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DEATH OF CHATHAM

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self-preservation would compel Great Britain to see to it that the accession was of as little avail as possible. The British Government, of course, dissociated itself from any idea of introducing a war of savage desolation.

Convinced that it was "totally impracticable" to retain the dependence of America, the Duke of Richmond on 7 April moved an Address to the Crown for the withdrawal of the forces and for making peace. He was anxious to secure the Americans as allies, before war was declared with France. Chatham, though still indisposed from an attack of gout, dragged himself to town to protest against the surrender of the birthright of British princes and the dismemberment of the Empire. "Shall we", he cried, "now fall prostrate before the throne of Bourbon?" Richmond explained that he thought there was no prospect of success if Great Britain was opposed to France, Spain and America. Chatham rose to reply, staggered, and fell back in a fit.

The death of Chatham rendered North's retention of office almost unavoidable. Shelburne led the remaining followers of Chatham, but they were not strong enough to form a Government, and would neither coalesce with ministers nor join with the Rockingham party. Before Parliament met in November 1779, the growing weakness of the Government, the unsatisfactory condition of the Army and Navy, and the divided state of the country, occasioned the resignation of Lord Gower, President of the Council. The continuance of the war with America would, he believed, end in the ruin of the country. In announcing this event to the King, North expressed his opinion that it would involve the downfall of the ministry, and added that for three years he had held in his heart the same opinion as Gower. To strengthen the ministry, overtures were once more made to Opposition. The only result was to demonstrate yet again its weakness and dissensions. Profiting by the reaction from the Gordon riots, the King then dissolved Parliament (1 September 1780). The elections went in favour of the Crown. Towards the end of the year, Necker made a secret overture for peace. He proposed a truce for the purpose of negotiations, during which each army in America was to retain the territories it then held.1 George III rejected this advance on the ground that France was still attempting "to effect independency, which, whether under its apparent name or a truce, is the same in reality".

The news of Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown reached London on 25 November 1781. The King's Speech, two days later, still urged a vigorous prosecution of the war. Opposition remained divided. For though Shelburne insisted on the impossibility of continuing the struggle, he still would not concede to America the absolute independence which Rockingham was ready to grant. The pressure

1 Necker to Lord North, 1 Dec. 1780.

of the naval and military situation, however, was becoming irresistible. The country began to perceive the necessity of peace. The City petitioned the King to put an end "to this unnatural and unfortunate war". The West India merchants besought him to save them from utter ruin. In the House of Commons Government majorities dwindled before the logic of events, and the eloquence of Fox and Burke and Dunning and Barré was reinforced now by that of the younger Pitt and Sheridan. But the King turned a deaf ear to North's suggestions of peace.1 He would never consent, he declared, to the "irredeemable destruction" of the British Empire.2 But in February a motion condemning the management of the Navy was defeated only by nineteen votes. The confusion at the Admiralty was indeed notorious, although Lord Sandwich had latterly done something to improve its efficiency. On the 27th Opposition carried an address against further prosecution of the American War. It was coldly received by the King. On 4 March, therefore, General Conway returned to the attack, moving an Address declaring all who should advise continuance of the war to be enemies of their country. Next day the Attorneygeneral introduced a bill for enabling the Government to treat with the colonies. Fox poured upon it the vials of his wrath, and, spurning the idea of a coalition, proclaimed that he would be the most infamous of men if ever he should make terms with any one of such ministers. A vote of censure was nearly carried on the 8th. On the 15th, Sir John Rous, a Tory, moved a vote of No Confidence. The Government was saved by nine votes. Fox gave notice of a similar motion on the 20th. But on that day, before the debate could begin, North announced his resignation. Only with the utmost difficulty had he induced George III to accept the inevitable. It was now even whispered that Jamaica was ready to follow the example of the Leeward Islands and surrender to the French. On 10 March the King had at last agreed that the Chancellor should approach Rockingham. Thurlow reported his terms. The royal veto was not to be imposed upon American independence; the new Government's policy would be peace and economy, and its measures must include bills for prohibiting contractors from sitting in Parliament, Burke's Establishment bill, and the Custom House bill disfranchising revenue officers.4 The King refused these terms. He would only contemplate an administration "on a wider bottom". Determined not to throw himself "into the hands of Opposition", he spoke of abdication as "the only way left" for his honour and conscience.5 The royal yacht was prepared for his departure to Hanover. But North recognised that the demand for a change could no longer be resisted. He 1 North to George III, 21 Jan. 1782.

