PRELIMINARIES OF PEACE.
It was a prevailing opinion that negociations with France, Spain, and Holland would yet fail, and that a general peace was yet a distant event.
Nevertheless, during the recess, negociations came to a pacific conclusion. Preliminary articles of peace were signed at Versailles on the 20th of January; and the arrangements of the whole were as follow:—Great Britain acknowledged the thirteen United States as free, sovereign, and independent States, with advantageous boundaries, comprehending the countries on both sides of the Ohio, and on the east of the Mississippi. The right of fishing on the banks of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence was also granted to the Americans. The right of navigation on the Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, was declared common to both powers. In the treaty, the loyalists were merely recommended to congress; but it was agreed that no new confiscations or persecutions were to take place. The right of fishing on the coast of Newfoundland, from Cape St. John on the east, round the north of the island to Cape Bay on the west, was likewise ceded to France. That power also obtained the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon and St. Lucie and Tobago in the West Indies; Senegal and Goree in Africa; Pondicherry, with other districts in the East Indies, were in part restored, and in part ceded, to France. The article of the peace of Utrecht, relative to the fortifications of Dunkirk, were moreover abrogated. On her part, France restored to Great Britain the islands of Grenada and the Grenadines, St. Vincent, Dominica, St. Christopher’s, Nevis, and Montserrat. In Africa, she likewise ceded the possession of Fort James and the River Gambia. Spain obtained the island of Minorca and the two Floridas, as the price of her exertions; but she gave up Providence and the Bahama islands to Great Britain: his catholic majesty, also, guaranteed to English subjects the right of cutting logwood in the bay of Honduras. Holland agreed to a truce, with the understanding that there should be a mutual restoration of conquests between her and Great Britain; but the exact terms of pacification were not yet arranged.