SHELBURNE AND PEACE WITH AMERICA

by Peter J. Marshall Professor Emeritus of History, Kings College London

I feel honoured but also very conscious of my inadequacies in talking about Lord Shelburne to a seminar in the Clements Library. In the first place, this library is the great centre for Shelburne studies. It holds a very important part of his archive and for long Arlene Shy used to dispense her unrivalled knowledge of Shelburne and his papers to grateful readers. Members of the present staff still do that. What can I say that might be new or interesting about him in such a place? Beyond that, I feel honoured but also inadequate to be addressing a seminar of Atlantic historians, members of that triumphant army whose pronouncements have established the agenda for early modern British and American history. To propose to talk to them about a British politician and Anglo-American relations is to invite their disdain. Professor Bailyn has accepted that there is a place for 'a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of Atlantic politics' in Atlantic history; but, for him politics is 'a mass of intricate connections throughout the Atlantic world'. The politics of British policy-making is by contrast distinctly old hat.1 It is also an approach to the Revolution and its aftermath that I suspect does not find much favour with Atlantic historians. It takes Britain and America out of their wider Atlantic context and even out of the context of the long continuities that continued to bind Britain and America across the Atlantic, such as trade, migration and the diffusion of metropolitan
1 Atlantic History: Concepts and Contours (Cambridge, MA, 2005), p. 49.

cultural values. Viewed in this way, the transition from a nominal subjection to an ineffective imperial authority to what was at first a very uncertain independence may not seem to be any great matter. Indeed it may not be, but my current research is directed to testing it, to trying to assess the nature of the disruption on Britain in particular. The first step in this project, which is as far as I have got with anything in a state to be reported, must be to try to establish the terms on which this disruption came about. The person who set the terms on the British side was undoubtedly Lord Shelburne. Hence this very old fashioned paper, for which I can only crave the indulgence of Atlanticists. I would like to begin with a few generalisations about the British political elite who were confronted with what they regarded as the problem of America. Most of them were becoming increasingly aware of the scale of the colonies' contribution to Britain's wealth and power, especially as a consequence of the Seven Years War, and this awareness was leading to a concern about the weakness of imperial structures and a determination to try to strengthen authority over the colonies, above all by invoking the sovereignty of parliament. While they valued the colonies and wished them well, few of them had any sense of transatlantic social and political realities or any depth of understanding of the peoples over whom they wished to exert greater control. Their vision was hardly an Atlantic one. The colonies were valued as an important asset in maintaining Britain's status as a great power and that was measured by her standing in Europe. American colonies were a means to European greatness; they were not an end in themselves. Eighteenth-century British historiography has been marked by something of a counter-attack 2

against imperial or blue-water interpretations of the British view of the world. Marie Peters, for instance, concludes a recent essay on 'Early Hanoverian Consciousness: Empire or Europe?' with a call 'to recognise not only the increasingly global reach of British commerce and empire' -- a view with which people who have spent much of their lives working on British India are inclined to concur 'but above all the other and more striking face of Britain as a European power the end to which empire was a means'.2 Brendan Simms tries to make a similar case in his substantial Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714-1783. He begins his book with the proposition that 'the history of eighteenth-century Britain was in Europe', not in America or Asia, and feels it necessary politely to correct Dan Baugh, Nicholas Rodger and what he calls a 'confection' of 'imperial or Atlantic' historians, a category in which he does me the honour of bracketing me with David Armitage and Kathleen Wilson.3 I must disclaim this honour, however, partly because of my unworthiness to appear in such company and partly because I think he misunderstands me: I actually think he has a case, though he overstates it. Many years ago in a most illuminating essay entitled 'Thomas Pownall, Henry Ellis and the Spectrum of Possibilities, 1763-1775', John Shy argued that there were no hawks or doves, friends or enemies of America in British political circles. Certain propositions about the colonies' relations with Britain were held to be axiomatic across the whole British political spectrum. These included that Americans must accept a share of imperial burdens and must recognise the sovereignty of parliament. There were no significant dissenters who might have
2 English Historical Review, CXXII (2007), 632-68. 3 (London, 2007), pp. 1, 3.

plotted alternative courses that did not lead to civil war.4 Subsequent scholarship, notably the authoritative three-volume study of British politics and America by Peter Thomas, seems to confirm the lack of any significant alternatives to the common assumption across the political elite.5 Old attitudes persisted after American independence. There was as little depth of engagement in British political circles with the United States in the years after 1783 as there had been with the thirteen colonies. The common assumptions were that the new Republican state constitutions were recipes for turbulence and instability and that the Confederation could not possible hold together. Further negotiation would be pointless. Britain would lay down the terms of future relations unilaterally. Restrictions were imposed on American trade with the surviving British colonies and the northern forts were retained until America fulfilled her obligations under the Treaty. America now featured very little in public debate. In asking Silas Deane for information about the new federal constitution in 1788, Lord Sheffield commented: 'That country is no longer an object of the least attention or even curiosity among Englishmen and not a man is to be met who troubles himself with the subject.'6 Were there significant exceptions among Britain's political leadership: men who troubled themselves about America both before and after independence, cultivated leading Americans and could envisage policies that differed from the inflexible consensus? Was Lord Shelburne such a person? Some Americans certainly thought so. Shelburne seems to have to have developed close relations with Americans in Britain during his period as
4 In A. G. Olson and R. M. Brown eds., Anglo-American Political Relations, 1675-1775 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1970), pp. 155-86. 5 British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis (Oxford, 1975); The Townshend Duties Crisis (1987); Tea Party to Independence (1991). 6 Letter of 26 Sept 1788, 'The Deane Papers', Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, XXIII (1930).

