of war-time property taxes in Britain. With Britain committed to peace, the two sides signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, which, tellingly, restored the status quo ante bellum.98 Writing to George Canning on December 28, Liverpool framed Britain’s continued presence in North America with a combination of realism and fatalism. The “weakness of Canada,” Liverpool observed, derived from the vast advantage in population possessed by the United States—Canada had a population of approximately 300,000, whereas the U.S. population numbered 7,500,000. Liverpool believed that Britain could continue to hold and defend British Canada, “but the frontier must in any case be of such prodigious extent, that it never could be made, as a frontier, defensible against the means which the Americans might bring against it.”99 Bathurst underlined what this understanding meant for Native Americans in two letters to Pakenham written on November 27. The British government urged native leaders to reach independent agreements with the United States based on the Treaty of Ghent, but cautioned that the British state “could not be justified in affording them further Assistance if they should persist in Hostilities.” As a means of strengthening 98 Liverpool to Castlereagh, November 11, 1814, in The Life and Administration of Robert Banks, Second Earl of Liverpool, K. G., Late First Lord of the Treasury, comp. by Charles Duke Yonge (London, MacMillan and Co., 1868), 2: 72-74. Islands in the Bay of Passamaquoddy represented the only exception to the restoration of status quo ante bellum. The bay had represented disputed territory prior to the War of 1812, and the two countries agreed to abide by a principle of uti possidetis concerning the islands in the first article of the treaty. Treaty of Ghent, http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/ diplomatic/c_ghent.html (accessed January 30, 2016). 99 Liverpool to Canning, December 28, 1814, Liverpool, 2: 74-77. 288 .