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of Messrs. Oswald and Vaughan's concessions. * As stated by an American diplomatist, he "had been sent Criticisms on from England for the purpose of stiffening the easy Mr. Strachey.nature of Mr. Oswald, but he only succeeded in infusing into the Conferences all the asperity which they ever betrayed." ↑ A late equally Anglo-phobe writer declares that, “Mr. Strachey appeared in Paris as the exponent of English arrogance, insolence, and general offensiveness."‡ But his contemporaries were more just: "Mr. Strachey won an acknowledgment from both sides for his persistent energy and skill. Adams said of him, 'He presses every point as far as it can possibly go. He is a most eager, earnest, and pointed spirit.' And Mr. Oswald, in writing to Mr. Secretary Townshend, said, 'He enforced our pretensions by every argument that reason, justice and humanity, could suggest." §

Mr. Strachey was too late! Had he sounded the But he was French Minister, whose policy respecting the United too late. States he must have known, he might, perhaps, have learned that Congress had withdrawn the claims to the fisheries, and the Mississippi boundaries, as ultimata; and that M. de Vergennes was ready to use the supervisory influence which Congress had given France, for the purpose of making the American plenipotentiaries more conciliatory. Against him, however, Messrs. were the betrayals of Cabinet secrets to the Ameri-Oswald and

Vaughan had disclosed

* " Vaughan, regretting the interposition of Strachey, undertook Cabinet sec

for a second time to represent the American views to the British Ministry." Adams's Works, v. 3, p. 312.

+ Life of John Adams, by J. Q. & C. F. Adams, v. 3, p. 39.

‡ Morse's John Adams, American Statesmen Series (1890), p. 218.

§ Winsor's America, v. 7, p. 139.

Ibid, p. 141.

rets.

can Commissioners by Messrs. Oswald and Vaughan; And approved their oft-given approval of the cession of Canada and

of the cession of Canada.

Nova Scotia; the consent of the British Ministry to a confinement of the Canadian limits to a small strip of territory along the St. Lawrence River, and the cession of the remainder to the United States. * He failed, therefore, to reverse Mr. Oswald's cession of the fertile agricultural territory of southern Canada south of the Great Lakes, and in the valley of the Ohio and Mississippi. He also failed to have the Nova Scotia boundary commence at the Penobscot River, but he recovered the territory between the St. John and St. Croix Rivers, making the latter, where it flows into Passamaquoddy Bay, the Atlantic starting point. And,

He gained a under imperative instructions from the Foreign Office, slight change he regained the portion of the Canadian (now southern in boundaries. Ontario) territory between Mr. Oswald's Lake Nipissing and Mississippi line and the lakes; and he accepted the present river and lake boundary.t

British Commissioners unaware of

cation of claims to Canadian shore fisheries.

Neither Mr. Oswald, nor Mr. Strachey, appears to have been aware of the conditional modification of the

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U. S. modifi- claims respecting the fisheries as an ultimatum; nor that Congress had directed their Commissioners to claim the right to take fish on the banks of Newfoundland and other fisheries in the American seas anywhere, excepting within the distance of three leagues

* MS. Despatch, the Foreign Secretary to Oswald, Whitehall, Ist September, 1782.

+ One of the alternative boundary lines proposed was to continue on the 45th degree of north latitude from the point where it crossed the Connecticut River, and thence west to where it would strike the River Mississippi. MS. Despatch, Strachey to the Foreign Secretary, November, 1782. For the Draft Treaty proposing this 45° latitude boundary, see Sparks's Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution, v. 10, p. 95.

without

off the shores of the territory remaining to Great Britain at the close of the war, if a nearer distance Conceded cannot be obtained by negotiation." * But, apparently Canadian in ignorance of these facts, all Canadian in-shore fishery reciprocal right to rights were conceded, without even the suggestion - American much less the demand-of a reciprocal concession to eries. Canadians to take fish in American in-shore waters.

shore fish

account of

What took place over the fishery clauses of the American Treaty has been dramatically related by Mr. Adams's the discussion

biographer:

over the fishery clauses.