Secretary of State for the Southern Department from 1766 to 1768. One of the connections that he formed then was to prove remarkably enduring: that was with Arthur Lee. Lee saw himself as a member of what he called 'the College', the group of intellectuals, including Joseph Priestley and Richard Price, which met at Bowood, Shelburne's country estate, or in his London house at Berkeley Square to advise Shelburne. During the war Lee continued to assure Shelburne of his 'perfect esteem' for him.7 With the ending of the war, he professed his happiness to resume correspondence with 'a nobleman I so much respect and esteem' and to whom he thought that both Britain and America were deeply indebted for the peace.8 Richard Henry Lee had never met Shelburne, but believed that he was 'adored in this country'.9Franklin's relations with Shelburne began in 1763 and developed much further during his period as Secretary of State. He too became a regular visitor to Bowood. The connection seems to have lapsed during the war, but Franklin invoked his 'ancient respect for your talents and virtue' at the beginning of the peace negotiations in March 1782.10 Not all Americans who encountered Shelburne were beguiled by him. Arthur Lee's brother, William, in 1774 called Shelburne 'as wicked a man in politics as any in the nation' and, repeating a common term of abuse, 'a complete Jesuit'.11 When Shelburne returned to office in 1782, he sought out an understandably very embittered Henry Laurens, who had been taken off a captured ship and confined in the Tower. He lectured him on the future of
7 Letter of 18 Dec. 1776, J. C. Ballogh ed., The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, 2 vols. (New York, 1914), II. 128. 8 Letter of 23 July 1783, M. A. Giunta ed., The Emerging Nation: A Documentary History of the Foreign Relations of the United States under the Articles of Confederation 1780-1789, 3 vols. (Washington, DC, 1989), I. 896. 9 Letter to [A. Lee], 19 May 1769, Ballogh, ed., Letters of Richard Henry Lee, I. 35. 10 Letter of 22 March 1782, J. C. Labaree et.al., eds. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 1959-), XXXVII. 26. 11 To R. H. Lee, 10 Sept. 1784, W. C. Ford, ed., Letters of William Lee, 3 vols. (New York, 1891), I. 94

Anglo-American relations. Laurens found this hard to bear. In his view Shelburne was a man with an entirely justified reputation for 'duplicity and dissimulation' and an 'overweening opinion', both of his own abilities and of his influence in the United States, which Laurens thought was non-existent. In as far as he could understand them, he found Shelburne's ideas completely unrealistic.12 He recounted an exchange in which 'His Lordship, said that 'he regreted the independence of the United States for the sake, he said, of the inhabitants he was sure they would not be so happy without us as with the connexion with Great Britain'. Laurens was moved to reply that they had 'conducted their affairs with tolerable success' for the last eight years.13 In the later years of the war, when, as his mentor Chatham had done, Shelburne had insisted that there could be no acceptance of American independence, his reputation with Americans sank to a low ebb. Few welcomed his return as Secretary of State in March 1782 and even fewer his accession to be the King's chief minister in July. It was commonly supposed that this represented a counter-attack by the King against the supposed willingness of the majority of the Rockingham ministry to accept immediate American independence. In the later stages of the negotiations, however, opinions changed. Shelburne seemed to be offering America independence with very favourable terms on issues of great importance to them, such as the western lands, the limits of Canada and access to the fisheries. John Jay, who fed him ideas about Anglo-American cooperation against Spain on the Mississippi, through the official British negotiator, Richard Oswald, and through an
12 Letters to Franklin, 24 June 1782, Labaree ed., Franklin Papers, XXXVII, 526; to Price, 3 Aug. 1782, D. O. Thomas, ed., The Correspondence of Richard Price, 3 vols (Cardiff and Durham, NC, 1783-94 ), II. 177; to Lafayette, 6 Aug. 1782, P. M. Hamer, ed., Papers of Henry Laurens, 16 vols. (Columbia, SC, 1963-2003), XV. 548. 13 Laurens's Journal, 31 March 1782, Hamer, ed., Papers of Laurens, XV. 399-400.

