pretended that the express restitution of
St. Germain's, and the possession taken by France in consequence of
the treaty of Breda, after a long discussion of the limits and the
declaration of France during the negotiation of the treaty of Utrecht,
were foreign to the point in question. In refutation of these maxims,
the English commissaries proved, from an examination of the maps and
historians cited by the French in support of their system, that if this
question was to be decided upon the authorities which they themselves
allowed to belong, and to be applicable to, this discussion, the limits
which they assigned were utterly inconsistent with the best maps of all
countries, which are authorities in point for almost every part of
the claim of Great Britain. They showed that the French historians,
Champlain and Denys, and particularly this last, with his commission
in the year one thousand six hundred and fifty-five, assigned the same
northern and western limits to Acadia which they did; and that Escarbot,
another of their historians, as far as any evidence can be drawn from
his writings, agrees entirely with the former two. They observed, that
all these evidences fall in with and confirmed the better authorities of
treaties, and the several transactions between the two crowns for near
a century past; and that the French commissaries, by deviating from
treaties, and the late proceedings of the two crowns, to ancient
historians and maps, only made a transition from an authentic to an
insufficient sort of evidence, and led the English commissaries into an
inquiry which proved that both the proper and the improper, the regular
and the foreign evidence, upon which this matter had been rested,
equally confuted the limits alleged by the French commissaries as the
ancient limits of Acadia.

CHAPTER IX.

_Ambitious Schemes of the French in North America..... Rise
and Conduct of the Ohio Company..... Letter from the
Governor of Virginia to the French Commander at Riviere-au-
Beuf..... Perfidious Practices of the French in Nova
Scotia..... Major Laurence defeats the French Neutrals.....
British Ambassador at Paris amused with general Promises.....
Session opened..... Supplies granted..... Repeal of the Act
for naturalizing Jews..... Motion for repealing a former Act
favourable to the Jews..... East India Mutiny Bill..... Case
of Le ------ Session closed..... Death of Mr. Pe