reasons-because ces terres sont parallèles à merchant-adventurers of England, trading notre France-conflicts with the extravagant to Hudson's Bay." claim of Lescarbot to all the country northward to the Arctic circle, a claim of which the groundlessness has already been shown. If the Pacific had been set up as the western limit of Canada, on the strength of the discoveries of the Vérandryes, it might have had the merit of resting on a discovery, though it would have been no less invalid, because England received the capitulation of Canada with a specific description of boundaries on the west, not only in words, but accompanied by a line officially drawn on a map, by the representative of the nation making the cession, and accepted, and afterwards insisted on by herself.

The western boundary line of Canada, to which we now turn, was once, upon insufficient evidence, judicially declared. The whole question was made to rest on the description in the Quebec Act, 1774, and the Proclamation of 1791. Of the former, the concluding portion is all that it is necessary to quote:

The proclamation of 1791 takes us to a point where a line drawn due north from Lake Temiscaming would intersect "the boundary line of Hudson's Bay, including all the territory to the westward and southward of the said line, to the utmost extent of country commonly called, or known, by the name of Canada." If we ascertain the western limit of Canada as agreed upon by the French and English Governments, we shall then know the exact meaning of the language of the proclamation. In the meartime it will be necessary to examine into the circumstances under which the wester boundary was judicially declared, in the absence of all information as to the points to which the French and English Govern ments allowed it to extend, after the capitulation by Vaudreuil.

It is to be observed that the line westward. described in the Quebec Act, followed the bank of the Ohio river; but the northward line drawn from the junction of that river with the Mississippi is not similarly contro

"Through Lake Ontario and the river called Niagara; and thence along the south-led by the obligation to follow the course of eastern bank of Erie, following the said bank, until the same shall be intersected by the northern boundary granted by the charter of the Province of Pennsylvania, in case the same shall be so intersected; and from thence along the said northern and western boundaries of the said Province until the said western boundary strike the Ohio; but in case the said bank of the said lake shall not be found to be so intersected, then following the said bank until it shall arrive at such point of the said bank which shall be nearest the north-western angle of the Province of Pennsylvania; and thenc ealong the western boundary of the said Province, until it strike the river Ohio; and along the bank of said river westward to the banks of the Mississippi, and northward to the southern boundary of the territory granted to the

the latter river. The words westward and northward, taken by themselves, are of equivalent value: the westward line would necessarily deviate from a due west line as much as the Ohio deviated. Was the northward line to follow the course of the Mississippi without special direction? If not was there any thing to prevent its being a due north line? This, in the absence of all positive evidence to show the wester limit of Canada, was the state of the question on the trial of Reinhard and McLellan, at Quebec, May, 1818. Witnesses having the knowledge which surveyors acquire, were examined to show what a "northward” line meant. Mr Saxe, the first surveyor put into the witness-box, was asked by the Attorney General, "Would a line running north from the junction of the Ohio and Mississipp

Then the

though not a north line."
Chief Justice ventured upon a remark which
is obviously erroneous. "Then,” he said,
"its course northward must unquestionably
be due north, if a line north-westerly is a
north-west line." M. Vallière de St.

rivers strike, in its passage to the Hudson's Bay territories, the great lakes, and where would it strike lake Superior? And where would it leave Fort William?" It will be seen that these questions were not put in the language of the statute, the technical meaning of which a surveyor's knowledge Real having reminded his worship that the was required to explain. The Attorney-witness had added, “but if it deviated so as General did not enquire into the effect of to gain a little north, it would then be drawing a "northward" but a "north" line. a due north line." The Chief Justice, When the witness had explained that a line, now growing warm, complained that comsupposing it to run due north from the junc- mon sense was being outraged; and he tion of the Ohio and Mississippi, would leave broke out in this fashion: "I want to know the river Winepeg five degrees out of Cana- whether in point of fact, a fact that any da, and had added with emphasis "not a man can tell as well as a surveyor," (the fact northward line," as mentioned in the statute, of bringing a surveyor there negatived this "but a due north line," the Attorney-General, assumption) "whether a line from a western assuming an imperious tone, enquired: or eastern point of the compass, drawn "Do you mean to say that a northward line northward, is or is not a north line? Just is not due north, sir?" To which he receiv- answer that question," he insisted, "yes ed for reply: "It is not always; it may be or no." north by east, or north by west, or north west, or many other points of the compass. A due north line is one that goes direct to the north pole without any deviation whatever." The Attorney-General returning to the charge, then asked: "And does not a northward line go to the north pole? If you had a northward line to run, would you not run it to the north pole ?""Perhaps I might, and perhaps not; it would certainly be northerly, though it might not run due north," replied the undaunted witness. After several more like questions and answers, Chief Justice Sewell came to the aid of the AttorneyGeneral. He really did not comprehend the distinction; "to say that a northward line is not a north line" appeared to him absurd. "Suppose," he said, "we had a compass here, and from a given point I draw a line north-westward, that is to say, terminating at a point north-westward, would not that be a due north-west line?" "It would," the witness replied, "if drawn due north-west; but if in advancing you gained northerly, it would from the course of its deviation be a northward line,