unofficial channel, Benjamin Vaughan, found him particularly responsive. 14 After the peace had been concluded, Jay was invited to Bowood on a visit to Britain. Three years later Jay wrote effusively to the now Marquis of Lansdowne about his 'large and liberal views and principles' and about how he had tried to make a peace that would have reduced the Revolution to having been no more than 'an exchange of dependence for friendship'.15 With the hardening of British policy after the peace, nearly all Americans came to think well of Shelburne. Even the deeply sceptical John Adams concluded that 'Shelburne and his set would have gone through well'.16 In retrospect, Americans came to believe that that they had been exceptionally fortunate in having Lord Shelburne to make peace with them. If the height of wisdom in Anglo-American relations is for the British to give the Americans what they want, then Shelburne in 1782 or Tony Blair in 2003, can hardly be faulted. Given the weakness of Britain's position throughout the crisis of the Revolution, with no effective structure of civil government able to enforce imperial policies and no realistic prospect that military coercion would be successful, generous concession was not necessarily an abject policy. Yet this was almost certainly not the outcome that Shelburne would have wished. In his trenchant condemnation of war against America, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, published in 1776, Richard Price inserted a passage paying high tribute to Shelburne. As Secretary of State from 1766 to 1768, he wrote, Shelburne had possessed the 'confidence' of the colonies, but 'without ever compromising the confidence of this country; a
14 Oswald to T. Townshend, 2 Oct. 1782, WLCL, Shelburne MSS. 70, pp. 255-8; Jay to R. Livingston, 17 Nov. 1782, Giunta, ed., Emerging Nation, I. 669-70. 15 Letter of 20 April 1786, BL, Bowood MSS, 37, ff. 69-70. 16 Letter to A. Lee, 12 April 1783, R. H. Lee, ed., Life of Arthur Lee, 2 vols. (Boston, 1829), II. 248.

confidence which discovered itself by peace among themselves and duty and submission to the mother-country'.17 Price was very close to Shelburne and this is likely to have been a realistic assessment of Shelburne's aims in dealings with America. All ministers of course wished for the 'duty and submission' of the colonies and also professed a desire to govern with their confidence, but Shelburne took unusually serious steps, according to his lights, to cultivate that confidence. In 1767 Shelburne had sponsored a plan for new colonies in the west. Vincent Harlow, for whom Shelburne was an exception among his contemporaries with a clear and original vision for the future of the British empire, saw this as a piece of 'imaginative realism' aimed at associating 'the interests of the mother country and the colonies in a common purpose'.18 Whatever its other merits, this scheme was likely to endear Shelburne to those Americans, like Arthur Lee and Benjamin Franklin, who had a more than platonic interest in western land. What his American well-wishers may not have known is that he was well to the fore in proposing draconian measures to the Cabinet in 1767 to coerce colonial recalcitrance: if colonies would not pay for quarters he thought that troops might be billeted in private houses and he suggested that refusal to obey an act of parliament might be made 'high treason'.19 There was to be rigorously enforced 'duty and submission' as well as 'confidence'. War was for Shelburne far too high a price to pay to enforce duty and submission. Even so, throughout the war he resolutely opposed any formal recognition of American independence. He began to coin the phrase, so often to be quoted against him, that Britain's sun would set with the loss of America.
17 8th edn. (London, 1778), p. 1 18 The Founding of the Second British Empire 1763-1793, 2 vols. (London, 1952-64), I. 193. 19 Thomas, Stamp Act and British Politics, pp. 306, 309.

In 1778 he propounded his alternative to offering America independence. Fighting must stop, all American grievances must be met and their rights must be guaranteed for the future. Then he was sure that, although the activists in Congress might hold out, 'the bulk of the people ... would be easily brought to a reconciliation' and would 'come back to an alliance with this country'.20 When he resumed office in 1782, Shelburne was to try to put such a policy into effect. The eventual outcome of huge gains conceded to America without any compensating concession of continuing links with Britain was not at all what he had intended. Nevertheless, when he had to defend the terms of the peace in the House of Lords on 17 February 1783 and when he came to reflect on them later, he could invest them with high principles. Against accusations that he had surrendered to the Americans access to the Newfoundland fisheries and the western territory on which a very extensive British fur trade depended, he had argued in the Lords that territorial empires with exclusive restrictions were now becoming irrelevant.21 'All Europe' seemed anxious to throw off 'the vile shackles of oppressive and ignorant monopoly'. As the greatest manufacturing and commercial nation Britain must be in the van of free trade. We should not seek to confine America's trade. We should treat them with generosity. 'Indeed, to speak properly it is not generosity to them but oeconomy to ourselves.'22 Their prosperity would be our gain. In his notes, he used a phrase much associated with him by later historians. The Mississippi should be opened 'for the purposes of trade not dominion'.23 In a letter of 1787 to Arthur Lee he told
20 Speech of 8 April 1778, Parliamentary History, XIX. 1033-56. See also version of the speech in B. Vaughan to B. Franklin, 28 April 1778, Labaree, ed., Papers of Franklin, XXVI. 368-9. 21 Except where indicated, Shelburne's speech is taken from the version in Parliamentary History, XXIII. 404-19. 22 Morning Post, 20 Feb. 1783. 23 WLCL Shelburne MSS, 87:222.

