CHAPTER III. AMERICA AND GREAT BRITAIN. 1782-1783. THE king of France heard from Vergennes, with surprise and resentment, that the American deputies had signed their treaty of peace; * Marie Antoinette was conciliated by the assurance that "they had obtained for their constituents the most advantageous conditions." "The English buy the peace rather than make it," wrote Vergennes to his subaltern in London; their "concessions as to boundaries, the fisheries, and the loyalists, exceed everything that I had thought possible.” † "The treaty with America," answered Rayneval, "appears to me like a dream."‡ Kaunitz # and his emperor | mocked at its articles. King George of England was mastered by a consuming grief for the loss of America, and knew no ease of mind by day or by night. When, on the fifth of December, in his speech at the opening of parliament, he came to read that he had offered to declare the colonies of America free and independent states, his manner was constrained and his voice fell. To wound him least, Shelburne in the house of lords, confining himself to the language of the speech from the throne, *Count Mercy's report from Paris, 6 December 1782. MS. from Vienna Vergennes to Rayneval, 4 December 1782. MS. Rayneval to Vergennes, 12 December 1782. MS. archives. # Kaunitz's note of 22 December 1782, written on the emperor's copy of the speech of the king of England at the opening of parliament. MS. | Autograph memorandum of Joseph. MS. Joseph II. und Leopold von Toscana. Ihr Briefwechsel von 1781 bis 1790, i., 146. A Rayneval to Vergennes, 12 December 1782. MS. represented the offer of independence to America as contingent on peace with France. To a question from Fox on the following night in the other house, Pitt, with unfaltering courage, answered that the recognition was unqualified and irrevocable. During the Christmas holidays the negotiations for a general peace were pursued with equal diligence and moderation by Vergennes and Shelburne; and France made sacrifices of its own to induce Spain to forego the recovery of Gibraltar and assent to terms which in all other respects were most generous. The Netherlands, though their definitive peace was delayed, agreed in the suspension of arms. Franklin shrewdly and truly observed that it would be better for the nations then possessing the West India islands to let them govern themselves as neutral powers, open to the commerce of all, the profits of the present monopolies being by no means equivalent to the expense of maintaining them; * but the old system was preserved. Conquests were restored, and England felt it to be no wound to her dignity to give back an unimportant island which she had wrested from the house of Bourbon in a former war. The East Indian allies of France, of whom the foremost was Tippoo Saib, the son and successor of Hyder Ali, were invited to join in the peace. France recovered St. Pierre and Miquelon and her old share in the fisheries of Newfoundland; Spain retained Minorca, and, what was of the greatest moment for the United States, both the Floridas, which she certainly would find a burden. Treaties of commerce between Great Britain and each of the two Bourbon kingdoms were to be made within two years. When, on the twentieth of January, these preliminaries were signed by the respective plenipotentiaries, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, on the summons of Vergennes, were present, and in the name of the United States acceded to the declaration of the cessation of hostilities. The provisional treaty between Great Britain and the United States was held to take effect from that day. "At last," wrote Vergennes to Rayneval, as soon as the meeting was over, "we are about to breathe under the shadow of peace. Let us take care to make it a solid one; may the * Diplomatic Correspondence, iv., 69. name of war be forgotten forever." In a letter to Shelburne on that same day he expressed the confident hope that all ancient distrust would be removed; and Shelburne replied: "The liberal spirit and good faith which have governed our negotiations leave no room to fear for the future either distrust or jealousy."+ King George dwelt with Rayneval on the cordial understanding which he desired to establish with Louis XVI. "I wish," said he, "never again to have a war with France; we have had a first division of Poland; there must not be a second." + So came the peace which recognised the right of a commonwealth of Europeans outside of Europe, occupying a continental territory within the temperate zone; remote from foreign interference; needing no standing armies; with every augury of a rapid growth; and sure of exercising the most quickening and widest influence on political ideas," to assume an equal station among the powers of the earth." The restoration of intercourse with America pressed for instant consideration. Burke was of opinion that the navigation act should be completely revised; Shelburne and his colleagues, aware that no paltry regulation would now succeed, were indefatigable in digesting a great and extensive system of trade, and sought, by the emancipation of commerce, to bring about with the Americans a family friendship more beneficial to England than their former dependence.