MEMORANDUM-BOUNDARY AW 
 
 Ottawa, 
 
 The following letter was addressed to the G^^oil^u^oiWnuai 
 a correspondence to which it had already opened iCk^ol u mn^jji^l ts 
 refusal to publish it, as contained in its number of 24th^n^escaped 
 my attention till pointed out to me on my arrival here on Saturday 
 night ; and I would only remark that after having well abused ma for 
 the e"idence given by me two years ago— after having published in full 
 Sir Francis Hincks' lecture of May last year, mainly directed against me 
 — after having published my letter of 8th in its issue of 18th February 
 last, and the reply of Sir Francis Hincks, couched in no very dignified 
 language, I think the public will not find it hard to judge of the 
 motive being soniething else than want of room. In fact, i feel so muck 
 flattered by its exclusion, denoting as it does that I have succeeded in 
 leading Sir Francis into a series of admissions that absolutely demolish 
 the award, that I think it desirable to have it printed and circulated 
 before the debate now in progress in Parliament is concluded. It 
 will show by the fact now so thoroughly authenticated by one of the 
 arbitrators that they mnade, a boundary where they could find none, fud 
 were thus as much ultra vires of their powers as the award of the 
 arbitrators at Geneva — so often referred to — would have been, had the 
 award on that occasion ceded a slice of British territory instead of a 
 money indemnity, which 1 think the British people — however formal 
 the award — would have been very much inclined to laugh at. 
 
THE BOUNDARY AV/ARD. 
 
 ■ <» I 
 
 FURTHER REPLY TO SIR FRANCIS HINCKS. 
 
 ■ !<■> ■ 
 
 To the Editor of the Globe ■ 
 
 ft 
 
 Sir,— 
 
 Another letter from Sir Francis Ilincks, under date of the 
 10th inst., appears in the 6Yo6e of the 14th. Sir Francis Hincks will 
 kill the award if no one else does. His letter of the 10th is conclusive. 
 It admits and proves all that has been said against the boundary of the 
 award as a boundary having any existence independent of the award. It 
 admits and proves that the arbitrators have made a boundary where he 
 admits and proves that there was none. What Sir Francis says is that 
 " What the arbitrators made up their minds to was as to the south- 
 •* western and north-eastern boundary." To avoid any misconstruction 
 of terms, what he means is, that the boundary of that part of Ontario 
 on the east was the due north line from the head of Lake Temisca- 
 mingue, terminating on Hudsons Bay at a point which thus formed 
 the north-east angle of the Province ; and that the boundary on the 
 south was the international boundary up to the point where it reached 
 the west side of the Lake of the Woods, which thus formed the south- 
 west angle of the Province. He then goes ou to say, " They further 
 " made up their minds that there were no data whatever for declaring 
 " any particul?v place in the north-west as the north-westerly boundary." 
 Hero we have the whole case clearl} put: they found no boundary 
 nor any evidence or data whatever that there was or ever had been one 
 on the north or west between these two points — the north-east and the 
 • south-west angles of the Province — and so they proceeded to make one^ 
 and how to make it, as he tells us in his former letter (of 30th ult.,) 
 became then the question. One way entertained was to consider the 
 
immonse distance between these two |>oint.s, nearly sixteen degrees of 
 longitude, as the base of an irregular triangle and make a boundary by 
 a direct line between them. Another way entertained was to consider 
 this iinmenso gap as two sides of a square (the other two sides of 
 which were irregular, but had been determined as legal and absolute by 
 them, up to the south-west and north-east angles aforesaid) and make 
 a boundary between them by a due west and a due north line until by their 
 intersection they formed the north-west angle of the Province. They 
 finally adojjted the latter, in part, and in part a system of river 
 boundaries, but in any case, whether by the base ot a triangle or by two 
 sides of a square, they were making a boundary where Sir Francis says 
 there was none, and for which he declares "there were no data whatever." 
 In support of this he again says at the end of his letter that " there is 
 '• no established north-west boundary and no one has ever pretended tliat 
 " there is," and goes on to show that the arbitrators made one in a way 
 they thought ** perfectly fair " on the north and west between the 
 points they considered legally established. Now, as to whether they 
 made a *' fair" boundary or not, that is not the question, and, if they 
 had had the power to do so, would have been a mere matter of opinion, 
 but we are here not in the region of opinion, but of fact, and when Sir 
 Francis says that ** no one has ever pretended that there is" n boundary 
 on the north and west he is entirely in error. The Quebec Act of 1774^ 
 by which Sir Francis j)retends that the arbitrators were guided, declared 
 and enacted that there was such a boundary. The Dominion Govern- 
 ment " pretended that there is " a boundary, and clniraed the 
 height of land to be such a boundary. The arbitrators found, upon 
 intelligible principles, the north-east angle of the Province at the shore 
 of Hudson Bay. But why they should have seized upon a point for 
 the south-west angle which is not a terminal [)oint at all, but is on a 
 continuous description of the international boundary extending far to 
 the west of it ; or why, after starting their w^esterly boundary from that 
 point on a due north course, they should have brought it to a termina- 
 tion where they did, are questions whicli Sir Francis Hincks has failed 
 to answer. 
 
