SIR JAMES CRAIG
[Sidenote: Changes in administration.]
As has been told in the last chapter, Milnes and Hunter,
Lieutenant-Governors of Lower and Upper Canada respectively,
took up their appointments in the summer of 1799 when the
Governor-General Prescott was recalled to England. General
Hunter was not only Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada but also
Commander of the Forces in both provinces. These two men held
their appointments for six years, until August, 1805. On the 5th
of that month Milnes, who was by this time a baronet, Sir Robert
Shore Milnes,[216] left for England on leave of absence, and on
the 21st of the month General Hunter died at Quebec. For the time
being, two civilians acted as Lieutenant-Governors, Thomas Dunn,
senior Executive Councillor at Quebec, acting in Lower Canada, and
Alexander Grant acting in Upper Canada. Milnes remained on leave of
absence in England and drew his salary for over three years. A new
Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada was then appointed, who in his
turn also remained in England for many years and received pay in
respect of an office the duties of which he did not perform.[217]
[Sidenote: Evils of absenteeism.]
Thus it resulted that, at a very critical time, two provinces of
the British Empire, whose conditions were specially critical, were
left without a Governor-General, without Lieutenant-Governors,
and without a regular Commander of the Forces, while two men, one
holding the office of Governor-General of the two Canadas and the
other holding the office of Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada,
were spending their time and drawing their pay in England. We have
learnt something in the last hundred years, in regard to colonial
administration, and it is now difficult to appreciate a state of
public morality which showed so much indifference to the interests
of the colonies, so much acquiescence in sinecures, and so much
readiness on the part of capable and honourable public officers
to take pay without doing the work to which the pay was nominally
attached. But the fact that such things took place, affords a very
simple explanation of the difficulties which had already arisen and
which subsequently arose in the history of European colonization
between a mother country and her colonies. Men could put two and
two together in those days as in ours. If colonists saw the rulers
of the ruling land treating high offices in the colony as a matter
of individual profit and public indifference, they could only come
to the conclusion that they had better take care of themselves;
and if the answer came that governors and lieutenant-governors
were paid not by the colony but by the mother country, then the
colonists must needs have concluded that they themselves would
prefer to find the money and to have the money’s worth. This may
well have been in the minds of the members of the elected Assembly
in Lower Canada when, at a little later date, in 1810, they passed
uninvited a resolution that the province shall pay the cost of
the civil government, a resolution of which more was heard in the
course of the long constitutional struggle.
[Sidenote: External dangers which threatened Canada at the
beginning of the nineteenth century.]
[Sidenote: Hostility of France to Great Britain.]
What made for keeping up the connexion with the mother country
was not so much what the mother country did for the colonies in
peace, as the need which the colonies had for the mother country
in case of war. An attempt has been made in the preceding chapters
of this book to show that good fortune has attended Canada in her
development into a nation. The conquest by Great Britain tended to
this end, so did the loss by Great Britain of the provinces which
now form the United States. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century the cloud of war hung over Canada, but still her good
fortune did not desert her. There was perpetual danger from two
quarters, from France and from the United States. With France
Canada, as being part of the British Empire, was nominally at open
war throughout the closing years of the eighteenth and the early
years of the nineteenth century, except for the very short interval
which followed the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens in 1802; but
it is noteworthy how the political complications inured to the
preservation of Canada as a British possession. France and the
United States had strong bonds of sympathy. To French intervention
the United States largely owed their independence. Having parted
with their monarchy, the French were more attractive than before
to the citizens of the American republic; and in the days of the
American revolutionary war Congress had pledged itself to defend
for ever the French possessions in America. The bulk of the
Canadians, French in race, tradition, language and religion, might
well be expected to be French in sympathies. How great then might
have seemed the probability that England in war with France would
lose Canada? It was no wonder that such incidents as a visit of
Jerome Bonaparte to the United States caused uneasiness, or again
that a report was spread that Moreau, the French republican general
then living in exile in America, was likely to lead an invasion of
Canada.
[Sidenote: French Canadians not in sympathy with the French
Revolution.]
But, as a matter of fact, neither were the Canadians inclined
to return to their French allegiance nor were the people of the
United States in the least likely to permit France to regain
Canada. The Canadians had known forty years of British rule, clean
and just in comparison with what had gone before, and the France
which would reclaim them was widely different from the France to
which they had once belonged. The King was gone; religion was at
a discount; Canadian sympathies, at any rate in the earlier years
of the revolutionary wars, were rather with Royalist _emigrés_
than with the national armies who went on from victory to victory.
Above all antipathy to the United States, without whose abetting
or connivance, no French projects for regaining Canada could
have effect, tended to keep the Canadians firm in their British
allegiance. Thus the news of the victory of Trafalgar was welcomed
in Canada.
[Sidenote: The United States not disposed to allow the French to
regain Canada.]
Nor again were the Americans, however well disposed to France, in
any way or at any time minded to enable her to regain her lost
possessions in North America. A Canadian who had left Canada for
France when Canada was annexed by Great Britain, wrote, before the
conclusion of the Peace of Amiens, expressing the hope that Canada
would be regained by France. He regarded Canada, from the French
point of view, ‘as a colony essential to trade and as an outlet for
merchandize and men’; and he wrote that, if restored to France,
it ‘would constantly furnish the means of speculation which would
improve the future of the citizens whom war and revolution have
reduced to wretchedness’.[218] The words read as those of a man who
had known and still sighed for the days of the old French régime
in Canada, when men grew rich by illicit traffic; but, apart from
the views of individuals, there is no doubt that, as the eighteenth
century closed, France and the French people, after the wars of
the Revolution, with their power consolidated at home, were in the
stage of development favourable to colonial expansion, and mindful
of possessions beyond the seas which had once been French but were
French no longer.
[Sidenote: Napoleon’s views as to St. Domingo and Louisiana.]
[Sidenote: Abandonment of his American schemes.]
Napoleon, as writers have shown, in negotiating for and concluding
the Peace of Amiens which gave him respite from the sea power of
Great Britain, had in view the reconquest of St. Domingo where
Toussaint L’Ouverture had secured practical independence, and the
recovery of Louisiana. By secret bargain with Spain in 1800, he had
secured the retrocession of Louisiana; and, had the arrangement
been carried out and the French power been firmly planted again at
New Orleans and on the Mississippi, a new impetus and a new motive
would have been given for French designs on Canada. But the losses
in the St. Domingo campaigns were heavy, and in regard to Louisiana
Napoleon had to reckon with the American people. Realizing that his
policy, if persisted in, would draw the United States away from
France and towards Great Britain, he came, with some suddenness, to
the conclusion that the game was not worth the candle, and selling
in 1803 to the United States the great territory on the line of
the Mississippi which after all was not his to sell, he put an end
for ever to French aspirations for recovering their North American
dominions.
[Sidenote: Danger to Canada from the United States.]
Napoleon’s decision set Canada free from any possible danger of
French conquest; but, at the same time, it set him free also to
renew war with Great Britain, and cut short any tendency to more
cordial relations between Great Britain and the United States.
The danger for Canada now was that, either as the direct result
of friendship between France and the United States, or indirectly
through the incidents to which the maritime war between France
and Great Britain gave rise, war would take place between Great
Britain and the United States, involving American invasion and not
improbably American conquest of Canada. Eventually, in 1812, war
came to pass. Once more England was called upon to fight France
and the United States at the same time; but in this second war the
Canadians, heart-whole in defending their province against their
rivals of old time, themselves largely contributed to the saving of
Canada.
[Sidenote: The incident of the _Leopard_ and the _Chesapeake_.]
[Sidenote: Sir James Craig appointed Governor-General of Canada.]
[Sidenote: His previous career.]
The causes which led to the war of 1812 have been noted in another
book.[219] One of the incidents which preluded it was the action
of a British ship of war, the _Leopard_, in firing on the American
frigate _Chesapeake_ and carrying off four men, who were claimed
as deserters from the British navy. This high-handed proceeding
naturally caused the strongest resentment in the United States,
and raised the whole question of the right of search. There was
talk of invading Canada, which was answered by calling out the
Canadian militia; the Canadians answered readily to the call; and
shortly afterwards a new Governor-General arrived in Canada, a man
well tried in war, Sir James Craig. On the 10th of August, 1807,
General Prescott, still Governor-General of Canada, though he had
left in July, 1799, was delicately informed by Lord Castlereagh,
then Secretary of State, that it was necessary to appoint a
new Governor-General. The terms of the letter were that Lord
Castlereagh lamented that circumstances required an arrangement
to be made which might interfere with Prescott’s emoluments. Sir
James Craig accordingly received his commission on the last day of
August, 1807, and landed at Quebec on the 18th of October, too ill
to take the oaths of office until the 24th of that month, when he
took them in his bedroom. Craig, though in failing health, governed
Canada for four years. Like his predecessors he was a distinguished
soldier. He was a Scotchman but was born at Gibraltar, where his
father held the post of civil and military judge in the fortress.
He was born in 1748 and was only fifteen years old when he joined
the army in 1763, the year of the great Peace. He was wounded at
Bunker’s Hill; in 1776 he went to Canada and commanded the advanced
guard of the forces which under Carleton’s command drove the
Americans out of Canada. He took part in Burgoyne’s expedition, was
twice wounded, was present at Saratoga, and was chosen to carry
home dispatches.[220] Later in the war he served with distinction
under Lord Cornwallis in North Carolina. In 1794 he became a
major-general, and in 1795 he was sent to the Cape to take it over
from the Dutch. The Netherlands, recently over-run by a French army
under Pichegru, had been transformed into the Batavian republic,
and the Prince of Orange, then a refugee in England, sent orders by
the British fleet under Admiral Elphinstone, which carried Craig
and his troops, that the British force should be admitted as having
come to protect the colony from the French. The Dutch governor,
however, was not prepared to hand over his charge to British
keeping. Craig accordingly landed his troops at Simonstown, and
successfully attacked the Dutch at Muizenberg, but was not able to
occupy Capetown until the arrival of a force from India, which had
been ordered to co-operate, and which was under the command of a
senior officer, Sir Alured Clarke, the late Lieutenant-Governor of
Lower Canada. On Clarke’s arrival the Dutch capitulated, and Craig
became the first British Governor of the Cape, being succeeded in
1797 by a civilian, Lord Macartney. He served about five years in
India, being promoted to be Lieutenant-General in 1801; and, after
returning to England in 1802, was sent in 1805 to the Mediterranean
in charge of an abortive expedition to Naples, in which British and
Russian troops were to combine against the French. It ended in his
transferring his force to Sicily, where the Neapolitan court had
taken refuge. He then went home in ill health, and in 1807 went out
to Canada. His appointment was no doubt mainly due to his military
reputation, for war with the United States seemed close at hand;
but he was well qualified for it also by his wide experience of
the colonies, and by the fact that, like Prescott, he had already
had a short term of colonial administration. He left behind him at
the Cape a good record as governor, and but for the state of his
health seemed clearly the man for Canada.
[Sidenote: The beginning of his administration.]
In his first speech to the Legislature of Lower Canada in January,
1808, Craig expressed his gratification at meeting the members of
the two Houses ‘in the exercise of the noblest office to which the
human mind can be directed, that of legislating for a free people’,
and he added that he looked forward to the most perfect harmony
and co-operation between them and himself. His anticipations were
not fulfilled, and during the years of his administration the
inevitable struggle for further power on the part of the elected
representatives of the community became accentuated. The session
of 1808 lasted from January to April. It was the last session of
an existing Parliament. No point of difference arose in this short
time between the Assembly and the Executive; but, the Assembly
having passed a Bill, undoubtedly right in principle though
directed against a particular individual, that judges should be
incapable of being elected to or sitting in the House, the Bill
was thrown out by the Legislative Council. This caused ill feeling
between the two branches of the Legislature, and at the same time
the Assembly came into collision with one of the constituencies,
that of Three Rivers, by passing a resolution which excluded from
the House a Jew who had been duly elected as member for Three
Rivers and was promptly re-elected. At the conclusion of the
session a General Election took place in May, but the Legislature
was not called together till April, 1809, and in the meantime
friction began between the governor and the popular representatives.
