tion of exploration and arbitration, shows of itself that neither party had any real hope of actually settling the controversy, but that both were willing to unite in a decent pretext for procrastination. The report of Mr. Featherstonhaugh, erroneously believed, in England, to rest upon the results of actual exploration, had been sanctioned by the ministry, and seemed to extinguish the last hope that England would agree to any terms of settlement which the United States would deem reasonable. The danger of collision on the frontier became daily more imminent, and troops to the amount of seventeen regiments had been poured into the British provinces. The arrest of M'Leod, as we have already observed, had brought matters to a point at which the public sensibility of England would not have allowed a minister to blink the question. Lord Palmerston is known to have written to Mr. Fox, that the arrest of M'Leod, under the authority of the State of New York, was universally regarded in England as a direct affront to the British government, and that such was the excitement caused by it that, had M'Leod been condemned and executed, it would not have been in the power either of ministers or opposition, or the leading men of both parties, to prevent immediate war. At the same time, Lord Palmerston was urging France into a co-operation with the four other leading powers of Europe in the adoption of a policy, by the negotiation of the quintuple treaty, which would have left the United States in a position of dangerous insulation on the subject of the great maritime question of the day.

At this juncture a change of administration occurred in England, subsequent but by a few months only to that which took place in the government of the United States. Lord Melbourne's government gave way to that of Sir Robert Peel in the summer of 1841; it remained to be seen with what influence on the relations of the two countries. Some circumstances occurred to put at risk the beneficial tendency toward an accommodation, which might naturally be hoped for from a change of administration nearly simultaneous on both sides of the water. A note of a very uncompromising character, on the subject of the search of American vessels on the coast of Africa, had been addressed to Mr. Stevenson by Lord Palmerston on the 27th of August, 1841, a day only before the close

of Lord Melbourne's ministry, to which Mr. Stevenson replied in the same strain. The answer of Lord Aberdeen, who had succeeded Lord Palmerston as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, bears date 10th of October, 1841, and an elaborate rejoinder was returned by Mr. Stevenson on the very day of his departure from London. Lord Aberdeen's reply to this note, addressed to Mr. Everett, was dated on the 20th of December, the day on which the quintuple treaty was signed at London by the representatives of the five powers, and it contained an announcement of that fact.

Happily, however, affairs were already taking a turn auspicious of better results. From his first entrance on office as Secretary of State, Mr. Webster, long familiar with the perplexed history of the negotiation relative to the boundary, had perceived the necessity of taking a "new departure." The negotiation had broken down under its own weight. It was like one of those lawsuits which, to the opprobrium of tribunals, descend from age to age: a disease of the body politic not merely chronic, but hereditary. Early in the summer of 1841, Mr. Webster had intimated to Mr. Fox, the British minister at Washington, that the American government was prepared to consider, and, if practicable, adopt, a conventional line as the only mode of cutting the Gordian knot of the controversy. This overture was, of course, conveyed to London. Though not leading to any result on the part of the ministry just going out of office, it was embraced by their successors in the same wise and conciliatory spirit in which it had been made. On the 26th of December, 1841, a note was addressed by Lord Aberdeen to Mr. Everett, inviting him to an interview for the following day, on which occasion he communicated the purpose of the government to send a special mission to the United States, Lord Ashburton being the person selected as minister, and furnished with full powers to settle every question in controversy.

This step on the part of the British government was as bold as it was wise. It met the difficulty in the face. It justly assumed the existence of a corresponding spirit of conciliation on the part of the United States, and of a desire to bring matters to a practical result. It was bold, because it was the last expedient for an amicable adjustment, and because if it should

fail, its failure must necessarily lead to very serious and immediate consequences.

It

In his choice of a minister, Lord Aberdeen was not less fortunate than he had been wise in proposing the measure. was a decided advantage that a diplomatist by profession was not selected. Lord Ashburton was above the reach of the motives which influence politicians of an ordinary stamp, and unencumbered by the habits of routine which belong to men regularly trained in a career. He possessed a weight of character at home which made him independent of the vulgar resorts of popularity. He was animated by a kindly feeling, and bound by kindly associations with this country. There was certainly no public man in England who united in an equal degree the confidence of his own government and country with those claims to the good-will of the opposite party, which were scarcely less essential to success. It may not be improper to add, that Mr. Webster had passed some months in England in 1839, had been received with great distinction and kindness by prominent men of all parties, and that Lord Ashburton, among others, had made his acquaintance. He knew, therefore, that his immediate intercourse with the American government would not be through an entire stranger, and was no doubt in some measure decided to accept the mission, by his reliance on the upright and honorable character of the American secretary.