him that he hoped that 'the principles of the peace' would in 'a very few years, ... prove the foundation of a lasting and firm union with America which will do honour to mankind. I need not say that by this I do not mean a legislative union; in truth not so much an alliance, as a similarity of principle which may embrace all nations and contribute to the happiness of all'. 24 Harlow believed that his desire to bring about 'an intimate association' with 'a young nation in the making, whose power and weight in world affairs was certain to be of continental proportions' was the principle underlying the peace of 1783 for Shelburne.25 This is surely an Atlanticist vision. Setting aside the Atlanticist dimension for the moment, whether the peace that finally emerged embodied any coherent vision must be open to question. In general terms Shelburne was determined to above all to break the Franco-American alliance, eliminating French influence and bringing America back into some sort of amicable connection with Britain. He began with ambitious hopes about the form that this connection might take but was forced to accept less and less. With the fall of the North administration in March 1782, Shelburne evidently saw the chance of bringing about the kind of reconciliation that he had outlined in his speech in 1778. He shared the common delusion of all British politicians who had opposed the war that American hostility to Britain would collapse as soon as they realised that their friends were in power. The Americans would immediately abandon their, to the British, unnatural and inexplicable alliance with France and return to the British fold. To the American leadership, however, the new British ministers were not so much their friends
24 Lee, ed., Life of Arthur Lee, II. 358. 25 Second British Empire, II. 440.

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as potential enemies of a different kind to be treated with extreme caution. Washington carefully read the reports of the parliamentary debates on the fall of North. He thought the ideas expressed in them were 'delusory'. He found no 'idea of American independence on its true principles', but instead 'an idea of reconnecting us to the British nation and dissolving our connection with France is too prevalent'.26 This was absurdly nave. David Ramsay astutely observed that many people in Britain saw themselves as 'freinds to America' but that none of them were friends to an independent America still allied to France. He incidentally considered Shelburne 'so double a character'.
27

Another delusion

of self-styled British friends of America, that Shelburne shared to the full, was that Americans could be made to see the error of their ways and be brought to recognise that their Republican experiments were doomed to failure and that acceptance of something like the British constitution was the only way forward for them. Shelburne told Henry Laurens that 'The constitution of Great Britain is sufficient to pervade the whole world'.28 He was reported to have told the House of Lords that he would welcome an opportunity to appear before Congress in person in order to persuade them that 'if their independence was signed, their liberties were gone for ever'. He thought that there were 'great numbers' in America who saw 'ruin and independence linked together'.29 So fixated was he on the hopes expressed in 1778 that the mass of Americans were only waiting for an opportunity to turn against their leaders and to reunite with Britain, that the British commanders in New York were instructed to try to
26 Letter to G. Clinton, 7 May 1782, J. C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington, 39 vols. (Washington DC, 1931-44), XXIV. 228. 27 Letter to J. Eliot, 2 Jan. 1783, P. H. Smith ed., Letters of Delegates to Congress 1774-1789, 26 vols. (Washington, DC, 1976-2000), XIX. 532. 28 H. Laurens to J. Bourdieu, 10 Aug. 1782, WLCL, Shelburne MSS, 35, f. 55, cited in Harlow, Second British Empire. I. 267. 29 Version of speech of 10 July 1782 in A Letter to the Earl of Shelburne, new edn. (London, 1791), pp. 7-9.

11

make direct contact with American opinion to spread the news of the good intentions of the new ministry. Americans should contrast their present 'dependence' on France with 'British union and all the advantages resulting from returning affection and confidence'.30 These manoeuvres seem to have had no effect, beyond arousing yet further suspicion of Shelburne's intentions in American political circles. It was becoming clear that Americans were not likely to accept anything short of unqualified independence, nor were they at the moment at all inclined to make any peace separate from their French allies. If progress was to be made, it could only be by formal opening negotiations with the agent empowered by Congress, that is with Franklin in Paris. Franklin initiated contact on 22 March with his old acquaintance Shelburne, who had become Secretary of State for home and colonial affairs. Shelburne chose as his emissary to deal with Franklin Richard Oswald, an elderly merchant entirely without diplomatic experience, but long engaged on a very large scale in American trade and with many American friends. He was said to be the 'most intimate and respected friend' that Henry Laurens, who Shelburne had found so recalcitrant, 'had in the world'.31 Oswald's conduct of his mission came to be much criticised by contemporaries for being far too conciliatory to the Americans. Eventually even Shelburne turned against him. He was to be pilloried in the press as a traitor to Britain. Most historians have also been critical of him.32 Shelburne's choice of

30 Instructions to G. Carleton, 4 April 1782, K. G. Davies, ed., Documents of the American Revolution 1770-1783, 21 vols. (Shannon, 1972-81), XXI. 54. 31 B. Vaughan to J. Monroe, 18 Sept. 1795, R. B. Morris, ed., John Jay: The Winning of the Peace (New York, 1980), p. 346. 32 For a fair and authoritative assessment, see C. R. Ritcheson, 'Britain's Peacemakers 1782-1783: To an Astonishing Degree Unfit for the Task? in R. Hoffman and P. J. Albert, eds., Peace and the Peacemakers: The Treaty of 1783 (Charlottesville, 1986), pp. 70-100. See Aalso David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community 1735-1785 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 390-5.

