It is assigned by him as a reason why the Province of Massachusetts should assent to the boundary assigned to the Province of Quebec by the proclamation that "it would not be of any great consequence to you" (Massachusetts), "but is absolutely necessary to the Crown to preserve the continuity of the Province of Quebec." The part of the Province of Quebec whose continuity with the rest of that colony was to be preserved is evidently the district of Gaspe, of which Nova Scotia, a royal colony, was divested by the same proclamation. For this continuity no more was necessary than a road along the St. Lawrence itself, and the reason would have been absurd if applied to any country lying beyond the streams which fall into that river, for up to the present day no communication between parts of Canada exists through any part of the disputed territory. The narrow territory thus advised to be relinquished extends, according to the views of Messrs. Mudge and Featherstonhaugh, from the Great Falls of the St. John to Quebec, a distance in a straight line of 160 miles. It has a figure not far from triangular, of which this line is the perpendicular and the shore of the St. Lawrence from the Chaudiere to the Metis the base. It contains about 16,000 square miles. It would have been a perversion of language in Mr. Mauduit to describe this to his employers as a narrow tract. But the space whose cession he really intended to advise is in every sense a narrow tract, for its length along the St. Lawrence is about 200 miles, and its average breadth to the sources of the streams 30. It contains 6,000 square miles, and is described by him in a manner that leaves no question as to its extent being "watered by streams" which "run into the St. Lawrence." It therefore did not include any country watered by streams which run into the St. John. It is believed that this is the first instance in which the term _narrow_ has ever been applied to a triangle almost right angled and nearly isosceles, and it is not a little remarkable that this very expression was relied upon in the statement to the King of the Netherlands as one of the strongest proofs of the justice of the American claim. Admitting, however, for the sake of argument, that the Crown did demand this territory, and that the mere advice of an agent without powers was binding on Massachusetts, the fact would have no direct bearing upon the point under consideration. The relinquishment by Massachusetts of the whole of the territory west of the meridian of the St. Croix would not have changed the position of the northwest angle of Nova Scotia, nor the title of the United States collectively under the treaty of 1783 to a boundary to be drawn from that angle, however it might have affected the right of property of that State to the lands within it.