[Sidenote: Friction between the governor and the Assembly.]
In June, 1808, Craig dismissed certain gentlemen from their
appointments as officers in the town militia on account of their
connexion with the French opposition paper _Le Canadien_. One of
them, M. Panet, had been Speaker of the House of Assembly in the
late Parliament, and when the new House met he was again chosen to
be Speaker, the choice being confirmed by the governor. The House
sat for five weeks in 1809, wrangling over the same questions that
had been prominent in the preceding year, viz. the exclusion from
the House of judges and of members of the Jewish religion: it was
then peremptorily dissolved by the governor, who rated the members
as so many children for wasting time and abusing their functions at
a critical season of national affairs. The election took place in
the following October; and, when the Legislature met in January,
1810, the Assembly was composed of much the same representatives
as before, any change being rather against than in favour of the
governor. In his opening speech the governor intimated that the
Royal approval would be given to any proper Bill passed by both
Houses, rendering the judges ineligible for seats in the Assembly.
The House of Assembly on their side, having passed a resolution to
the effect that any attempt on the part of the Executive or the
other branch of the Legislature to dictate to them or censure their
proceedings was a breach of their privileges, went on to pass loyal
addresses appropriate to the fiftieth year of the King’s reign,
their loyalty being, perhaps, quickened by the strong reference
which had been made in the governor’s speech ‘to the high-sounded
resentment of America’, coupled with an assurance that in the event
of war Canada would receive ‘the necessary support of regular
troops in the confident expectation of a cheerful exertion of the
interior force of the country’. There followed an Address to the
King and the Imperial Parliament, to which reference has already
been made, and in which the Assembly, with many expressions of
gratitude, intimated that the prosperity of Lower Canada was now so
great that they could in that session pay all the expenses of the
civil government. This Address the governor promised to lay before
the King, though he pointed out that it was unconstitutional
in, among other points, ignoring the Legislative Council. A Bill
excluding the judges was then passed and sent up to the Legislative
Council, who amended it by adding a clause which postponed its
effect until the next Parliament, whereupon the Assembly passed a
resolution excluding by name a certain judge who had a seat in the
House, and the governor, rightly deeming their action in the matter
to be unconstitutional, on the 26th of February again dissolved
Parliament.
[Sidenote: Proceedings taken by the governor against _Le Canadien_.]
[Sidenote: Craig retires on ill health.]
[Sidenote: His death and character.]
[Sidenote: Prosperity of Canada under Sir James Craig.]
[Sidenote: Growth of the lumber trade.]
[Sidenote: The first steamer on the St. Lawrence.]
[Sidenote: Road to the Eastern Townships.]
The French newspaper, _Le Canadien_, abounded weekly in scurrilous
abuse of the authorities. On the 17th of March Craig took the
strong step of seizing the printing press and all the papers, and
committing to prison various persons connected with the paper,
three of whom had been members of the late House of Assembly. He
justified his action in a proclamation to the country at large. The
prisoners were released in the course of the summer on the score of
ill health or submission, with the exception of one French Canadian
named Bedard, who refused to come to terms with the Executive
and was still in prison when the new Assembly, to which he had
been elected, met on the 12th of December, 1810. The governor,
in his masterful proceedings, had acted under the authority of
a temporary law entitled ‘an Act for the better preservation of
His Majesty’s Government, as by law happily established in this
province’. This Act was now expiring, and in his opening address
he called attention to the necessity for renewing it. He carried
his point, the Act was renewed, and, in addition to resolutions
on the subject of Mr. Bedard’s imprisonment, the Assembly did
some useful legislative work before the Legislature was prorogued
on the 21st of March, 1811. Shortly after the prorogation Mr.
Bedard was released, and on the 19th of June, 1811, Sir James
Craig left Canada. He had long been in failing health, and in the
proclamation, in which he defended his seizure of _Le Canadien_ and
those responsible for it, he had referred pathetically to his life
as ‘ebbing not slowly to its period under the pressure of disease
acquired in the service of my country’. His resignation had been
for some months in the hands of the Government, and it was only in
order to suit their convenience that he put off his departure to
the date when it actually took place. He reached England alive, but
died in the following January in his sixty-second year. He was a
man of conspicuous honesty and of undoubted courage and firmness.
He had a soldier’s view as to discipline and subordination, which
made him peremptory as a governor, and his addresses tended to be
long-winded and dictatorial. But his personal popularity was great,
he was dignified, hospitable, and open-handed, and he commanded
respect even from his political opponents and from those whom he
put into prison. He may well have been forgiven much not only for
his personal qualities, but also because his military reputation
was no small asset to Canada. His dealings with the United States
were fair and courteous, but behind them was the known fact of
his capacity and experience as a soldier. He might dispute with
those whom he governed in the sphere of civil action, but in the
event of war they had in him a leader upon whom they could rely.
The Canadians too had reason to be in the main satisfied with
his rule, in that the years during which Craig was governor were
years of much prosperity. It was at this time that, stimulated
by Napoleon’s attempts to cut off Great Britain from the Baltic
trade and by the Non Intercourse Acts of the United States, lumber
became an important industry of Canada. It was at this time too,
at the beginning of November, 1809, that a citizen of Montreal,
John Molson, put the first steamer on the St. Lawrence, her
passage from Montreal to Quebec taking sixty-six hours, during
thirty of which she was at anchor. Craig himself contributed to
improvement of communication in Lower Canada by constructing sixty
miles of road which bore his name, and which linked the Eastern
Townships, then being settled largely by immigrants from the United
States, to the southern bank of the St. Lawrence over against
Quebec. This road, which was carried out by the troops under the
Quartermaster-General, afterwards Sir James Kempt, Administrator
of Canada, was, as Craig wrote to his friend and secretary Ryland,
much wanted ‘not merely for the purpose of procuring us the
necessary supplies but for the purpose also of bringing the people
to our doors’:[221] and it resulted in the price of beef falling
in the Quebec market from 7½_d._ to 4½_d._ a lb.[222] It gave an
outlet to Quebec to a fine agricultural district, and it opened a
direct route to Boston from the capital of Canada.
[Sidenote: Ryland’s mission to England.]
When Craig wrote these letters to Ryland, the latter was in
England. He had been sent by the governor to lay the views of the
latter upon the political situation in Canada before the Home
Government; and, reaching England at the end of July, 1810, he was
active in interviewing ministers and supplying them verbally and
by written memoranda with first-hand information. Ryland had gone
out to America in 1781 as a paymaster in the army during the War
of Independence; and, returning with Carleton at the end of the
war, had been taken by him to Canada as confidential secretary. He
continued to hold that office to successive governors for twenty
years, until 1813, when Sir George Prevost, who followed Craig as
Governor-General and with whom Ryland was not in harmony, suggested
that other arrangements should be made for the secretaryship.
Ryland then resigned his office of governor’s secretary but
remained clerk to the Executive Council, living in the suburbs of
Quebec, until his death in 1838. He seems to have been an able,
honourable man, strongly opposed to the democratic party in Lower
Canada, to the French and Roman Catholic section of the community.
In England he was brought into relations chiefly with Lord
Liverpool, who was Secretary of State for War and the Colonies[223]
in the Percival ministry, having succeeded Lord Castlereagh in that
office, and with the Under-Secretary of State, Robert Peel. Peel
was then beginning his public life, and Ryland’s impression of him
on his first interview was that ‘though a very young man and but
a few days in office [he] appears to be very much _au fait_ in
matters of public business’. A week or two later he wrote of him
as ‘a very elegant young man of fine talents, as I am informed’,
and very pleasing manners.[224] With these two ministers and
with various other public men, including George Canning, Ryland
conferred or corresponded during his stay in England, which lasted
for the better part of two years. On one occasion, soon after his
arrival, he was present at a Cabinet Council, being seated, as
we learn from the full account which he wrote to Craig, between
Percival and Lord Liverpool. He was asked a large number of
questions, including a query as to the number of regular troops in
Canada, and, as the result, he appears to have formed a very poor
opinion of the knowledge and capacity of the ministry.
[Sidenote: Craig’s views on the political situation in Lower
Canada.]
He had brought with him to England a very long dispatch in which
Craig had set out his views. Craig estimated the population of
Lower Canada at the time when he wrote, May, 1810, at between
250,000 and 300,000 souls, out of whom he computed that no more
than 20,000 to 25,000 were English or Americans. The remainder,
the French Canadians, he represented as, in the main, wholly
alienated from the British section of the community, French in
religion, laws, language and manners, and becoming more attracted
to France and more alienated from Great Britain, in proportion as
the power of France in Europe became more consolidated. The large
mass of the people were, so he wrote, wholly uneducated, following
unscrupulous men, their leaders in the country and in the House of
Assembly. The Roman Catholic priests were anti-English on grounds
of race and religion; their attachment to France had been renewed
since Napoleon made his concordat with the Pope; and, being largely
drawn from the lower orders of society, and headed by a bishop who
exercised more authority than in the days of the old régime and
who arrogated complete independence of the civil government, they
were hardly even outwardly loyal to the British Crown. The growing
nationalist and democratic feeling was reflected and embodied in
the elected House of Assembly. When the constitution was first
granted, some few Canadian gentlemen had come forward and been
elected; but, at the time when the governor wrote, the Canadian
members of the Assembly, who formed an overwhelming majority,
according to his account consisted of avocats and notaries,
shopkeepers and habitants, some of the last named being unable
either to read or write. The organ of the party was the paper
_Le Canadien_, which vilified the Executive officers as ‘gens en
place’, and aimed at bringing the government into contempt.
[Sidenote: Constitutional changes recommended.]
To meet the evils which he deemed so great and emphasized so
strongly, Craig proposed that the existing constitution should be
either cancelled or suspended. His view, as expressed in a letter
to Ryland written in November, 1810,[225] was that it should
be suspended during the continuance of the war with France and
for five years afterwards, and that in this interval the former
government by means of a governor and a nominated Legislative
Council should be revived. He argued that representative
institutions had been prematurely granted, before French Canadians
were prepared for them; that they had been demanded by the English
section of the inhabitants, not the French; and that at the time
the best informed Canadians had been opposed to the change. In
the alternative, he discussed the reunion of the two provinces,
so as to leaven the Assembly with a larger number of British
members, though he did not advocate this course; and the re-casting
of the electoral divisions in Lower Canada, so as to give more
adequate representation to those parts of the province, such as
the Eastern Townships, where the English-speaking element could
hold its own. In any case he pointed out the necessity of enacting
a property qualification for the members of the Assembly, no such
qualification being required under the Act of 1791, although
that Act prescribed a qualification for the voters who elected
the members. Craig went on to urge, as Milnes had urged before
him, that the Royal supremacy should be exercised over the Roman
Catholic priesthood, additional salary being given to the bishop,
in consideration of holding his position under the Crown, and the
curés being given freehold in their livings under appointment from
the Crown. There was a further point. The Sulpician seminary at
Montreal was possessed of large estates, and Craig considered this
clerical body to be dangerous in view of the fact that it consisted
largely of French emigrant priests. He proposed therefore that the
Crown should resume the greater part of the lands.
[Sidenote: Craig’s views not accepted by the Imperial Government.]
Ryland soon found that the ministry were not prepared to face
Parliament with any proposals for a constitutional change in
Canada, and that they were more inclined to what he called ‘the
namby-pamby system of conciliation’.[226] They thought that it had
been a mistake in the first instance to divide Canada into two
provinces, but the only step which they now took was to procure
a somewhat superfluous opinion from the Attorney-General to the
effect that the Imperial Parliament could alter the constitution of
the provinces, or could reunite them with one Council and Assembly;
and a rather less self-evident opinion that the governor could not
redistribute the electoral divisions of Lower Canada without being
authorized to do so by an Act either of the Imperial or of the
Colonial Legislature.
[Sidenote: Critical condition of England at the time of Ryland’s
mission.]