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Oswald seems, however, to be a clear indication that he still seriously underestimated the difficulties in reaching a settlement with the Americans. As Harlow put it, he was 'slow to accept that he was engaged in a diplomatic contest and not in a cooperative effort to heal a family breach'.33 The Americans were to be coaxed back into some kind of association with Britain. The appointment of Oswald, who was, Shelburne told Franklin, 'a pacifical man' was a gesture of goodwill to achieve a quick reconciliation. 34 From that point of view, as David has pointed out, Oswald was a logical choice. Shelburne hoped that the Americans would reciprocate to such gestures. Oswald was later to tell Franklin that he wished to deal with him not only as a personal friend but 'as a friend to England'. He assured him that Shelburne 'had the greatest confidence in his good intentions towards our country'.35 In office again from March 1782 Shelburne began to moderate his total hostility to American independence. On 10 July he told the House of Lords that he ready to yield to the 'fatal necessity'.36 He insisted, however, that Britain should not concede independence without securing substantial undertakings from America in return. Americans supposed that he was looking for something like the legislative independence extracted by Ireland. The term he used was a 'federal union', which, he recognised, was almost certainly unattainable in a political if not a commercial sense.37 He evidently hoped that the Americans would offer 'spontaneous measures to be gone upon in return for the spontaneous measures of England',38 but in his instructions to Oswald he set
33 34 35 36 37 38 Second British Empire, I. 246. Letter of 6 April 1782, Giunta ed., The Emerging Nation, I. 328-9. Oswald to Shelburne, 8 July WLCL Shelburne MSS, 70, p. 33. Parliamentary Register, VIII. 366. WLCL, Shelburne MSS, 71, p. 25 B. Vaughan to Shelburne, 2 Aug. 1782, BL, Bowood MSS, 19, f. 67.

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out his own terms for a settlement that would 'avoid all future risque of enmity, and lay the foundation of a new connection better adapted to the present temper and interest of the countries'.39 The 'indisputable condition of our acknowledging their independence' that the Americans must meet was that they were truly independent in the sense of being free from any binding commitment to France. The French alliance must be wound up. Close commercial relations to replace the old colonial system was a prime objective. The Americans should agree to 'free trade, unencumbered with duties, to every part of America'. Shelburne also hoped to retain other 'tyes which are consonant to our mutual relations, habits, language and nature', including an 'unreserved system of naturalization'. Finally, Oswald was repeatedly told to ensure that British creditors with debts outstanding from before the war and American loyalists to the British cause who had suffered confiscations of their property were properly compensated.40 Shelburne's insistence that Americans could not expect to win independence without giving something in return of course followed logically from his desire to preserve some sort of connection with the former colonies. There were also, however, domestic political calculations behind it. British public opinion in 1782 was strongly anti-American. There was no appetite for continued war on the American mainland; those who were willing to support further campaigns insisted that they must be at sea and in the West Indies against France and Spain. Yet while most people accepted that American independence was now inevitable, gratuitous and unrequited concessions to America were quite another matter. Thomas Orde, one of Shelburne's closest
39 Letter to R. Oswald, 27 July 1782, WLCL, Shelburne MSS, 71, pp. 65-6. 40 Oswald's instructions of April 1782 are Lord Fitzmaurice, Life of William Earl of Shelburne, 2nd edn. , 2 vols (London, 1912), II. 127-8; those of July are in TNA, FO 97/157, ff. 49-52.

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aides, heard from 'several persons of weight in the City and having connections of interest in the country that a great alarm is taken at the supposed concessions made by this country'. Such people could accept that peace could not be obtained without recognising American independence, but they 'cannot endure the idea of a voluntary, unconditional and possibly inconsequential dereliction of that bond, by which we maintain some controlling influence over the full exertion of American power, or at least reserved some claim of dignity to our government which might be made use of to our national pride'. Orde believed that Shelburne's policy of no independence without concessions by the Americans was 'wholly consonant to the ideas and wishes of those who form a great and most essential majority in this country'.41 'Common sense' told the King that if Britain conceded unconditional independence at the outset, she would have nothing left with which to bargain 'for what we want from thence'.42 He warned Shelburne that independence must have a 'price set on it which alone would make the kingdom consent to it'. Rodney's recent victory over the French fleet had pushed that price up.43 In the event the Americans got their independence without formal conditions. The British could, however, be sure that the most important of Shelburne's terms, separation of America from France, would be met. As Franco-American relations deteriorated, with John Jay taking the lead, the Americans indicated that were independence to be conceded, they were eager to make peace without their ally. The British Cabinet therefore authorised their envoy to agree to their unconditional independence. Shelburne came to see
41 Letter of 26 Sept. 1782, BL Bowood MSS, 42 Letter of 11 July 1782, J. Fortescue, ed., The Correspondence of King George III, 6 vols. (London, 1927-8), VI. 81. 43 Letter of 1 July 1782, , ibid., VI. 70.