 I need not extend this letter further, as it is only intended to show- 
 that the boundary of the award is m*- ely a creation of the arbitrators, 
 as ni)W admitted by Sir Francis Hinjks, and rests on no basis of history 
 or fact. No doubt, they intended to do what they thought " perfectly 
 fair," but they ^ot wholly at sea by starting upon a wrong principle, 
 and, having got to a point they erroneously considered to be legally 
 established, they could not make one thing fit with another, and so 
 jumped at a conclusion, such as I have described it, and ultra vires of 
 their powers. 
 
 The article in the Globe of the 18th on my last letter both misquotes « 
 and misapplies what I have said. I did not say that the proclamation 
 of 1791 was a factor in the matter of the western boundary. I only 
 
showed tliat Sir Francis Hiiicks, at the same time ti\at ho argued from 
 it as a factor, declared that the arbitrators had discarded it as such. 
 And in attempting to convict me of inconsistency vith my former 
 opinions as to the western boundary, the error is in thone who entirely 
 ignore, in all their arguments, the fact that the Canada of 1703 was 
 divided into three parts, viz : " Lower Canada," " Upper C.mada," and 
 the " Indian Territories," and it is in ignoring entirely the existence of 
 the latter, notwithstanding that two Imperial Statutes were enacted speci- 
 ally for the Government of these Territories, that the arbitrators and others 
 seem to have got astray. We should have had these territories when thn 
 lease of them expired, in 1859, as I urged in 1857 ; but it must l»e remem- 
 bered in connection with Ontario's claim to them that these territories, 
 west of Upper Canada, were put by Imperial Statute under the Govern- 
 ment and jurisdiction of Lower Canada. 
 
 Of course I expect that the Globe, as a party paper and for party 
 objects, will try to give such turn as may suit its view3 to what I say. 
 I am not now in controversy with the fjlobe^ or party p ijiers on either 
 side, but with Sir Francis Hincks, who has aliandoned the judicial 
 spirit of an arbitrator to explain away the errors of an award which hia 
 own statements now prove to be untenable ; and, while subject to the 
 fair criticism of the Globe, or other papers, with v'hich I do not now 
 intend to enter u[)on a political controversy, I only ask that it be 
 directed against what I did, and not against what I did not, say. 
 
 Three Kivers, 28th February, 1882. 
 
 Being absent in Montreal, I defened the above on learning of 
 a further letter from Sir Francis Hincks, under date ot 25th Feby., 
 in the Globe of the 28th, professedly in reply to my letter in the Globe 
 of the 18th, now before me, in which Sir Francis still ftirther labours 
 most successfully, though no doubt unintentionally, to kill the boundary 
 of the award. Before noticing that point, however, 1 am under the 
 necessity of adverting to attacks upon myself personally I have not 
 heretofore noticed, but which, so often reiterated by Sir Francis Hincks, 
 and sought to be maintained by misquotation and misapplication of 
 isolated passages, might involve in error such readers as have not had 
 the opportunity of comparing those extracts and assertions with the facts 
 and the context of whr.t I have really written or said. 
 
