SHELBURNE AND PEACE WITH AMERICA

by

Peter J. Marshall

Professor Emeritus of History, King’s 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

1 Atlantic History: Concepts and Contours (Cambridge, MA, 2005), p. 49.

1

diffusion of metropolitan 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

2

British historiography has been marked by something of a counter-attack

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

2 English Historical Review , CXXII (2007), 632-68.3 (London, 2007), pp. 1, 3.

3

recognise the sovereignty of parliament. There were no significant dissenters

who might have 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?

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).

4

Some Americans certainly thought so. Shelburne seems to have to have

developed close relations with Americans in Britain during his period as

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

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

5

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

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

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.

6

fed him ideas about Anglo-American cooperation against Spain on the

Mississippi, through the official British negotiator, Richard Oswald, and

through an 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

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.

7

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 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

17 8th edn. (London, 1778), p. 118 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.

8

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. 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

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.

9

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 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

23 WLCL Shelburne MSS, 87:222.24 Lee, ed., Life of Arthur Lee, II. 358.25 Second British Empire , II. 440.

10

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 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 naïve. 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

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

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 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

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.

12

pilloried in the press as a traitor to Britain. Most historians have also been

critical of him.32 Shelburne's choice of 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

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.

33 Second British Empire , I. 246.34 Letter of 6 April 1782, Giunta ed., The Emerging Nation, I. 328-9.35 Oswald to Shelburne, 8 July WLCL Shelburne MSS, 70, p. 33.36 Parliamentary Register , VIII. 366.

13

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 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

37 WLCL, Shelburne MSS, 71, p. 2538 B. Vaughan to Shelburne, 2 Aug. 1782, BL, Bowood MSS, 19, f. 67.39 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.

14

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

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

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.

15

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 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

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.

16

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 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

48 Letter to R. Livingston, 17 July 1783, C. F. Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. (Boston, 1850-6), VIII. 106.

49 R. Oswald to Shelburne, 10 July 1782, Giunta, ed., Emerging Nation, I. 462

17

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 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

50 T. Townshend to R. Oswald, 1 Sept. 1782, WLC, Shelburne MSS, 87:89.51 Letter of 21 Nov. 1782,52 Letter to R. R. Livingston, 5 [-14] Dec. 1782, Labaree, ed., Franklin Papers, XXXVIII. 413.

18

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 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. 54 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

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

19

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 an unfavourable light, in, nearly every one of the news-papers'. Since 'nine-

tenths 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

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.

20

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 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

60 Shelburne to A. Fitzherbert, 21 Oct. 1782, WLCL, Shelburne MSS, 71, p. 300.61 Oswald to Strachey, 9 Jan. 1783, TNA, FO 97/157, f. 254.

21

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 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

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 Abbé Raynal' in M. D. Conway, ed., The Writings of Thomas Paine, 4 vols., (London, 1906), II. 119.

22

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

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

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

23

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 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 1782-3 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 .

66 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 329-31.67 (Exeter, 2001), p. 9.68 Three Victories and a Defeat , p. 661.

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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.

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