venture on Lake
Champlain," wrote Bathurst to Castlereagh, "I really believe we should
have signed a peace by the end of this month. This will put the enemy in
spirits. The campaign will end in our doing much where we thought we
should have done little, and doing nothing where we expected
everything."[510] He announced the intention to send Pakenham in Ross'
place for the New Orleans expedition, and to increase his force in the
spring, should the war last till then. Meanwhile, it might be well to
let the Powers assembled at Vienna understand that, whatever the success
in Louisiana, the inhabitants would be distinctly told that in no case
would the country be taken under British protection. They might be
granted independence, but preferably would be urged to place themselves
again under the Spanish Crown; but they must know that, in treating with
the United States, neither of these solutions would be made by Great
Britain a _sine qua non_. The Government had probably taken a distaste
to that peremptory formula by the unsatisfactory result of the
proposition about the Indians.

This care concerning the effect produced upon the course of events at
Vienna appears forcibly in the letters of Liverpool. After the receipt
of the American commission's refusal to accept the basis of the _uti
possidetis_, he wrote to Castlereagh, October 28, that he feared it
put an end to any hopes of bringing the American war to a conclusion.
The expectation of some favorable change in the aspect of affairs,
however, decided the ministry to gain a little more time before
bringing the negotiation to a close; and the envoys at Ghent were
therefore to be instructed to demand a full _projet_ of all the
American conditions before entering on further discussion. The same
day Liverpool sent a second letter,[511] in which he said distinctly
that, in viewing the European settlement, it was material to consider
that the war with America would probably be of some duration; that
enemies should not be made in other quarters by holding out too long
on the questions of Poland, Naples, and Saxony, for he was
apprehensive that "some of our European allies will not be indisposed
to favor the Americans; and, if the Emperor of Russia should be
desirous of taking up their cause, we are well aware from some of Lord
Walpole's late communications that there is a most powerful party in
Russia to support him. Looking to a continuance of the American war,
our financial s