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