But by

through Madrid to be present at its surrender. showers of red-hot shot, and by a most heroic sortie under General Elliot, the batteries which were thought to be fireproof were blown up or consumed, and a fleet under Lord Howe was close at hand to replenish the stores of the fortress. The news increased the clamor of Paris for peace. France, it was said, is engaged in a useless war for thankless allies; she has suffered disgrace in the West Indies while undertaking to conquer Jamaica for Spain, and now shares in the defeat before Gibraltar. Vergennes, to obtain a release from his engagement to Spain, was ready to make great sacrifices on the part of his own country, and to require them of America. Congress was meanwhile instructing Franklin "to use his utmost endeavors to effect the loan of four millions of dollars through the generous exertions of the king of France;" and on the third of October it renewed its resolution to hearken to no propositions for peace except in confidence and in concert with its ally.

On the fourteenth of the same month Vergennes explained to the French envoy at Philadelphia the policy of France: “If we are so happy as to make peace, the king must then cease to subsidize the American army, which will be as useless as it has been habitually inactive. We are astonished at the demands which continue to be made upon us, while the Americans obstinately refuse the payment of taxes. It seems to us much more natural for them to raise upon themselves, rather than upon the subjects of the king, the funds which their defence exacts." "You know," continued Vergennes, "our system with regard to Canada. Everything which shall prevent the conquest of that country will agree essentially with our views. But this way of thinking ought to be an impenetrable secret for the Americans. Moreover, I do not see by what title the Americans can form pretensions to lands on Lake Ontario. Those lands belong to the savages or are a dependency of Canada. In either case, the United States have no right to them whatever. It has been pretty nearly demonstrated that to the south of the Ohio their limits are the mountains following the shed of the waters, and that everything to the north of the mountain range, especially the lakes, formerly made a part of Canada. These notions are for you alone; you will take care

not to appear to be informed about them, because we the less wish to intervene in the discussions between the Count de Aranda and Mr. Jay, as both parties claim countries to which neither of them has a right, and as it will be almost impossible to reconcile them."

When the first draft of the treaty with the United States reached England, the offer of Jay of the free navigation of the Mississippi was gladly accepted; but that for a reciprocity of navigation and commerce was put aside. The cabinet complained of Oswald for yielding everything, and appointed Henry Strachey, Townshend's clear-headed and earnest undersecretary of state, to be his assistant. On the twentieth of October, both of the secretaries of state being present, Shelburne gave Strachey three points specially in charge: no concession of a right to dry fish on Newfoundland; a recognition of the validity of debts to British subjects contracted by citizens of the United States before the war; but, above all, security for loyalists, and adequate indemnity for the confiscated property of the loyal refugees. The allegation of the American commissioners that they had no authority to restore the loyalists to their old possessions was objected to as a confession that, though they claimed to have full powers, they were not plenipotentiaries; that they were acting under thirteen separate sovereignties, which had no common head. Shelburne proposed either an extension of Nova Scotia to the Penobscot or the Kennebec or the Saco, so that a province might be formed for the reception of the loyalists; or that some part of the revenue from sales of the old crown lands within the United States might be set apart for their benefit. To the ministry it was clear that peace, if to be made by them at all, must be made before the meeting of parliament, which had been summoned for the twenty-fifth of November.

The American commission was, on the twenty-sixth of October, recruited by the arrival of John Adams, its chief. It had been the proudest moment of his life when he received from congress the commission of sole plenipotentiary for negotiating peace and commerce between the United States and Great Britain. The year in which he was deprived of it he has himself described as "the most anxious and mortifying

year of his whole life." He ascribed the change in part to the French government, in part to Franklin. In his better moments, even at that day, he did justice to France; toward Franklin he never relented. Both Franklin and John Adams had done great deeds which give them a place in the history of mankind. The one best understood his fellow-men and how to deal with them; the other the principles on which free constitutions should be formed. Both sons of Massachusetts, they were stars shining in the same constellation, and now in framing a treaty of peace with the British empire each of the two seemed living not a life of his own, but as if prophetically inspired with all the coming greatness of their country.

