tlantic to the Mississippi and from the Great Lakes
to the Floridas. England held Canada, Newfoundland, and the West Indies
intact, made gains in India, and maintained her supremacy on the seas.
Spain won Florida and Minorca but not the coveted Gibraltar. France
gained nothing important save the satisfaction of seeing England humbled
and the colonies independent.

The generous terms secured by the American commission at Paris called
forth surprise and gratitude in the United States and smoothed the way
for a renewal of commercial relations with the mother country. At the
same time they gave genuine anxiety to European diplomats. "This federal
republic is born a pigmy," wrote the Spanish ambassador to his royal
master. "A day will come when it will be a giant; even a colossus
formidable to these countries. Liberty of conscience and the facility
for establishing a new population on immense lands, as well as the
advantages of the new government, will draw thither farmers and artisans
from all the nations. In a few years we shall watch with grief the
tyrannical existence of the same colossus."

[Illustration: NORTH AMERICA ACCORDING TO THE TREATY OF 1783]

SUMMARY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD

The independence of the American colonies was foreseen by many European
statesmen as they watched the growth of their population, wealth, and
power; but no one could fix the hour of the great event. Until 1763 the
American colonists lived fairly happily under British dominion. There
were collisions from time to time, of course. Royal governors clashed
with stiff-necked colonial legislatures. There were protests against the
exercise of the king's veto power in specific cases. Nevertheless, on
the whole, the relations between America and the mother country were
more amicable in 1763 than at any period under the Stuart regime which
closed in 1688.

The crash, when it came, was not deliberately willed by any one. It was
the product of a number of forces that happened to converge about 1763.
Three years before, there had come to the throne George III, a young,
proud, inexperienced, and stubborn king. For nearly fifty years his
predecessors, Germans as they were in language and interest, had allowed
things to drift in England and America. George III decided that he would
be king in fact as well as in name. About the same time England brought
to a close the long and costly French and Indian War and was staggering
under a heavy burden o