In fulfilling these instructions of his Government it is not the purpose of the undersigned to open the general discussion of the respective claims of Great Britain and the United States to the disputed territory (within which Mr. Greely was arrested), or the right of either Government to exercise jurisdiction within its limits. Whatever opinion the undersigned may entertain as to the rightful claim of the State of Maine to the territory in dispute, and however unanswerable he may regard the arguments by which the claim may be sustained, he deems it neither proper nor needful to urge them upon the consideration of Her Majesty's Government in the decision of the present case; more especially as the whole subject is elsewhere, and in another form, matter of negotiation between the two Governments, where the discussion of the question of right more appropriately belongs. The undersigned, moreover, does not presume that pending the negotiation, and whilst efforts are making for the peaceable and final adjustment of these delicate and exciting questions, Her Majesty's Government can claim the right of exclusive jurisdiction and sovereignty over the disputed territory or the persons residing within its limits. In such a claim of power on the part of Great Britain or its provincial authorities, the undersigned need not repeat to Lord Palmerston (what he is already fully apprised of) the Government of the United States can never consent to acquiesce in the existing state of the controversy. On the contrary, the mutual understanding which exists between the two Governments on the subject and the moderation which both Governments have heretofore manifested forbid the exercise by either of such high acts of sovereign power as that which has been exerted in the present case by the authorities of Her Majesty's provincial government. The undersigned must therefore suppose that this arrest and imprisonment of an American citizen under such circumstances and in the existing state of the controversy could only have been justified by some supposed infringement of the understanding existing between the parties in relation to the question of jurisdiction within the disputed territory. Such, however, was not the case. The correspondence between the governor of Maine and the lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick shows that the only act done by Mr. Greely was the simple enumeration of the inhabitants, and it is not perceived how such an act could be construed into a breach of the understanding between the two Governments. It is proper also to remark that this was not the first time that the inhabitants within this particular settlement had been enumerated under the authority of the United States. It was done in the census of 1820 (as a portion of the State of Maine), and was at the time neither objected to nor remonstrated against by the British Government or that of New Brunswick.