When the public stocks depreciate four-fifths, without exciting the least sensation, it is idle to attach importance to the matter of this or that individual being placed over the finances. The king promised us also to give us a constitution, when tranquillity should be established, and more auspicious circumstances permitted: his majesty told us that he would adapt his system to the progress of knowledge, and the actual state of civilization!-All the circulars of M. de Cevallos respecting the construction of canals and great roads are in full force, since they have not been repealed by other circulars. There are no enemies without who threaten the peninsula. England is interested in watching over our repose: it is her work; Portugal will be restrained by England, and France by all Europe.

Cease then to look upon us with an eye of curiosity. There is nothing new here; there will be nothing new.—

Your's

T. P. S.

The following Obituary notice of a man who had approached as near to evangelical perfection as it is given to our feeble nature to do, is copied from a Boston Gazette. It is entitled, on account both of the extraordinary merit of its subject, and the particular elegance of the composition, to a place in columns somewhat less perishable than those of a daily paper.

Died, on Saturday last, the 19th inst. the Rev. FRANCIS ANTHONY MATIGNON, D. D. He was born in Paris, Nov. 10, 1753. Devoted to letters and religion from his earliest youth, his progress was rapid and his piety conspicuous. He attracted the notice of the learned faculty as he passed through the several grades of classical and theological studies; and having taken the degree of bachelor of divinity, he was ordained a priest, on Saturday, the 19th of September, 1778, the very day of the month and week, which, forty years after, was to be his last. In the year 1782, he was admitted a licentiate, and received the degree of doctor of divinity from the college of the Sorbonne in 1785. At this time he was appointed regius professor of divinity in the college of Navarre, in which seminary he

performed his duties for several years, although his state of health was not good.

His talents and piety had recommended him to the notice of a prelate in great credit, (the cardinal de Brienne,) who obtained for him the grant of an annuity from the king, Louis XVI. which was sufficient for all his wants, established him in independence, and took away all anxiety for the future. But the ways of Providence are inscrutable to the wisest and best of the children of men. The revolution, which dethroned his beloved monarch, and stained the altar of his God with the blood of holy men, drove Dr. Matignon an exile from his native shores. He fled to England, where he remained several months, and then returned to France to prepare for a voyage to the United States. He landed in Baltimore, and was appointed by bishop Carroll, pastor of the Catholic church in Boston, at which place he arrived, August 20, 1792.

The talents of doctor Matignon were of the highest order. In him were united a sound understanding, a rich and vigorous imagination, and a logical precision of thought. His learning was extensive, critical and profound, and all his productions were deeply cast, symmetrically formed, and beautifully coloured. The fathers of the church and the great divines of every age were his familiar friends.-His divinity was not merely speculative, nor merely practical; it was the blended influence of thought, feeling, and action. He had learned divinity as a scholar, taught it as a professor, felt it as a worshipper, and diffused it as a faithful pastor. His genius and his virtues were understood; for the wise bowed to his superior knowledge, and the humble caught the spirit of his devotions. With the unbelieving and doubtful he reasoned with the mental strength of the apostle Paul; and he charmed back the penitential wanderer with the kindness and affection of John the evangelist. His love for mankind flowed in the purest current, and his piety caught a glow from the intensity of his feeling. Rigid and scrupulous to himself, he was charitable and indulgent to others. To youth, in a particular manner, he was forgiving and fatherly. With him the tear of

his course, that even the censorious forgot to watch him, and the malicious were too cunning to attack one armed so strong in honesty. For four years he sustained the weight of this charge alone, until Providence sent him a coadjutor in the person of the present excellent bishop Cheverus, who seemed made by nature and fitted by education and grace to sooth his griefs by sympathy, (for he too had suffered,) to cheer him by the biandishments of taste and letters and all congenial pursuits and habits; and in fact, they were as far identified as two embodied minds could be. These holy seers pursued their religious pilgrimage together, blessing and being blessed, for more than twenty years; and the young Elisha had received a double portion of the spirit and worn the mantle of his friend and guide, long before the sons of the prophets heard the cry of my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof. May the survivor find consolation in the religion he teaches, and long be kept on his journey to bless the cruise of oil in the dwellings of poverty and widowhood, and to cleanse by the power of God, the leprosy of the sinful soul.

