Again, in his opposition to the extradition clause of the treaty, Benton was certainly wrong. Nothing is clearer than that nations ought to combine to prevent criminals from escaping punishment merely by fleeing over an imaginary line; the crime is against all society, and society should unite to punish it. Especially is there need of the most stringent extradition laws between countries whose people have the same speech and legal system, as with the United States and Great Britain. Indeed, it is a pity that our extradition laws are not more stringent. But Benton saw, or affected to see, in the extradition clause, a menace to political refugees, and based his opposition to it mainly on this ground. He also quoted on his side the inevitable Jefferson; for Jefferson, or rather the highly idealized conception of what Jefferson had been, shared with the "demos krateo principle" the honor of being one of the twin fetiches to which Benton, in common with most of his fellow-Democrats, especially delighted to bow down. But when he came to the parts of the treaty that defined our northeastern boundary and so much of our northwestern boundary as lay near the Great Lakes, Benton occupied far more defensible ground; and the parts of his speech referring to these questions were very strong indeed. He attempted to show that in the matter of the Maine frontier we had surrendered very much more than there was any need of our doing, and that the British claim was unfounded; and there seems now to be good reason for thinking him right, although it must be admitted that in agreeing to the original line in earlier treaties the British had acted entirely under a misapprehension as to where it would go. Benton was also able to make a good point against Webster for finally agreeing to surrender so much of Maine's claim by showing the opposition the latter had made, while in the Senate, to a similar but less objectionable clause in a treaty which Jackson's administration had then been trying to get through. Again Webster had, in defending the surrender of certain of our claims along the boundary west of Lake Superior, stated that the country was not very valuable, as it was useless for agricultural purposes; and Benton had taken him up sharply on this point, saying that we wanted the land anyhow, whether it produced corn and potatoes or only furs and lumber. The amounts of territory as to which our claims were compromised were not very large compared to the extent of the Pacific coast lands which were still left in dispute; and it was perhaps well that the treaty was ratified; but certainly there is much to be said on Benton's side so far as his opposition to the proposed frontier was concerned.