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heard him called "M. le Marquis." Now, as I don't love marquises, I send him to you.

'Health and Fraternity!

'DUQUESNOY.'-vol. ii. p. 323.

We believe that in all the annals of this bloody period there are not to be found two more frivolous reasons for shortening by the head the leaders of a victorious army, than that one showed humanity to a wounded prisoner, and that the other was called marquis' -probably in derision: but on the other two cases, in which Duquesnoy sends two officers of high rank to be guillotined for cowardice, we must direct the notice of our readers to the prodigious effect on individual conduct that the despotic power of these proconsuls must have had. Every officer was fighting with, as it were, a halter round his neck, and found it safer to rush on the enemy in front than to retire on his friend in the rear-in the former case death was only a chance, and if it came it was glorious-in the latter it was certain and ignominious. General Gratien, however, though broke on the field of battle for cowardice, and thus sent off to be shortened, escaped, by the favour, it is said, of Robespierre, and was reinstated in his rank. He afterwards served under Buonaparte-was the commandant of the corps that beat Schill at Stralsund (for which the King of Denmark was so base as to send him the order of Dannebrog)— and he died, in 1814, a commander of the Legion of Honour, and a Baron of the Empire!

But who was this colleague of Carnot?-this terrible Duquesnoy? and what became of him? His history may be told in three awful and instructive words-Duquesnoy was an apostate monk, an atheist, and a regicide. Taking a part in the Jacobin insurrection of Prairial (May, 1795), he was arrested, and perished miserably, in prison, by his own bloody hand! The comparison of the foregoing letter with the fate of this wretch affords a valuable addition to the great chapter of revolutionary retribution!

We regret that the promised continuation of this work has not yet reached us. It is probable that the documents (of the authenticity of which no doubt can be entertained) were irregularly obtained, and that some public authority or private arrangement may have arrested the publication.

ART.

ART. VIII.-1. Correspondence relating to the North American Boundary. Presented by command of her Majesty. A and B. 1838.

2. Report of the British Commissioners appointed to survey the Territory in dispute between Great Britain and the United States of America on the North-Eastern Boundary of the United States; with an Appendix. Presented to Parliament by command of her Majesty. July, 1840.

3. The Right of the United States of America to the NorthEastern Boundary claimed by them. Principally extracted from the Statements laid before the King of the Netherlands, and revised by Albert Gallatin; with an Appendix and eight Maps. New York.

1840.

4. A Brief History of the United States' Boundary Question. Drawn up from Official Papers, by G. P. R. James, Esq. London. 1839.

THE spirit in which we undertake the examination of the important and interesting question discussed in these publications, will be best indicated by an early expression of our sincere and cordial concurrence in the sentiments with which Mr. Gallatin prefaces his argument:

'In the various negotiations with Great Britain in which I have been employed, there was always an earnest desire to remove subjects of contention, and to promote friendly relations; on almost all questions a conciliatory disposition; nothing at any time that could shake my confidence in the sincerity and good faith of that government. And I do believe that it would do justice, if it was once satisfied that justice was due. . . But under any circumstances whatever, the question must be settled. It would be the height of madness and of wickedness to come to a rupture, and for such an object. Both governments are animated by a sincere and earnest desire to preserve peace. It is not believed that the English nation wishes a war with the United States. It may be confidently asserted that, with an entire conviction of their right to the territory in question, there is not a more universal feeling amongst the people of America, everywhere and without distinction of political parties, than that of the preservation of peace, above all, of peace with Great Britain. It is the duty of the two governments speedily to devise and to adopt the means necessary for effecting the object; and I believe that means may be found.'-Preface, pp. ix, x.

* Mr. Gallatin, now, we believe, in his eighty-first year, has filled with distinction many important offices and embassies:-he was one of the American negociators of the treaty of Ghent, and afterwards (and pending these boundary discussions) minister of the United States in London.

We

We believe and hope so too; and our humble efforts, valeant quantum, will be directed towards that conciliatory conclusion; but we must, at the same time, confess that our hopes would not be so confident as Mr. Gallatin's seem to be, if they did not rest on very different grounds from those on which Mr. Gallatin informs us that he has built his expectations.

