The Secretary of
State at the same time expressed the desire of the President to enter
into further negotiation in pursuance of the resolution of the Senate,
and proposed that the discussion should be carried on at Washington. He
also said that if the plenipotentiaries of the two parties should fail
in this new attempt to agree upon the line intended by the treaty of
1783 there would probably be less difficulty than before in fixing a
convenient boundary, as measures were in progress to obtain from the
State of Maine more extensive powers than were before possessed, with
a view of overcoming the constitutional obstacles which had opposed
themselves to such an arrangement; and he further intimated that the
new negotiation would naturally embrace the important question of the
navigation of the river St. John.
In April, 1833, Sir Charles R. Vaughan, the British minister,
addressed a note to the Department of State, in which, hopeless of
finding out by a new negotiation an assumed line of boundary which
so many attempts had been fruitlessly made to discover, he wished to
ascertain, first, the principle of the plan of boundary which the
American Government appeared to contemplate as likely to be more
convenient to both parties than those hitherto discussed, and, secondly,
whether any, and what, arrangement for avoiding the constitutional
difficulty alluded to had yet been concluded with the State of Maine.
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