business to be now brought forward related to a general peace, it was consequently in the department of Fox, and he was accordingly directed to announce another agent "to regulate the circumstantials," and that this agent was not himself, but Mr. Thomas Grenville. The same information was also communicated to Vergennes. Several conversations followed on the 6th of May and the following days, between Oswald, Franklin, and the French minister, but nothing of importance passed; indeed Oswald was so reticent that Franklin wondered at his having been sent back to Paris, especially as Mr. Grenville was so soon to follow.[1]
On the 8th of May Mr. Grenville arrived, and the following day, at a meeting with Franklin and Vergennes, intimated that if England granted independence to America she would expect France to restore the conquered English islands, with the exception of Miquelon and St. Pierre on the coast of Newfoundland. As the original object of the war was the independence of America, it was supposed in England, he said, that France would be contented with the concession of it. To this Vergennes demurred. "As to our being satisfied," he said, "with the original object of the war, look back to the conduct of your nation in former wars. In the last war, for example, what was the object? It was the disputed right to some waste lands on the Ohio, and the frontier of Nova Scotia; did you content yourselves with the recovery of those lands? No, you retained at the peace all Canada, all Louisiana, all Florida, Grenada, and other West India Islands, and the greater part of the Northern fisheries; with all your conquests in Africa and the East Indies."
The French minister then reiterated his intentions of only negotiating conjointly with America, and altogether declined to look upon the independence of the latter country as a cession or favour to France, or as in any manner to be considered as the valuable consideration given by England for a favourable treaty to France; on that subject England must negotiate with America
- ↑ Diary of Franklin, May 1782. Works, xiii. 486.