 It is hardly worth while to notice the commencement, where he 
 seeks to retort in the matter of discourtesy by charging that I did 
 not send him a copy of ray evidence before the Parliamentary Commit- 
 tee ; but the cases are not parallel, for, though differing with thearl»itra- 
 tors, I spoke of them not only with courtesy but with esteem, though 
 «iot once mentioning their names ; whereas Sir Francis Hincks' lecture 
 
6 
 
 was in llio »i>fiin a personal attack upon me. In one paragraph my 
 namo appears six times, in another eight times, and in yet another four- 
 teen timcH, in fact it is fairly bristling with " VVm. McD. Uawson," and 
 was a cirefullv T)repare(l written document, which Sir Francis must evi- 
 dently have been cogitating over for more than a year, and, as naturally 
 to bo expected, would be more correct in a promised pamphlet than an 
 reported in a daily paper, while my evidence before the Committee was 
 viva voce, and published in the Blae Books, over which I have no control, 
 and ot which Sir Francis no doubt had as early communication as I had. 
 A gentleman has now, however, been kind enough to send me a copy of 
 the lecture in i)amphlot, and, though 1 may not have as much spare time 
 as Sir Francis has on hand, it will be answered in duo courae and iii 
 time to be useful, he may depend upon it. 
 
 Sir Francis says i:i this last letter that he has charged me with "grosa 
 inconsistency " and says he supports it by an extract from my own rc- 
 piort made in 1857, as follows :— 
 
 ■' It will be seen by the question of boundary, already treated, that 
 «' the country about R.d lliver. Lake Winnipeg, etc., which th >y (the 
 *' Hudson Bay Com[)any) claim under their charter, absolutely belongs to 
 " Canada." 
 
 Well, I certainly wrote that in 1857, and I challenge and 
 defy Sir Francis Hincks to show that I have ever since denied it or 
 contradicted the fact therein stated, that the country named belonged to 
 Canada us an integral part of that "Canada" that was ceded by France 
 in 1763. My whole evidence before the Committee of 1880 distinctly 
 and absolutely maintains the same fact, and I maintain it now. But Sir 
 Francis Hincks has not yet gone so far (and if he did his boundary 
 would be still more wide of the mark) as to say that the old Province 
 of Quebec, out of which Lower and Upper Canada were carved, was 
 identical with the whole of French Canada, cirded by France in 1*763. If 
 he would just only attempt to say so instead of implying it, he would soon 
 be impaled on the horns of a worse dilemma than he has yet got into. 
 But why does he accuse me of inconsistency because I said twenty-five 
 years ago, what I say still, that Canada, as ceded by France, covered 
 the Red River, Lake Winnipeg, etc., when I had never denied it and 
 he dare not deny it himself, though he does not preteni to carry Ontario 
 there ! ! ! The fact is that Sir Francis, while he cannot deny, purposely, 
 as I am now constrained to say, ignores the Indian Territories altogether, 
 as if they were wholly foreign to the argument, though they were 
 undoubtedly parts of " Canada" and were, by the Imperial Parliament, 
 shown to exist " adjoining " but not part of Upper or Lower Canada. 
 I pretended twenty -five years ago, precisely as I do to-day, that Canada 
 as acquired from France included the Red River and the Saskatchewan, 
 and was divided first into the small " Province of Quebec " and the 
 "Indian Territories" — then in 1774 the Province of Quebec was 
 enlarged out of, but did not absorb, the Indian Territories, and in 1791 
 
