CHAPTER LVI.

ROCKINGHAM'S MINISTRY ASSENTS TO AMERICAN

INDEPENDENCE.

1782.

1782.

THE hatred of America as a self-existent state became every day more intense in Spain from the desperate weakness of her authority in her transatlantic possessions. Her rule was dreaded in them all; and, as even her allies confessed, with good reason. The seeds of rebellion were already sown in the vice-royalties of Buenos Ayres and Peru; and a union of Creoles and Indians might prove at any moment fatal to metropolitan dominion. French statesmen were of opinion that England, by emancipating Spanish America, might indemnify itself for all loss from the independence of a part of its own colonial empire; and they foresaw in such a revolution the greatest benefit to the commerce of their own country. Immense naval preparations had been made by the Bourbons for the conquest of Jamaica; but now, from the fear of spreading the love of change, Florida Blanca suppressed every wish to acquire that hated nest of contraband trade. When the French ambassador reported to him the proposal of Vergennes to constitute its inhabitants an indepen- April. dent republic, he seemed to hear the tocsin of insurrection sounding from the La Plata to San Francisco, and from that time had nothing to propose for the employment of the allied fleets in the West Indies. He was perplexed beyond the power of extrication. One hope only remained. Minorca having been wrested from the English, he concentrated all the force of Spain in Europe on the one great object of recovering Gibraltar, and held France to her

promise not to make peace until that fortress should be given up.

With America, therefore, measures for a general peace must begin. As the pacification of the late British dependencies belonged exclusively to the department of Lord Shelburne, the other members of the cabinet should have respected his right. As a body they did so; but Fox, leagued with young men as uncontrollable as himself, resolved to fasten a quarrel upon him, and to get into his

Apr. 12.

own hands every part of the negotiations for peace. 1782. At a cabinet meeting on the twelfth of April, he told Shelburne and those who sided with him that he was determined to bring the matter to a crisis; and on the same day he wrote to one of his young friends: "They must yield entirely. If they do not, we must go to war again; that is all: I am sure I am ready." Oswald at

the time was on his way to Paris, where on the Apr. 16. sixteenth he went straightway to Franklin. The latter, speaking not his own opinion only, but that of congress and of every one of his associate commissioners, explained that the United States could not treat for peace with Great Britain unless it was also intended to treat with France; and, though Oswald desired to keep aloof from European affairs, he allowed himself to be introduced by Franklin to Vergennes, who received with pleasure assurances of the good disposition of the British king, reciprocated them on the part of his own sovereign, and invited an offer of its conditions. He wished America and France to treat directly with British plenipotentiaries, each for itself, the two negotiations to move on with equal step, and the two treaties to be simultaneously signed.

From Amsterdam, John Adams questioned whether, with Canada and Nova Scotia in the hands of the English, the Americans could ever have a real peace. In a like spirit, Franklin intrusted to Oswald "Notes for Conversation," in which the voluntary cession of Canada was suggested as the surety "of a durable peace and a sweet reconciliation." At the same time, he replied to his old friend Lord Shelburne: "I desire no other channel of communication be

tween us than that of Mr. Oswald, which I think your lordship has chosen with much judgment. He will be witness of my acting with all the sincerity and good faith which you do me the honor to expect from me; and if he is enabled, when he returns hither, to communicate more fully your lordship's mind on the principal points to be settled, I think it may contribute much to the blessed work our hearts are engaged in."

Another great step was taken by Franklin. He excluded Spain altogether from the American negotiation. Entreating Jay to come to Paris, he wrote: "Spain has taken four years to consider whether she should treat with us or not, Give her forty, and let us in the mean time mind our own business."