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the parting of France and America as his supreme achievement.44 Such claims riled some Americans, but it can certainly be argued that the generosity of what he was offering gave the Americans in Paris every incentive to break away from a connection with a power whose motives they had increasingly come to mistrust. Shelburne had less success with his other conditions. A clause in favour of British creditors was inserted in the treaty which achieved its purpose of buying off the creditors' opposition to the peace,45 but which was to take an inordinate time to be implemented and to lead to much ill feeling. The settling of the terms for future commercial relations between Britain and America was shelved for later negotiations, which fell victim to Shelburne's loss of power. Had he stayed in office, it was apparently Shelburne's intention to appoint an ambassador of high rank to the United States in order to conclude the commercial treaty. He had Charles Howard, Earl of Surrey in mind.46Common naturalization was never enacted. A clause that 'an Englishman in America should be considered in all matters of commerce as an American, and an American in England the same as an Englishman' was shelved for the commercial settlement.47 John Adams was, however, assured that the British wished to make 'no distinction between their people and ours, especially between the inhabitants of Canada and Nova Scotia and us'.48 Provisions inserted in the treaty for the loyalists were, with good reason as events were to show, dismissed as virtually meaningless by Shelburne's critics. In his defence of the treaty, Shelburne insisted that generosity towards the
44 Letter to A. Lee, 4 Feb. 1787, Lee, ed., Life of Arthur Lee, II. 358-9. 45 According to Oswald, 'they were pretty well, if not perfectly satisfied', Answers to Objections to the Peace, 6 Feb. 1783, TNA, 30/8/343, f. 33. 46 Surrey to Shelburne, 16 Dec. 1782, BL, Bowood MSS, 47, f. 80. 47 Oswald's Answers, 6 Feb. 1783, TNA, PRO 30/8/343, f. 35. 48 Letter to R. Livingston, 17 July 1783, C. F. Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. (Boston, 1850-6), VIII. 106.

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Americans would remove all causes of future disputes. It failed in this purpose. Disputes about some of its provisions were to damage Anglo-American relations for many years to come. Franklin did not respond to Shelburne's hints that he might propose terms for some sort of future Anglo-American connection, but he did lay down certain specific American requirements that must be met. These were presented to Oswald on 10 July. 'Independence full and complete in every sense' inevitably came top of the list. There must be a settlement of boundaries with the remaining British colonies. In particular, the huge additions of western lands claimed by some American colonies that had been bestowed on Canada by the 1774 Quebec Act must be relinquished. Americans were to have 'a freedom of fishing on the banks of Newfoundland, and elsewhere'. Presumably without much expectation of success, Franklin added some 'adviseable' articles. The British ought to pay reparations for the damage their forces had done, parliament should in some way acknowledge its errors in 'distressing those countries as much as we had done' and the whole of Canada was to be given up. A commercial settlement was left to the advisable articles.49 Oswald could not foresee any obstacles to conceding the essential articles and he advocated closing on them quickly. Shelburne and his ministerial colleagues also seem at first to have had no real difficulties with them either, once the great question of the terms of independence had been settled. As late as 1 September 1782 Oswald was authorised to 'go to the full extent' of the rest of the articles.50 Within a few weeks, however, ministers came to appreciate that too much was being given to the Americans and that concessions, especially on the Canadian
49 R. Oswald to Shelburne, 10 July 1782, Giunta, ed., Emerging Nation, I. 462 50 T. Townshend to R. Oswald, 1 Sept. 1782, WLC, Shelburne MSS, 87:89.

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boundaries and access to the fisheries together with the failure so far to extract anything for the debtors and the loyalists would produce a peace that would be politically disastrous for the government, since it would go against public expectations and incur the wrath of several powerful lobbies. Defeated in America, the loyalists had played their cards in Britain with considerable skill and had become a formidable lobby. They had mounted a very vigorous press campaign, depicting the persecution that they had already suffered and were likely to suffer when New York was evacuated in dramatic terms and appealing to the honour of the British nation to secure them redress. Even though opponents of the war had usually denounced the loyalists as traitors to the American cause and malign incendiaries to Anglo-American understanding, all shades of political opinion now accepted the obligation. Shelburne warned Oswald that if ministers failed to obtain provision for them, 'the nation would rise to do itself justice and to recover its wounded honour'.51 The fixing of boundaries and the loyalist question were linked. If the Americans would not restore loyalist property, Shelburne urged that the territory of Canada and Nova Scotia should be extended to provide lands for them. As Franklin put it, 'They wished to bring their boundary down to the Ohio and to settle their loyalists in the Illinois country. We did not chuse such neighbours'.52 An alternative was that a fund should be created out of the sale of western lands reserved to the Crown in the Proclamation of 1763 and still, Shelburne argued, its property to dispose of as it wished. What Shelburne seems not have anticipated was that a truncated Canadian boundary would enrage another vocal lobby, the British merchants trading in Canadian furs. In their vociferous
51 Letter of 21 Nov. 1782, 52 Letter to R. R. Livingston, 5 [-14] Dec. 1782, Labaree, ed., Franklin Papers, XXXVIII. 413.