But he only got for reply: "It certainly must be, to a certain extent, a north line, but not a due north line." Chief Justice Sewell, when he came to charge the jury, assumed that a northward line meant a due north line, and decided that the western boundary of Canada is a line drawn due north from the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, in latitude 37° 10' north, and longitude 83° 50′ west.*

This line, if Mr. Sax be correct, would strike Lake Superior about three-quarters of a degree east of Fort William. The question of jurisdiction arose in this way. If the locality of the murder, a place between the Dalles and Portage du Rat, which lies north of the north-west corner of the Lake of the Woods, were in Upper Canada, the trial must have taken place in that Province; but if it were in the Indian territories, the trial could, under the forty-third of George III. take place in either Province. In deciding

La limite Ouest du Haut Canada est une ligne tirée vrai Nord de la jonction des rivières Ohio et Mississippi, dans la latitude de 37° 10' Nord, et la longitude 88° 50' Ouest.

principles to which it gave activity, of gov erning the country by means of a Governor in Council without the intervention of a General Assembly, combined with the Boston Charter Act, struck terror into the selfgoverning colonies of New England, whom it inspired with the fear that their own fate might be read in the treatment accorded to the Province of Quebec. Mazères, the first Solicitor-General of Canada after the conquest, says then there ceased to be a British party in the other English colonies, after the passing of these two Acts; and in a dialogue* between an Englishman and a Frenchman, the Englishman reporting the prevalent sentiments of these British colonists, as expressed to himself, gives it as the strongest of all causes of complaint that had annihilated the British party, gained over the Tories, as the firm friends of England were called, the extension of the Province of Quebec, on the west, to the Mississippi. This is the language in which the late Tories, who had joined the opposition to England, are represented as expressing themselves:

"And lastly, (which is a matter that concerns us more nearly than all the rest,) to enlarge the boundaries of the Province of Quebec, so as to take in the five great lakes and all the immense and very fruitful country contained between the Ohio and Mississippi, and which lies at the back of our Provinces; with a view, as it should seem, that this new and favourite mode of government, together with the Roman Catholic religion, (now also, to all appearance, become an object of favour with Great Britain,) should prevail throughout all that vast country."

Mr. Mazères' view of the extent of Canada, under the Quebec Act, including "all "the immense and very fruitful country be"tween the Ohio and the Mississippi," and the great lakes-precludes the idea of the western boundary being east of Fort William.

• Canadian Freeholder, Vol. 2., p. 337.

At the same time, he may not have been very exact in his description. When speaking of all the country to the Mississippi being included, we have it on the authority of Lord North that the Quebec Act took in some scattered settlements to the West. Added to this, the language of Attorney General Thurlow seems to make it plain that the object of extending the limits of the Province, beyond those to which it had been restricted by the proclamation of 1763 was to take in all the French settlements. Did a trading post constitute a settlement? Was there a settlement at Prairie du Chien? Carver, who visited it in 1766, says: "This town is the great mart where all the adjacent tribes, and even those who inhabit the remote branches of the Mississippi, annually assemble about the latter end of May, bringing with them their furs to dispose of to the traders." Was this one of the settlements which it was the object of the Quebec Act to include ?

The government of United Canada did not restrict its authority to the limits contained in the judgment of 1818. It exercised numerous acts of authority west of those limits, including the laying out of townships and the sale of land.

But we must seek for other evidence of "the utmost extent of country (westward) commonly called or known by the name of Canada." Those limits were laid down, agreed upon between the Governments of France and England, described in words and marked on a map, in the negotiations. for peace, 1761. In the French memorial of propositions, July 15, 1761, the King of fers to cede and guarantee Canada to the King of England, "such as it has been and in right ought to be possessed by France, without restriction and without the liberty of returning upon any pretence whatever, against this cession and guarantee, and without interrupting the Crown of England in the entire possession of Canada." The French King stipulated for the free ex