ish Government
now considered itself by this refusal of the United States fully and
entirely released from the conditional offer which it had made, and
that he was instructed distinctly to announce to the President that
the British Government withdrew its consent to accept the territorial
compromise recommended by the King of the Netherlands.

With regard to the American proposition for the appointment of a new
commission of exploration and survey, Mr. Bankhead could not see, since
the President found himself unable to admit the distinction between the
Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic Ocean, how any useful result could arise
out of the proposed survey. He thought, on the contrary, that if it did
not furnish fresh subjects of difference between the two Governments it
could at best only bring the subject back to the same point at which it
now stood.

To the suggestion of the President that the commission of survey should
be empowered to decide the river question Mr. Bankhead said it was not
in the power of His Majesty's Government to assent; that this question
could not properly be referred to such a commission, because it turned
upon the interpretation to be put upon the words of the treaty of 1783,
and upon the application of that interpretation to geographical facts
already well known and ascertained, and that therefore a commission of
survey had no peculiar competency to decide such a question; that to
refer it to any authority would be to submit it to a fresh arbitration,
and that if His Majesty's Government were prepared to agree to a fresh
arbitration, which was not the case, such arbitration ought necessarily,
instead of being confined to one particular point alone, to include all
the points in dispute between the two Governments; that His Majesty's
Government could therefore only agree to such a commission provided
there were a previous understanding between the two Governments; that
although neither should be required to give up its own interpretation
of the river question, yet "the commissioners should be instructed to
search for highlands upon the character of which no doubt could exist
on either side."

If this modification of the President's proposal should not prove
acceptable, Mr. Bankhead observed, the only remaining way of adjusting
the difference would be to abandon altogether the attempt to draw a line
in conformity with the words of the treaty and to fix upon a convenient
line, to be drawn according t