To Ryland the affairs of Canada were all in all; to the ministry
whom he deemed so weak, they were overshadowed by events and
difficulties at home and abroad, compared with which the political
questions which troubled Lower Canada were insignificant,
noteworthy only as likely, if not carefully handled, to add to
the burden which was laid on the statesmen responsible for the
safe-keeping of the Empire. In 1809 Talavera had been fought and
hardly won, but it was the year also of the disastrous expedition
to Walcheren. In 1810, behind the lines of Torres Vedras,
Wellington was beginning to turn the tide of French invasion in the
Peninsula. The next year saw Massena’s retreat, but at home the
political situation was complicated by the insanity of the old King
and the consequent necessity of declaring a regency. In 1812, the
year of Salamanca, Percival the Prime Minister was assassinated,
his place being taken by Lord Liverpool, who, as long as Ryland was
in England, had been in charge of the colonies. In the same year,
war with the United States long threatened, came to pass. These
years were in England years of financial distress and of widespread
misery. William Cobbett giving voice to the hungry discontent of
the poor was fined and imprisoned, and Ryland hoped that his fate
would have some effect in Canada.[227]
[Sidenote: Legal opinion as to patronage to appointments in the
Roman Catholic Church in Canada, and as to the Sulpician estates.]
Lord Liverpool, however, was very loyal to Craig, though he
did not support any such drastic measures as the latter had
suggested. At the end of July, 1811, by which time Craig had left
Canada, he wrote a letter to him expressing the Prince Regent’s
high approbation of his general conduct in the administration
of the government of the North American provinces and the
Prince’s particular regret at the cause which had necessitated
his retirement. He wrote too to Craig’s successor, Sir George
Prevost, highly praising Ryland and expressing a hope that he
would be retained in his appointment. The law officers of the
Crown in England had been consulted as to the Roman Catholic
Church in Canada in view of the governor’s proposals, and advised
that so much of the patronage of Roman Catholic benefices as was
exercised by the Bishop of Quebec under the French Government had
of right devolved on the Crown. On the further question, whether
the Crown had the right of property in the estates of the Sulpician
seminary at Montreal, they advised that legally the Crown had the
right, inasmuch as the Sulpicians who remained in Canada after the
British conquest had no legal capacity to hold lands apart from the
parent body at Paris which had since been dissolved, and had not
obtained a licence from the Crown to hold the estates; but the law
officers, seeing the hardship which would be involved in wholesale
confiscation of the lands after so many years of undisturbed
tenure, suggested that the question was one for compromise or
amicable arrangement. In the end nothing was done in the matter in
the direction of Craig’s and Ryland’s views, and many years later,
in 1840,[228] by an ordinance of Lower Canada, the Sulpicians of
Montreal were incorporated under certain conditions and confirmed
in the possession of their estates.
[Sidenote: Sir James Craig’s administration.]
It is not easy to form an accurate estimate of Sir James Craig’s
administration. His views and his methods have been judged in the
light of later history rather than in that of the years which had
gone before. It is somewhat overlooked that at the beginning of
the nineteenth century the normal conditions of the world were
conditions of war not of peace, and that the governors of colonies
were as a rule soldiers whose first duty was the military charge
of possessions held by no very certain tenure. The account usually
given and received is that Craig was an honest but mistaken man,
tactless and overbearing, trying to uphold an impossible system
of bureaucratic despotism, instead of realizing the merits of
representative institutions and giving them full play. The apology
made for him has been that he was guided by and saw with the eyes
of a few rapacious officials, who had no interest in the general
welfare of the community. ‘The government, in fact,’ writes
Christie, ‘was a bureaucracy, the governor himself little better
than a hostage, and the people looked upon and treated as serfs and
vassals by their official lords.’[229]
[Sidenote: Uniacke.]
[Sidenote: James Stuart.]
Constitutions and systems of government are good or bad according
to the kinds of people to which they are applied, the stage
of development which they have reached, and the particular
circumstances existing at a given time inside and outside the land.
It was only with much hesitation that representative institutions
had been given to Canada; and one governor and another, bearing in
mind the conditions which had preceded the War of Independence,
had laid stress on the necessity of having a strong Executive,
and on the growing danger of colonial democracy. They were not
ignorant or shortsighted men; they looked facts in the face and
argued from past experience in America. Again, if the officials
were incompetent placemen, out of sympathy with the people, it was
the governors who laid stress on the necessity of filling official
positions with first-rate men and who occasionally took a strong
line with the men whom they did not consider to be adequate.
Moreover some of the officials, notably the judicial and legal
officers, placed themselves in opposition to the local government
and posed as defenders of the people. Craig dispensed, for the time
at any rate, with the services of two law officers. One of them,
Uniacke, who had been in Nova Scotia, was made Attorney-General
of Lower Canada by Lord Liverpool, and, being considered by the
governor to be unfit for his duties, was sent on leave to England
in 1810 with a request that he should be removed from his office.
He subsequently returned to his work in Canada. The other, James
Stuart, became a notable figure in Canadian history. He was the son
of a United Empire Loyalist, the rector of Kingston in Ontario.
He had been appointed Solicitor-General of Lower Canada by Milnes
in 1801, but after Craig’s arrival ranged himself, as a member
of the Assembly, in opposition to the governor, and in 1809 was
obliged to resign his appointment. After some years of bitter
opposition to the government, he lived to become a leading advocate
of reunion of the two provinces, to be appointed Attorney-General,
to be impeached by the Assembly and again deprived of his office,
and finally to be appointed by Lord Durham Chief Justice of Lower
Canada and to be created a baronet for his public services.
[Sidenote: Thorpe and Willcocks.]
Meanwhile in Upper Canada, where a young Lieutenant-Governor,
Francis Gore, from 1807 to 1811 carried on the administration
firmly and well, various holders of offices opposed the government
and tried to play the part of popular leaders. Judge Thorpe has
already been mentioned, on the Bench and in the House of Assembly
a blatant and disloyal demagogue; another man of the same kind
was Wyatt the Surveyor-General, and another Willcocks, sheriff of
one of the districts, and owner or nominal owner of a libellous
newspaper, for the contents of which the House of Assembly
committed him to jail on the ground of breach of privilege. These
three men were suspended from their appointments, and eventually
disappeared from Canada to make their voices heard in England or
in the United States; and the end of Willcocks was to be killed
fighting against his country in the war of 1812. One thing is
certain that in their official positions they were disloyal to the
government, and that in their disloyalty they received no support
from the elected Assembly of Upper Canada. Gore had a difficulty
too with his Attorney-General, Firth, a man sent out from England.
Firth ended by returning to England without leave and joining in
misrepresentations against the Lieutenant-Governor.
[Sidenote: Craig’s opinion of the French Canadians.]
[Sidenote: Real attitude of the French Canadians.]
It may fairly be summed up that in the Canadas many men were found
in office who had been pitchforked into appointments for which
they were unsuited; but that they were by no means invariably
supporters of the Executive against the representatives of the
people, nor were the governors their tools. On the contrary there
were constant cases of such officials opposing the governors, while
the governors in their turn stood out conspicuously in opposition
to the practice of appointing men from outside to offices in
Canada which required special qualifications in addition to good
character and general capacity. But a distinction must be drawn
between Upper and Lower Canada. In Upper Canada the voters and
their nominees, however democratic, were, with the exception of
a few traitorous individuals, intensely loyal to the British
connexion. In Lower Canada, on the other hand, the all-important
race question complicated the situation, and here Craig saw in the
French Canadians, who were also the democratic party, the elements
of disloyalty to Great Britain and _rapprochement_ with France. In
August, 1808, he wrote that the Canadians were French at heart;
that, while they did not deny the advantages which they enjoyed
under British rule, there would not be fifty dissentient voices,
if the proposition was made of their re-annexation to France: and
that the general opinion among the English in Canada was that
they would even join the Americans if the latter were commanded
by a French officer. His views on this point were fully shared by
another man of clear head and sound judgement, Isaac Brock. For
reasons which have been given Craig seems to have exaggerated any
danger of the kind. Republican France, which attracted American
sympathies, repelled those of the French Canadians. France under
Napoleon, brought back to law and order and to at any rate the
outward conventionalities of religion, became more attractive
to the French Canadians, but at the same time, in view of the
Napoleonic despotism, it became less attractive to the United
States. But at no time probably was there any real intention on the
part of the French Canadians to take any active step to overthrow
British supremacy. Certainly at no time was there the slightest
possibility of their changing their status except by becoming
absorbed in the United States. They were as a whole an unthinking
people, to whom representative institutions and a free press were
a novelty; their leaders liked the words and phrases which they
had learnt from English-speaking demagogues or imported from
revolutionary France. Their priesthood was not loyal, because it
claimed to be independent of the civil government, especially when
it was the government of a Protestant Power. The general aim was to
see to what uses the new privileges could be applied and how much
latitude would be given. The elected representatives opposed the
second chamber, the Legislative Council, as much as they opposed
the governor; they played with edged tools, but it may be doubted
whether at this early stage of the proceedings they meant much more
than play.
Under the circumstances, perhaps a fair judgement upon Sir James
Craig’s administration would be that he took the Parliamentary
situation in Lower Canada too seriously, and did not give
sufficient rope to the local politicians. He reprimanded the
Assembly when they acted unconstitutionally, and dissolved them
when they did not do their work. The strong measures which he
adopted, and the repeated dissolutions, were a bad precedent for
the future: and the course which he recommended, viz. suspension
of the constitution, would, if carried into effect, have been
premature and unwise. But for the moment the steps which he took
were effective. By his summary action in regard to the newspaper
_Le Canadien_, he showed that he had the ultimate power and was
not afraid to use it; and the result was that the very law which
gave the Executive extraordinary powers was renewed by the Assembly
which objected to those powers. Meanwhile Canada thrived, the
governor was personally respected, and repeated elections did no
one any harm. It was a time of danger from without and unrest
within, but many countries with admirable constitutions have fared
much worse than did Lower Canada under the rule of a strong soldier
confronted by a recalcitrant Assembly.
He was succeeded by a man of wholly different type, Sir George
Prevost, who endeared himself greatly to the French Canadians;
but internal differences were soon to be overshadowed by foreign
invasion, for in one year to the day from the date when Sir James
Craig left Canada, Madison, President of the United States, issued
a proclamation which began the war of 1812.
FOOTNOTES:
[216] He belonged to the same family as the Earl of Crewe,
Secretary of State for the Colonies.
[217] The Lieutenant-Governor in question was Mr., afterwards Sir,
F. Burton. His commission was dated November 29, 1808, but he
did not go out to Canada till 1822. He left Canada in 1828, but
did not cease to be Lieutenant-Governor, as his commission was
renewed on October 25, 1830--the year of King William the Fourth’s
accession. An Act passed in 1782, 22 Geo. III, cap. 75, commonly
known as Burke’s Act, provided against the holding of Patent
offices in the Colonies and Plantations in America and the West
Indies by sinecurists living in England. The operation of this Act
was greatly extended, and the granting of leave restricted by a
subsequent Act of 1814, 54 Geo. III, cap. 61.
[218] See Brymner’s _Report on Canadian Archives_ for 1892,
Introduction, p. xlix.
[219] _The Canadian War of 1812._
[220] See the _Memoir of Sir James Craig_, quoted at length on
pp. 343-5 of vol. i of Christie’s _History of the Late Province
of Lower Canada_, 1848. The notice of Craig in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_ says that he was sent home with dispatches
after the taking of Ticonderoga, which seems to be incorrect.
[221] Letter of August 6, 1810, Christie’s _History of Lower
Canada_, vol. vi, p. 129.
[222] Letter of September 10, 1810, Christie’s _History of Lower
Canada_, vol. vi, p. 157.
[223] The departments of War and the Colonies were combined under
one Secretary of State in 1801. This lasted till 1854, when a
separate Secretary of State for War was appointed.
[224] Ryland to Craig, August 4, and September 1, 1810. Christie,
vol. vi, pp. 124, 149.
[225] Letter of November 9, 1810, Christie, vol. vi, p. 166. The
main dispatch is dated May 1, 1810.
[226] Letter to Craig, August 23, 1810, Christie, vol. vi, p. 146.
[227] Letter to Craig, November 9, 1810, Christie, vol. vi, p. 169.
[228] 3 and 4 Vic., cap. 30.
[229] _History of Lower Canada_, vol. i, p. 350.
