declared that this demand would be fatal to the whole negotiation.[1] The fear of Pitt was ever present in the English Cabinet, and the cession of Florida or Porto Rico was accordingly insisted upon, and the former obtained without the difficulties anticipated by Bedford. In America, France ceded to England the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, everything in fact for which she had contended in the last war, only retaining some very strictly limited rights of fishery off Newfoundland and in the gulf of St. Lawrence.
In the East Indies, France only recovered the possessions she had had on the 1st January, 1749. In the West Indies, England retained Tobago, Dominica, St. Vincent, and Grenada, and, in Africa, Senegal. In Europe the works of Dunkirk were to be again demolishe; Belleisle was given up by England in exchange for Minorca, while both England and France withdrew from the German war, and the French restored the German territories of the English King as well as those of Hesse, Cleves, and Gueldres. Such were the preliminaries of peace which Granville, the greatest authority on foreign politics in England, pronounced on his death-bed to be "glorious and most honourable,"[2] though if Bute had had his way some important advantages would have been lost. Nor was the Treaty that betrayal of Prussia which it is sometimes represented to have been, for the withdrawal of France from Germany more than compensated that of England. Prussia besides was no longer at the time the victim of the great coalition, Russia and Sweden having already made peace with her during the year.
But though thus far successful, Bute was aware that he was only at the beginning of his task. The preliminaries were to be laid before Parliament, and it was necessary to have a leader in the House of Commons better able than Grenville to defend them against the attacks to which they were sure to be exposed. Bute hoping to induce Fox to
