458 PRELIMINARIES OF PEACE SIGNED. [1782. France and the United States. Franklin made rather an awkward apology: "Nothing has been agreed in the preliminaries contrary to the interests of France; and no peace is to take place between us and England, till you have concluded yours. Your observation is, however, apparently just, that, in not consulting you before they were signed, we have been guilty of neglecting a point of bienséance.” * The Parliament was opened by the king on the 5th of December, the Houses having met on the previous 26th of November, and were then adjourned in the expectation of some definite result from the negociations. The opening words of the speech are very memorable. His majesty declared he had lost no time in giving the necessary orders to prohibit the further prosecution of offensive war upon the continent of North America. Adopting with decision what he collected to be the sense of his parliament and his people, he had directed all his measures to an entire and cordial reconciliation with those colonies. He had not hesitated to go the full length of the powers vested in him, and had offered to declare them free and independent States, by au article to be inserted in the treaty of peace. Provisional articles had been agreed upon, to take effect whenever terms of peace should be finally settled with the Court of France. The king then said, "In thus admitting their separation from the crown of these kingdoms, I have sacrificed every consideration of my own to the wishes and opinion of my people. I make it my humble and earnest prayer to Almighty God, that Great Britain may not feel the evils which might result from so great a dismemberment of the empire; and that America may be free from those calamities which have formerly proved in the mother country how essential monarchy is to the enjoyment of constitutional liberty. Religion, language, interest, affections, may, and I hope will, yet prove a bond of permanent union between the two countries." The violent debates on the Address belong to the history of faction rather than to the history of the country. Tories were indignant at the concession of American independence. Whigs complained that the concession had not been the first step in the negociation. Lord Shelburne in former years had held that when the colonies should become independent, the sun of England would be set; and he was now reproached for his inconsistency in granting their independence. On the 20th of January, 1783, the Preliminaries of Peace were signed between Great Britain and France and Spain. With Holland there was a suspension of arms; and the Preliminaries of Peace were not signed until the 2nd of September. The articles of pacification with the United States, with the exception of the first article acknowledging their independence, are now of minor importance. By the treaty with France, England ceded St. Lucia and Tobago, and gained back Granada, St. Vincent's, Dominica, St. Christopher's, Nevis, aud Montserrat. The French recovered some possessions in Africa, and in the East Indies. The old stipulations for the demolition of Dunkirk were given up. To Spain Great Britain ceded Minorca and the Floridas. The principle of the final treaty with Holland was on the basis of mutual restitution. Thus, then, was finished one of the most calamitous wars that England * Letter to Vergennes-Franklin's Works, vol. ix. p. 451. 1782.] PARLIAMENTARY CENSURES OF THE TERMS OF PEACE. 459 had ever been driven into, through a mistaken view of the relative positions of a mother country and her colonies, and an obstinate reliance upon her power to enforce obedience. It might have been expected that a pacification which involved no humiliating conditions, beyond the acknowledgment of that independence of the United States which it was no longer possible to withhold, would have been received with unmingled satisfaction. On the contrary, a combination of parties was entered into for the purpose of removing lord Shelburne and his ministry; a coalition which, to our minds, is not a pleasant exhibition of the motives which sometimes unite the most opposite factions in the pursuit of power. On the 17th of February, the two Houses took into consideration the Preliminaries of Peace with France, Spain, and America. In the House of Lords the ministers carried the Address of Thanks to the Crown by a majority of thirteen. In the House of Commons they were defeated by a majority of sixteen. On the 21st of February lord John Cavendish moved Resolutions of Censure on the terms of the Peace, which were carried by a majority of seventeen. Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt were on this occasion brought into immediate conflict-" the tug of war" which was to last for twenty years was now begun. The particular points of attack or defence in the conditions of the peace have little to interest us. But the principles exhibited by these great rivals on so stirring an occasion have a permanent value. Fox defended the coalition of parties which some had censured; but he emphatically proclaimed his adhesion to his own party: "I am free to boast of being connected with a set of men, whose principles are the basis on which the state has for a long time past been preserved from absolute destruction. It is to the virtues of these men that I have surrendered my private opinions and inclinations. It is thus only that I could prevent myself from falling into those errors which the prejudices, passions, and perplexities of human nature, will, at times, occa sion. And thus I have been always answerable to my country for my conduct; for in every public transaction I have thought it most safe to resign my private opinion, when I found it departing from the general opinion of those with whom I was connected by friendship, confidence, and veneration. Those whose virtues claimed my respect, and whose abilities my admiration, could not but prove the best directors of a conduct which, alone, might fall by its temerity, or be lost by temptation." Pitt was self-reliant in his own confidence in the purity of his intentions: "High situation, and great influence, are desirable objects to most men, and objects which I am not ashamed to pursue, which I am even solicitous to possess, whenever they can be acquired with honour, and retained with dignity. On these respectable conditions, I am not less ambitious to be great and powerful than it is natural for a young man, with such brilliant examples before him, to be. But even these objects I am not beneath relinquishing, the moment my duty to my country, my character, and my friends, renders such a sacrifice indispensable. Then I hope to retire, not disappointed, but triumphant; triumphant in the conviction that my talents, humble as they are, have been earnestly, zealously, and strenuously employed, to the best of my apprehension, in promoting the truest welfare of my country; and that, however I may stand chargeable with weakness of understanding, or error of judgment, nothing can be imputed to my official capacity which bears the most distant 460 LORD SHELBURNE, BEING DEFEATED, RESIGNS. * (1762 connection with an interested, a corrupt, or a dishonest intention." The struggle for office was over. On the 24th of February lord Shelburne resigned. One of his Secretaries of State, lord Grantham, wrote to sir James Harris that the fallen minister trusted too much to his measures, and that the Parliament, spoilt by long habits of interest, gave no credit to them. The measures of lord Shelburne contemplated a much wider field of action than his opponents, with the exception of Burke, could have admitted into their views. In the king's speech at the opening of the Session, his majesty recommended a revision of our whole trading system, upon the same comprehensive and liberal principles that had been adopted concerning the commerce of Ireland. There is a letter of February, 1783, from Mr. Benjamin Vaughan to Dr. Franklin, in which, speaking of "the boldness of my friend's conduct," evidently alluding to lord Shelburne, he thus describes the views of the minister who had secured peace for his country: "You will take pleasure in hearing that he talked of making England a free port, for which he said we were fitted by nature, capital, love of enterprise, maritime connections, and position between the Old and New World, and the North and South of Europe; and that those who were best circumstanced for trade, could not but be gainers by having trade open." Shelburne's opinions upon a liberal system of commerce were before his time. They were entirely opposed to the existing ignorance of the commercial public, and they would necessarily have failed. If he had remained in power, the great trading communities would have ensured his fall, had he dared to promulgate the principles which could only be accepted when England had received the enlightenment of more than half a century's experience. Jonathan Shipley, bishop of St. Asaph, was an old and intimate friend of Dr. Franklin. To the bishop the American philosopher wrote some words, after the conclusion of the peace, which ought not to pass out of remembrance: "Let us now forgive and forget. Let each country seek its advancement in its own internal advantages of arts and agriculture, not in retarding or preventing the prosperity of the other. America will, with God's blessing, become a great and happy country; and England, if she has at length gained wisdom, will have gained something more valuable, and more essential to her prosperity, than all she has lost; and will still be a great and respectable nation." To forgive and forget was perhaps more difficult to the king of England than to any one in his dominions. It has been asserted, and we think with much unfairness, that "the intense hatred with which George III. regarded the Americans was so natural to such a mind as his, that one can hardly blame his constant exhibition of it during the time that the struggle was actually impending. But what is truly disgraceful is, that, after the war was over, he displayed this rancour on an occasion when, of all others, he was bound to suppress it." This assertion is supported by a statement that when Jefferson and Adams made their appearance at Court in 1786, George III. "treated these eminent men with marked incivility, although they were then paying their respects to him in his own palace."§ John Adams was the first "Correspondence of the Earl of Malmesbury," vol. i. p. 501. S Buckle-"History of Civilization," vol. i. p. 128. 1782.] THE KING AND THE AMERICAN MINISTER. 