Lords Sitting of 3 April 1845

MINUTES.
Sat first.—The Earl of Effingham, after the Death of his Father.
BILLS. Public. — 1a. Sugar Duties; Lands Clauses Consolidation (Scotland); Lands Clauses Consolidation; Railway Clauses Consolidation (Scotland); Railway Clauses Consolidation.
2a. Bastardy.
3a. and passed:—Companies Clauses Consolidation; Companies Clauses Consolidation (Scotland).
Private — 1a. Duke of Argyll's Estate; Pudsey Gas; Birkenhead Commissioners Dock; Birkenhead Company's Docks.
PETITIONS PRESENTED. By Lord Redesdale, from Clergy and others, of Dorchester, and from Inhabitants of Watlington, and several other places, against Increase of Grant to Maynooth.—From Metropolitan Inhabitants, for Inquiry into Operation of Anatomy Act.—By Dukes of Richmond and Buccleuch, and Earl of Roseberry, from Chirnside, and several other places, for Improving the Condition of Schoolmasters (Scotland).—By Duke of Richmond, from Dean and Clergy of Frome, and from numerous other places, for the Suppression of Intemperance.—From Ashley, for Repeal of Malt Tax.—From County of Banff, against any Alteration in the present System of Banking (Scotland).—By Bishop of Hereford, from Hereford, against the Insolvent Debtors Act Amendment Bill.—By Lord Campbell, from British-born Jews of Portsmouth, in favour of Jewish Disabilities Removal Bill.—From Ballisakeery, and 2 other places, for the Encouragement of Schools in Connexion with Church Education
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Society (Ireland).—By Lord Monteagle, from Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, for Protection to Planters.

THE BOUNDARY TREATY WITH AMERICA.
Lord Ashburtonrose and said: My Lords, I take the liberty of bespeaking your Lordships' attention whilst I offer a few observations on a subject which is, indeed, in some respects, personal to myself, but which is also eminently of a public nature; inasmuch as it refers to the Treaty which I had the honour of negotiating with the United States of America. As I had the great satisfaction of receiving the expression—the most unusual expression of your Lordships' approbation of that measure, I feel it the more necessary to notice the gross misrepresentation which has been made of my conduct in this case; and, as this House is the only place and the only means I have of making any explanation, I trust your Lordships will excuse me whilst I detain you for a short time. I am not now about to enter into any general discussion of the merits of that measure; and your Lordships

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will do me the justice of recollecting that I have never troubled the House by noticing the criticisms, some of them made in no very fair or very decent language, which have been made upon that measure—and I would not now introduce them except to contradict certain statements of facts which, if they were true, would render me little deserving of the honour which your Lordships were pleased to pay to my exertions. Neither do I now complain of a matter personal to myself in the manner in which a noble Lord (Viscount Palmerston) is in the constant habit of speaking of the way in which I acted for the Crown; he may call the Treaty a capitulation, or anything else he pleases; we are all of different temperaments by nature, and it is the nature of the noble Lord to show a flippancy, not only upon this, but upon other occasions, which is most unfortunate for this country.
The Marquess of Lansdowne: I rise to order. I am most anxious that the noble Lord should be permitted to explain his own conduct, either in these transactions or in any other; but I must submit to the noble Lord whether it is consistent with the rules of this House, which are founded on excellent maxims of sense and usefulness, to introduce personal allusions—particularly when those references are so made, that it is impossible not to understand who the party is to whom those observations are intended to be applied. I am satisfied that the object of my noble Friend in making the explanation can be equally well effected without introducing any personal allusion; and, after what has recently taken place elsewhere, I wish my noble Friend would have recourse to some other mode of making his defence.
Lord Ashburton: I will attend, as far as possible, to the admonition of the noble Lord; but when a man who has discharged public duties, and who has received the approbation of this House for the manner in which he has performed those duties, has the honour of a seat in this House, this is the place in which he ought to justify himself when any imputations are made on his conduct; and I think that if my noble Friend who now complains of my expressions had been in another place, his great love of order would have been used to induce others to speak less disrespectfully and less lightly of the transactions to which I allude. I speak, however, now only to matters of facts. I am alluding to what has been published abroad as a positive
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declaration made elsewhere of facts which I am about to controvert. I wish to guard myself against committing any irregularity; but I shall speak of facts which have been published out of doors, and which it is impossible for me to admit. I am not about to enter into any argument as to the merits of the Treaty, or to say whether it is good or not; your Lordships and the other House of Parliament have been pleased to pass sentence upon it, and I should be very fastidious indeed if I were not satisfied with it: the approval of Parliament has been my inducement heretofore to abstain from entering into any controversy on the subject. I will not detain your Lordships for any great length of time, and when I have stated what the misrepresentations to which I allude are, and also the real facts of the case, I think I may leave it to your Lordships and to the country to decide upon them without any observations of my own. The principal fault imputed to me in condemnation of the Treaty which I negotiated with respect to the North-Eastern Boundary of the United States of America, is, that I made a sacrifice of certain settlements at the upper part of the river St. John, called the Madawaska Settlements. Recklessness and impropriety have been attributed to me over and over again, and it has been said that I sacrificed the interests of this country by surrendering those settlements. Without troubling your Lordships with any lengthened details, your Lordships probably know that the Madawaska Settlement is a straggling village extending for some miles on both sides of the river St. John; and now that this river is taken as the boundary, that portion of the settlement which lies on the south side of the river has been by the Treaty accorded to the United States. But those persons who bring accusations against me for this act have on more than one or two occasions positively offered to do the same thing; and the Secretary of State for the time, Lord Palmerston, has repeatedly, and over and over again, offered to give up to the United States this very settlement which he now reprobates me for parting with. As your Lordships will recollect, when the disputes as to the boundary first arose, the matter was referred to the arbitration of the King of the Netherlands; he made his award; and by that award the same portion of the Madawaska Settlement as I gave up was ceded to the United States; so that this was no new concession on my part. But was there any objection expressed to

