangement for avoiding the constitutional
difficulty alluded to had yet been concluded with the State of Maine.
Satisfactory answers on these points, he said, would enable the British
Government to decide whether it would entertain the proposition, but His
Majesty's Government could not consent to embarrass the negotiation
respecting the boundary by mixing up with it a discussion regarding the
navigation of the St. John as an integral part of the same question or
as necessarily connected with it.

In reply to this note, Mr. Livingston, under date of the 30th of April,
stated that the arrangement spoken of in his previous communication, by
which the Government of the United States expected to be enabled to
treat for a more convenient boundary, had not been effected, and that
as the suggestion in regard to the navigation of the St. John was
introduced merely to form a part of the system of compensations in
negotiating for such a boundary if that of the treaty should be
abandoned, it would not be insisted on.

The proposition of the President for the appointment of a joint
commission, with an umpire, to decide upon all points on which the
two Governments disagree was then presented. It was accompanied by a
suggestion that the controversy might be terminated by the application
to it of the rule for surveying and laying down the boundaries of tracts
and of countries designated by natural objects, the precise situation
of which is not known, viz, that the natural objects called for as
terminating points should first be found, and that the lines should then
be drawn to them from the given points with the least possible departure
from the course prescribed in the instrument describing the boundary.
Two modes were suggested in which such com