DOCUMENTS BEAKING ON TEEATY OF 1783. 195 



disturbances; I know not what parts of the Empire this country 

 might, in that case, have thought proper to disunite, but if tired of 

 colonisation, she had relinquished the fertile banks of the Ohio, the 

 paradise of America, it must have been to have rendered more secure 

 the safety of those persons,, for whom she was so deeply interested. 

 If this appears to any one right to have been done, let us see what has 

 been done? 



When the minds of the people of England were hardly brought 

 to bear the idea of establishing the American independency, but 

 when the progressive disasters of the war made it seem to be una- 

 voidable, a thunder-cloud breaks upon us on a sudden, and we are 

 told that a tract of country, equal almost to a third of Europe, is 

 added to that which we were in some measure prepared to lose. All 

 Canada is in fact lost to Great-Britain. All the country, from the 

 Alegany Mountains to the Mississippi lost. All the forts, settle- 

 ments, carrying places, towns, inhabitants upon the lakes, lost. The 

 peltry and fur trade lost. Twenty-five nations of Indians made over 

 to the United States, together with the three principal forts of 

 Niagara, Michilimakinac, and Detroit, which last, I understand, has 

 10,000 inhabitants around it. All opportunity of procuring masts, 

 (at least by any thing that appears) from Penobscot-bay, &c. and 

 all this without the smallest apparent advantage resulting to Great 

 Britain in return for these amazing concessions; not even that soli- 

 tary stipulation which our honour should have made us insist upon, 

 and have demanded with unshaken firmness, a place of refuge for 

 those miserable persons before alluded to, some port, some haven, 

 for those shattered barks to have been laid up in quiet. . . . 



But we keep the navigation of the Mississippi ! And so we might 

 say that we keep that of the Rhone or the Rhine. We are not pos- 

 sessed for 3,000 miles of a single acre of its shores ; and West Florida, 

 where the Mississippi meets the sea, is by the treaty in the 

 118 hands of the Spaniards. To what sort of understandings is 

 this fallacy addressed, or for what description of rational be- 

 ings is this delusion calculated ? . . . . 



After a summary recapitulation of his arguments, the noble Earl 

 moved his amendment, by which the original motion ran thus : " To 

 return our thanks to His Majesty for the communication of the pre- 

 liminary articles of peace, and for having put a stop to the calamities 

 of war, by a peace, which being concluded, we must consider as bind- 

 ing, and not to be infringed without a violation of the national faith. 

 To assure His Majesty that we feel, in the strongest manner, the 

 obligation of affording every relief, that can alleviate the distresses 

 of those deserving subjects, who have exposed their lives and fortunes 

 for the support of Great Britain; and at the same time, we cannot 

 help lamenting the necessity, which bids us subscribe to articles, 

 which, considering the relative situation of the belligerent Powers, 

 we must regard as inadequate to our just expectations, and derogatory 

 to the honour and dignity of Great Britain. 



******* 



Lord Walsingham .... 



To the boundaries established by the provisional articles he had 

 four objections, 1. That thereby the Province of Canada was ren- 

 dered insecure ; 2. That the fur trade was by this means totally and 

 absolutely lost ; 3. That several hundred millions of acres of territory 



