and minister plenipotentiary of Great Britain,
with the answer of the Secretary of State to the same.

It will appear from those documents that a numerous band of lawless and
desperate men, chiefly from the adjoining British Provinces, but without
the authority or sanction of the provincial government, had trespassed
upon that portion of the territory in dispute between the United States
and Great Britain which is watered by the river Aroostook and claimed
to belong to the State of Maine, and that they had committed extensive
depredations there by cutting and destroying a very large quantity of
timber. It will further appear that the governor of Maine, having been
officially apprised of the circumstance, had communicated it to the
legislature with a recommendation of such provisions in addition to
those already existing by law as would enable him to arrest the course
of said depredations, disperse the trespassers, and secure the timber
which they were about carrying away; that, in compliance with a
resolve of the legislature passed in pursuance of his recommendation,
his excellency had dispatched the land agent of the State, with a
force deemed adequate to that purpose, to the scene of the alleged
depredations, who, after accomplishing a part of his duty, was seized
by a band of the trespassers at a house claimed to be within the
jurisdiction of Maine, whither he had repaired for the purpose of
meeting and consulting with the land agent of the Province of New
Brunswick, and conveyed as a prisoner to Frederickton, in that Province,
together with two other citizens of the State who were assisting him in
the discharge of his duty.

It will also appear that the governor and legislature of Maine,
satisfied that the trespassers had acted in defiance of the laws of
both countries, learning that they were in possession of arms, and
anticipating (correctly, as the result has proved) that persons of their
reckless and desperate character would set at naught the authority of
the magistrates without the aid of a strong force, had authorized the
sheriff and the officer appointed in the place of the land agent to
employ, at the expense of the State, an armed posse, who had proceeded
to the scene of these depredations with a view to the entire dispersion
or arrest of the trespassers and the protection of the public property.

In the correspondence between the governor of Maine and Sir John Harvey,
lieutenant-governor of the Provinc