by Her Majesty's Government, he was informed that the suggestion had
been offered, as the proposition on the part of Great Britain that led
to it was supposed to have been, with regard to the extent of territory
lost or acquired by the respective parties, and in the hope that the
great importance of terminating this controversy by establishing a
definite and indisputable boundary would be seen and acknowledged by the
British Government, and have a correspondent weight in influencing its
decision; that the suggestion in Mr. Bankhead's note of 28th December,
1835, of a part of the river St. John as a portion of the general
outline of a conventional boundary, apparently recognized the superior
advantages of a river over a highland boundary, and that 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 alluded to,
although based upon 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 Great Britain; that it was
therefore fair to presume that the river line, in the opinion of His
Majesty's Government, presented advantages sufficient to counterbalance
any loss of territory by either party that might accrue from its
adoption; and it was also supposed that another recommendation of this
line would be seen by Great Britain in the fact that whilst by its
adoption the right of jurisdiction alone would have been yielded to the
United States over that portion of New Brunswick south of the St. John,
Great Britain would have acquired the right of soil and jurisdiction of
all the disputed territory north of that river.

To correct a misapprehension into which Mr. Fox appeared to have fallen,
the distinctive difference between the American proposition for a
commission and that proposition as subsequently modified by Great
Britain was pointed out, and he was informed that although the proposal
originated with this Government, the modification was so fundamentally
important that it entirely changed the nature of the proposition, and
that the supposition, therefore, that it was rather for the Government
of the United States than for that of Great Britain to answer the
inquiry preferred by the Secretary of State for information relative
to the manner in which the report of the