_ included the agreement
previously framed concerning the Indians; who were thus provided for
in the treaty, though excluded from any recognition as parties to it,
or as independent political communities. This was the only demand
which Great Britain can be said fairly to have carried, and it was so
far a reduction from her original requirement as to be unrecognizable.
An American proposition, pledging each of the contracting parties not
again to employ Indians in war, was rejected.

The remaining articles of the _projet_, although entirely suitable to
a treaty of peace, were not essentially connected with the war. The
treaty merely gave a suitable occasion for presenting them. They
provided for fixing, by mixed commissions, the boundary lines between
the British possessions and the United States. These the Treaty of
1783 had stated in terms which had as yet received no proper
topographical determination. From the mouth of the St. Croix River,
and the islands within it and in the adjacent sea, around, north and
west, as far as the head of Lake Superior, the precise course of the
bounding line needed definition by surveyors. These propositions were
agreed to; but when it came to similar provision for settling the
boundary of the new territories acquired by the Louisiana purchase, as
far as the Rocky Mountains, difficulties arose. In the result it was
agreed that the determination of the boundary should be carried as far
as the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods, "in
conformity with the true intent of the said Treaty of Peace of one
thousand seven hundred and eighty-three." The treaty was silent on the
subject of boundary westward of the Lake of the Woods, and this
article of the _projet_ was dropped. It differed indeed from its
associates, in providing the settlement for a new question, and not
the definition of an old settlement. In conclusion, the British
commissioners obtained the adoption of an agreement that both parties
"would use their best endeavors to promote the entire abolition of the
slave trade." In Great Britain the agitation for this measure had
reached proportions which were not the least among the embarrassments
of the ministry; and at this critical juncture the practical
politicians conducting affairs found themselves constrained by a
popular demand to press the subject upon the less sympathetic
statesmen of the Cabinet.

The American commissioners had made a good fight, and shown complet