On the twenty-third, shortly after the return of 1782. Oswald to London, the cabinet on his report agreed Apr. 23. to send him again to Franklin to acquaint him of their readiness to treat at Paris for a general peace, conceding American independence, but otherwise maintaining the treaties of 1763. On the twenty-eighth, Shel- Apr. 28. burne, who was in earnest, gave to his agent the verbal instruction: "If America is independent, she must be so of the whole world, with no ostensible, tacit, or secret connection with France." Canada could not be ceded. It was "reasonable to expect a free trade, unencumbered with duties, to every part of America.” "All debts due to British subjects were to be secure, and the loyalists to be restored to a full enjoyment of their rights and privileges." As a compensation for the restoration of New York, Charleston, and Savannah, the river Penobscot might be proposed for the eastern boundary of New England. "Finally," he said, "tell Dr. Franklin candidly and confidentially Lord Shelburne's situation with the king; that his lordship will make no use of it but to keep his word with mankind." With these instructions, Oswald returned immediately to Paris, bearing from Shelburne to Franklin a most friendly letter, to which the king had given his thorough approval.

With the European belligerents, the communication was

necessarily to proceed from the department of which Fox was the chief. He entered upon the business in a spirit that foreboded no success; for, at the very moment of his selection of an emissary, he declared that he did not think it much signified how soon he should break up the cabinet. The person of whom he made choice to treat on the weightiest interests with the most skilful diplomatist of Europe was Thomas Grenville, one of his own partisans, who was totally ignorant of the relations of America to France, and very young, with no experience in public business, and a very scant knowledge of the foreign relations of his own country.

1782. Arriving in Paris on the eighth of May, Grenville May 8. delivered to Frankuin a most cordial letter of introduction from Fox, and met with the heartiest welcome. After receiving him at breakfast, Franklin took him in his own carriage to Versailles; and there the dismissed postmaster-general for America, at the request of the British secretary of state, introduced the son of the author of the American stamp act as the British plenipotentiary to the minister for foreign affairs of the Bourbon king. Statesmen at Paris and Vienna were amused on hearing that the envoy of the "rebel" colonies was become "the introductor" of the representatives of Great Britain at the court of Versailles.

Vergennes received Grenville most cordially as the nephew of an old friend, but smiled at his offer to grant to France the independence of the United States; and Franklin refused to accept at second hand that independence which his country had already won. Grenville remarked that the war had been provoked by encouragement from France to the Americans to revolt; to which Vergennes answered with warmth that France had found and not made America independent, and that American inde

pendence was not the only cause of the war. On the May 10. next day, Grenville, unaccompanied by Franklin, met

Vergennes and De Aranda, and offered peace on the basis of the independence of the United States and the treaty of 1763. "That treaty," said Vergennes, "I can

1782. May.

never read without a shudder. The king, my master, cannot in any treaty consider the independence of America as ceded to him. To do so would be injurious to the dignity of his Britannic majesty." The Spanish ambassador urged with vehemence that the griefs of the king of Spain were totally distinct from the independence of America.

With regard to America, the frequent conversations of the young envoy with Franklin, who received him with constant hospitality, cleared up his views. It was explained to him with precision that the United States were free from every sort of engagement with France except those contained in the public treaties of commerce and alliance. Grenville asked if these obligations extended to the recovery of Gibraltar for Spain; and Franklin answered: "It is nothing to America who has Gibraltar." But Franklin saw in Grenville a young statesman ambitious of recommending himself as an able negotiator; in Oswald, a man who, free from interested motives, earnestly sought a final settlement of all differences between Great Britain and America. To the former he had no objection, but he would have been loath to lose the latter; and, before beginning to treat of the conditions of peace, he wrote to Shelburne his belief that the "moderation, prudent counsels, and sound judgment of Oswald might contribute much, not only to the speedy conclusion of a peace, but to the framing of such a peace as may be firm and lasting." The king, as he read the wishes of Franklin, which were seconded by Vergennes, "thought it best to let Oswald remain at Paris," saying that "his correspondence carried marks of coming from a man of sense."

While Oswald came to London to make his second report, news that better reconciled the English to treat for peace arrived from the Caribbean Islands. The fleet of De Grasse in 1781, after leaving the coast of the United States, gave to France the naval ascendency in the West Indies. St. Eustatius was recaptured, and generously restored to the United Provinces. St. Christopher, Nevis, and Montserrat were successively taken. On the nineteenth of February,