the Province of Quebec was divided into two, when tho whole country 
 then consisted of " Lower Canada," ** Upper Canada" and tho " Indian 
 Territories," the 1 itter (the " Indian Territories ") having; been twice 
 separately and distinctly legislated for by the Imperial Parliament, as 
 separate from but " adjoining " tho Provinces of Lower and Up|)er 
 Canada, and put under the jurisdiction and government mainly of 
 Lower Canada. All these definitions were taken into account in tlie 
 document Sir Francis Hincks has quoted, and Canada was treated as 
 the Canada acquired from Franco, without any minute inquiry into the 
 question of intcr-provincial boundaries, which wero not at the 
 moment of any importance, and had little or no bearing upon the issues 
 then involved. But Sir Francis thinks it an awful thing to change 
 an opinion, and we shall see in the sequel how this may atfect his 
 adherenjo to a wrong princifdo and an erroneous award, as in his 
 view a leas "shame" than to acknowledge an error. When 
 the award was made, the arbitrator had before them all that 
 the ingenuity and plodding application of a Mills and a Mowat, 
 with unlimited means at their command, with all the resources 
 of a wealthy Province at their back, and as many assistants a« 
 they chose to employ ransacking the archives of Europe and America, 
 could adduce ; and all this, collected in ponderous tomes of print and 
 large sheets of lithograi)hed maps of all ages from the discovery of 
 America to the pi'esent time, within their purview ; and yet they 
 erred, egregiously erred, in an award for which in every letter he writes 
 Sir Francis Hincks declares there were no data whatever, and yet main- 
 tains that they were right rather than make what he thinks would be 
 " proclaiming his own shame " in the admission that they were wrong. 
 On the other hand, when I wrote the report of 1857, I had no aid and no 
 assistance, no means of acquiring additional information beyond what I 
 had gradually picked up in researches previously cariied out at such leisure 
 moments as I could command with but very limited time ; and yet Sir 
 Francis thinks that if in that report, with nothing previous in the same 
 line of investigation to guide me, which was the tirst published enun- 
 ciation at that period of the rights and interests leading to a great future 
 for the country, and which, at sacrifices that should never have been 
 necessary, are now assured to the people oi Canada, some error occurred 
 which the mass of printed information since produced had convinced me 
 of, it would be " proclaiming my own shame " to acknowledge it. That 
 may be Sir Francis Hincks' view of the moral aspect of the case, but it 
 is not mine. It may account for his admission in every letter he writes, 
 that there were no data whatever for the boundaiy of the award on the 
 north and west, and yet that it always was and is the true boundary. 
 That is a contradiction to which Sir Francis Hincks may, with hia 
 construction of ** gross inconsistency " and " proclaiming his own 
 shame," reconcile himself, but I can only say that such an interpre- 
 tation is peculiar to himself. 
 
8 
 
 Wliiit lio expected to make by the quotation from tlio n^port of 
 185'(, 111 which there is no error and wliich exactly ex pressefl what I 
 then maintained, and liavo ever since maintained to the very 
 letter, is nion^ than I can imagine, as the nse niado of it by 
 him only pioves tnat ho has not yet beg\in to nuister the 
 8ulij« ct on which he writes, if there has, however, been additional 
 ovi(h nco adiluced in the documents supplied to chanf;e an opinion hehl 
 by me at that time on any one point, Hir Francis llincks has not yet 
 been sharj) enotigh to discover it. In the document ho has cjnoted from 
 I was i)re{)aring a Htate paper, which was adopted by a Minister of 
 State for the action of the Government, and in puch a docnment, 
 while very decided in maintaining the rights of "Canada" as one 
 country, 1 was bound to be very cautious, and I think I was so from 
 the fact that no material point in it has ever been controverted. Less 
 cautious in the expres.-ion of meiely personal opinions on points that 
 were not in the category of j)roved facts it would be strange indeed if 
 the nwtss of evidence .since adduced had not thrown .some new light 
 thereon, and when that is made to appear 1 should be far from feeling, 
 like Sir Fiancis Hincks, that it would bo " proclaiming my own shame " 
 to admit it. Such has not occurred, however, in relation to the Htate 
 paper referred to, for it was and is correct, so far us it goes, and in all 
 it uiaini.ins, and when it is .shown that I have changed in anything 
 elsewheie ex[)ressed, I shall seek, if I can, to justify the change, and 
 not '* proclaim my own shanie " by resisting the evidence of facts, as 
 Sir Francis Hincks so unblushingly assumes to be the right principle to 
 follow, 
 
 " Gross inconsistency," " tergiversation," and " proclaiming hu 
 own shame" — these be strong words, Sir Francis, and perhaps it would 
 not be amiss to see how their application could be made in your behalf 
 to the existing state of things as compared with the past, to see, in fact, 
 what resemblance they bear to the chickens that too surely come home 
 to roost. Without time now to treat it genei-ally, I have glanced at 
 the pamphlet containing Sir Francis Hincks' lecture of May last year, 
 and in it, at page IG, I find the position he had previously held in this 
 controversy described in the following words : — 
 
 " Up to the time when it became my duty to study the question as 
 ** an arititrator, I had been under the prevailing impression that the 
 *' height of land was the boundary of the Hudson Bay Territory." 
 