2 George III to Lord Stormont, 22 Dec. 1781; George III to North, 21 Jan. 1782. 3 Memorandum by Lord Sandwich, Corr. of George III (ed. Fortescue).

Rockingham, Memoirs, II, 451.

George III to North, 17 March 1782; Walpole, Journals, 11, 421.

ROCKINGHAM'S CABINET

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reminded the King that the Throne could not prudently resist the deliberate resolutions of the Commons. The example of his royal predecessors proved that his honour was not involved. Rockingham and Shelburne alone could form a new administration, and they would not act with any of the present ministry, except Thurlow.1 Still North was forbidden to resign. Only on the eve of the 20th, to save him from the vote on Fox's motion, did the King accept his resignation.

Shelburne was sent for, and requested to form an administration "on a broad bottom". He declined, and, in accordance with a promise he had made to Grafton, suggested Rockingham. Rockingham and his terms the King, after a vain appeal to Lord Gower, was at last obliged to accept. But George would only negotiate with him through Shelburne, and insisted upon retaining Thurlow as Lord Chancellor. Rockingham's Cabinet consisted of five of his own party, including himself, and five of Shelburne's, besides one High Tory, Thurlow. Lord John Cavendish became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Keppel, First Lord of the Admiralty, Richmond, Master-General of the Ordnance, Camden, Lord President of the Council, Grafton, Privy Seal, Dunning, raised to the Peerage as Lord Ashburton, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Conway, Commander-in-Chief. Fox was appointed First Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and Shelburne Secretary of State for Home, Irish, and Colonial Affairs, the office of Third Secretary for the Colonies being now abolished. Barré, Thomas Townshend, Sheridan, Burke, and the Duke of Portland (Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) took office without seats in the Cabinet. No place was found for William Pitt, who refused to take an inferior office. "At last", wrote the King to Lord North," the fatal day has come",2 and he drafted a letter of abdication in favour of the Prince of Wales, stating that the change of sentiment in the House of Commons had "totally incapacitated him from either conducting the War with effect or from obtaining any peace but on conditions which would prove destructive to the commerce as well as the essential rights of the British Nation". George III may have been narrow-minded and obstinate, but he was faithful to the ideas of kingship and the interests of the Empire as he conceived them.

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In addition to the difficult problems presented by the military and naval situation, the new Government was confronted with the necessity of pacifying Ireland. For the quarrel with America had brought into prominence the religious and economic oppression under which Ireland laboured. When North had passed his conciliatory proposals to the Americans, he had been pressed to extend similar

CHBE I

1 North to George III, 18 March 1782.

2

27 March 1782, Corr. of Geo. III (ed. Fortescue), I, 154.

3 Facsimile in ibid. 1, 161 A.

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privileges to Ireland. Something had been done for the relief of Irish trade; but most of the contemplated measures had to be laid aside in deference to the protests of English merchants. Non-importation agreements, similar to those in America, had then been adopted in Ireland.

These problems were enough to tax the strength of the most united ministry. But the Whigs were not united, even on those points of parliamentary and economical reform on which they had conducted a lively agitation in the country, and which formed an essential part of their programme for regaining some of the power taken from them by the successful policy of the King. Outnumbered and outvoted by the Rockingham section, Shelburne remained in the confidence of the King, who appealed for his support when Rockingham proceeded with the reform of the Civil List and the Establishment bill.1 Fox and Shelburne, too, were soon at loggerheads, first over the settlement of Irish affairs, and then over the Contractors' bill, whilst Pitt's motion for parliamentary reform was rejected by a combination of Rockingham Whigs and North's old supporters. But the most pressing and most difficult problem was the negotiation of peace.

