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“If arbitration be unobtainable, the only mode of accommodation is mutual concession; and the terms which we suggest for that mutual concession are those which, if we were arbitrators, we should award, namely, that the boundary should be the forty-ninth parallel until it meets the Pacific, and then the sea. Our only real claim rests on contiguity, and this would give us more than mere contiguity entitles us to. This would give us the whole of Vancouver’s Island, and it would give us an abundance of good harbors. It would also give us the country which is best for the purposes for which we use it, the fur trade. * * Whatever be Lord Aberdeen’s policy, the Opposition will, we trust, not add to its difficulties. * * * We trust that the English negotiators will not deny every principle of law, however sacred, which they find opposed to them, and every fact, however notorious, that makes against them.”The only real claim of the British rests on contiguity.