With the appointment of Lord Ashburton, the discussion of the main questions in controversy between the two countries, as far as it had been carried on in London, was transferred to Washington. But as an earnest of the conciliatory spirit which bore sway in the British councils, Lord Aberdeen had announced to Mr. Everett, in the interval which elapsed between Lord Ashburton's appointment and his arrival at his place of destination, that the queen's government admitted the wrong done by the detention of the "Tigris" and "Seamew" in the African waters, and was prepared to indemnify their owners for the losses sustained.

Notwithstanding the favorable circumstances under which the mission of Lord Ashburton was instituted, the great difficulties to be overcome were not long in being felt. The points in dispute in reference to the boundary had for years been the subject of discussion, more or less, throughout the country, but

especially in Massachusetts and Maine (the states having an immediate territorial interest in its decision), and, above all, in the last-named state. Parties, differing on all other great questions, emulated each other in the zeal with which they asserted the American side of this dispute. So strong and unanimous was the feeling, that when the award of the King of the Netherlands arrived, the firm purpose of General Jackson to accept it was subdued. The writer of these pages was informed by the late Mr. Forsyth, while Secretary of State, that when the award reached this country, General Jackson regarded it as definitive, and was disposed, without consulting the Senate, to issue his proclamation announcing it as such; and that he was driven from this purpose by the representations of his friends in Maine, that such a course would cost them the state; and he was accustomed to add, in reference to the inconveniences caused by the rejection of the award, and the still more serious evils to be anticipated, that "it was somewhat singular, that the only occasion of importance in his life in which he had allowed himself to be overruled by his friends, was one of all others in which he ought to have adhered to his own opinions."

The following pages show that the first step taken by Mr. Webster, after receiving the directions of the President in reference to the negotiation, was to invite the co-operation of Massachusetts and Maine, the territory in dispute being the property of the two states, and under the jurisdiction of the latter. The extent of the treaty-making power of the United States, in a matter of such delicacy as the cession of territory claimed by a state to be within its limits, belongs to the more difficult class of constitutional doctrines. We have seen both the theory and practice of General Jackson on this point. The administration of Mr. Tyler took for granted that the full consent of Massachusetts and Maine was necessary to any adjustment of this great dispute on the principle of mutual cession and equivalents, or any other principle than that of the ascertainment of the true original line of boundary by agreement, mutual commission, or arbitration. Communications were accordingly addressed to the governors of the two states. Massachusetts had anticipated the necessity of the measure, and made provision for the appointment of commissioners. The Legislature

of Maine was promptly convened for the same purpose by the late Governor Fairfield. Four parties were thus in presence at Washington for the management of the negotiation: the United States and Great Britain, Massachusetts and Maine. Recollecting that the question to be settled was one which had defied all the arts of diplomacy for half a century, it seemed to a distant, and especially a European observer, as if the last experiment, exceeding every former step in its necessary complication, was destined to a failure proportionably signal and ignominious. The writer of these remarks was in a condition to know that the course pursued by the American secretary, in making the result of the negotiation relative to the boundary contingent upon the approval of the state commissioners, was regarded in Europe as decidedly ominous of its failure.

It undoubtedly required a high degree of political courage thus to put the absolute control of the subject, to a certain extent, out of the hands of the national government; but it was a courage fully warranted by the event. It is now evident that this mode of procedure was the only one which could have been adopted with any hope of success. Though complicated in appearance, it was in reality the simplest mode in which the co-operation of the states could have been secured. The commissions were, upon the whole, happily constituted; they were framed in each state without reference to party views. By their presence in Washington, it was in the power of the Secretary of State to avail himself, at every difficult conjuncture, of their counsel. Limited in number, they yet represented the public opinion of the two states, as fully as it could have been done by the entire body of their Legislatures; while it is quite evident that any attempt to refer to large deliberative bodies at home the discussion of the separate points which arose in the negotiation, would have been physically impossible and politically absurd. In looking back, after the lapse of a few years, at the correspondence between the commissioners and the Secretary of State, as it appears in the present volume, it must be admitted that there are occasionally, on the part of the former, a tone and spirit which we might wish to qualify, and which were not calculated at the time to advance the negotiations. It is always easy to make trouble; true statesmanship seeks, without compromise of principle, to save trouble, and by honorable