in dispute, but
with reference also to the right of jurisdiction and the fact of the
actual exercise of it in different portions thereof.

Always aiming at an amicable adjustment of the dispute, both parties
have entertained and repeatedly urged upon each other a desire that each
should exercise its rights, whatever it considered them to be, in such
a manner as to avoid collision and allay to the greatest practicable
extent the excitement likely to grow out of the controversy. It was in
pursuance of such an understanding that Maine and Massachusetts, upon
the remonstrance of Great Britain, desisted from making sales of lands,
and the General Government from the construction of a projected military
road in a portion of the territory of which they claimed to have enjoyed
the exclusive possession; and that Great Britain on her part, in
deference to a similar remonstrance from the United States, suspended
the issue of licenses to cut timber in the territory in controversy and
also the survey and location of a railroad through a section of country
over which she also claimed to have exercised exclusive jurisdiction.

The State of Maine had a right to arrest the depredations complained of.
It belonged to her to judge of the exigency of the occasion calling for
her interference, and it is presumed that had the lieutenant-governor of
New Brunswick been correctly advised of the nature of the proceedings
of the State of Maine he would not have regarded the transaction as
requiring on his part any resort to force. Each party claiming a right
to the territory, and hence to the exclusive jurisdiction over it, it is
manifest that to prevent the destruction of the timber by trespassers,
acting against the authority of both, and at the same time avoid
forcible collision between the contiguous governments during the
pendency of negotiations concerning the title, resort must be had to the
mutual exercise of jurisdiction in such extreme cases or to an amicable
and temporary arrangement as to the limits within which it should be
exercised by each party. The understanding supposed to exist between the
United States and Great Britain has been found heretofore sufficient
for that purpose, and I believe will prove so hereafter if the parties
on the frontier directly interested in the question are respectively
governed by a just spirit of conciliation and forbearance. If it shall
be found, as there is now reason to apprehend, that there is, in