Far from the sepulchre of his fathers, repose the ashes of the good and great doctor Matignon; but his grave is not as among strangers, for it was watered by the tears of an affectionate lock, and his memory is cherished by all who value learning, honour, genius, or love devotion.

The writer of this brief notice offers it as a faint and rude memorial only of the virtues of the man, whose character he venerated. Time must assuage the wounds of grief before he, who loved him most, and knew him best, can attempt his epitaph.

duty of ascertaining to whom the several islands in the bay of Passamaquoddy, and Grand Menan in the bay of Fundy, belonged by virtue of the treaty of 1783. This board consisted of two commissioners, one appointed by each of the contracting parties. No umpire, as in the former case, was to be called to their assistance. If the commissioners so appointed agreed in opinion, their decision was to be binding and conclusive on both nations. If they disagreed in part or in whole, separate reports were to be made to the two governments, and some friendly sovereign or state to be then named for that purpose,' was to determine the controversy.

In pursuance of the provisions of the treaty in this respect, his Britannic majesty appointed his former commissioner, the honourable Thomas Barclay, to be a commissioner under this article, and the president of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the senate, appointed the honourable John Holmes, of Alfred, in the district of Maine, and then a member of the senate of Massachusetts.

The claims of the British government were confided to the management of the honourable Ward Chipman, judge of the supreme court of New Brunswick, and those of the United States to James Trecotheck Austin, esquire, a counsellor at the bar of Massachusetts.

The commission was opened at St. Andrew's, on the 24th of September, 1816, immediately after colonel Barclay's appointment was communicated to the American government. Each of the agents claimed, for their respective governments, all the islands in dispute.

The claim of the British nation was founded on the assertion, that at the peace of 1783 these islands were an in

tegrant part of the province of Nova Scotia, and, as such, specially excepted from the limits assigned to the United States.

The Nova Scotia intended in the treaty of 1783 was said to be that province erected and described in certain letters patent, granted by king James I., in 1621, to sir William Alexander, master of requests for the crown of Scotland; which charter, it was contended, actually included all the islands in question.

The American agent denied that

any title could be deduced from the letters patent above mentioned, which, he contended, were void ab origine, and had been obsolete, derelict, and neglected by all nations, but especially by the predecessors of his present Britannic majesty-that, in point of fact, the letters patent did not include any of the islands-that a remarkable exception was to be found in the description of territory therein set forth, plainly proving an intention not to assign them to Alexander, and that, in fact, from the date of the grand charter of Plymouth, they were a constituent part of the territories now forming the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and had been acknowledged as such by Great Britain on numerous occasions, in grants, charters, cessions, public letters and treaties.

The extensive field thus opened for examination was diligently explored by both the agents, in a very copious analysis and discussion of every public act, and most of the charter transactions, which had the eastern territory for their object; and occupied the attention of the commissioners until the 24th day of November, 1817, on which day the board agreed in a decision on all the questions before them. This decision has terminated all the disputes heretofore existing on the subject. The opinion and judgment of the commissioners has been communicated to the respective governments of Great Britain and the United States, and has ascertained and determined that Moose, Dudley and Frederick islands do belong to the United States, and that all the other islands in the bay of Passamaquoddy, and Grand Menan in the bay of Fundy, do belong to Great Britain, by virtue of the treaty of peace of 1783.

By those negotiations a permanent right of navigation was secured to the citizens of the United States through the eastern or ship channel, between Deer island and Campo Bello. To do the same in this case was beyond the authority of the present commissioners, whose duty was limited to ascertaining the right to the islands, and did not extend to the decision of any question of water privilege; which must be governed by principles of national law applicable to the case. The eastern

passage is at times the only one, and always is the best passage-way for ships through the bay of Passamaquoddy and into the river St. Croix. Its free navigation, essential to the enjoyment of the use of the river, has always been claimed by the United States. Their ministers have been instructed to provide for their interests in this passage way; and it has been of as much or more importance than the possession of Grand Menan. Since the

capture and occupation of Moose island, an English sloop of war has occasionally been stationed there, and American vessels prohibited from passing.

