r of rightful authority to do
so, a portion of the territory claimed by the State.

With regard to the suggestion made by the undersigned in his note of the
29th of February, 1836, of the readiness of the President to apply to
the State of Maine for her assent to the adoption of a conventional line
making the river St. John, from its source to its mouth, the boundary
between the United States and the adjacent British Provinces, Mr. Fox
thinks it difficult to understand upon what grounds an expectation
could have been formed that such a proposal could be entertained by
the British Government, since such an arrangement would give to the
United States even greater advantages than would be obtained by an
unconditional acquiescence in their claim to the whole territory in
dispute. In making the suggestion referred to, the undersigned expressly
stated to Mr. Bankhead that it was offered, as the proposition on the
part of Great Britain that led to it was supposed to have been, without
regard to the mere question of acres--the extent of territory lost or
acquired by the respective parties. The suggestion was submitted in the
hope that the preponderating importance of terminating at once and
forever this controversy by establishing an unchangeable and definite
and indisputable boundary would be seen and acknowledged by Her
Majesty's Government, and have a correspondent weight in influencing its
decision. That the advantages of substituting a river for a highland
boundary could not fail to be recognized was apparent from the fact that
Mr. Bankhead's note of 28th December, 1835, suggested the river St. John
from the point in which it is intersected by a due north line drawn from
the monument at the head of the St. Croix to the southernmost source of
that river as a part of the general outline of a conventional boundary.
No difficulty was anticipated on the part of Her Majesty's Government in
understanding the grounds upon which such a proposal was expected to be
entertained by it, since the precedent proposition of Mr. Bankhead, just
adverted to, although professedly based on the principle of an equal
division between the parties, could not be justified by it, as it would
have given nearly two-thirds of the disputed territory to Her Majesty's
Government. It was therefore fairly presumed that the river line
presented, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, advantages
sufficient to counterbalance any loss of territory by either