THE CAUSES OF THE RUPTURE WITH SPAIN.
Although the opposition were correct in their conjectures as to a final war with Spain, ministers were by no means so blind as represented by them. It had, indeed, required all the family influence of the greater branch of the House of Bourbon, and all the activity and skill of French negotiators to lead Charles III. into this new and unprovoked contest. The Spanish monarch remembered how much he had suffered from his last short war with England; he was alarmed also for the tranquillity of his own colonies, if encouraged by the example of successful rebellion; and he moreover shrunk from the unkingly action of fomenting insurrection and allying himself with rebels. These were barriers which the King of France and his negotiators had to break down before they could procure the Spanish monarch’s aid in their designs. And in this they encountered a great difficulty. Charles III. assured Lord Grantham, that he knew nothing of the treaty between France and America until it was concluded; and his prime-minister, Count Florida Blanca, declared that he considered the independence of America as no less injurious to Spain than to Great Britain. Many overtures, he afterwards confessed, had been made, but his monarch had uniformly rejected the instances of France to acknowledge the independence of the United States. Subsequently, however, Charles III. was led to believe that revolution might flourish in North America without reaching the south; that the final hour of the British supremacy at sea, and consequently of the British empire was at hand; and that the united House of Bourborn would then have little else to do than to reach forth their hands and divide the spoils. The Spanish monarch then, with these visionary hopes in view, altered his line of conduct. On the first breaking out of a war with France he pretended great anxiety for maintaining his treaties with Great Britain, and expressed a compassionate interest for his brother the King of England, and his utter abhorrence of the proceedings of congress against so just and good a prince. He tendered his services as a mediator, and when it was hinted that the King of England could not submit a quarrel between him and his own subjects to another prince, he expressed his readiness to mediate in the French part of the quarrel alone, and to reconcile the differences existing between the courts of St. James’s and Versailles. To this latter proposal it was replied, that it was inconsistent with national honour to admit the interference of a third power, till the views of France were known; and then Charles expressed his readiness to open the negociation himself, so as to spare both parties the humiliation of making the first step towards a peace. He suggested, that each government should transmit its conditions to Madrid, and that he should be allowed to draw from both a plan for the conclusion of a treaty. To this the British ministers assented, and the conditions they sent were comprised in this one article—that, assuming the right of England to treat with her own colonies independently of foreign intervention, as an unquestionable principle, if France would cease her interference, and withdraw her troops from America, they would readily concur in establishing the harmony which had subsisted for fifteen years between the two crowns. On the other hand, the French ministers required that England should withdraw her forces from America; that she should acknowledge the independence of the United States; and that the French court should be granted the power of bringing forward additional demands for amending and explaining treaties. Such demands as these could not be conceded, and then the King of Spain offered these three different proposals of his own, as proper to produce a pacification—namely, that there should either be a truce between England and the colonies for twenty-five years, during which a peace might be negociated, and the separate articles in dispute with France amicably adjusted; or that there should be a truce with France, including the colonies; or that there should be an indefinite truce both with the colonies and with France, to determine only after a year’s notice, during which plenipotentiaries of England, France, and America might form a congress at Madrid, with Spain as a fourth party. This latter convention was to be signed by the American agents at Paris, subject to the approval of congress, which France was to pledge herself should be obtained, and in the meantime the colonies were to enjoy freedom of trade and independence, and the British forces were to be either withdrawn from America, or greatly reduced. The British ministers replied, that any such plan seemed to proceed on every principle which had been disclaimed, and to contain every term which had been rejected; and they declared, that if compelled to grant such extreme conditions, it would be more consistent with the dignity of the British nation to grant them directly to America, without the intervention of any foreign power. Before this final reply reached Madrid, however, the Spanish monarch threw off the mask, and ordered his ambassador to quit London, leaving the manifesto behind him as a justification of war. This manifesto contained nearly one hundred grievances; and not the least of these was, that Great Britain had insulted Spain by rejecting her mediation—a mediation which was evidently commenced with the one design of inducing a rupture between the two nations.