[Illustration:
MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE BOUNDARY OF CANADA _to face page 322_
TREATIES
subsequent to the Treaty of 1783,
under which the boundary line was fixed either directly or by
Commission or Arbitration
+---+ _Treaty of Ghent 24 Dec 1814_
| 1 | _Article 4._
+---+
+---+ _Jay’s Treaty of 19 Nov 1794_
| 2 | _Article 5._
+---+
+---+ _Treaty of Washington 9 Aug 1842_
| 3 | _Article 1._
+---+
+---+ _Treaty of Ghent 24 Dec 1814_
| 4 | _Article 6._
+---+
+---+ { _Treaty of Ghent 24 Dec 1814_
| 5 | { _Article 7._
+---+ { _Treaty of Washington 9 Aug 1842_
{ _Article 2._
+---+ { _Convention of London 20 Oct 1818_
| 6 | { _Article 2._
+---+ { _Treaty of Washington 9 Aug 1842_
{ _Article 2._
+---+ _Treaty of Washington 15 June 1846_
| 7 | _Article 1._
+---+
+---+ _Treaty of Washington 8 May 1871_
| 8 | _Articles 34 etc._
+---+
B. V. Barbishire, Oxford, 1908.
]
APPENDIX I
TREATY OF PARIS, 1783
DEFINITIVE TREATY OF PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN HIS
BRITANNIC MAJESTY AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, SIGNED AT
PARIS, THE 3RD OF SEPTEMBER, 1783.
In the Name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. It having
pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the Most
Serene and Most Potent Prince, George the Third, by the Grace of
God, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the
Faith, Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg, Arch-Treasurer and Prince
Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, &c., and of the United States of
America, to forget all past misunderstandings and differences that
have unhappily interrupted the good correspondence and friendship
which they mutually wish to restore: and to establish such a
beneficial and satisfactory intercourse between the 2 Countries,
upon the ground of reciprocal advantages and mutual convenience,
as may promote and secure to both perpetual Peace and Harmony; and
having for this desirable end already laid the foundation of Peace
and Reconciliation by the Provisional Articles signed at Paris,
on the 30th of November, 1782, by the Commissioners empowered on
each part; which Articles were agreed to be inserted in, and to
constitute, the Treaty of Peace proposed to be concluded between
the Crown of Great Britain and the said United States, but which
Treaty was not to be concluded until terms of Peace should be
agreed upon between Great Britain and France, and His Britannic
Majesty should be ready to conclude such Treaty accordingly; and
the Treaty between Great Britain and France having since been
concluded, His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America,
in order to carry into full effect the Provisional Articles
above-mentioned, according to the tenor thereof, have constituted
and appointed, that is to say:
His Britannic Majesty, on his part, David Hartley, Esq.,
Member of the Parliament of Great Britain; and the said
United States, on their part, John Adams, Esq., late a
Commissioner of the United States of America at the Court
of Versailles, late Delegate in Congress from the State
of Massachusetts, and Chief Justice of the said State and
Minister Plenipotentiary of the said United States to
Their High Mightinesses the States General of the United
Netherlands; Benjamin Franklin, Esq., late Delegate in
Congress from the State of Pennsylvania, President of the
Convention of the said State, and Minister Plenipotentiary
from the United States of America at the Court of Versailles;
John Jay, Esq., late President of Congress and Chief Justice
of the State of New York, and Minister Plenipotentiary
from the said United States at the Court of Madrid; to be
the plenipotentiaries for the concluding and signing the
present Definitive Treaty: who, after having reciprocally
communicated their respective Full Powers, have agreed upon
and confirmed the following Articles:
Art. I. His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United
States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island
and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to be Free, Sovereign
and Independent States; that he treats with them as such;
and for himself, his Heirs and Successors, relinquishes all
claims to the government, propriety and territorial rights of
the same, and every part thereof.
II. And that all disputes which might arise in future on
the subject of the Boundaries of the said United States may
be prevented, it is hereby agreed and declared, that the
following are and shall be their Boundaries, viz., from the
North-West Angle of Nova Scotia, viz., that Angle which
is formed by a line drawn due North, from the source of
St. Croix River to the Highlands, along the said Highlands
which divide those Rivers that empty themselves into the
River St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic
Ocean, to the North-westernmost head of Connecticut River;
thence down along the middle of that River to the 45th
degree of North latitude; from thence by a line due West
on said latitude until it strikes the River Iroquois or
Cataraquy; thence along the middle of the said River into
Lake Ontario; through the middle of said Lake, until it
strikes the communication by water between that Lake and Lake
Erie; thence along the middle of said communication into
Lake Erie; through the middle of said Lake until it arrives
at the water-communication between that Lake and Lake Huron;
thence along the middle of said water-communication into the
Lake Huron; thence through the middle of said Lake to the
water-communication between that Lake and Lake Superior;
thence through Lake Superior, Northward of the Isles Royal
and Phelipeaux, to the Long Lake; thence through the middle
of said Long Lake, and the water-communication between it
and the Lake of the Woods, to the said Lake of the Woods;
thence through the said Lake to the most North-western point
thereof, and from thence on a due West course to the River
Mississippi; thence by a line to be drawn along the middle
of the said River Mississippi, until it shall intersect the
Northernmost part of the 31st degree of North latitude. South
by a line to be drawn due East from the determination of the
line last mentioned, in the latitude of 31 degrees North
of the Equator, to the middle of the River Apalachicola or
Catahouche; thence along the middle thereof to its junction
with the Flint River; thence straight to the head of St.
Mary’s River, and thence down along the middle of St. Mary’s
River to the Atlantic Ocean, East by a line to be drawn along
the middle of the River St. Croix, from its mouth in the Bay
of Fundy to its source; and from its source directly North to
the aforesaid Highlands, which divide the rivers that fall
into the Atlantic Ocean from those which fall into the River
St. Lawrence: comprehending all islands within 20 leagues
of any part of the shores of the United States, and lying
between lines to be drawn due East from the points where the
aforesaid boundaries between Nova Scotia on the one part, and
East Florida on the other, shall respectively touch the Bay
of Fundy, and the Atlantic Ocean; excepting such Islands as
now are, or heretofore have been, within the limits of the
said Province of Nova Scotia.
III. It is agreed that the People of the United States
shall continue to enjoy unmolested the right to take Fish
of every kind on the Grand Bank and on all the other Banks
of Newfoundland; also in the Gulph of St. Lawrence, and at
all other places in the Sea, where the Inhabitants of both
Countries used at any time heretofore to fish. And also that
the Inhabitants of the United States shall have liberty
to take fish of every kind on such part of the Coast of
Newfoundland as British Fishermen shall use, (but not to dry
or cure the same on that Island,) and also on the Coasts,
Bays, and Creeks of all other of His Britannic Majesty’s
Dominions in America; and that the American Fishermen shall
have liberty to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled
Bays, Harbours, and Creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands
and Labrador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled; but
so soon as the same, or either of them, shall be settled, it
shall not be lawful for the said Fishermen to dry or cure
fish at such Settlement, without a previous agreement for
that purpose with the Inhabitants, Proprietors, or Possessors
of the ground.
IV. It is agreed, that Creditors on either side shall meet
with no lawful impedimenta to the recovery of the full
value in sterling money of all bonâ fide debts heretofore
contracted.
V. It is agreed, that the Congress shall earnestly recommend
it to the legislatures of the respective states to provide
for the restitution of all estates, rights and properties
which have been confiscated, belonging to real British
subjects; and also of the estates, rights and properties
of persons resident in districts in the possession of his
Majesty’s arms, and who have not borne arms against the said
United States; and that persons of any other description
shall have free liberty to go to any part or parts of
any of the Thirteen United States, and therein to remain
twelve months unmolested in their endeavours to obtain the
restitution of such of their estates, rights and properties
as may have been confiscated; and that Congress shall also
earnestly recommend to the several states, a reconsideration
and revision of all acts or laws regarding the premises, so
as to render the said laws or acts perfectly consistent,
not only with justice and equity, but with that spirit of
conciliation, which, on the return of the blessings of peace,
should universally prevail. And that Congress shall also
earnestly recommend to the several states, that the estates,
rights and properties of such last-mentioned persons shall
be restored to them, they refunding to any persons who may
be now in possession the bonâ fide price (where any has been
given) which such persons may have paid on purchasing any of
the said lands, rights or properties, since the confiscation.
And it is agreed, that all persons who have any interest in
confiscated lands, either by debts, marriage settlements
or otherwise, shall meet with no lawful impediment in the
prosecution of their just rights.
VI. That there shall be no future confiscations made, nor any
prosecutions commenced against any person or persons, for or
by reason of the part which he or they may have taken in the
present war; and that no person shall on that account suffer
any future loss or damage either in his person, liberty
or property, and that those who may be in confinement on
such charges at the time of the ratification of the Treaty
in America, shall be immediately set at liberty, and the
prosecutions so commenced be discontinued.
VII. There shall be a firm and perpetual Peace between His
Britannic Majesty and the said States, and between the
Subjects of the one and the Citizens of the other, wherefore
all hostilities both by sea and land shall from henceforth
cease: all Prisoners on both sides shall be set at liberty,
and His Britannic Majesty shall with all convenient speed,
and without causing any destruction, or carrying away any
Negroes or other property of the American Inhabitants,
withdraw all his Armies, Garrisons and Fleets from the said
United States, and from every Port, Place, and Harbour
within the same; leaving in all Fortifications the American
Artillery that may be therein: and shall also order and cause
all Archives, Records, Deeds, and Papers belonging to any of
the said States, or their Citizens which in the course of
the War may have fallen into the hands of his Officers, to
be forthwith restored and delivered to the proper States and
Persons to whom they belong.
VIII. The navigation of the River Mississippi, from its
source to the Ocean, shall for ever remain free and open to
the Subjects of Great Britain and the Citizens of the United
States.
IX. In case it should so happen that any Place or Territory
belonging to Great Britain, or to the United States, should
have been conquered by the arms of either, from the other,
before the arrival of the said Provisional Articles in
America, it is agreed that the same shall be restored without
difficulty, and without requiring any compensation.
X. The solemn Ratifications of the present Treaty, expedited
in good and due form, shall be exchanged between the
Contracting Parties in the space of 6 months, or sooner if
possible, to be computed from the day of the signature of the
present Treaty.
In witness whereof, we, the undersigned, their Ministers
Plenipotentiary, have in their name, and in virtue of our
Full Powers, signed with our Hands the present definitive
Treaty, and caused the Seals of our Arms to be affixed
thereto,
Done at Paris, this 3rd day of September, in the year of our
Lord, 1783.
(L.S.) D. HARTLEY. (L.S.) JOHN ADAMS.
(L.S.) B. FRANKLIN.
(L.S.) JOHN JAY.
APPENDIX II
THE BOUNDARY LINE OF CANADA
[Sidenote: The North-Eastern boundary.]
On the North-Eastern side, the Treaty of 1783 prescribed the
boundary as follows:--
‘From the North-West angle of Nova Scotia, viz., that
angle which is formed by a line drawn due North; from the
source of St. Croix river to the Highlands; along the said
Highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves
into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the
Atlantic Ocean, to the North-Westernmost head of Connecticut
river; ... East by a line to be drawn along the middle of
the river St. Croix, from its mouth in the Bay of Fundy
to its source, and from its source directly North to the
aforesaid Highlands, which divide the rivers that fall into
the Atlantic Ocean from those which fall into the river St.
Lawrence; comprehending all islands within twenty leagues
of any part of the shores of the United States, and lying
between lines to be drawn due East from the points where the
aforesaid boundaries between Nova Scotia on the one part, and
East Florida on the other, shall respectively touch the Bay
of Fundy and the Atlantic Ocean, excepting such islands as
now are or heretofore have been within the limits of the said
province of Nova Scotia.’
So far as these words refer to the sea boundary of the United
States no difficulty arose, except in the Bay of Fundy. East
Florida was ceded to Spain by Great Britain at the same time that
the treaty with the United States was signed, and therefore the
boundary line in the South had no further concern for the English.
[Sidenote: The border land between Acadia and New England.]
