The King would derogate from his rights of sovereignty, should he consent in any manner to the admission of any person whatever, delegated to the Congress by his rebel subjects; this admission being absolutely incompatible with their quality of subjects. For the same reason, conciliatory measures employed to put an end to a rebellion, ought not to be intermixed, either in their commencement or in their conclusion, with a negotiation between sovereign States.
In consequence of the same principle, his Majesty can never enter into any engagements, nor adopt any plan, which may limit or suspend the incontestible right, which every Sovereign has, to employ all the means in his power to terminate a rebellion kindled in his dominions, either by the progress of his arms, or by conciliatory means employed in the country itself. If, instead of taking advantage of the present disposition of a great part of his rebellious subjects to return to their allegiance, he was to stop the effect and progress of that disposition by stipulating a suspension of arms, he would retard the instant of that reconciliation, which he wishes so much to hasten, and would furnish the leaders of the rebels with the means of fostering and strengthening their rebellion, and oppressing the well-affected by the weight of their usurped authority; he would put it in the power of his enemies to prolong the troubles, if he made the return of peace in America to depend on the success of a negotiation with a belligerent power, a negotiation which it would always be in their power to render fruitless.
The favorable intentions of the King towards his rebellious subjects, and his desire to make them experience the effects of his clemency, and restore to them the happiness, which they enjoyed before their rebellion, are generally known, but whatever may be the arrangements, which his Majesty will make to restore and ensure the quiet of his Colonies, and link the happiness of his American subjects to that of the metropolis, they will be in their nature as all things are, which are merely national, arrangements of internal policy, and as such, they cannot properly be the object of the mediation or guarantee of any foreign power. When the King availed himself of the dispositions of the two Imperial Courts and employed their mediation, his Majesty gave it plainly to be understood, that he aimed at the restoration of peace between the belligerent powers, to which alone it appeared to him that a mediation could be applied. Persisting invariably in the same sentiments, the King wishes that the mediation, at the same time that it confines itself to this particular object, may comprehend it in its full extent, and that the war between Great Britain and the Republic of Holland may be included in it.
If the negotiation is opened, agreeably to these principles, and directed solely to this salutary end, if the other belligerent powers bring to it the same conciliatory spirit which his Majesty will show, the generous care of the mediating powers will meet with a success the most complete, and the most conformable to their views.
No. 4.
Reply of the Mediators to the Belligerent Powers.
Translation.
The Courts of Versailles and Madrid having transmitted to the two Imperial Courts their respective answers[4] to the Articles proposed to serve as a basis to the negotiation, which had been communicated to them, as the Court of London had done on the 15th of June last, the two Imperial Courts think, that they must not delay to communicate their reply reciprocally to the three respective Courts, as necessary to their mutual direction, and they have directed in consequence their Ambassadors and Ministers with the said Courts, to present copies of them to their respective Ministers.
Their Imperial Majesties have seen with the greatest satisfaction, in that which was transmitted to them by his Most Christian Majesty, the assurance of the grateful sentiments and real pleasure, with which his Majesty has received the said Articles, but they could not but be so much the more affected by the exposition of the motives, which have appeared to his Britannic Majesty sufficient to prevent his acceptation of them. It appears convenient to them in the actual state of things to refer to another time, and other circumstances the observations, which they might produce, and which it would probably be useless to expose in the present moment, but what cannot be so either at present or in future, is that the belligerent powers may see in their proper light the Articles, which have been proposed to them, and may in consequence appreciate them properly.
The mediating powers could not allow themselves to make any propositions, which might wound the dignity or delicacy of either of the parties, or any of those, which might in the first instant have obliged them implicitly or explicitly to decisions, which can only be the result of a consent obtained by the way of negotiations. They must consequently have confined themselves to seeking and finding out some proper means to enable the belligerent powers to assemble their respective Plenipotentiaries, at the place where the Congress shall sit, to endeavor, under the mediation of the two Imperial Courts, to settle amicably all the differences, which are the causes of the present war, and when once they have met, and are provided with instructions for all possible cases, to be continually at hand, to seize one of those happy moments, which circumstances sometimes bring on, and which are often lost forever, or at least for a great while, when one has not been at hand to take advantage of them.