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necessarily have been made, for defraying the great expenditures of embodying and sustaining the militia requisite for effecting the intended object. In the month of October last, information was received that a number of the inhabitants of Madawaska had organized themselves into a corporation, chosen municipal officers, and subsequently a representative and that in consequence of these acts, the Lieutenant Governour and other authorities of New Brunswick, accompanied with a military force, had proceed to Madawaska, arrested a number of American citizens, who were carried to Fredericton and there imprisoned. Though the measures adopted by the inhabitants. Voluntarily organizing themselves into a corporation at that place, then claimed to be under the actual jurisdiction of the Province of New Brunswick, were unexpected by me, and under taken without my knowledge, yet as they acted in territory known to be within the limits of Maine, and in obedience to the law and Constitution. I considered that they were entitled to the aid and protection of their government. Immediately therefore, on receiving evidence of these transactions, they were communicated, together with all the circumstances in relation to them within my knowledge, to the department of State of the United States, with a request that the proper measures might be adopted by the General Government to procure the release of our citizens, and to protect the territory of the State from invasion. Upon the receipt of this communication, though the proceedings of the inhabitants of Madawaska were considered by the General Government to be a breach of the arrangement made with the British Minister for preserving the state of things as