DOCUMENTS BEAEING ON TREATY OF 1183. 199 



We had abandoned them to the fury, the enmity, and the revenge of 

 their countrymen. It was a most impolitic as well as a most dishon- 

 ourable conduct. Faith, truth, justice, all that was sacred amongst 

 men and nations, must disdain and reprobate it; it would be a stain 

 on our character as a people to the latest posterity ; and must, if there 

 was nothing else offensive and disadvantageous in the present peace, 

 stamp it as the most ignominious of any that this country in the very 

 lowest circumstances concluded. He must declare that he could not 

 give his consent to an address in which they were called upon to 

 return thanks for a treaty stamped with such disgraceful condi- 

 tions as he had enumerated; and he should therefore vote for the 



amendment. 

 120 IjordHawke . . . 



With respect to the fur trade, he stated that the great object 

 of the peace was a reconciliation with America; that the House of 

 Commons last year had laid down the arms of the nation ; that they 

 had made a peacti necessary, by declaring the man an enemy to his 

 country who should take up arms against America : it was therefore, 

 said he, the duty of ministers to effect a reconciliation on such 

 grounds as would prevent another war. He reminded their Lord- 

 ships of the proclamation in 1763, which narrowed the boundaries 

 of Canada still more, and excluded the Utawa country : he stated the 

 disputes between the French and the colonies, previous to the war of 

 1756: he asserted that the best furs were to the north of the lakes; 

 and asked whether a monopoly of the fur trade was an object when it 

 not only might create another war, but would certainly alienate those 

 affections which we had purchased with the price of independence ? 

 * * * * * * * 



[Viscount Townshend spoke strongly against the desertion of the 

 loyalists.] 



******* 



Viscount Stormont .... 



There was, prefixed to the articles of peace between England and 

 America, a very pompous preamble, setting forth that those treaties 

 were the best observed in which were reciprocal advantages. He was 

 a long time at a loss to understand the meaning of those words " re- 

 ciprocal advantages." But at last he discovered that they meant only 

 the advantage of America. For in return for the manifold conces- 

 sions on our part, not one had been made on theirs. In truth, the 

 American commissioners had enriched the English dictionary with 

 several new terms and phrases; reciprocal advantages, for instance, 

 meant the advantage of one of the parties ; and a regulation of bound- 

 aries meant a cession of territory. 



His Lordship then took a view of our concessions on Newfoundland, 

 the ceded Islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, which being fortified, 

 will command the entrance of the River of St. Lawrence. The liberty 

 accorded to the Americans to settle in Nova Scotia; the cession of 

 Penobscot, a nursery of masts; the giving up of all that was impor- 

 tant or valuable in Canada; the Floridas, important for their situa- 

 tion, and agreeable in respect of climate and soil We might as well 

 have ceded all Canada to them, as to have drawn such a line of sep- 

 aration; for all the forts which commanded the lakes were in their 

 hands, and we were wholly defenceless and at their mercy, in our 



