As to jurisdiction over Pope’s Folly Island, the claim of the British Commissioner is, at first blush, the strongest. It rests upon the report of the commissioners appointed under the treaty of Ghent for the partition of the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay. It will be remembered that in this report three, only, of these islands were declared to belong to the United States, and Pope’s Folly was not one of them. As all others were to be the property of Great Britain it would seem that the sovereignty of this small island was hers beyond doubt. There is, however, very distinctly, another aspect of the question. In the first place, it is highly probable the Commissioners under the treaty of Ghent restricted their consideration and action to those islands the domain of which was and had been actually in dispute. The language of the treaty distinctly implies this and the language of the report closely follows that of the treaty. It is true that reference is had to “the several islands in the Bay of Passamaquoddy, which is part of the Bay of Fundy,” _etc._, but it is further said that “said islands are claimed as belonging to His Britannic Majesty, as having been at the time of and previous to the aforesaid treaty of one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three, within the limits of the Province of Nova Scotia”; for by that treaty all of the important islands of the group would have come to the United States, had not exception been made of all then or previously belonging to this province. Obviously, then, the partition commissioners would consider only those for which such a claim could be set up. There is also good reason to believe that the island called Pope’s Folly may not have been considered by the commission, on account of its trifling importance. It is a significant fact that there are many other small islands in the bay, some of them much larger and more important than this, of which no mention was made by the commission, yet Great Britain has never claimed or even suggested that they were rightfully British territory. Their sovereignty was probably not even thought of by the commission. In short, a literal interpretation of their report is not admissible and it has never been so claimed. Its phraseology is another example of hasty diplomatic composition, into the acceptance of which the Americans may have been led by their more skilful opponents.