 1 take it for granted that Sir Francis has so stated truly the 
 position he formerly held towards this great question, and when he 
 frankly acknowledges the change of opinion avowedly worked in him 
 by my Report of 1857, and the succeeding one by Chief Jnstice Draper, 
 so far am I from charging it as " proclaiming bis own shame " that I 
 view it, on the contraiy, as an honourable acknowledgment of previous 
 ignorance and error. But what cf that ignorance and error and the 
 responsibDity attaching thereto 1 Sir Francis Hincks had long been 
 
9 
 
 one of the ruling |)owerH of the country. Ho had risen to tlie highest 
 position in the gift of the Crown within the vast domain of the old 
 United Province of Oiinada and its de))endencies, and us the first 
 Minister of the Crown was responsiljlo for the administration of the law, 
 civil and ci-iminul, throughout the wide expanse of Canada, not only as 
 considered in relation to the two subdivided and again re-united portions 
 of the old Province of Quebec, known by the names of Lower and 
 Upper Canada, but extending to tlio whole country from the Gulf of St. 
 Jjawrence throughout the whole North- West to the shores of the 
 Pacific, and the embouchure of the Mackenzie River, in the North Sea. 
 It is not that the late United Province of Canoda was alon3 under his 
 Hway as its Chief Minister, but that by specific Acts of the Covernraent 
 and' Parliament of the Empire, just as binding and imperative as the 
 British North America Act that now binds together this glorious Domin- 
 ion, Ihese vast regions, constituting that magnificent heritage of the people 
 of Canada we so fully recognize to-day, were placed under his Govern- 
 ment, and he now comes forward '• proclaiming his own shame," and 
 ileclares that he did not know it, that he had yet to learn, I might say, 
 the baby-alphabet of the subject, when called upon to adjudicate upon 
 the merits of a divisional line between the integral parts of that vast 
 domain, when he tells us it became his duty to study the (question of 
 that divisional line — a question of utter insignificance as compared with 
 the higher duty imposed upon him by the laws of the country, of which 
 he was the sworn administrator, and which he neglected on the pitiful 
 excuse of ignorance, or the " prevailing impression " that it was some 
 other body's country. 
 
 True, the neglect of an imperative duty arising from that " prevail- 
 ing impression " may be a neglect in which others, both before and after, 
 shared, but when Sir Francis erroneously thinks he has detected me in 
 acknowledging that I did not at that time know everything, and is found 
 in almost the same breath " proclaiming his own shame " in avowing 
 that he himself knew nothing, notwithstanding that his duties and res- 
 ponsibilities were such as to make ignorance shameful indeed, it is but 
 fair that I should point out that he was not without some tooniticn and 
 a pretty strong pressure as to what his duties were, and the addition 
 the incident will make to the history of the case may as well be stated 
 now. 
 
 When the Government was in Toronto, and after the military ex- 
 pedition that had been sent to quell the Indian insurrection on Lake 
 Superior, which made a favourable opportunity or calling attention to 
 the subject, a project was got up by myself and a gentleman then an 
 officer of the Government tor the initiation of an advance of settlement 
 towards the Red River and the North-West, expressly in view of 
 ultimate proceedings for the re-opening of the country as a field for 
 commerce and immigration when the lease to the Hudson Bay Company 
 «hould expire. Neither of us having at that time the position or 
 