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this concession on the part of the Secretary of State at that time? On the contrary, the Secretary of State urgently pressed the United States to accept this award, by which this Madawaska Settlement was given up. This favourable opinion was expressed in the strongest terms two or three times. On the 4th of October the noble Lord said,—
"His Majesty would indeed be deeply grieved if he could suppose that the Government of the United States would hesitate to accept this award."
Therefore this settlement, which is said by Lord Palmerston to have done so much mischief because of the cession, is founded on a cession of which the noble Lord not only approved, but presssed the United States to accept. I think that is a good answer to the complaint, and shows that no extravagant concession was made by my Treaty. But in a second letter, written two years afterwards, the noble Lord the then Secretary of State said,—
"His Majesty has seen his hopes frustrated with the deepest concern."
So that, after two years' consideration, the noble Lord expressed his great regret that the line drawn by the award of the King of the Netherlands had not been accepted. I should state, as an additional fact, that the settlements ceded by the award of the King of the Netherlands, as the line was drawn by him, and which was so pressed for acceptance by Lord Palmerston, ceded a more important portion of territory than he (Lord Ashburton) had agreed to cede to the American Government; that the line drawn by the King of the Netherlands ran along the heights intermediate between the waters of the St. John and of the St. Lawrence, and that these heights would enable America to command, in case of any war, the whole passage of the river St. Lawrence. The truth is, that this was the only part of the territory which is of the slightest importance. The heights ceded by the King of the Netherlands overlooked the banks of the St. Lawrence, and commanded the passage and the road on the right side of that river; so that the noble Lord who now complains of my concession was not only ready to make that cession of the settlement of Madawaska, but was also ready to take the very bad line which involved the whole military command of the St. Lawrence, and by which the American Government could have impeded the communications between
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our Colony of New Brunswick, and the whole of our Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. That point was, I trust, satisfactorily settled by my Treaty. Whatever others may think about it, I should say, that the last person entitled to express an opinion adverse to the settlement of that part of the line is the noble Lord, who has so flippantly made the objections I have stated. It may be said, it is true, that Lord Palmerston consented to an objectionable line, because that was the line which was made by the award of the King of the Netherlands; but, as the noble Lord did not think that an unfair line, and as my line is a better line, I do not see how it can be open to the objections which have been raised against it by the noble Lord. As I have before said, it might be stated that the fact of its having been the award of the King of the Netherlands was a sufficient reason for the noble Lord's accepting the unfavourable line to which I have referred. But, the whole of the negotiations pending on the award having blown over in 1835, four years after the Americans had refused that award, and the entire question being open for fresh negotiations, the noble Lord volunteered an offer to America, in which the line, as then drawn, proposed again to sacrifice these very Madawaska settlements which the noble Lord reproaches me for having sacrificed. In writing upon the subject, the noble Lord's language is to this effect; that when a tract of country was claimed by two States, and when each is equally convinced of the justice of its claim, the fairest way to settle the controversy would be to divide the disputed territory between the two claimants. I do not object to the principle laid down, or to the proposal which was made on that occasion by the noble Lord; but I do claim your Lordships' judgment of the fairness of the proceeding of a man who, having himself once consented to accept a particular line, because it had been the arbitrated line of the King of the Netherlands, and who afterwards proposed that line as a boundary between the two countries, could come down to Parliament and charge me with having adopted an objectionable line, although a more favourable line than the one which the noble Lord himself had sanctioned and proposed. I wish to cast no blame upon the noble Lord for having proposed that line. I do not think the line at all an unfair one; but if my line be a better line, retaining, as it does, to this country the heights of St. John, to which

