ly to present to the respective Governments the
result of their labors, which, it was hoped and believed, would pave
the way for an ultimate settlement of the question.

Mr. Bankhead considered it proper to state frankly and clearly that the
proposition offered in the last note from the Department to make the
river St. John from its source to its mouth the boundary between the
United States and His Majesty's Province of New Brunswick was one to
which the British Government, he was convinced, would never agree.

On the 5th March the Secretary expressed regret that his proposition to
make the river St. John the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick
would, in the opinion of Mr. Bankhead, be declined by his Government;
that the Government of the United States could not, however, relinquish
the hope that the proposal, when brought before His Majesty's cabinet
and considered with the attention and deliberation due to its merits,
would be viewed in a more favorable light than that in which it appeared
to have presented itself to Mr. Bankhead. If, however, the Secretary
added, this expectation should be disappointed, it would be necessary
before the President consented to the modification of his previous
proposition for the appointment of a commission of exploration and
survey to be informed more fully of the views of the British Government
in offering the modification, so that he might be enabled to judge how
the report of the commission (which as now proposed to be constituted
was not to decide upon points of difference) would be likely to lead
to an ultimate settlement of the question of boundary, and also which
of the modes proposed for the selection of commissioners was the one
intended to be accepted, with the modification suggested by His
Britannic Majesty's Government.

In January last Mr. Fox, the British minister at Washington, made a
communication to the Department of State, in which, with reference to
the objection preferred by the American Government that it had no power
without the consent of Maine to agree to the arrangement proposed by
Great Britain, since it would be considered by that State as equivalent
to a cession of what she regarded as a part of her territory, he
observed that the objection of the State could not be admitted as valid,
for the principle on which it rested was as good for Great Britain as
it was for Maine; that if the State was entitled to contend that until
the treaty line was determi