10 
 
 influence to j)usli so important a matter, we solicited the assistance of 
 the lafr« Honourable George Brown, at that time, though he had never 
 been in Parliament, the most influential journalist in the country, and 
 supporter of the Lafontaine-Baldwin Administration, in which Sir 
 Francis Hincks was Minister of Finance. Mr. Brown took the matter 
 into consideration, I lent him some books on the question and he became 
 very warnijy engrossed in the project, and the result was a memoi-ial to the 
 Government, signed by Mr. Brown first, as the most influential, by Mr. 
 Alexander McNabb, afterwards of Saugeen, where I hope the old ge - 
 tleman is still alive and well, and lastly by me, as junior. We then, by 
 appointment, interviewed Ministers Baldwin, Hincks, Price, etc. 
 Brown was chiefly our spokesman, and how ably he advocated the 
 project I need not say — nor need I say how warmly it appeared to be 
 taken up under such auspices. But soon after occuiTed the quarrel 
 between Mr. Brown and the then Ministry, which had very important 
 results, which are matters of history, and our petition was, of course, 
 pigeon-holed, though no doubt it is still to be found am ;>ng the archives 
 of the Government. The following year found Sir Francis Hincks 
 Premier, with responsibilities and duties extending not only over Lower 
 and Upper Canada, but to that greater Canada of which they were but 
 small provinces, and which was put as emphatically, by Imperial enact- 
 ments, under the jurisdiction and control of the Administration of 
 which he was the responsible head, and by the same authority, as that 
 by which they are integral i)ai ts of the Dominion to-day ; but notwith- 
 standing that the matter was tlius brought under his notice as above, 
 we now find Sir Francis Hincks " proclaiming his own shame " by the 
 avowal that he was in uttor ignorance of these responsibilities and 
 duties, and quite satisfied with the "prevailing impression" that the 
 major part of the country for wliich he held Her Majesty's commission 
 as its chief responsible administ tutor under the Crown was some other 
 body's land, with which he had no concern. Let me tell Sir Francis' 
 Hincks that if he had done his duty then, as I sought to do mine in a 
 humbler sphere, we would have had a Canada worth boasting of to-day, 
 for we would have had within the last twenty-five years all that the 
 next twenty-five will bring, and that will be something'that all thinking 
 people, even Sir Francis Hincks, must now understand to be a degree 
 of progress that the imagination can scarcely realise in advance. 
 
 I shall now return to Sir Francis Hincks' last letter, and convict 
 him at once of misstating the position he seeks to controvert, like 
 putting up a baseless fabric as being of my construction, in order to 
 knock it down. He says that I do not " pretend to affirm that it is 
 possible to lay down any northerly boundary west of the north-eaaterly 
 boundary on James' Bay." What authority, I would ask, has Sir 
 Francis for that assertion ] The Quebec Act certainly declared a boun- 
 dary, which as certainly the Albany River is not. He continues in 
 the same paragraph, as my proposition, that ** the arbitrators, appointed 
 
11 
 
 expressly to determine the boundaries, should have simply reported 
 that the true westerly boundary was at the north-west angle," etc., and 
 anyone reading his letter would conclude that I concurred in that point 
 being correctly designated as " the true westerly boundary," whereas 
 there was not one word ever said or written by me that would bear that 
 construction in the most remote degree. I was dealing with his staie- 
 raent that they could not find a northerly boundary when I said, " Then 
 why, it may be asked, did they not report the fact that there was no 
 boundary, instead of proceeding to make one 1 " 
 
 I must here protest against the misapplication of terms by which 
 Sir Francis obscures his own position and mis-states mine so often. He 
 speaks of the westerly boundary when he means the extreme point on the 
 west to which they decided that the southerly boundary extended. The 
 north-west angle is a point on a line of boundury, and not a boundary 
 itself. It is the limit on the west, according to them, of the southerly 
 boundary, but not a westerly boundary, which he has declared they 
 could not find, any more than a northerly boundary. When they pro- 
 fessed to have found the termination of the southerly boundary at the 
 north-west angle of the Lake of the Woods (in which I do not agree 
 with them) they, being of that opinion, had a right to report so ; but 
 when from that point Sir Francis declares so repeatedly and emphati- 
 cally that they could find no boundary ou the west or on the north he 
 thoroughly sustains what [ assert, viz. : that they made a boundary 
 instead of finding one. He declares that they found a boundary round 
 two sides of the area of the Province ; on the other two sides, the west 
 and the north, they found none, and no data whatever therefor, and 
 hence they made one to suit their own views of what they thought fair, 
 which was beyond their powers. 
 
