far _such consent_ would enable the treaty
authority to exert its powers. _Citizens_ might be made the subjects of
a treaty transfer, and these citizens owing allegiance to the State and
to the Union, and allegiance and protection being reciprocally binding,
the right to transfer a citizen to a foreign government, to _sell_ him,
might well be questioned as being inconsistent with the spirit of our
free institutions. But be this as it may, Maine will never concede the
principle that the President and two-thirds of the Senate can transfer
its territory, much less its citizens, without its permission, given by
its constitutional organs.

Your committee, however, deem it but fair to admit that they have
discovered no inclination in the General Government, or any department
of it, to assume this power. On the contrary, the President has
repeatedly declined the adoption of a conventional line deviating from
the treaty of 1783, upon the express ground that it could not be done
without the consent of Maine.

It is due, nevertheless, to the State of Maine to say that the committee
have no evidence that any conventional line has been proposed to them
for their consent. It indeed appears that the consent of Maine had not
been given to the adoption of any other boundary than that prescribed
by the treaty of 1783 up to the 29th February, 1836, and we are well
assured that no proposition for a different boundary has since that
time been made to any department of the government of this State.

The President of the United States on the 15th June last
communicated to the Senate, in compliance with their resolution, a
copy of the correspondence relative to the northeastern boundary. This
correspondence embraced a period from the 21st July, 1832, to the 5th
March, 1836.

The opinion and advice of the King of the Netherlands, to whom the
controversy was referred by the provisions of the treaty of Ghent, was
made on the 10th January, 1831, and of the three questions submitted,
viz, _the northeastern boundary, the northwesternmost head of Connecticut
River_, and _the forty-fifth parallel of latitude_, he seems to have
determined _but one_. He did decide that the source of the stream
running into and through Connecticut Lake is the true northwest head of
that river as intended by the treaty of 1783; and as to the rest, he
_advises_ that it will be _convenient (il conviendra)_ to adopt the
"Thalweg," the deepest channel of the St. John an