merchants, was at least divided with American merchants; and that no less than twenty-four tribes of Indians, who had been thoroughly loyal to the British Crown, were handed over, without the smallest stipulation in their favour, to the American rule. The Americans had liberty to fish on all the banks of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but they were not permitted to dry or cure fish on the island of Newfoundland. It was noticed that there was no corresponding. authorisation for British subjects to fish on American coasts.

There were two other points which excited great difficulty. England demanded that the private debts incurred by American citizens to English citizens before 1775 should be recognised as binding. This was indeed a question of the simplest honesty, and there were considerable old debts outstanding, chiefly to Glasgow merchants, which, when the troubles began, the Americans had been unwilling or unable to pay. Franklin strenuously opposed the demand, ingeniously alleging that much of the merchandise from the sale of which these debts ought to have been paid had been destroyed by English soldiers during the war. John Adams, however, whose sense of honour was much higher than that of his colleague, fully admitted the justice of the English claim, and declared that he had no notion of cheating anybody,' that the question of paying debts and compensating Tories were two.' The dispute was ultimately settled by a general clause stating that creditors on either side shall meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value in sterling money of all boná fide debts heretofore contracted.'

The other question at issue was one in which the honour of England was deeply concerned. It was that

' Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, iii. 293.

THE LOYALISTS-FRANCE AND AMERICA. 469

those who had taken arms for the Crown should be restored to their country and their rights, and should regain the estates that had been confiscated, or at least obtain an equivalent for their loss. On these points, however, the American plenipotentiaries were obdurate. All that could be obtained was an engagement that there should be no future confiscations or prosecutions on account of the part taken in the war; that Congress would earnestly recommend it to the legislatures of the respective States' to restore the confiscated estates of a real British subjects, and of Americans who had not actually taken arms for the British; that Congress would also earnestly recommend that loyalists who had taken arms should receive back their estates on refunding the money which had been paid for them, and that such persons should have liberty to remain for twelve months in the United States' unmolested in their endeavours' to obtain the restitution of their confiscated estates and rights.

Perhaps the most remarkable fact in the negotiation which led to the American peace was that in its latter stages the parties most seriously opposed to one another were not the English and Americans, but the Americans and the French. Franklin, it is true, always leaned to the French side, and showed much gratitude to France and some animosity to England; but John Adams had long disliked and distrusted Vergennes,' and Jay, who had at one time been an ardent advocate of the French alliance, changed into the most violent hostility. 'He thinks,' wrote Franklin, 'the French minister one of the greatest enemies of our country; that he would have straitened our boundaries to prevent the growth of our people, contracted our fishery to obstruct the increase of our seamen, and retained the royalists among us to

See Adams' Life. Works, i. 820, 821.

keep us divided; that he privately opposes all our negotiations with foreign Courts, and afforded us during the war the assistance we received, only to keep it alive that we might be so much the more weakened by it; that to think of gratitude to France is the greatest of follies, and that to be influenced by it would ruin us. He makes no secret of his having these opinions, and expresses them publicly, sometimes in presence of the English ministers.'1

Considering all that France had done for America, such language sounds very strange, but it is not difficult to explain it. While the French minister had never wavered in his determination to secure the independence of the old English colonies in America, he had, as we have seen, uniformly discouraged all attempts to annex Canada to them, and he aimed at the establishment of a balance of power in America in which neither England nor the United States should have a complete ascendency. In accordance with the same policy he contended that the country of the great lakes was incontestably either a dependency of Canada or the property of Indians, and that the United States had no title to it. In October 1782 Vergennes expressed these views in a secret despatch to the French envoy in America; he added, with some bitterness, that once the French ceased to subsidise the American army it would be 'as useless as it has been habitually inactive,' and he expressed his astonishment at the new demand for money, while the Americans obstinately refused the payment of taxes. 'It seems to be much more natural,' he wrote, 'for them to raise upon themselves, rather than upon the subjects of the King, the funds which the defence of their cause exacts.' A month later he intimated to,

American Diplomatic Corra

spondence, iv. 188.

Bancroft's History of the United States, z. 582.

FRANCE AND AMERICA.

471

the French ambassador at Madrid his determination not to continue the war on account of the ambitious pretensions of the Americans, either with reference to the fisheries or to their boundaries. France had herself an interest in the Newfoundland fishery, and the French agents strongly denied the right of the Americans to an unrestricted participation in it. The fishery of the broad sea, they said, is by natural law open to all; coast fisheries, apart from express treaty provisions, belong exclusively to the sovereigns of the coast; and the Americans, in ceasing to be British subjects, had lost all right to fish upon an English coast.'

The Americans soon discovered that on these two important questions the influence of France was hostile to them, and on the question of the Mississippi boundary the same opposition appeared. The country bounded on the north by Canada, on the south by part of Florida, on the west by the Mississippi, and on the east by the Alleghany Mountains, fringed the whole length of the United States; and although it had not yet been appropriated or divided into States, it was the great field in which the ultimate expansion of the English race might be anticipated. According to the Spaniards the boundaries of Florida extended far into this country, but England had never acknowledged the claim. In the proclamation of 1763 the country was recognised as Indian territory external to the English establishments." Vergennes agreed with Spain that the United States were nowhere in contact with the Mississippi. The northern portion of the disputed territory, as far down as the Ohio, he thought should be considered part of

Bancroft's History of the

United States, x. 588.

⚫ Circourt, ii. 243.

See the memorial of Bay.

neval on the subject. American Diplomatic Correspondence, viiå 156-160.

Canada, in accordance with the boundary defined by the Quebec Act. The southern portion, in accordance with the proclamation of 1768, he wished to be considered Indian territory, under the joint protectorate of Spain and the United States.

The question was one which had been for some time pending. In 1779, Congress had put forward an ultimatum for peace, in which they claimed the Mississippi for their western boundary. In 1780, however, when the question of a Spanish alliance was raised, the French envoy had strongly represented that the States had no right whatever to this western territory or to the navigation of the river; that the Spanish conquests would probably spread over this country, and that an abandonment of the claim to the Mississippi boundary was indispensable if Spain was to be induced to co-operate in the war. Congress listened to the advice, and silently dropped the claim, making a simple acknowledgment of the independence of the States the sole condition of peace. The claim, however, to the Mississippi boundary was now revived, and as it was a matter of little or no importance to England, it produced the curious spectacle of a kind of alliance between the English and American diplomatists in opposition to those of France and Spain.

The motives of the French ministers appear to have been twofold. They were consistently jealous of the too great expansion of the new State, and they were anxious to assist their allies the Spaniards. France had found herself unable to fulfil her pledge of recovering Gibraltar by arms; she had failed in her attempts to induce England to cede it in exchange for Oran, or West Florida and the Bahama islands, or Guadeloupe, and she had equally failed in her intention of restoring Jamaica to Spain. Under these circumstances, Ver

• Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, iii. 169–178.