 As to the north-west angle of the Lake of the "Woods, it has 
 nothing whatever to do with the boundary of Ontario. It is simply a 
 point on the line of the international boundary, and, if the arbitrators 
 were right in carrying the southerly boundary of Ontario to that point, 
 then there was nothing to stop them there, and they v.'ere bound to 
 continue on the international line still further west, " 450 miles" and 
 
 more. • , o- 
 
 It is, however, wholly unnecessary to fill your columns with Sir 
 Francis' criticism of my letter or the remarks which he seeks to make 
 oiTonsive by language not generally used even in the heat of dismssion, 
 and if it turns upon himst^lf he has himself to thank. I am very 
 sorry to tread on his exceedingly sensitive corns. A. man in the 
 wrong and determined to defend it generally gets in a passion ; but the 
 subject, in the common interest, is too important to permit of his going 
 unanswered My letter will speak for itself, but, while he objects that 
 it does not show where the boundary should be, I have only to say that 
 that is a question to be dealt with outside of the untenable coucliisions 
 of the award. Its sole object was to show that the boundary of the 
 
12 
 
 award was not the true boundary of Ontario, and in that he comes 
 again and again to my aid and proves it most conclusively, and for that 
 I need only quote hia own language, four times again repeated in his 
 last letter, as follows : (1.) That the boundaries "of Upper Canada 
 " were so vague on the noi-th and north- west that it is simply impossible 
 " to find any line positively laid down by authority." (2.) ** I have 
 " always admitted that, while the arbitrators determined all the points in 
 " dispute and found true and legal boundaries on the west and north-east, 
 ** they had no data to guide them as to the mode of connecting the 
 " points established" — tlmt is, that for two sides of the Province they had 
 no data whatever. (3.) " My object was simply to prove that no 
 "precise boundaries were laid down, and that the arbitrators were com- 
 " I)elled to determine them between certain established points in the 
 " manner most advantageous to the contending parties," that is, to make a 
 bouv.dary which they thought a good one for two sides of the Province. 
 (4 ) "The arbitrators determined, as they thought they had a right to do, 
 " the boundaries on the north and north-west. I have sufficiently 
 "explained the imposibility of finding true boundaries where there are no 
 " data whatever." And so out of his own mouth he is condemned — thev 
 " determined " boundaries for one-half or two sides of a [square^ of the 
 Province for which they had " no data whatever." 
 
 When Sir Francis Hincks can appeal to some authority for that 
 point at which the award terminates the southerly boundary, which he 
 says was legally established at the north-west angle of the Lake of the 
 Woods — some authority that carries it to that point and no farther — 
 there will be some room for argument ; until then there is none. It 
 would then be in order to show why the arbitrators adopted a due north 
 line from that point, and why, at a distance of seventy or eighty miles 
 on that course, they should have stopped and turned to the eastward 
 for a northerly bounlary, and, as Sir Francis Hincks has declared that 
 "there were no data whatever" for those last two boundaries, it would 
 need something more than his opinion that they were " most advantageous 
 to the contending parties" to make them legal. The Dominion claim be- 
 fore them was for boundaries which, though in my humble opinion erro- 
 neous and pleaded on false principles, were quite intelligible. The 
 Ontario claim before them was for boundaries also quite intelligible. 
 The award was for boundaries for whi'ih Sir Francis has failed to show 
 &ny intelligible basis, the terminating point of the southerly boundary, 
 at the north-west angle, being without authority, and the balance with- 
 out even the pretence of authority, and resting only upon what the arbi- 
 trators chose to think would b<^ " most advantageous to the contending 
 parties," which was not a matter for their consideration. 
 
 The Ontario claims are pleaded on just so much of the known facte 
 of history as was deemed suitable to maintain it, ignoring adverse facts, 
 of which not the least was that Lower Canada had, by special Imperial 
 enactment, rights of Government and jurisdiction outside of and beyond 
 
13 
 
 Upper Canada on the west, and yet witLin " Canada". And if Lower 
 Canada has ser'n fie to give up her claims to a vast domain originally 
 hers — and in w^hich equal rights were for ever secured to her by treaty — 
 for the purpose of a fairly balanced Confederation, in which her interest 
 would be duly regarded under the legitimate protection of her just and 
 proportionate influence in the deliberations of the commonwealth, she has 
 a right to protest against the erection, under the flimsy plea of an award 
 of arbitrators, ultra vires of the question committed to their deliberations 
 of a dominant power, calculated to crea+e and foster antagonisms in the 
 future that had better be niPt and avoided at the outset. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 WM. McD. DAWSON. 
 
 Three Riveus, 8th March, 1882.