ment of a lawfully constituted international tribunal, such as the present Commission.

Citizens of the United States are not slow to invoke the intervention of their Government in behalf of any American injured in the progress of civil war in other countries, and on such occasions to talk loudly of "outrages to citizens:" let us do as we would be done by, and concede that Great Britain is entitled to judicial examination of the cases of her subjects alleging injury by the occurrences of civil war in the United States.

CHAPTER IV.

THE NORTHWESTERN BOUNDARY-LINE.

PROVISIONS OF THE TREATY.

THE Articles of the Treaty from XXXIV. to XLII. inclusive dispose of the long-standing dispute between the United States and Great Britain regarding the true water-line by which the Territory of Washington is separated from Vancouver's Island.

The subject of the controversy, and the agreement for its termination, are set forth as follows:

"Whereas it was stipulated by Article I. of the treaty concluded at Washington on the 15th of June, 1846, between the United States and Her Britannic Majesty, that the line of boundary between the territories of the United States and those of Her Britannic Majesty, from the point on the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude up to which it had already been ascertained, should be continued westward along the said parallel of north latitude 'to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and thence southerly, through the middle of the said channel and of Fuca Straits, to the Pacific Ocean;' and whereas the Commissioners appointed by the high contracting Parties to determine that portion of the boundary which runs southerly through the middle of the channel aforesaid, were unable to agree upon the same; and whereas the Government of Her Britannic Majesty claims that such boundary-line should, under the terms of the treaty above recited, be run through the Rosario Straits, and the Government of the United States claims that it should be run through the Canal de Haro, it is agreed that the respective

claims of the Government of the United States and of the Government of Her Britannic Majesty shall be submitted to the arbitration and award of His Majesty the Emperor of Germany, who, having regard to the above-mentioned Article of the said Treaty, shall decide thereupon, finally and without appeal, which of those claims is most in accordance with the true interpretation of the Treaty of June 15, 1846."

Subsequent articles prescribe that the question shall be discussed at Berlin by the actual diplomatic Representatives of the respective Governments, either orally or by written argument, as and when the Arbitrator shall see fit, either before the Arbitrator himself, or before a person or persons named by him for that purpose, and either in the presence or the absence of either or both Agents.

A previous arrangement in a treaty negotiated by the Earl of Clarendon and Mr. Johnson for referring the subject to the arbitration of the President of the Swiss Confederation had been rejected by the Senate of the United States, not on account of any objection to the particular arbitrator, but for other considerations.

There is good cause for the suggestion of Lord Milton that the Senate of the United States considered our "right to the disputed territory so extremely clear that it ought not to be submitted to arbitration." That, indeed, is the tenor of Senator Howard's speech on the subject, the publication of which was authorized by the Senate. Such a view of a question of right may be admissible on the part of a private individual, who, in a clear case, may prefer a suit at law in the courts of his country to arbitration; but it is

wholly inapplicable to nations, which, if they can not agree and will not arbitrate, have no resource left

save war.

But this was not the only consideration which induced the Senate to refuse its assent to that treaty. There were objections to the form of submission.

HISTORY OF THE QUESTION.

The controversy to which these treaties refer is one of the leavings of the last war between the United States and Great Britain, and has its roots far back in the circumstances of the primitive colonization of North America by Europeans.

When the Kings of the little island of Britain, in virtue of some of their subjects having coasted along a part of the Atlantic shores of America, assumed to concede to the Colonies of Massachusetts and Virginia grants of territory extending by parallels of latitude westward to the Pacific Ocean, and covering the unexplored immensity of the Continent, and on the premises of sovereignty and jurisdiction as good as their title to the manor of East Greenwich in Kent,—it was only men's universal ignorance of geography which saved the act from the imputation of wild extravagance.

But such grants, and the pretensions on which they were founded, were the logical consequence of the theories of colonization and conquest pursued in the New World by Spain, Portugal, and France, as well as England, and formed the basis of the power of Great Britain in North America, and eventually of

that of the United States. It was the assumption that discovery by any European State, followed by occupation on the sea-coast, carried the possessions of such State indefinitely landward until they met the possessions of some other European State.

At the same time, France had entered into America by the waters of the St. Lawrence, had ascended that river to the Lakes, had then descended by the Mississippi to the site of the future New Orleans, and had thus laid the foundation of a title not only to the explored territories watered by the St. Lawrence or in front of it on the sea-coast, but also to undefined, because unknown, regions beyond the Mississippi.

Hence arose the first great questions of boundary in North America, those between England, France, and Spain, which were settled by the Peace of Utrecht. France retained possession of the territories on the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi; whilst England retained her country of Hudson's Bay and her Provinces on the Atlantic coast, and acquired Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. [Treaty of Utrecht, March 31– April 11, 1713.]

Subsequently, the fortunes of war made England mistress of the Canadian and coast establishments of France, leaving to the latter only the territory beyond the Mississippi. [Treaty of Fontainebleau, Nov. 3, 1762, and Treaty of Paris, Feb. 10, 1763.]

Meanwhile, Spain continued, with but brief interruption, in undisputed sovereignty of the two Floridas, and of the vast provinces of New Spain, of undefined extension west and north toward the Pacific.