Satisfactory communications had already passed between Franklin and Shelburne.2 The Cabinet therefore decided to send Richard Oswald to open an informal negotiation. Oswald was a simple, straightforward Scottish man of business, whose one idea was to conclude peace and conciliate the Americans. He informed Franklin that the new ministry desired peace, but would not consent to humiliating terms from France (12 April). Franklin then introduced Oswald to Vergennes (17 April).

By the Treaty of Alliance the United States were pledged not to conclude a separate peace. Vergennes had already been perturbed by Franklin's omission to inform him of the first approaches made to him. Besides the interests of France he had also to consider the demands of Spain. Indeed, the objects of these strangely assorted allies were no more identical in making peace than they had been in waging war. The divergence of their aims profoundly influenced the course of the ensuing negotiations. Vergennes had not fought for American independence, but for vengeance on Great Britain. The main objects of the Spaniards had been to recapture Gibraltar and Minorca, and to deprive the British of East and West Florida and thus regain supremacy in the Gulf of Mexico. Flushed by the success of Saratoga, Congress in 1779 had ignored the protests of M. Gérard, the French envoy, and adopted, as the terms of peace, acknowledgment of independence before negotiations, and the Mississippi as their western boundary, with the navigation of that river to the

1 George III to Shelburne, 12 April 1782.

2 Franklin to Shelburne, 22 March.

* Franklin to Vergennes, 22 March.

NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE

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southern boundary of the States and a fort below it. They also claimed the rights they had enjoyed, as subjects of the British Empire, in the Newfoundland fishery. The increasing importance of French aid had enabled Gérard to induce Congress to abandon the claim to navigation of the Mississippi, after he had informed them that Spain intended to keep both the Floridas; that the territory on the east side of the Mississippi belonged to Great Britain; and that their own western boundary was the line to which settlements were permitted by the British Proclamation of 1763.1 His successor, La Luzerne, also obtained an alteration in the instructions of John Adams who, with Franklin, John Jay, and Henry Laurens, was appointed a commissioner "to treat and conclude peace". He was directed to undertake nothing in the negotiations "without the knowledge or concurrence of the French ministers". Independence was to be the sole ultimatum.

Not only was Spain determined to retain possession of the two Floridas, to which the success of her arms in that quarter seemed to entitle her, but she maintained that these territories extended even to the Great Lakes. She wished to keep the Mississippi Valley for herself, and as she had no desire to have republican neighbours upon her borders, preferred to leave the lands north-west of the Ohio in possession of Great Britain, and south-west of it to limit American expansion in the direction of the Mississippi by a definite boundary line. France, by the treaty, had bound herself not to recover any part of the continent then belonging to Great Britain. Still, the lands south of the Great Lakes and between the Mississippi and the Alleghanies might be regarded as Indian territory and not included in that category. Vergennes had no desire to establish the revolted colonies as a great rival Power. Politically, his object was to place France in the position of holding the balance between Great Britain, Spain and the United States. He was therefore prepared to support in some degree the Spanish claims. His intention was to assign the Floridas to Spain, but to treat the country between West Florida and the Cumberland River as Indian territory, placing it under the protection of Spain and the United States, and to recognise the country north of the Ohio as British, in accordance with the Quebec Act.3 Moreover, as presently appeared, he would not support the New England demand for fishing rights on the coast of Newfoundland, but intended to establish the exclusive right of the French to fish on certain portions of it, as claimed by them under the Treaties of Utrecht and Paris.

The proposals of France and Spain amounted to a restriction of the United States to the same strip of land on the Atlantic coast as

1

15 Feb. 1780. Cf. Jay, John, Life of John Jay, I, 124 seqq.

2 Wharton, Amer. Dipl. Corr. VI, 23.

a Life of John Jay, 1, 144, II, 476.

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