# To promote this end, on the evening of the eleventh of February, William Pitt, with the permission of the king, repaired to Charles James Fox and invited him to join the ministry of Shelburne. The only good course for Fox was to take the hand which the young statesman offered; but he put aside the overture with coldness, if not with disdain, choosing a desperate alliance with those whose conduct he had pretended to detest, and whose principles it was in later years his redeeming glory to have opposed. * Vergennes to Rayneval, 20 January 1783. MS. Vergennes to Shelburne, 20 January 1783; Shelburne to Vergennes, 24 January 1783. Lansdowne House MSS. Rayneval to Vergennes, 24 and 28 January 1783. MS. # Price in Lee's Life of Arthur Lee, ii., 349. Pending the negotiations with France and Spain, Fox and Lord North remained quiet, from the desire to throw the undivided responsibility for the peace on Lord Shelburne; but when on the seventeenth of February, in a house of four hundred and fifty members, the treaties with the United States and with both branches of the Bourbons were laid before parliament, and an address of approval, promising a liberal revision of commercial law, was moved, the long-pent-up passions raged without restraint. No sooner had William Wilberforce, with grace and good feeling, seconded the motion and in the warmest language assured to the loyal refugees compensation for their losses, than Lord John Cavendish, the nearest friend of Fox, condemned the peace, though supporting its conditions. Lord North then pronounced against it a most elaborate, uncandid, and factious invective. He would have deprived the United States of access to the upper lakes; he would have retained for Canada the country north and northwest of the Ohio; and, bad as is a possession which gives no advantage but powers of annoyance, he would have kept east Florida as well as the Bahamas, so as to compel the ships of America, in passing through the Florida channel, to run the gauntlet between British posts. He would have had no peace without the reinstatement of the loyalists, nor without securing independence to the savage allies of Great Britain. He enumerated one by one the posts in the West which by the treaty fell to America, dwelt on the cost of their construction and on their importance to the fur-trade, and foreshadowed the policy of delaying their surrender. He not only censured the grant to the Americans of a right to fish on the coast of Nova Scotia, but spoke as if they derived from Great Britain the right to fish on the banks in the sea which are the exclusive property of no one. At the side of Lord North stood Edmund Burke, with hotter zeal as a partisan, though with better intentions toward America. Pitt answered every objection to the treaty; but, after a debate of twelve hours, the ministry on the division found themselves in a minority of sixteen. On the same evening, to a larger number of peers than had met in their house since the accession of George III., Carlisle, the unsuccessful commissioner of 1778, Keppel, the inglorious admiral, and Stormont, the late headstrong ambassador at Paris, eager to become once more a secretary of state, Lord George Germain, now known as Lord Sackville, Wedderburn, now Lord Loughborough and coveting the office of lord chancellor, poured forth criminations of a treaty for which the necessity was due to their own incapacity. In perfect understanding with Fox and Lord North, they complained that the ministers had given up the banks of the Ohio, "the paradise of America,” had surrendered the fur-trade, had broken faith with the Indians, had been false to the loyalists. Thurlow ably defended every article of the treaty that had been impeached, and then asked: "Is there any individual in this house who dares to avow that his wish is for war?" The interest of the debate centred in Shelburne, and the house gave him the closest attention as he spoke: "Noble lords who made a lavish use of these Indians have taken great pains to show their immense value, but those who abhorred their violence. will think the ministry have done wisely." Naming a British agent who had been detested for wanton cruelty, he continned: "The descendants of William Penn will manage them better than all the Stuarts, with all the trumpery and jobs that we could contrive. "With regard to the loyalists, I have but one answer to give the house. It is the answer I gave my own bleeding heart. A part must be wounded that the whole empire may not perish. If better terms could have been had, think you, my lords, that I would not have embraced them? If it had been possible to put aside the bitter cup which the adversities of this country presented to me, you know I would have done it. "The fur-trade is not given, up; it is only divided, and divided for our benefit. Its best resources lie to the northward. Monopolies, some way or other, are ever justly punished. They forbid rivalry, and rivalry is the very essence of the well-being of trade. This seems to be the era of protestantism in trade. All Europe appears enlightened and eager to throw off the vile shackles of oppressive, ignorant, unmanly monopoly. It is always unwise; but, if there is any nation under heaven who ought to be the first to reject monopoly, it |