The North-East had been the border land between Acadia and the New
England States. In old days, as was inevitable, there had been
constant disputes between French and English as to the boundary
between Acadia and New England, while Acadia still belonged to
France; and, after the Treaty of Utrecht had given Acadia to Great
Britain, as to the boundary between Acadia and Canada. When, by the
Peace of 1763, Canada was ceded to Great Britain, the question of
boundaries ceased to have any national importance; and no further
difficulty, except as between British Provinces, arose until
the United States became an independent nation. Then it became
necessary to draw an international frontier line, which as a matter
of fact had never yet been drawn. There seems to have been a more
or less honest attempt, with the help of maps which were, as might
have been expected, inaccurate, to adopt a line for which there
was some authority in the past, instead of evolving a wholly new
frontier; and the result of looking to the past was eventually to
fix a boundary which was in no sense a natural frontier.
[Sidenote: The river St. Croix taken in 1763 as the boundary of
Nova Scotia and hence adopted as the boundary line in the Treaty of
1783.]
The river St. Croix had always been a landmark in the history
of colonization in North America. It was the scene of the first
settlement by De Monts and Champlain; and, when Sir William
Alexander in 1621 received from the King the famous grant of Nova
Scotia, the grant was defined as extending to
‘the river generally known by the name of St. Croix and to
the remotest springs, or source, from the Western side of the
same, which empty into the first mentioned river’,
Later, the French claim on behalf of Acadia extended as far as
the Penobscot river, if not to the Kennebec; but after the Treaty
of Utrecht, the claims of Massachusetts to the country up to the
St. Croix river were allowed in 1732;[230] and in 1763, after the
Peace of Paris, the St. Croix river was, in the Commission to
the Governor of Nova Scotia, designated as the boundary of the
province, the following being the terms of the Commission:--
‘Although Our said province has anciently extended, and does
of right extend, so far as the river Pentagoet or Penobscot,
it shall be bounded by a line drawn from Cape Sable across
the entrance of the Bay of Fundy to the mouth of the river
St. Croix, by the said river to its source, and by a line
drawn due North from thence to the Southern boundary of Our
Colony of Quebec.’
Accordingly the river St. Croix was designated as the international
boundary in the Treaty of 1783.
[Sidenote: Doubt as to the identity of the St. Croix river.]
[Sidenote: Commission appointed under the Treaty of 1794 to
identify the river.]
But then the question arose which was the St. Croix river. Between
1763 and 1783 attempts had been made to identify it, but without
success, for at least three rivers flowing into Passamaquoddy Bay
were each claimed as the St. Croix. After the Peace of 1783, the
dispute continued, and eventually the further Treaty of 19th of
November, 1794, known from the name of the American statesman who
negotiated it in London as Jay’s Treaty, provided in the Fifth
Article that the question should be left to the final decision
of three Commissioners, one to be appointed by the British
Government, one by that of the United States, and a third by the
two Commissioners themselves. The article provided that
‘the said Commissioners shall by a Declaration under their
hands and seals decide what river is the river St. Croix
intended by the treaty. The said Declaration shall contain
a description of the said river and shall particularize the
latitude and the longitude of its mouth and its source.’
[Sidenote: The St. Croix river determined in 1798.]
In August, 1795, the Treaty was ratified by Washington as President
of the United States; and, in 1796, the Commissioners began their
work, the third Commissioner being an American lawyer. The work
was not concluded until another explanatory article had been, on
the 15th of March, 1798, signed on behalf of the two Governments,
relieving the Commissioners from the duty of particularizing the
latitude and longitude of the source of the St. Croix, provided
that they described the river in such other manner as they judged
expedient, and laying down that the point ascertained and described
to be the source should be marked by a monument to be erected and
maintained by the two Governments. Eventually, on the 25th of
October, 1798, the Commissioners, who had discharged their duties
with conspicuous fairness and ability, gave their award. They
identified the Scoodic river, as it was then called, with the St.
Croix of Champlain; they selected the Eastern or Northern branch of
the river as the boundary line in preference to the South-Western,
thereby including in American territory a considerable area which
the English had claimed; they marked beyond further dispute the
point which was thereafter to be held to be the source of the St.
Croix; but they did not demarcate the actual boundary line down the
course of the river.
[Sidenote: The Maine Boundary question.]
From the source of the St. Croix, according to the words of the
Treaty of 1783, which have been already quoted, a line was to be
drawn due North to the Highlands which formed the water parting
between the streams running into the St. Lawrence and those running
into the Atlantic Ocean, and this line was supposed to form the
North-West angle of Nova Scotia. No provision was made in the
Treaty of 1794 for determining the boundary North of the source of
the St. Croix river, and the labours of the St. Croix Commission
were confined to identifying that river from the mouth to the
source. A far more serious and more prolonged controversy arose
over the territory to the North of the source, threatening to bring
war between Great Britain and the United States, and not settled
for sixty years.
[Sidenote: The old definitions of the boundary.]
As in the case of the St. Croix, the framers of the Treaty of 1783,
in specifying a line drawn due North from the source of that river,
to meet the Highlands which parted the basin of the St. Lawrence
from that of the Atlantic, had recourse to past history and used
definitions already in existence. Nova Scotia, as granted to Sir
William Alexander, was, according to the terms of the charter,
bounded from the source of the St. Croix
‘by an imaginary straight line which is conceived to extend
through the land, or run Northward to the nearest bay, river,
or stream emptying into the great river of Canada’.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763, which constituted the province of
Quebec after the peace signed in that year, defined the Southern
boundary of Quebec as passing
‘along the Highlands which divide the rivers that empty
themselves into the said river St. Lawrence from those which
fall into the sea’.
The Quebec Act of 1774 again defined the Southern boundary of
Quebec as
‘along the Highlands which divide the rivers that empty
themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall
into the sea, to a point in 45 degrees of Northern latitude
on the Eastern bank of the River Connecticut’.
In the Commission to the Governor of Nova Scotia issued in 1763,
the Western boundary of Nova Scotia from the source of the St.
Croix was defined
‘by a line drawn due North from thence to the Southern
boundary of Our colony of Quebec’.
Therefore the Treaty of 1783, in defining the international line as
a line drawn from the source of the St. Croix
‘directly North to the aforesaid Highlands which divide the
rivers that fall into the Atlantic Ocean from those which
fall into the river St. Lawrence’,
used the previous definitions of the Western boundary of Nova
Scotia and the Southern boundary of Quebec.
[Sidenote: The ‘North-West angle of Nova Scotia’.]
There were only two new points in the wording of the Treaty. The
first was that the sea was defined as the Atlantic Ocean, thereby
excluding the Bay of Chaleurs, and possibly the Bay of Fundy also,
which was, in the Treaty, at any rate according to the British
contention, treated as separate from the Atlantic Ocean. The second
was the importation of the words ‘the North-West angle of Nova
Scotia.’ It was obvious that wherever the Western boundary of Nova
Scotia met the Southern boundary of Quebec there must be such an
angle, but the Treaty spoke of it as a fixed starting point from
whence to draw the boundary line; it assumed that this angle rested
on highlands which divided the waters that flowed into the Atlantic
from those which were tributaries of the St. Lawrence; and it
assumed also that it would be reached by a due North line from the
source of the St. Croix river. So the inaccurate maps of the day
testified, and so paper boundaries, already recognized, prescribed.
When, however, the matter was put to the test of actual geography,
it was found that a line drawn due North from the source of the St.
Croix nowhere intersected a water parting between the St. Lawrence
basin and that of the Atlantic Ocean. The sources of the rivers
which run into the Atlantic were found to be far to the West of
the Northern line from the St. Croix river, to the West of that
line even if it had been drawn from the source of the South-Western
branch of the St. Croix, and not, as the St. Croix Commission had
drawn it, from the source of its more easterly branch. It was
evident that the earlier documents, which the Treaty of 1783 had
followed, were based upon inaccurate information and that it had
never been realized that the source of the St. John river, beyond
which would naturally be sought the head waters of the streams
running into the Atlantic, lay so far to the West, as is actually
the case.
[Sidenote: The terms of the 1783 Treaty were not in accord with
actual facts.]
It was therefore physically impossible to mark out a boundary in
accordance with the terms of the Treaty. If the due Northern line
was adhered to, the Highlands mentioned by the Treaty could not
be reached. If those Highlands were adhered to, the due Northern
line must be abandoned. In either case the North-Western angle
of Nova Scotia, instead of being a fixed starting point, was an
unknown factor, an abstraction which could only be given a real
existence by bargain and agreement. The matter was one of vital
importance to Great Britain, for it involved the preservation or
abandonment of communication between the Maritime Provinces and
Canada, all important in winter time when the mouth of the St.
Lawrence was closed. The direct North line cut the St. John river
slightly to the west of the Grand Falls on that river; and, had
it been prolonged in the same direction, searching for Highlands
till the St. Lawrence was nearly reached, Canada and New Brunswick
would have been almost cut off from each other. The longer the
controversy went on, the more clearly this result was seen by the
Americans as well as by the English, hence the bitterness of the
dispute and the tenacity with which either party maintained their
position and accentuated their claims.
[Sidenote: Attempt at settlement in 1803.]
[Sidenote: The second American war.]
[Sidenote: The British Contention.]
On the 12th of May, 1803, a Convention was signed between Great
Britain and the United States providing that the dispute should be
left to the decision of an International Commission constituted
in precisely the same manner as the St. Croix Commission had
been constituted; but the Convention was never ratified, and the
points at issue were still outstanding when the negotiations were
set on foot which ended in the Treaty of Ghent at the close of
the second war between the two nations. During the war formal
possession was taken on behalf of Great Britain of the country
between the Penobscot river and New Brunswick, which included
the area under dispute, a proclamation to that effect being
issued at Halifax on the 21st of September, 1814;[231] but at
the date of the proclamation negotiations for peace were already
proceeding, and the only basis on which the Americans would treat
was the restitution of the status quo ante bellum, proposals
for an adjustment of the boundary between New Brunswick and
Massachusetts,[232] of which Maine then formed part, being treated
as a demand for cession of territory belonging to the United
States. On the British side it was maintained that the line claimed
by the Americans
‘by which the direct communication between Halifax and Quebec
becomes interrupted, was not in contemplation of the British
Plenipotentiaries who concluded the Treaty of 1783’,[233]
and in a later letter, replying to the American representatives,
the British negotiators wrote[234]
‘the British Government never required that all that portion
of the State of Massachusetts intervening between the
Province of New Brunswick and Quebec should be ceded to Great
Britain, but only that small portion of unsettled country
which interrupts the communication between Halifax and
Quebec, there being much doubt whether it does not already
belong to Great Britain’.
The inference to be drawn from the correspondence is that, on the
strict wording of the Treaty of 1783, apart from the intention of
those who negotiated it, the American claim was recognized to be
stronger than the British.
[Sidenote: The Treaty of Ghent.]
[Sidenote: A Boundary Commission appointed.]
[Sidenote: The Commissioners disagree.]
The Treaty of Ghent was signed on the 24th of December, 1814,
and the Fifth Article provided that two Commissioners should be
appointed to locate the North-West angle of Nova Scotia as well as
the North-Westernmost head of the Connecticut river, between which
two points the Treaty of 1783 provided that the dividing line along
the Highlands was to be drawn. A map of the boundary was to be
made, and the latitude and longitude of the North-West angle and
of the head of the Connecticut were to be particularized. If the
Commissioners agreed, their report was to be final; but if they
disagreed, they were to report to their respective governments, and
some friendly sovereign or state was to arbitrate between them. The
Commission first met in 1816, much time was taken up in surveying
the North line from the source of the St. Croix to the watershed
of the St. Lawrence, and it was not until 1821 that the two
representatives, having failed to agree, gave distinct awards, the
British Commissioner placing the North-West angle at the Highlands
known as Mars Hill nearly 40 miles south of the St. John river, and
the American Commissioner locating it nearly 70 miles north of that
river, either Commissioner adopting the extreme claim put forward
by his side.
[Sidenote: The Convention of 1827.]
[Sidenote: Award given by the King of the Netherlands as
Arbitrator.]
[Sidenote: The award not accepted by the Americans.]