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press campaigns they alleged that the fur trade 'must be totally destroyed' and that Canada would be rendered valueless and might just as well have been renounced totally.53 They made the most of what they represented as the geographical ignorance of the ministers who seemed, when they called on them to protest, to be unaware of the significance of what they had done. American creditors with committees in London and Glasgow were another formidable lobby. So too were the West Country fishing concerns. They saw no reason to perpetuate to the New England fishermen, once they had chosen to leave the empire, the advantage given them by their proximity of being first off Newfoundland and therefore first to the southern European markets. Any implied weakening of the British long-distance fishing industry, the famed nursery of seamen for the navy, could have very damaging political resonances. It was commonly asserted that free access to the fisheries would lay the basis for an American navy to challenge Britain.55 In making peace, Shelburne faced opposition from within his Cabinet, which he seems to have consulted as little as he could, and he was deeply apprehensive as to how a peace that seemed to be making too many concessions would fare in parliament, where particular lobbies would be well represented, or be received by a public which was not generally well disposed to the Americans. He was by no means sure of a majority at the best of time in the House of Commons. He was also losing the battle for the press or seemed hardly to be fighting it at all. A volunteer to his cause warned him that his enemies boasted that 'they will write your Lordship down before the meeting of parliament, and have already set their emissaries to work to represent you in
53 Morning Chronicle, 3 Feb. 1783. 54 E. g., 'Y. Z. W.' in Public Advertiser, 13 Feb. 1783. 55 e. g. 'Piscator' in Public Advertiser, 12 Feb. 1783
54

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an unfavourable light, in, nearly every one of the news-papers'. Since 'ninetenths of the people of all ranks form their ideas of ministers and measures from the public prints', he urged counter measures.56 To stop his support eroding further, Shelburne decided that a tougher line must now be taken with the Americans. Oswald was reprimanded for being conciliatory to the point of anticipating the Americans' wishes.57 Public 'clamour' would 'scarcely be to be withstood' and 'the expectations of the cabinet, and the still greater expectations without doors' be assuaged unless Oswald and the colleague that he was now to be given clawed back significant parts of what was being conceded.58 The colleague was Henry Strachey, Under Secretary in the Home Office and a skilled and unyielding negotiator, as the Americans soon came to realise. He and Oswald had to get good terms for the creditors, extended boundaries for Canada and Nova Scotia, proper compensation for the creditors and the loyalists and some limitations on American access to the fisheries.59 Time was, however, becoming crucial. Shelburne recognised that it was going to be difficult enough to get a concluded peace through parliament, but if negotiations were still going on while parliament was in session the situation would be impossible. The strength of 'interests and passions supported by party and different mercantile interests' would mean that 'no negotiation can advance with credit to those employ'd or any reasonable prospect for the publick'.60 Shelburne was therefore determined

56 R. Tomlinson to Shelburne, 20 July 1782, BL, Bowood MSS, B. 40, f. 49. On the weakness of the government's press management see J. Norris, Shelburne and Reform, p. 253. For evidence of activity on Shelburne's behalf, see J. Jackman of the Morning Post to Shelburne 28 Sept. 1782, BL, Bowood MSS, B. 37, ff. 59-60. 57 Letter of 21 Oct. 1782, WLCL, Shelburne MSS, 71, pp. 153-4. 58 Letter of 23 Oct. 1782, ibid., pp. 323-4.. 59 Instructions to Strachey and Notes, 20 Oct. 1782, WLCL, Shelburne MSS, 87: 205, Giunta ed., Emerging Nation, I. 619. 60 Shelburne to A. Fitzherbert, 21 Oct. 1782, WLCL, Shelburne MSS, 71, p. 300.

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to have an agreed peace with the Americans and with Britain's main European opponents by the time parliament reconvened. It followed that while Strachey and Oswald must push as hard as they could to improve the terms in the last resort they would have to yield rather than risk a total breakdown of the negotiations. In a weak position, Strachey felt that they had done as well or even better than could have been expected. The creditors were given the prospect of repayment. Congress was to recommend to the states that compensation be given to the loyalists and some adjustments were made to the Canadian and Nova Scotia boundary. The fisheries terms remained substantially the same, John Adams telling Oswald that America would fight on if need be without France rather than accepting any exclusion from the fisheries.61 The peace was defeated in the House of Commons and Shelburne resigned. Whether the terms of the American peace were decisive in his defeat remains unproven. The vote was on the treaties with France and Spain as well as with America and in any case the realignment of parliamentary forces that produced the Fox-North Coalition and thus sealed Shelburne's fate had already taken place. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that the American terms were widely unpopular. Most of the parliamentary discussion was on the peace with America and much of it was critical. Most press coverage was unremittingly hostile to the American terms. Some indication of how a wider public may have responded was conveyed by the story of George Byng, MP for the popular constituency of Middlesex, that he was frequently accosted in the street by people exclaiming 'Good God, Mr Byng, what a peace you have

