If our construction of the Treaty be right, the island of San Juan, with other small islands, will fall to the United States, while, if the British interpretation be adopted, these islands will be on their side of the line. President Buchanan, in his Message to the Senate of February 21, 1861, declared his conviction that the territory thus in dispute “is ours by the Treaty fairly and impartially construed.” But the British Government, on their side, insist that it is theirs. The argument on both sides seems to have been exhausted. Under these circumstances, it appears from the correspondence submitted to the Senate, that General Cass, Secretary of State, by letter of June 25, 1860, to Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Washington, invited the British Government to make a proposition of adjustment. Here are his words:-- “And I have it further in charge to inform your Lordship, that this Government is ready to receive and fairly to consider any proposition which the British Government may be disposed to make for a mutually acceptable adjustment, with an earnest hope that a satisfactory arrangement will speedily put an end to all danger of the recurrence of those grave questions which have more than once threatened to interrupt that good understanding which both countries have so many powerful motives to maintain.” The reply of the British Government to this invitation was communicated by Lord Lyons, in a letter to General Cass, dated December 10, 1860, in the course of which he uses the following language. “In reference to the line of the water boundary intended by the Treaty, with respect to which also her Majesty’s Government have been invited by the United States Government to make a proposition for its adjustment, I am instructed to inform you that her Majesty’s Government are glad to reciprocate the friendly sentiments expressed in your note of the 25th of June, and will not hesitate to respond to the invitation which has been made to them. “It appears to her Majesty’s Government that the argument on both sides being nearly exhausted, and neither party having succeeded in producing conviction on the other, the question can only be settled by arbitration.” Lord Lyons then proceeds to details connected with the offered arbitration, and, in behalf of his Government, proposes that the King of the Netherlands, or the King of Sweden and Norway, or the President of the Federal Council of Switzerland should be invited to be arbiter. Upon these facts the President submits to the consideration of the Senate the following interrogatories. “Will the Senate approve a Treaty referring to either of the sovereign powers above named the dispute now existing between the Governments of the United States and Great Britain concerning the boundary line between Vancouver’s Island and the American continent?