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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 345: EXECUTION OF TREATIES, ETC.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

EXECUTION OF TREATIES, ETC.

The greatest difficulty in the way of the settlement of the definitive treaties arose from Holland. On the 2nd of September, however, through the influence of France, Holland acceded to preliminaries of peace, by which all conquests on both sides were to be restored, except the town of Negapatam, in the East Indies, which was to remain in the possession of Great Britain. On the next day the definitive treaties with France, Spain, and America were signed, and that under the auspices of the men who had condemned the articles in toto. Soon after Mr. Adams arrived in London as ambassador from the United States. On his first audience at St. James’s, the king received Mr. Adams with much courtesy and kindness. He remarked to him:—“I was the last man in the kingdom, sir, to consent to the independence of America; but, now it is granted, I shall be the last man in the world to sanction its violation.” It is said that Adams retired from the monarch’s presence with altered sentiments as to his real character; and when at a later period Jay came into contact with the king, he was obliged to confess that in his representations of George III. in the American manifestoes and revolutionary documents, which had been chiefly written by him, he had overcharged the picture. Instead of being an unfeeling and savage tyrant, thirsting for the blood of his subjects, as he had set forth, he found that his majesty possessed many virtues, and that he was beloved by his subjects.