61 Oswald to Strachey, 9 Jan. 1783, TNA, FO 97/157, f. 254.

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made'. Byng agreed that too much had been given away62 Shelburne seems to have believed that he had been beaten on the American terms, although it was said that he 'retains all his old American sentiments and repents of nothing'. 63 The peace had indeed been generous to the Americans. Shelburne had initially hoped that generosity would be reciprocated. His generosity had certainly precipitated the break-up of a Franco-American alliance that had outrun its usefulness to the Americans. Otherwise, he had little concrete to show a British audience in return for his concessions. When he began to realise how much damage unrequited generosity was doing him politically, he tried with too little time to revoke some of what was being given away. Ultimately, Shelburne had neither been able to bring about the the reunion with the United States that he had so ardently desired nor to impose terms on them that the British political public could regard as an adequate defence of British interests and of British honour. He had seriously underestimated both the absolute American determination for a Republican independence without any association with Britain. As Tom Paine pointed out, assumptions that Americans were still British at heart were mistaken. A new generation had grown up in America 'who know nothing of Britain but as a barbarous enemy'.64 Shelburne had also underestimated until it was too late the strong tide of resentment against America in Britain itself. Nevertheless, if Shelburne's misapprehensions about both America and Britain meant that the final terms of the peace embodied contradictory aims rather than a coherent vision of Anglo-American relations, he certainly had an overall objective: this was to conciliate America within a close connection with
62 Report of the Middlesex Meeting, 5 March 1783, Parker's General Advertiser, 6 March 1783. 63 B. Vaughan to J. Adams, 11 March 1783, Adams, ed., Works of Adams, VIII. 47. 64 'Letter to the Abb Raynal' in M. D. Conway, ed., The Writings of Thomas Paine, 4 vols., (London, 1906), II. 119.

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Britain. In the last resort, if substance could not be put to any such connection, he would still conciliate. To an unusual degree, he recognised the future potential of America. He had no forebodings about America's territorial expansion and the spectacular growth of her population. He continued to cultivate individual Americans, as he had done before the Revolution, and his eldest son went on a tour of North America. All this was unusual in a British politician. Even proven friends of America, such as Edmund Burke, whose great speeches were a marvellous imaginative engagement with late colonial America, or Charles Fox, seem to have lost interest in the United States. John Adams found that they behaved towards him as ambassador with the 'same dry decency and cold civility' as other members of the British political elite. 65 Did this recognition of American potential constitute an Atlanticist vision of the world? It is often argued that main legacy for Britain of the War of American Independence was in fact to turn Britain politically back to Europe in belated recognition that she could not bid the world defiance without a European ally. Some historians interpret Shelburne's peace settlement as marking this turn back to Europe. Hamish Scott in his excellent British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution argued that for contemporaries the European peace was far more important than the American one. In Scott's view, Shelburne was very concerned at the great shift in the European balance of power that had been demonstrated by the cooperation of Austria, Prussia and Russia in the partition of Poland and the cutting back of the Ottoman Empire. Britain and France must stop fighting one another at sea and combine against the threat from the East. He hoped for a deep and lasting Anglo-French

65 Letter to J. Jay, 14 Feb. 1788, Adams, ed., Works of John Adams, VIII. 475.

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rapprochement. The American sideshow must therefore be brought to an end as quickly as possible.66 Andrew Stockley's more recent Britain and France at the Birth of America: The European Powers and the Peace Negotiations of 17823 elaborates the same theme: the 'overwhelming importance', as he puts it, 'for both Britain and France of European as opposed to American or imperial considerations'.67 Brendan Simms concludes his book with the assertion, not worked out at all, that Britain had surrendered 'a whole continent' in order 'to maintain the European balance'.68 Does this mean that Shelburne was no different from the other British statesmen of the later eighteenth century for whom America was merely a means to European ends. Up to a point, yes. No British politician who seriously aspired to hold office, could doubt that Britain's role as a great power depended on her standing in Europe. Nor, it seems, did Shelburne doubt this. The wealth generated by American trade was a major prop of the naval and military resources that enabled Britain to protect her interests in Europe, but dominion in America could not be an end in itself. I doubt whether Shelburne differed in this respect, but he did envisage America not just as an asset from which wealth could be extracted, but as a potential ally, albeit a subordinate one whose future development Britain should try nurture . Whether this is an Atlanticist view, I leave it to Atlantic historians to determine. With all its misconceptions, the intolerable assumptions of superiority that so riled Laurens and the ignorance about America (William Knox and the Canada merchants thought that Shelburne's geographical knowledge of North America was very flawed), it still seems to me to be as close to an Atlanticist view as any major British political figure was to attain.
66 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 329-31. 67 (Exeter, 2001), p. 9. 68 Three Victories and a Defeat, p. 661.

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