The reason why an exclusive right was assumed by the British government was assigned to be, that this was a passage between two islands, both of which belonged to Great Britain, and therefore was exclusively hers. That it was not the only, although it was the best, passage, and there being another, which was practicable, no inconvenience attending it could give the Americans a right of using this. If the water between Deer island and Campo Bello had been in fact a river, the opposite shores of which belonged to Great Britain, there could be no doubt that her principle was correct, it being an undoubted doctrine of national law, that a river in the territories of a nation, is as much its exclusive property as the land, and it is only a river of boundary, where two nations possess respectively one of the banks, that gives to both a common right of navigation.

But the passage way between Campo Bello and Deer island is not in a river, but in a bay; and it may well be doubted whether the law applicable to the former, can with any propriety be applied to the latter. Not only is this passage-way in a bay, but it is in the grand bay of Fundy, described by the early navigators, and now very commonly known to be more properly a part of the sea or ocean.'

It had, indeed, heretofore been considered, that these islands and the passage-way between them were in the bay of Passamaquoddy, which being an interior and smaller bay, distant from the ocean, and connected with the coasts of the continent, had all the

jurisdictional properties of a river; and that a free navigation of it might be attended with evils similar to those which would follow from an admission of foreign vessels as a matter of right, into the rivers of a country.

But the treaty of Ghent has contradicted this supposed geographical fact. It has in express words declared, that the bay of Passamaquoddy is part of the bay of Fundy; and no reason can be assigned for this assumption and declaration, but that it was intended to make the waters, formerly called Passamaquoddy, as free and common, as those of any other part of the bay of Fundy.

Now the passage-way between New Brunswick and Grand Menan in the bay of Fundy, has never been claimed by Great Britain as exclusively hers, because she possessed in full sovereignty the opposite coasts; neither can she claim the passage-way between Deer island and Campo Bello, lying in the same bay. So long as the treaty of Ghent is in force, all the islands and the passage-ways between them heretofore in dispute are in the grand bay of Fundy, or more properly a part of the sea or ocean,' and no exclusive right of navigating those waters can be claimed by any particular nation.

On this ground we presume, not withstanding the decision of the commissioners, assigning Campo Bello and Deer Island to Great Britain,-the vessels of the United States will have a perfect right to navigate by the eastern or ship channel as freely as on any other part of the ocean.

To put the question however beyond dispute, as far as was practicable, the commissioners addressed a joint letter to the two governments of Great Britain and the United States, in which they declared that their decision was founded on the presumption of an existing right in each of the two nations freely to navigate by this channel, notwithstanding the sovereignty of Great Britain over the islands lying contiguous and on each side had been expressly allowed.

The English forces still hold a military possession of Moose Island and its dependencies; but it is understood that arrangements are in train for their removal, and that early in the ensuing spring, the place will be restored to the

VOL. XII.

jurisdiction of the United States, and be once again under the local authorities of Massachusetts.

Thus has happily terminated a second tribunal, instituted by two great and independent nations, for the settlement of important interests in dispute between them, interests far greater than many which history has recorded as the foundation of long protracted and destructive wars. An example is thus given to the world, which it is hoped may be powerful enough to supersede that rash resort to arms, which has too often wasted, in the progress of desolation, more than all the objects of the contest were worth.

The other commissioners, provided in the treaty of Ghent, are not so much to settle disputes as to prevent them.

The lines of territory recited in the treaty of peace of 1783, were never actually drawn upon the land, but were described from the best maps then existing, but now known to be very inaccurate. To explore the frontiers together, and to fix muniments of boundary by common consent, had become a very necessary duty, in order to prevent conflicting grants and unintentional trespasses. Accordingly, this duty was divided into two parts. The commission established by the fifth article of the treaty of Ghent was to run the boundary line due north from the source of the river St. Croix to the north-west angle of Nova Scotia, thence along the highlands which divide those rivers, that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence, from those which fall into the Atlantic ocean, to the north-westernmost head of Connecticut river, thence down along the middle of tha river to the 45° of north latitude, thence by a line due west on said latitude until it strikes the river Iroquois or Cataraqua-to make a map of said boundary -declare it under their seals to be a true map, and to particularize the latitude and longitude of the northwest angle of Nova Scotia, of the north-westernmost head of Connecticut river, and of such other points of the said boundary as they may deem proper.

Under this article the British government appointed the same commissioner as in the former; and appointed the same agent jointly with his son, Ward Chipman, jun. esq. a counsellor at law in New Brunswick. The American government

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