The Critical Period of American History. Fiske John

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СКАЧАТЬ the purport of the treaty should be, while our not too friendly ally was kept in the dark. The annals of modern diplomacy have afforded few stranger spectacles. With the indispensable aid of France we had just got the better of England in fight, and now we proceeded amicably to divide territory and commercial privileges with the enemy, and to make arrangements in which the ally was virtually ignored. It ceases to be a paradox, however, when we remember that with the change of government in England some essential conditions of the case were changed. The England against which we had fought was the hostile England of Lord North; the England with which we were now dealing was the friendly England of Shelburne and Pitt. For the moment, the English race, on both sides of the Atlantic, was united in its main purpose and divided only by questions of detail, while the rival colonizing power, which sought to work in a direction contrary to the general interests of English-speaking people, was in great measure disregarded.

      The separate American treaty, as agreed upon:

       1. Boundaries;

      As soon as the problem was thus virtually reduced to a negotiation between the American commissioners and Lord Shelburne's ministry, the air was cleared in a moment. The principal questions had already been discussed between Franklin and Oswald. Independence being first acknowledged, the question of boundaries came up for settlement. England had little interest in regaining the territory between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, the forts in which were already held by American soldiers, and she relinquished all claim upon it. The Mississippi River thus became the dividing line between the United States and the Spanish possessions, and its navigation was made free alike to British and American ships. Franklin's suggestion of a cession of Canada and Nova Scotia was abandoned without discussion. It was agreed that the boundary line should start at the mouth of the river St. Croix, and, running to a point near Lake Madawaska in the highlands separating the Atlantic watershed from that of the St. Lawrence, should follow these highlands to the head of the Connecticut River, and then descend the middle of the river to the forty-fifth parallel, thence running westward and through the centre of the water communications of the Great Lakes to the Lake of the Woods, thence to the source of the Mississippi, which was supposed to be west of this lake. This line was marked in red ink by Oswald on one of Mitchell's maps of North America, to serve as a memorandum establishing the precise meaning of the words used in the description. It ought to have been accurately fixed in its details by surveys made upon the spot; but no commissioners were appointed for this purpose. The language relating to the northeastern portion of the boundary contained some inaccuracies which were revealed by later surveys, and the map used by Oswald was lost. Hence a further question arose between Great Britain and the United States, which was finally settled by the Ashburton treaty in 1842.

      2. Fisheries; commercial intercourse;

      The Americans retained the right of catching fish on the banks of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but lost the right of drying their fish on the Newfoundland coast. On the other hand, no permission was given to British subjects to fish on the coasts of the United States. As regarded commercial intercourse, Jay sought to establish complete reciprocal freedom between the two countries, and a clause was proposed to the effect that "all British merchants and merchant ships, on the one hand, shall enjoy in the United States, and in all places belonging to them, the same protection and commercial privileges, and be liable only to the same charges and duties as their own merchants and merchant ships; and, on the other hand, the merchants and merchant ships of the United States shall enjoy in all places belonging to his Britannic Majesty the same protection and commercial privileges, and be liable only to the same charges and duties as British merchants and merchant ships, saving always to the chartered trading companies of Great Britain such exclusive use and trade, and the respective ports and establishments, as neither the other subjects of Great Britain nor any the most favoured nation participate in." Unfortunately for both countries, this liberal provision was rejected on the ground that the ministry had no authority to interfere with the Navigation Act.

      3. Private debts;

      Only two questions were now left to be disposed of,—the question of paying private debts, and that of compensating the American loyalists for the loss of property and general rough treatment which they had suffered. There were many old debts outstanding from American to British merchants. These had been for the most part incurred before 1775, and while many honest debtors, impoverished during the war, felt unable to pay, there were doubtless many others who were ready to take advantage of circumstances and refuse the payment which they were perfectly able to make. It was scarcely creditable to us that any such question should have arisen. Franklin, indeed, argued that these debts were more than fully offset by damages done to private property by British soldiers: as, for example, in the wanton raids on the coasts of Connecticut and Virginia in 1779, or in Prevost's buccaneering march against Charleston. To cite these atrocities, however, as a reason for the non-payment of debts legitimately owed to innocent merchants in London and Glasgow was to argue as if two wrongs could make a right. The strong sense of John Adams struck at once to the root of the matter. He declared "he had no notion of cheating anybody. The questions of paying debts and compensating Tories were two." This terse statement carried the day, and it was finally decided that all private debts on either side, whether incurred before or after 1775, remained still binding, and must be discharged at their full value in sterling money.

      4. Compensation of loyalists.

      The last question of all was the one most difficult to settle. There were many loyalists in the United States who had sacrificed everything in the support of the British cause, and it was unquestionably the duty of the British government to make every possible effort to insure them against further injury, and, if practicable, to make good their losses already incurred. From Virginia and the New England states, where they were few in number, they had mostly fled, and their estates had been confiscated. In New York and South Carolina, where they remained in great numbers, they were still waging a desultory war with the patriots, which far exceeded in cruelty and bitterness the struggle between the regular armies. In many cases they had, at the solicitation of the British government, joined the invading army, and been organized into companies and regiments. The regular troops defeated at King's Mountain, and those whom Arnold took with him to Virginia, were nearly all American loyalists. Lord Shelburne felt that it would be wrong to abandon these unfortunate men to the vengeance of their fellow countrymen, and he insisted that the treaty should contain an amnesty clause providing for the restoration of the Tories to their civil rights, with compensation for their confiscated property. However disagreeable such a course might seem to the victorious Americans, there were many precedents for it in European history. It had indeed come to be customary at the close of civil wars, and the effect of such a policy had invariably been good. Cromwell, in his hour of triumph, inflicted no disabilities upon his political enemies; and when Charles II. was restored to the throne the healing effect of the amnesty act then passed was so great that historians sometimes ask what in the world had become of that Puritan party which a moment before had seemed supreme in the land. At the close of the war of the Spanish Succession, the rebellious people of Catalonia were indemnified for their losses, at the request of England, and with a similar good effect. In view of such European precedents, Vergennes agreed with Shelburne as to the propriety of securing compensation and further immunity for the Tories in America. John Adams insinuated that the French minister took this course because he foresaw that the presence of the Tories in the United States would keep the people perpetually divided into a French party and an English party; but such a suspicion was quite uncalled for. There is no reason to suppose that in this instance Vergennes had anything at heart but the interests of humanity and justice.

      On the other hand, the Americans brought forward very strong reasons why the Tories should not be indemnified by Congress. First, as Franklin urged, many of them had, by their misrepresentations to the British government, helped to stir up the disputes which led to the war; and as they had made their bed, so they must lie in it. Secondly, such of them as had been concerned in burning and plundering defenceless villages, and wielding the tomahawk in concert with bloodthirsty Indians, deserved no compassion. It was rather for them to make compensation for the misery СКАЧАТЬ