461 minister of the United States accredited to Great Britain. He was presented to the king in June, 1785. Jefferson, who succeeded Franklin as minister to France, went to London in 1786, to arrange some treaties in concert with Adams; and he says that when he appeared at Court, he saw, or thought he saw, that "the ulcerations in the king's mind left nothing to be expected from him;" and that, on his presentation to their majesties at their levées, "it was impossible for anything to be more ungracious than their notice of Mr. Adams and myself." Mr. Buckle, in referring to these passages in Jefferson's correspondence, omits to mention the remarkable interview between George III. and Mr. Adams, on the 1st of June, 1785-an interview which the American ambassador described the next day, to the American Secretary, Mr. Jay, in a letter of permanent historical interest. He was left with the king, and lord Carmarthen, the secretary-of-state, alone. He presented his letter of credence as Minister Plenipotentiary, and expressed the desire of the United States to cultivate the most liberal and friendly intercourse between his majesty's subjects and their citizens. He then said, "The appearance of a Minister from the United States to your majesty's Court will form an epoch in the history of England and America. I think myself more fortunate than all my fellow citizens, in having the distinguished honour to be the first to stand in your majesty's royal presence in a diplomatic character; and I shall esteem myself the happiest of men if I can be instrumental in recommending my country more and more to your majesty's royal benevolence, and of restoring an entire esteem, confidence, and affection, or, in better words, 'the old good nature,' and the good old humour, between people, who, though separated by an ocean, and under different governments, have the same language, a similar religion, a kindred blood. I beg your Tucker-"Life of Jefferson," vol. i. p. 226. 462 WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL TO HIS ARMY. [1782 majesty's permission to add that although I have sometimes before been entrusted by my country, it was never in my whole life in a manner so agreeable to myself." Mr. Adams, in continuing his narrative, says that the king listened to every word he said, with an apparent emotion; that he was himself much agitated; but that his majesty "was much affected, and answered me with more tremor than I had spoken with." The king said, "Sir-the circumstances of this audience are so extraordinary, the language you have now held is so extremely proper, and the feelings you have discovered so justly adapted to the occasion, that I must say, that I not only receive with pleasure the assurance of the friendly disposition of the United States, but that I am very glad the choice has fallen upon you to be their Minister. I wish you, sir, to believe, and that it may be understood in America, that I have done nothing in the late contest but what I thought myself indispensably bound to do, by the duty which I owed to my people. I will be very frank with you. I was the last to conform to the separation; but the separation having been made, and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an Independent Power. The moment I see such sentiments and language as yours prevail, and a disposition to give this country the preference, that moment I shall say, let the circumstances of language, religion, and blood, have their natural and full effect."* There is one man who was the chief instrument in the hands of Providence for conducting the war, by his energy, prudence, and constancy, to that triumphant assertion of Independence which has built up the great North American republic. To Washington the historian naturally turns, as to the grandest object of contemplation, when he laid aside his victorious sword, that sword which, with those he had worn in his earlier career, he bequeathed to his nephews with words characteristic of his nobleness: "These swords are accompanied with an injunction not to unsheathe them for the purpose of shedding blood, except it be for self-defence, or in defence of their country and its rights; and in the latter case, to keep them unsheathed, and prefer falling with them in their hands to the relinquishment thereof." + On the 4th of December, 1782, Washington bade farewell to the principal officers of his army. He filled a glass and said, “With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honourable." He asked that each com * Works of John Adams, vol. viii. The remaining passage of the official letter of Mr. Adams is sufficient evidence that the king did not treat the first eminent American who came into his presence with "marked incivility." "The king then asked me whether I came last from France; and upon my answering in the affirmative, he put on an air of familiarity, and smiling, or rather, laughing, said, 'There is an opinion among some people that you are not the most attached of all your countrymen to the manners of France.' I was surprised at this, because I thought it an indiscretion, and a descent from his dignity. I was a little embarrassed, but determined not to deny the truth on the one hand, nor leave him to infer from it any attachment to England on the other. I threw off as much gravity as I could, and assumed an air of gaiety and a tone of decision, as far as was decent, and said, 'That opinion, Sir, is not mistaken; I must avow to your majesty I have no attachment but to my own country.' The king replied as quick as lightning, An honest man will never have any other.'" Will of Washington," 1799. |