In view of the divergence between the two reports, it was
necessary, in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, to
submit the matter to arbitration; but this step was not taken until
yet another Convention had been signed on the 29th of September,
1827, providing that new statements of the case on either side
should be drawn up for submission to the arbitrator. It was laid
down that the basis of the statements should be two specified
maps, one of which was referred to as the map used in drawing
up the original Treaty of 1783. The inaccuracies in this map,
Mitchell’s map, had been the origin of all the difficulties which
had subsequently arisen. The King of the Netherlands was selected
to arbitrate. In 1830 the statements were laid before him, and
in January, 1831, he gave his award. It was to the effect that
it was impossible, having regard either to law or to equity, to
adopt either of the lines proposed by the two contending parties,
and that a compromise should be accepted which was defined in
the award. The line which the king proposed was more favourable
to the Americans than to the English, but the Americans declined
to consent to it, on the ground that, while the arbitrator
might accept either of the two lines which were presented for
arbitration, he was not empowered to fix a third and new boundary.
[Sidenote: Collision in the Aroostook region.]
[Sidenote: The Ashburton Treaty.]
[Sidenote: Final settlement of the Maine boundary question.]
Thus this troublesome matter was still left outstanding, and yet
the necessity for a settlement was more pressing than ever. The new
state of Maine maintained the American claim with more pertinacity
and less inclination to compromise than the Government of the
United States had shown; the United States Government was ready to
accept a conventional line, but Maine objected, and meanwhile the
result of the uncertainty and delay was that the backwoodsmen of
Maine and New Brunswick were coming to blows. About the beginning
of 1839 the disputes in the region of the Aroostook river nearly
brought on war between the two nations, which was only averted
by the mediation of General Winfield Scott then commanding the
American forces on the frontier. Immediately afterwards two British
Commissioners, Colonel Mudge and Mr. Featherstonhaugh, were deputed
to survey the debatable territory and reported in April, 1840,[235]
their report being followed by a survey on the part of the American
Government. At length, on the 9th of August, 1842, Daniel Webster
then Secretary of State for the United States, and Lord Ashburton,
sent out as special Commissioner from Great Britain, concluded the
Treaty of Washington, which put an end to the long and dangerous
controversy. By the First Article of that Treaty the present
boundary was fixed; the North line from the monument at the head of
the St. Croix river was followed to the point where it intersected
the St. John; the middle of the main channel of that river was then
taken as far as the mouth of its tributary the St. Francis; thence
the middle of the channel of the St. Francis up to the outlet of
the Lake Pohenagamook; from which point the line was drawn in a
South-Westerly direction to the dividing Highlands and the head of
the Connecticut river until the 45th degree of North latitude was
reached. The boundary was subsequently surveyed and marked out, and
upon the 28th of June, 1847, the final results were reported and
the matter was at an end.
[Sidenote: Settlement of the boundary between the province of
Quebec and that of New Brunswick.]
The existing boundary is on the whole more favourable to Great
Britain than the line which the King of the Netherlands proposed
and the Americans rejected; but notwithstanding, Lord Ashburton’s
settlement has always been regarded in Canada as having given to
the United States territory to which Great Britain had an undoubted
claim. The fault, however, was not with Lord Ashburton but with the
wording of the original Treaty of 1783; and that treaty, as has
been shown, was based on such geographical information as there
was to hand, accepted at the time in good faith, but subsequently
proved to be incorrect. It should be added that by the Third
Article of the Ashburton Treaty the navigation of the river St.
John was declared to be free and open to both nations, and that
the settlement of the international boundary was followed by an
adjustment of the frontier between Canada and New Brunswick. The
dispute between the two provinces was, at the suggestion of the
Imperial Government, eventually referred to two arbitrators, one
chosen by each province, with an umpire selected by the arbitrators
themselves. The award was given in 1851, and in the same year its
terms were embodied in an Imperial Act of Parliament
‘for the settlement of the boundaries between the provinces
of Canada and New Brunswick’.
[Sidenote: The International boundary in the Bay of Fundy.]
In the Bay of Fundy the boundary line between British and American
territory was, by the terms of the 1783 Treaty, to be drawn due
East from the mouth of the St. Croix river, assigning to the United
States all islands within twenty leagues of the shore to the South
of the line,
‘excepting such islands as now are or heretofore have been
within the limits of the said province of Nova Scotia.’
Here was a further ground of dispute, touching the ownership of
the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay. Geographically they would belong
to the United States, unless they could be shown to have been
within the limits of Nova Scotia. The Convention of 1803, which
has already been mentioned as never having been ratified, in the
First Article prescribed the boundary; and the Treaty of Ghent
in the Fourth Article referred the matter to two Commissioners
on precisely the same terms as were adopted by the next Article
of the Treaty in the case of the North-West angle controversy,
i.e., each nation was to appoint an arbitrator, and, if the two
arbitrators failed to agree, separate reports were to be made to
the two governments, and the final decision was to be left to some
friendly sovereign or state. Fortunately the two arbitrators came
to an agreement, delivering their award on the 24th of November,
1817. Three little islands in the Bay of Passamaquoddy, named
Moose Island, Dudley Island, and Frederick Island, were allotted
to the United States, and the rest of the islands in the bay,
together with the island of Grand Manan, lying further out in the
Bay of Fundy, were assigned to Great Britain. The actual channel,
however, was not delimited; and though many years afterwards, under
a Convention of 1892, Commissioners were appointed for the purpose,
they failed to come to a complete agreement; this small question
therefore between the two nations is still awaiting settlement
under the Treaty for the delimitation of International Boundaries
between Canada and the United States which was signed on 11th
April, 1908.[236]
[Sidenote: The line from the North-Westernmost head of the
Connecticut river to the St. Lawrence.]
From the point where the boundary line struck the North-Westernmost
head of the Connecticut River, the Treaty of 1783 provided that it
should be carried
‘down along the middle of that river to the forty-fifth
degree of North latitude, from thence by a line due West
on said latitude until it strikes the river Iroquois or
Cataraquy’.
Iroquois or Cataraquy was the name given to the St. Lawrence
between Montreal and Lake Ontario, and the First Article of Lord
Ashburton’s Treaty, identifying the North-Westernmost head of the
Connecticut River with a river called Hall’s Stream, re-affirmed
in somewhat different words the provision of the older Treaty as
to this section of the boundary. Here there was no dispute. The
line had already been laid down in the Proclamation of 1763 and the
Quebec Act of 1774. In the words of the Ashburton Treaty it was the
line
‘which has been known and understood to be the line of actual
division between the States of New York and Vermont on one
side and the British province of Canada on the other’.
[Sidenote: The line up the St. Lawrence and the lakes.]
From the point where the 45th parallel intersected the St.
Lawrence, the line was, under the Treaty of 1783, to be carried
up the middle of the rivers and lakes to the water communication
between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, with the necessary result
that Lake Michigan was entirely excluded from Canada. By the
Sixth Article of the Treaty of Ghent two Commissioners were to
be appointed to settle doubts as to what was the middle of the
waterway and to which of the two nations the various Islands
belonged: and, as in other cases, if the Commissioners disagreed,
they were to report to their respective governments with a view
to arbitration by a neutral power. A joint award was given,[237]
signed at Utica on the 18th of June, 1822, the boundary being
elaborately specified and the report being accompanied by a series
of maps.
[Sidenote: The line between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, and to
the most North-Western point of the Lake of the Woods.]
[Sidenote: Nonexistence of the ‘Long Lake’.]
[Sidenote: The ‘most North-Western point of the Lake of the Woods’
determined.]
[Sidenote: The Ashburton Treaty and the Treaty of 1871.]
[Sidenote: Navigation of the St. Lawrence.]
The Treaty of 1783 laid down that the line was to be drawn, as
already stated, through the middle of Lake Huron
‘to the water-communication between that lake and Lake
Superior; thence through Lake Superior, Northward of the
Isles Royal and Phelipeaux to the Long Lake; thence through
the middle of said Long Lake and the water communication
between it and the Lake of the Woods to the said Lake of the
Woods, thence through the said lake to the most North-Western
point thereof’.
Under the Sixth Article of the Treaty of Ghent the Commissioners
defined the frontier line well into the strait between Lakes Huron
and Superior, but stopped short of the Sault St. Marie, at a point
above St. Joseph’s Island and below St. George’s or Sugar Island.
Here they considered that their labours under the Sixth Article
terminated. But the next Article of the Treaty of Ghent provided
that the same two Commissioners should go on to determine
‘that part of the boundary between the dominions of the two
powers, which extends from the water communication between
Lake Huron and Lake Superior to the most North-Western point
of the Lake of the Woods’.
Comparing these words with the terms of the 1783 Treaty, it will
be noticed that mention of the Long Lake is eliminated, as it had
been discovered in the meantime that the Long Lake could not be
identified. On this section of the boundary the Commissioners were
not at one. Accordingly on the 23rd of October, 1826,[238] they
presented an elaborate joint report showing the points on which
they had come to an agreement, and those on which they were at
variance, with their respective recommendations. As to a great
part of the line they were in accord, and especially they defined
by latitude and longitude the most North-Western point of the Lake
of the Woods, but they wholly disagreed as to the ownership of
St. George’s or Sugar Island in the strait between Lake Huron and
Lake Superior, and also as to the line to be taken from a point
towards the Western end of Lake Superior[239] to the Lac de Pluie
or Rainy Lake. They made, however, on either side suggestions for
compromise. The matter was set at rest by the Second Article of
Lord Ashburton’s Treaty, St. George’s Island being assigned to the
United States, and a compromise line being drawn from Lake Superior
to Rainy Lake. The channels along the whole boundary line from the
point where it strikes the St. Lawrence are open to both nations;
and by the Twenty-sixth Article of the Treaty of Washington, dated
the 8th of May, 1871, the navigation of the St. Lawrence, from the
point where it is intersected by the International Boundary down
to the sea is declared to be free and open for the purposes of
Commerce to the citizens of the United States, subject to any laws
and regulations of Great Britain and Canada not inconsistent with
the privilege of free navigation.
[Sidenote: The line from the most North-Western point of the Lake
of the Woods to the Mississippi.]
[Sidenote: Mistake as to the source of the Mississippi in the
Treaty of 1783.]
[Sidenote: Corrected by Jay’s Treaty of 1794.]
According to the 1783 Treaty the boundary line from the most
North-Western point of the Lake of the Woods was to be drawn
‘on a due West course to the river Mississippi’,
and was then to follow that river Southwards. Here geographical
knowledge was again wanting. The framers of the treaty were under
the impression that the source of the Mississippi was further North
than is actually the case, and they prescribed a geographical
impossibility. It was not long before the mistake was found out,
for the Fourth Article of Jay’s Treaty of 1794[240] began with the
words
‘Whereas it is uncertain whether the river Mississippi
extends so far to the Northward as to be intersected by a
line to be drawn due West from the Lake of the Woods.’
The same Article provided that there should be a joint survey of
the sources of the river, and, if it was found that the Westward
line did not intersect the river, the boundary was to be adjusted
‘according to justice and mutual convenience and in
conformity to the intent of’
the 1783 Treaty.
[Sidenote: The Convention of 1818.]
[Sidenote: First mention in the boundary agreements of the 49th
Parallel and the Rocky Mountains.]
The Fifth Article of the unratified Treaty of 1803 provided that a
direct line should be drawn from the North-West point of the Lake
of the Woods to the nearest source of the Mississippi, leaving it
to three Commissioners to fix the two points in question and to
draw the line. A further attempt at adjustment was made in 1806-7,
when the negotiators provisionally agreed to an Article to the
effect that the line should be drawn from the most North-Western
point of the Lake of the Woods to the 49th parallel of latitude,
and from that point due West along the parallel
‘as far as the respective territories extend in that quarter’.
This solution again was not carried into effect; and though the
subject was raised in the negotiations which preceded the Treaty
of Ghent in 1814, no mention was made of it in the Treaty itself.
