CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES. 61

Imperial policy had lost us thirteen colonies, Great
Britain cheerfully surrendered much fertile land,
about 270,000 square miles on the Ohio and Mississippi,
 which were formerly part of Canada. Maine
was lost through what must be regarded as something
 more than mere astuteness on the part of the
United States Government.! Now thata port on
the Atlantic seaboard would be of such value to
Canada, Canada feels herself badly crippled. The
mouth of the Columbia river lost, according to the
story current in Canada, because the emissary of the
British Foreign Office sent out to investigate the

! Daniel Webster had in his possession a facsimile of a
map showing the true boundary as settled in 1783, marked
in red ink by Benjamin Franklin, the United States Commissioner.
 He suppressed this map and produced another
map which gave to the United States a large portion of
British territory. When the Senate afterwards in secret
session demurred to ratifying it, Webster authorised Mr.
Rives, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations,
to produce the map which proved that he had secured a
large area which did not belong to the United States, and
then the Senate ratified it. This was on the August 17,
1842, only eight days after the signing of the Ashburton
Treaty. The Senate subsequently dissolved the injunction
of secrecy and authorised the publication of Mr, Rives’
speech.
Dr. Kingsford, in his * History of Canada,” vol. ii., p. 159,
speaking of this, says: * We came out of the negotiations
serious losers; but no national reproach of meanness and
wrong rises unbidden to wring our consciences. It is a
question if a high-minded citizen of the United States can,
with complacency, contemplate the proceedings of his
Government on this occasion.” — Footnote to Denison’s
6 Canada and Her Relations to the Empire.”