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I have alluded, I say it is hardly fair to reproach me with having accepted an objectionable line. Another Member of the late Cabinet (Lord J. Russell) states, that he had, through Lord Sydenham, directed a negotiation between Lord Sydenham and Mr. Webster, and that Lord Sydenham had positively refused to let America have those Madawaska settlements. I do believe that many Gentlemen who complain of those settlements having been sacrificed, do so either for party purposes or without knowing or caring where those settlements really are. Lord J. Russell, however, states, that Mr. Webster would not consent to the proposed Treaty without the Madawaska settlements, and that the last act of his (Lord J. Russell's) official life was to express to Lord Sydenham how much he approved of his conduct upon that occasion. Your Lordships will probably be surprised when I tell you that for the whole of that statement of facts there is no foundation whatever. There was no negotiation between Lord Sydenham and Mr. Webster; nay, more, there was no offer of a treaty on the part of Lord Sydenham to Mr. Webster, or on the part of Mr. Fox in Washington, upon the terms stated by Lord J. Russell, The noble Lord, however (Lord J. Russell), prided himself very much upon boldly maintaining the interests of his country as the last act of his official career, and of course threw a proportionate degree of opprobrium on the person who yielded what he had refused to grant. He had a sincere respect for the noble Lord, and from the experience of a long friendship with him, he felt assured that the noble Lord would not state anything knowing it to be untrue. Whether on going out of office he dreamed this fact, or took it upon light authority, I cannot say; but I can only assure your Lordships that there is really no foundation for it. The only negotiation that took place was one between Mr. Fox, the British Minister at Washington, and Mr. Webster, the American Secretary of State, and that was a negotiation, not for any Treaty of Boundary whatever, but one that was called for merely in consequence of contests having arisen in that country between the regular officers of the State of Maine and our officers in New Brunswick, which threatened to involve us in the probabilities of war. They said that the subject was going to be negotiated about generally, and they proposed and agreed to draw a line pending the negotiation
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for the occasional occupancy of the military; but there never was any negotiation between them for a Treaty of Boundary. Your Lordships are aware that the New Treaty could not be entered into without the previous consent of the States of Maine and Massachusetts, the Deputies from which particular States I had absolutely to wait for. Your Lordships will therefore see from that fact that there could have been no negotiations for a treaty going on between Mr. Fox and Mr. Webster, and still less between Mr. Webster and Lord Sydenham. There had been other statements with respect to his proceedings on the occasion to which he had referred, relative to a subject which now occupied the attention of the country and the Government—he meant the question of the reciprocal Right of Search upon the seas between Africa and America. It has been stated by the noble Lord (Lord Palmerston), speaking of the present Government, that "The very first thing that they did after they came into power was to acquiesce in the refusal of the French Government to ratify a Treaty for the suppression of the Slave Trade; the next thing they did was to let the United States out of a Treaty to co-operate with them for this object." And then there is a further charge made, that I had done something to let the United States out of their existing Treaty for the suppression of the Slave Trade by Right of Search. Any one who knows anything of the history of these transactions must at once see that that is wholly untrue; and I only throw it out as another instance of the loose and light nature of the charges that have been made against me in a place where there is no possibility of my answering them. With regard to this imputation of my having, as the phrase is, "let America out" of the Treaty for the suppression of the Slave Trade by the mutual Right of Search, it is rather a singular fact that not only was there no such Treaty entered into with America from which I could have "let her out;" but that in 1824, the Government of which Lord Palmerston was a Member did let America out of a most effectual stipulation for the mutual Right of Search. During the Government of Mr. Canning a Treaty was about to be entered into which would have been perfectly effective, had it been put in force, much more so in fact than existing Treaties upon the subject about which so much noise has been made. When sent to America for ratification, however,

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the Senate of the United States wished to strike out the words "on the coast of America," which were contained in the definition of the latitude and longitude within which the Right of Search was to be exercised. The Senate said, "You might as well extend the limits into the British Channel; omit these words, and we will ratify the Treaty." Mr. Canning refused to adopt the Amendment of the Senate—an extremely reasonable Amendment in my opinion — and the Treaty was accordingly rejected, and America "let out of it" by the act of a Government of which Lord Palmerston was a Member. These, my Lords, are the only observations with which I shall trouble you. I trust you will be of opinion that I was sufficiently justified in making them. For myself, I can only say that if I had suffered the imputations of which I complain to pass unnoticed, I do not think I should have been worthy of the approbation which your Lordships have bestowed upon my conduct.

BASTARDY BILL.
Lord Stanleywished that the Second Reading of the Bastardy Bill should not be postponed; it stood for to-night, and it was material, on account of its provisions, that it should receive the Royal Assent on Saturday, in order that it might be acted upon at the approaching Quarter Sessions. Their Lordships were, perhaps, aware that it did not interfere at all with the general question of which notice had been given by a noble Lord opposite, but that it had been introduced merely for the purpose of removing some technical difficulties in the practical working of the Act of last Session.
Lord Campbellnot only saw no objection to the Bill, but thought it would be salutary in its operation; he thought, however, that the noble Lord ought to wait until the Earl of Radnor was present, who had a measure pending upon the same subject.
The Duke of Richmondremarked, that if the Bill did not receive the Royal Assent on Saturday, it would be of no use.
Lord Stanleyobserved, that it did not in any respect interfere with Lord Radnor's Bill.
Bill read 2a, and the Committee fixed for to-morrow.
House adjourned.