Untaught by the experience of fifty years of fruitless discussion-undismayed by the failure of so many former negociators (himself included!)-unembarrassed by the decision of the King of the Netherlands, who declared the terms of the treaty of 178S to be inexplicable-Mr. Gallatin finds no difficulty at all in the case-In his view there is neither obscurity nor doubt; he suggests that the only impediment to an arrangement has been that no English cabinet minister has ever yet 'taken the trouble to examine the question thoroughly.' (Pref. p. ix.) Mr. Gallatin thinks that the fact of Lord Palmerston's laying the Report of the Commissioners before parliament affords strong proof that that distinguished statesman' [soft sawder, Mr. Slick!], amidst his more important and overwhelming avocations, had not found time to investigate the case, and judge for himself.' (ib.) Mr. Gallatin is perfectly satisfied that there is no British jury nor British chancellor who would not, on hearing the cause, decide in favour of America;' (ib.) and Mr. Gallatin, therefore, does not see why the enlightened British cabinet,' [soft sawder again] if they could find time to make an attentive ministerial inquiry into the tedious details of this vexed question,' should not arrive at a similar result. (ib.)

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Now, the grounds of Mr. Gallatin's hope of arriving at ‘a satisfactory settlement' being thus, in limine, pronounced to be the indisputable and irresistible justice and reason of the whole American claim-which needs only to be thoroughly understood to be, even by the British cabinet, immediately admitted-we confess we receive no great comfort from his flattering prognostics;-nor do we think that this wholesale style of begging his question and jumping to his conclusion even before he has begun his argument, would add much to Mr. Gallatin's reputation as either a logician or practical statesman.

But the truth is, that Mr. Gallatin comes before us on this occasion neither as a logician nor statesman, but as an advocate:— and pledged as an advocate, to maintain his whole case, he presumes that there can be no demur to his conclusion, but from imperfect knowledge.

This drives Mr. Gallatin to misrepresent the very first aspect of the case: he finds the chief obstacle to a settlement in its

" tedious

'tedious details '-but tedious is not the word-he should have rather said, obscure, intricate, contradictory, unintelligible. It has not been the mere spirit of chicane (though that has not been wanting), nor the ignorance or negligence of secretaries of state (though they may have helped to prolong and embarrass the discussion), that have kept this matter in suspense for half a century—it has been, we believe, its innate and intrinsic complexity-the extreme difficulty of reconciling the vague and ambiguous terms of a clumsy description, to the unknown or disputed features of an unexplored tract of country. This, and not the want of time or diligence for the inquiry, has been the real impediment. We have no doubt of the general meaning of the parties to the original negociations, and we think it can be shown aliundè in what direction they intended the boundary line should run; but unhappily the terms of the treaty were in themselves so unfortunately chosen and so loosely applied, as to be hardly reconcileable with any possible boundary, or indeed with any reasonable interpretation; and we seriously incline to think that the most rational way of dealing with the subject would have been, in the very first stages of the discussion, to have rejected the whole of the disputed passage of the Boundary clause as nonsense, and to have negociated-not for a new basis-(for the basis was, we believe, clear enough, and the ambiguity wholly verbal)-but for an intelligible and practicable definition of what were really the object and intention of the contracting parties. Mr. Gallatin and most of the other American advocates profess to see their way clear through the labyrinth; we do not pretend to such bold perspicacity:-all that we see quite clearly is this—that their construction is directly contrary to the spirit of the treaty, and more at variance with its letter than any of the other interpretations. We will not take upon ourselves to say that any other construction is clearly and indisputably right; but we will venture boldly to assert -and so far we have the concurrent opinion of the Umpirethat theirs is clearly wrong; and that no wrenching of the words of the treaty, and no distorting the features of the country, can produce even an equitable case for their alleged boundary. It may be hard-the Umpire thought it impossible-to make any sense of the treaty; but it is not hard to show their construction to be nonsense.

We must begin by a short historical recapitulation of the affair, and for the better understanding the geographical details upon which the whole question turns, we subjoin a slight sketch of the disputed territory and the adjacent regions.

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On this sketch we request our readers to observe

1. That the whole shaded part is the disputed territory; and the northern part, more lightly shaded, is that which the arbitration of the King of the Netherlands would have assigned to England.

2. That we have placed the names of the provinces so as not to prejudge any question as to their boundaries.

3. That the former Province of Quebec is now styled Lower Canada, and that the former Province of Nova Scotia has been divided into two-the peninsula only being now called Nova Scotia, while the rest is called New Brunswick-so that in this discussion, when the names Lower Canada and New Brunswick are introduced, they may be considered as equivalent, respectively, to the former denominations of Quebec and Nova Scotia.

4. That the former Province or State of Massachusetts comprised the district of Maine-since erected into a separate Stateso that for the territorial purposes of this discussion, Massachusetts and Maine may be considered as synonymous.

5. All other boundaries being, by us, considered as settled, and those of the shaded part being alone in question, the main point of the discussion is whether the north-eastern angle of Maine is to be placed at B, as claimed by the United States, or at A, as contended by Great Britain.

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