"Mr. Strachey proposed that the word 'right' in this connection should be changed to 'liberty.' Mr. Fitzherbert sustained the movement by remarking that 'right' was an obnoxious expression. The suggestion seems to have fired Mr. Adams, and immediately he burst into an overwhelming defence of the term he had chosen. He rose, and, with the concentrated Suppression power which he possessed when excited, declared that modified when first commissioned as a negotiator with Great policy of Congress. Britain, his country had ordered him to make no peace without a clear acknowledgment of the right of the fishery, and by that direction he would stand. No preliminaries should have his signature without it. And here he appealed with some adroitness to Mr. Laurens, who had been President of the Congress when the first commission was given. Mr. Laurens readily responded to the call, and seconded the proposition with characteristic warmth. And Mr. Jay virtually threw his weight into the scale." +

of the

*Secret Journals of Congress, v. 3, p. 231. See also the report of the Committee of Congress, 8th January, 1782.

+ Life of Adams, v. 2, p. 44. "The fact seems to be that John Adams was determined to get the use of these fisheries, regardless of

"The stroke proved decisive."

Mr. Jay's dmission.

Sarcastic
letter of the
French
Minister.

The biographer of Mr. Adams thereupon paraphrases the sinister maxim "the end justifies the means," by telling us that "the stroke proved decisive;" but he apologizes by adding: "The act was the assumption of another prodigious responsibility." * And so it was; for the American Commissioners well knew that the earlier policy of Congress as set out in their first commission had been modified, and that the ultimatum respecting the Canadian fisheries, which they asserted with such indignant fervour, had been practically withdrawn. And Mr. Jay confirms this by recording: "Had I not violated the instructions of Congress, their dignity would have been in the dust." +

When the terms of the preliminary Treaty of Independence became known, the French Government at once demanded an explanation from the American Minister. "I am at a loss," sarcastically wrote M. de Vergennes to Dr. Franklin, " to explain your conduct, and that of your colleagues. You have concluded your preliminary articles without communicating with us, although Congress prescribed that nothing should be done without the concurrence of the King. You are wise and discreet, Sir! You perfectly understand what is due to propriety; you have all your life performed duties. I pray you to consider how you propose to fulfil those which are due to the King."

He

his instructions." Snow's Treaties and Topics in American Diploтасу, р. 430.

* Life of Adams, v. 2, p. 45.

+ Life of Jay, v. 2, p. 105.

+ Dr. Franklin apologized, and admitted that the French Minister's observations were just : " we have been guilty of neglecting a point of bienséance: we hope it will be excused," and that the great work would not be ruined by a single indiscretion of ours." M. de Vergennes accepted the apology. Mr. Secretary Livingston also expressed his personal disapproval of the acts of the Commissioners, adding: "It gives me pain that the character for candor and fidelity to its engagements, which should characterize a great people, should have been impeached." 25th March, 1783.

American

breach of

also instructed the French Minister at Philadelphia to inform the American Secretary of State that the American Commissioners had deceived him, and had Charges the been guilty of a gross breach of faith. And in writing Commissionto M. de Rayneval, he said: "The English have ers with bought a peace, not made one. Their concessions have faith. exceeded anything we believed possible." And the Surprise at French representative to the United States reported Canadian to M. de Vergennes, that the cession of the western territory. Canadian territory to the sources of the Mississippi, had surpassed all expectations, for it gave the Americans four forts that they had found it impossible to capture. *

cession of

The closing letters of Mr. Strachey to the Foreign Mr. Strachey's private Office, give a blunt Englishman's opinion of a specialty letters on he discovered in American diplomacy. In reporting American diplomacy. to his chief, he said, "The Treaty must be re-written in London in regular form, which we had not time to do in Paris, and several expressions, being too loose, should be tightened. These Americans are the greatest quibblers I ever knew." ↑ Later on he wrote to a colleague: "The Treaty signed and sealed is now sent. I shall set off to-morrow, hoping to arrive on Wednesday, if I am alive. God forbid if I should ever have a hand in such another Peace." +

* Winsor's America, v. 7, p. 158, note 5.

+ MS. Letter, Strachey to the Foreign Secretary, Calais, 8th November, 1782.

MS. Letter, Strachey to the Foreign Office, Paris, 30th November, 1782.

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