Eventually, however, on the 20th of October, 1818, a Convention was
signed in London, the Second Article of which ran as follows:--
‘It is agreed that a line drawn from the most North-Western
point of the Lake of the Woods along the 49th parallel of
North latitude or, if the said point shall not be in the
49th parallel of North latitude, then that a line drawn
from the said point due North or South, as the case may be,
until the said line shall intersect the said parallel of
North latitude, and from the point of such intersection due
West along and with the said parallel, shall be the line
of demarcation between the territories of His Britannic
Majesty and those of the United States, and that the said
line shall form the Southern boundary of the said territories
of His Britannic Majesty and the Northern boundary of the
territories of the United States from the Lake of the Woods
to the Stony Mountains.’[241]
Here the Rocky Mountains, under the name of the Stony Mountains,
first come in, their existence having been unknown, except by vague
report, when the Peace of 1783 was signed.[242]
[Sidenote: The boundary line as far as the Rocky Mountains finally
determined by the Ashburton Treaty.]
[Sidenote: The Ashburton Treaty finally determined the points
arising out of the wording of the Treaty of 1783.]
Geographical knowledge was creeping on, but the wording of
the Article shows that it was still uncertain whether the
North-Westernmost point of the Lake of the Woods was North or South
of the 49th parallel. This doubt was finally cleared up by the
Commissioners who, as already stated, reported in October, 1826,
and who fixed the point in question in 49° 23′ 55″ North; thus,
when Lord Ashburton negotiated the 1842 Treaty, it was only left
for him, adopting the point which the Commissioners had fixed, to
lay down in the Second Article that the boundary line ran
‘thence, according to existing treaties, due South to its
intersection with the 49th parallel of North latitude, and
along that parallel to the Rocky Mountains’.
The 49th parallel runs through the Lake of the Woods, but the
anterior provision that the boundary line should be carried to the
North-Westernmost point of the lake, coupled with the fact that
that point had been already determined, necessitated an unnatural
and inconvenient diversion of the frontier line first to the
North-West and then due South again, thereby including in American
territory a small corner of land which should clearly have been
assigned to Canada. For this result Lord Ashburton has been blamed,
as he was blamed in the matter of the Maine boundary, but in either
case his hands were tied by previous negotiations and the wording
of existing treaties. A fair review of the whole subject leads to
the conclusion that the Treaty of Washington in 1842 was a not
inadequate compromise of the almost insuperable difficulties which
the wording of the original Treaty of 1783 had left outstanding.
[Sidenote: Later boundary questions.]
In tracing the evolution of the boundary between Canada and the
United States we have now reached the point where the 1783 Treaty
ceased to operate, and have seen that the negotiations connected
with the interpretation of the Treaty resulted in the line of
demarcation being carried far beyond that point, viz., the head of
the Mississippi, up to the range of the Rocky Mountains. Meanwhile
the Pacific Coast had begun to attract attention, and a new crop of
international questions had come into existence.
[Sidenote: The Oregon boundary dispute.]
The Western territory in dispute between the two nations was known
as the Oregon or Columbia territory, and it lay between the 42nd
degree of North latitude and the Russian line in 54° 40′ North
latitude. The Columbia river took its name from the fact that it
had been entered in May, 1792, by an American ship from Boston
named the _Columbia_, commanded by Captain Gray, who thus claimed
to be the discoverer of the river. In 1805 Lewis and Clark, the
first Americans to cross the continent, reached its head waters and
followed the river down to the sea. In 1811 an American trading
settlement was planted at Astoria near its mouth. This settlement
was voluntarily surrendered to Great Britain in the war which
followed shortly afterwards, but was restored, without prejudice,
to the United States under the general restitution article of the
Treaty of Ghent. The Third Article of the subsequent Treaty of
October 20th, 1818, provided that
‘any country that may be claimed by either party on the
North-West coast of America, Westward of the Stony Mountains,
shall, together with its harbours, bays, and creeks and the
navigation of all rivers within the same, be free and open
for the term of 10 years’
to both Powers, without prejudice to the claims either of
themselves or of foreign Powers; and this Article was, by a
Convention of 6th of August, 1827, indefinitely prolonged--subject
to one year’s notice on either side--all claims being, as before,
reserved. This last Convention was concluded, as its terms
specified, in order to prevent all hazard of misunderstanding and
to give time for maturing measures for a more definite settlement.
[Sidenote: The position in 1842.]
On this basis matters stood in 1842, when the Ashburton Treaty was
signed. There was joint occupation of the Oregon territory by
British and American subjects, and freedom of trade for both. Lord
Ashburton had been empowered to negotiate for a settlement of the
North-Western as well as the North-Eastern frontier line; but the
latter, which involved the question of the Maine--New Brunswick
boundary, being the more pressing matter, it was thought well to
allow the determination of the line West of the Rocky Mountains
to stand over for the moment. As soon as Lord Ashburton’s Treaty
had been signed at Washington in August, 1842, Lord Aberdeen, then
Foreign Secretary in Sir Robert Peel’s Ministry, made overtures
to the United States with a view to an early settlement of the
Oregon question. A long diplomatic controversy ensued, complicated
by changes of government in the United States, and tending, as is
constantly the case in such negotiations, to greater instead of
less divergence of view.
[Sidenote: The rival claims.]
The Americans contended that they had a title to the whole
territory up to the Russian line, and they claimed the entire
region drained by the Columbia river. As a compromise, however,
they had already, in the negotiations which ended in the Convention
of 1827, suggested that the boundary line along the 49th parallel
should be continued as far as the Pacific, the navigation of the
Columbia river being left open to both nations. This offer was
repeated as the controversy went on, with the exception that on the
one hand free navigation of the Columbia river was excluded, and on
the other the American Secretary of State proposed
‘to make free to Great Britain any port or ports on
Vancouver’s Island, south of this parallel, which the British
Government may desire’.[243]
The counter British proposal was to the effect that the boundary
line should be continued along the 49th parallel until it
intersected the North-Eastern branch of the Columbia river, and
that then the line of the river should be followed to its mouth,
giving to Great Britain all the country on the north of the river
and to the United States all on the south, the navigation of the
river being free to both nations, and a detached strip of coast
land to the north of the river being also conceded to the United
States, with the further understanding that any port or ports,
either on the mainland or on Vancouver Island, South of the 49th
parallel, to which the United States might wish to have access,
should be constituted free ports.
[Sidenote: Settlement of the Oregon boundary question by the Treaty
of 1846.]
The arguments advanced on both sides, based on alleged priority
of discovery and settlement and on the construction of previous
treaties, are contained in the Blue Book of 1846, and are too
voluminous to be repeated here. The controversy went on from 1842
to 1846; and, when the spring of the latter year was reached, the
Americans had withdrawn their previous offer and had refused a
British proposal to submit the whole matter to arbitration. There
was thus a complete deadlock, but shortly afterwards a debate
in Congress showed a desire on the American side to effect a
friendly settlement of a dispute which had become dangerous, and,
the opportunity being promptly taken by the British Government, a
Draft Treaty was sent out by Lord Aberdeen, which was submitted by
President Polk to the Senate, who by a large majority advised him
to accept it.[244] The Treaty was accordingly signed at Washington
on the 15th of June, 1846. By the First Article the boundary line
was
‘continued Westward along the said forty-ninth parallel of
North latitude to the middle of the channel which separates
the continent from Vancouver Island, and thence Southerly,
through the middle of the said channel and of Fuca’s Straits,
to the Pacific Ocean’,
the navigation of the channel and straits South of the 49th
parallel being left free and open to both nations. By the Second
Article of the same Treaty, the navigation of the Columbia river,
from the point where the 49th parallel intersects its great
Northern branch, was left open to the Hudson’s Bay Company and
to all British subjects trading with the same. The effect of the
Treaty was that Great Britain abandoned the claim to the line of
the Columbia river, and the United States modified its proposal
to adopt the 49th parallel as the boundary so far as to concede
the whole of Vancouver Island to Great Britain. The news that the
treaty had been signed reached England just as Sir Robert Peel’s
ministry was going out of office.
[Sidenote: The San Juan boundary question.]
[Sidenote: Arbitration under the Treaty of 1871.]
The delimitation of the boundary which the Treaty had affirmed
gave rise to a further difficulty. The Treaty having provided that
the sea line was to be drawn southerly through the middle of the
channel which separates Vancouver Island from the continent and of
Fuca’s Straits into the Pacific Ocean, the two nations were unable
to agree as to what was the middle of the channel in the Gulf of
Georgia between the Southern end of Vancouver Island and the North
American coast. The main question at issue was the ownership of
the island of San Juan, and the subject of dispute was for this
reason known as the San Juan boundary question. The British claim
was that the line should be drawn to the Eastward of the island,
down what was known as the Rosario Straits. The Americans contended
that it should be drawn on the Western side, following the Canal
de Haro or Haro Channel. Eventually it was laid down by the 34th
and following Articles of the Treaty of Washington of 8th of
May, 1871--the same Treaty which provided for arbitration on the
_Alabama_ question--that the Emperor of Germany should arbitrate
as to which of the two claims was most in accordance with the true
interpretation of the Treaty of 1846, and that his award should be
absolutely final and conclusive. On the 21st of October, 1872, the
arbitrator gave his award in favour of the United States, and it
was immediately carried into effect, thus completing the boundary
line from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
[Sidenote: The Alaska boundary question.]
In a message to Congress on the subject of the San Juan Boundary
Award, President Grant stated
‘The Award leaves us, for the first time in the history of
the United States as a nation, without a question of disputed
boundary between our territory and the possessions of Great
Britain on this continent;’
and he suggested that a joint Commission should determine the line
between the Alaska territory and the conterminous possessions of
Great Britain, on the hypothesis that here there was no ground of
dispute and that all that was required was the actual delimitation
of an already admitted boundary line. The matter proved to be more
complex than the President’s words implied.
[Sidenote: Russian America ceded to the United States.]
[Sidenote: Line of demarcation between British and Russian
possessions in North America drawn in 1825.]
By a Treaty signed on the 30th of March, 1867, the territory
now known as Alaska was ceded by Russia to the United States.
It was the year in which the Dominion Act was passed; and, when
British Columbia[245] in 1871 joined the Dominion, Canada became,
in respect of that province, as well as in regard to the Yukon
Territory, a party to the Alaska boundary question. The limits of
Russian America, as it was then called, had been fixed as far back
as 1825, when, by a treaty between Great Britain and Russia, dated
the 28th of February in that year, a line of demarcation was fixed
between British and Russian possessions
‘upon the coast of the continent and the islands of America
to the North-West’.
The line started from the Southernmost point of Prince of Wales
Island, which point was defined as lying in the parallel of 54°
40′ North latitude and between the 131st and 133rd degrees of West
longitude. It was carried thence to the North, along the channel
called Portland Channel, up to that point of the continent where it
intersected the 56th parallel of North latitude. From this point it
followed the summit of the mountains parallel to the coast until
it intersected the 141st degree of West longitude, and was carried
along that meridian to the Arctic Ocean. The Treaty provided that
the whole of Prince of Wales Island should belong to Russia, and
that wherever the summit of the mountains running parallel to the
coast between the 56th parallel of North latitude and the point
where the boundary line intersected the 141st meridian was proved
to be at a distance of more than 10 marine leagues from the ocean,
the line should be drawn parallel to the windings of the coast at a
distance from it never exceeding 10 marine leagues.
[Sidenote: Free navigation of rivers.]
Free navigation of the rivers which flowed into the Pacific Ocean
across the strip of coast assigned to Russia was conceded in
perpetuity to British subjects; and, after the transfer of Russian
America to the United States, the Twenty-sixth Article of the
Treaty of Washington of 1871 provided that the navigation of the
rivers Yukon, Porcupine, and Stikine should for ever remain free
and open to both British and American citizens, subject to such
laws and regulations of either country within its own territory as
were not inconsistent with the privilege of free navigation.
[Sidenote: Negotiations for a settlement of the boundary with the
United States.]
[Sidenote: The Convention of 1892.]