Adams came fresh from the grand achievement of prevailing on the United Provinces to acknowledge the independence of the United States, and to form with them a treaty of commerce; but his first step in the negotiation at Paris was a wrong one. Franklin had hitherto warded off the demand that the treaty of peace should guarantee to English merchants the right to collect debts that had been due to them in the United States, because the British armies had in many cases robbed the merchants of the very goods for which the debts were incurred; and had wantonly destroyed the property of the planters, which would have furnished the means of payment. Moreover, the British themselves had confiscated the debts as well as all other property of the patriots of South Carolina. The day after Strachey's arrival in Paris, Adams, encountering him and Oswald at the house of Jay, to their surprise and delight gave his assent to the proposed stipulation in behalf of British creditors. In the evening of the same day Adams called for the first time on Franklin, who at once put him on his guard as to the British demands relating to debts and the compensation of tories.

On the thirtieth the American commissioners met Oswald and Strachey, and for four several days they discussed the unsettled points of the treaty.

Massachusetts desired to extend to the St. John; unless that boundary could be obtained, congress unanimously agreed the question should be reserved for settlement by commissioners after the war. The British commission, aided by a veteran

clerk from the old board of trade, were just then striving to wrest from Maine at least the duke of York's old province of Sagadahoc. From habitual forethought Adams had brought with him documents which were decisive on the question. He knew exactly the boundary of his native state on the east and north-east; he listened to no suggestion of delay in its adoption; he asked no extension of the true boundary; he scorned to accept less. His colleagues gladly deferred to him. To gain the influence of France he sought an interview with Vergennes, and, by the papers and maps which he submitted, secured his adhesion. The line which Adams vindicated found its place in the treaty without further dispute or cavil.

The British commissioners denied to the Americans the right of drying fish on Newfoundland. This was, after a great deal of conversation, submitted to upon condition that the American fishermen should be allowed to dry their fish on any unsettled parts of the coast of Nova Scotia. Franklin said further: "I observe as to catching fish you mention only the banks of Newfoundland. Why not all other places, and among others the Gulf of St. Lawrence? Are you afraid there are not fish enough, or that we should catch too many, at the same time that you know that we shall bring the greatest part of the money we get for that fish to Great Britain to pay for your manufactures?" And this enlargement was imbodied in the new article on the fisheries.

On the fourth of November, Adams and Jay definitively overruled the well-grounded objections of Franklin to the recognition by treaty of the validity of debts contracted before the war; thus involving the country in grievous difficulties by inserting in the treaty a clause to which the United States as then constituted had no power to give effect. Strachey wrote to the secretary of state that Jay and Adams would in like manner assent to the indemnification of the refugees rather than break off the treaty. Franklin saw and averted the danger. In reply to a letter from Secretary Townshend, having in his mind the case of the refugees, he deprecated any instructions to the British negotiators that would involve an irreconcilable conflict with those of America. At the same time he persuaded Adams and Jay to join with him in letters to Oswald and to

Strachey, expressing in conciliatory language their unanimous sentiments that an amnesty more extensive than what had already been agreed to could not be granted to the refugees.

*

Before Strachey reached London with the second set of articles for peace, the friends of Fox had forgotten their zeal for American independence. All parties unanimously demanded amnesty and indemnity for the loyalists. Within the cabinet, Camden and Grafton were restless, while Richmond and Keppell were preparing to renounce their places.† The king could not avoid mentioning "how sensibly he felt the dismemberment of America from the empire:" "I should be miserable indeed," he said, "if I did not feel that no blame on that account can be laid at my door; it may not in the end be an evil that its inhabitants will become aliens to this kingdom.”

Townshend and William Pitt remained true to Shelburne ; and a third set of articles was prepared, to which these three alone gave their approval in writing.

The Mississippi was accepted by the British as the American boundary on the west; but it remained to the last to settle the point where the United States would touch the northwestern boundary of Canada. In the first set of articles agreed on between the American commissioners and Oswald the line from the Connecticut at the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude was drawn due west on that parallel to the river St. Lawrence, thence to the south end of the lake Nipising, and thence straight to the source of the river Mississippi. This would have given the United States a part of upper Canada, and found no favor in England. In the articles taken to England by Strachey the line proceeded due west from the Connecticut on the forty-fifth parallel till it should strike the river Mississippi. At the last moment the question was determined in England by the British ministry, without any

"If it depended on my vote, I would cut this knot at once. I would compensate the wretches," etc. J. Adams to Jonathan Jackson, 17 November 1782. Works, ix., 516. "Dr. Franklin is very stanch against the tories; more decided a great deal on this point than Mr. Jay or myself." Diary of John Adams, 26 November 1782. Works, iii., 332. Works of J. Adams, iii., 330. Works of Franklin, ix., 426-433.

Almon's Debates, xxv., 180.