In 1872, the year after the entry of British Columbia into the
Dominion of Canada, mining being contemplated in the northern
part of British Columbia, overtures were, at the instance of the
Canadian Government, made to the United States to demarcate the
boundary, which had never yet been surveyed and delimited. The
probable cost of a survey caused delay, and no action had been
taken when in 1875 and 1876 disputes arose as to the boundary line
on the Stikine river. The Canadian Government in 1877 dispatched
an engineer to ascertain approximately the line on the river, and
the result of his survey was in the following year provisionally
accepted by the United States as a temporary arrangement, without
prejudice to a final settlement. Negotiations began again about
1884, and, by a Convention signed at Washington on the 22nd of
July, 1892, it was provided that a coincident or joint survey
should be undertaken of the territory adjacent to the boundary
line from the latitude of 54° 40′ North to the point where the
line intersects the 141st degree of West longitude. It was added
that, as soon as practicable after the report or reports had been
received, the two governments should proceed to consider and
establish the boundary line. The time within which the results of
the survey were to be reported was, by a supplementary Convention,
extended to the 31st of December, 1895, and on that date a joint
report was made, but no action was taken upon it at the time.
[Sidenote: Discovery of gold at Klondyke.]
[Sidenote: Further negotiations.]
In 1896 the Klondyke goldfields were discovered in what now
constitutes the Yukon district of the North-West Territories,
and in the following year there was a large immigration into the
district. The goldfields were most accessible by the passes beyond
the head of the inlet known as the Lynn canal, the opening of
which into the sea is within what had been the Russian fringe of
coast. The necessity therefore for determining the boundary became
more urgent than before. In 1898 the British Government proposed
that the matter should be referred to three Commissioners, one
appointed by each government and the third by a neutral power; and
that, pending a settlement, a _modus vivendi_ should be arranged.
A provisional boundary in this quarter was accordingly agreed
upon, but, instead of the Commission which had been proposed,
representatives of Great Britain and the United States alone met in
1898 and 1899 to discuss and if possible settle various questions
at issue between the two nations, among them being the Alaska
boundary. They were to endeavour to come to an agreement as to
provisions for the delimitation of the boundary
‘by legal and scientific experts, if the Commission should so
decide, or otherwise’,
memoranda of the views held on either side being furnished in
advance of the sittings of the Commission. Again no settlement was
effected.
[Sidenote: The Convention of 1903. Joint Commission appointed.]
The dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela as to the boundary
between Venezuela and British Guiana, in which the Government of
the United States had intervened, had, by a Convention signed in
February, 1897, been referred to arbitration, the Arbitrators
being five in number, two Englishmen, two Americans, and one
representative of a neutral State. In July, 1899, before the award
in this arbitration had been given, Lord Salisbury proposed to
the American Government that a treaty on identical lines with the
Venezuela boundary Convention should apply arbitration to the
Alaska Boundary question. To this procedure, giving a casting vote
on the whole question to a representative of a neutral power,
the American Government took exception, and suggested instead a
Tribunal consisting of ‘Six impartial Jurists of repute’, three to
be appointed by the President of the United States and three by Her
Britannic Majesty. A suggestion made by the British Government that
one of the three Arbitrators on either side should be a subject of
a neutral state was not accepted; and eventually, on the 24th of
January, 1903, a Convention was signed at Washington, constituting
a tribunal in accordance with the American conditions. The three
British representatives were the Lord Chief Justice of England and
two leading Canadians, one of them being the Lieutenant-Governor of
the Province of Quebec.
[Sidenote: Points for decision.]
The preamble of the Convention stated that its object was a
‘friendly and final adjustment’ of the differences which had
arisen as to the ‘true meaning and application’ of the clauses
in the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825 which referred to the Alaska
boundary. The tribunal was to decide where the line was intended to
begin; what channel was the Portland Channel; how the line should
be drawn from the point of commencement to the entrance to the
Portland Channel; to what point on the 56th parallel and by what
course it should be drawn from the head of the Portland Channel;
what interpretation should be given to the provision in the Treaty
of 1825 that from the 56th parallel to the point where the 141st
degree of longitude was intersected the line should follow the
crest of the mountains running parallel to the coast at a distance
nowhere exceeding ten marine leagues from the ocean; and what were
the mountains, if any, which were indicated by the treaty.
[Sidenote: Main point at issue.]
The main point at issue was whether the ten leagues should be
measured from the open sea or from the heads of the inlets, some
of which ran far into the land. If the latter interpretation were
adopted, the result would be to give to the United States control
of the main lines of communication with the Klondyke Mining
district, just as the Maine boundary threatened to cut, and in
large measure did cut, communication between the Maritime Provinces
and Quebec.
[Sidenote: The Award.]
The Convention provided that all questions considered by the
tribunal, including the final award, should be decided by a
majority of the Arbitrators. The tribunal was unanimous in deciding
that the point of commencement of the line was Cape Muzon, the
Southernmost point of Dall Island on the Western or ocean side of
Prince of Wales Island. A unanimous opinion was also given to the
effect that the Portland Channel is the channel which runs from
about 55°56′ North latitude and passes seawards to the North of
Pearse and Wales Islands; but on all subsequent points there was
a division of opinion, the three American representatives and the
Lord Chief Justice of England giving a majority award from which
the two Canadian members of the tribunal most strongly dissented.
The majority decided that the outlet of the Portland Channel to the
sea was to be identified with the strait known as Tongass Channel,
and that the line should be drawn along that channel and pass to
the South of two islands named Sitklan and Khannaghunut islands,
thus vesting the ownership of those islands in the United States.
They also decided that the boundary line from the 56th parallel of
North latitude to the point of intersection with the 141st degree
of West longitude should run round the heads of the inlets and not
cross them. One section of the line was not fully determined owing
to the want of an adequate survey. The net result of the award
was to substantiate the American claims, to give to the United
States full command of the sea approaches to the Klondyke Mining
districts, and to include within American territory two islands
hard by the prospective terminus of a new Trans-Canadian Railway.
[Sidenote: The Behring Sea arbitration.]
It may be added that the Treaty of 30th March, 1867, by which
Alaska was transferred from Russia to the United States, gave rise
not only to the territorial boundary dispute of which an account
has been given above, but also to a controversy as to American and
British rights in the Behring Sea, more especially in connexion
with the taking of seals. The questions at issue were settled at a
much earlier date than the land boundary, having been, by a treaty
signed at Washington on the 29th of February, 1892, referred to
a tribunal of seven arbitrators, two named by the United States,
two by Great Britain, and one each by the President of the French
Republic, the King of Italy, and the King of Sweden and Norway.
The arbitrators met in Paris and gave their award on the 15th
of August, 1893, the substance of the award, as concurred in
by the majority of the arbitrators, being that Russia had not
exercised any exclusive rights of jurisdiction in Behring Sea or
any exclusive rights to the seal fisheries in that sea outside the
ordinary three-mile limit, and that no such rights had passed to
the United States.
[Sidenote: The Treaty of April 11, 1908.]
The last phase in the evolution of the Boundary line between Canada
and the United States is the Treaty of 11th of April, 1908, ‘for
the delimitation of International Boundaries between Canada and
the United States’, by which machinery is provided ‘for the more
complete definition and demarcation of the International Boundary’,
and for settling any small outstanding points such as, e.g., the
boundary line through Passamaquoddy Bay.
FOOTNOTES:
[230] See the report of the Lords of the Committee of Council
for Plantation Affairs, October 6, 1763, given at pp. 116-18 of
_Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada,
1759-91_ (Shortt and Doughty).
[231] See _State Papers_, vol. i, Part II, p. 1369.
[232] _Note._--The territory in dispute, however, seems partly to
have been claimed by the United States as Federal Territory and
not as belonging to Massachusetts. See the letter from Gallatin to
Monroe, December 25, 1814. _State Papers_ for 1821-2, vol. ix, p.
562.
[233] See _State Papers_, vol. i, Part II, p. 1603.
[234] See _State Papers_, vol. i, Part II, p. 1625.
[235] See the two Blue Books of July, 1840, as to the ‘North
American Boundary’.
[236] The above account of the boundary disputes between Great
Britain and the United States in the region of Maine and New
Brunswick has been mainly taken from the very clear and exhaustive
_Monograph of the Evolution of the Boundaries of the Province of
New Brunswick_, by William F. Ganay, M.A., Ph.D., 1901, published
in the _Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada_, 1901-2, and
also published separately.
[237] It will be found in the _State Papers_ for 1821-2, vol. ix,
p. 791.
[238] The report will be found in the _State Papers_, 1866-7, vol.
lvii, p. 803.
[239] This point is described in the report as ‘100 yards to the
North and East of a small island named on the map Chapeau and lying
opposite and near to the North-Eastern point of Isle-Royale’.
[240] _State Papers_, vol. i, Part I (1812-14), p. 784.
[241] _State Papers_, vol. vi, 1818-19, p. 3--also in Hertslet’s
collection.
[242] As to the discovery of the Rocky Mountains, see vol. v, Part
I of _Historical Geography of the British Colonies_, p. 214 and
note.
[243] Correspondence relative to the negotiation of the question of
the disputed right to the Oregon Territory on the North-West coast
of America subsequent to the Treaty of Washington of August 9,
1842. Presented to Parliament in 1846, p. 39.
[244] A good account of the negotiations is in a _Historical Note_,
1818-46, included in a Blue Book of 1873, C.-692, North America,
No. 5 (1873).
[245] The boundaries of British Columbia had been fixed by an
Imperial Act of 1863.
INDEX
Abercromby, 51, 102, 126, 189, 203.
Acadia, 49, 50, 69, 238 n., &c.
Act of 1791. _See_ Canada Act.
Adams, John, 289.
Adet, 289.
Administration of Justice. _See_ Justice, Administration of.
Albany, 24, 140, 145-9, 154, 157, 165-72, 174-5, 182, 203.
Alleghany, the, 9, 19, 59, 83.
Allen, Ethan, 101, 106, 107, 119 n., 191.
American Civil War, 228-9.
Amherst, Lord, 11, 15, 17, 19, 23, 63, 102, 106, 125, 126, 129, 130,
189, 203, 289.
Amiens, Peace of. _See_ Treaty.
Anne, Fort, 164, 166, 167, 188.
Anticosti Island, 2, 3, 80.
Arbuthnot, Marriot, 127, 198.
Arnold, Benedict, 98 n., 101, 108-12, 113, 114, 116-20, 122, 123,
157, 175, 177, 178, 180 n., 185, 198, 199, 291.
Ashburton Treaty. _See_ Treaty.
Assemblies, Legislative, 3, 4, 71-3, 77, 87-9, 241, 243, 245,
257-65, 295-6, 318-9.
Australia, 32, 44, 45, 205, 278.
Bahamas, 223.
Barbados, 52 n., 253-4.
Bathurst, Lord, 278.
Batten Kill river, 169, 170, 175.
Baum, Colonel, 169-71, 170 n.
Baye des Chaleurs, 2, 224.
Beaver Creek, 27, 83.
Bedard, 307.
Bedford or Raestown, 17, 19, 20.
Belêtre, 12.
Bemus’ Heights, 174.
Bennington, 168-72, 171-2 n., 198.
Bermuda, 257.
Bird, Lieutenant, 153, 156.
Bloody Run. _See_ Parents Creek.
Bonaparte, Jerome, 300.
Boston, 85, 95, 96, 107, 130-2, 182, 213, 221, 309.
Bouquet, Henry, 11, 17, 18 n., 19, 20 and n., 21, 22 and n., 23, 24,
26, 27, 188.
Bouquet river, 159.
Braddock, General, 14, 18, 19, 21, 174.
Bradstreet, Colonel, 23-6, 98 n.
Brandywine, 134, 289.
Brant County, 234.
Brant, Joseph, 97 n., 119 n., 148-58, 150 n., 185-7, 186 n., 232-5.
Brant, Molly, 58, 149, 155.
Brantford, 152, 234, 235 n.
Breyman, Colonel, 170, 171, 176, 178, 179 n.
Brock, Isaac, 317.
Bunker’s Hill, 90, 106, 125-6, 130, 131, 150, 303.
Burgoyne, 116, 122, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131, 138, 139, 144, 145,
146, 152, 158-85, 160 n., 180 n., 182 n., 187, 188, 203,
237-8, 303.
Burke, 54, 83, 89, 117, 128, 135, 216, 244.
Burke’s Act 1782, 298 n.
Burnet, Governor, 147.
Burton, Colonel, 63-5, 67.