still form a bond of union between the two countries, and I will spare no
pains or attention to promote it." "I was the last man in England to
consent to the Independence of America," said the king to John Adams, who
was the first to represent the new republic at the Court of St. James; "I
will be the last in the world to sanction any violation of it." Honest
and sincere in his concessions as he had been in his persistent
obstinacy, the king supported his ministers against the violent attacks
made upon them in Parliament. The preliminaries of general peace had
been signed at Paris on the 20th of January, 1783.

To the exchange of conquests between France and England was added the
cession to France of the island of Tobago and of the Senegal River with
its dependencies. The territory of Pondicherry and Karikal received some
augmentation. For the first time for more than a hundred years the
English renounced the humiliating conditions so often demanded on the
subject of the harbor of Dunkerque. Spain saw herself confirmed in her
conquest of the Floridas and of the island of Minorca. Holland recovered
all her possessions, except Negapatam.

Peace was made, a glorious and a sweet one for the United States, which,
according to Washington's expression, "saw opening before them a career
that might lead them to become a great people, equally happy and
respected." Despite all the mistakes of the people and the defects every
day more apparent in the form of its government, this noble and healthy
ambition has always been present to the minds of the American nation as
the ultimate aim of their hopes and their endeavors. More than eighty
years after the war of independence, the indomitable energy of the
fathers reappeared in the children, worthy of being called a great people
even when the agonies of a civil war without example denied to them the
happiness which had a while ago been hoped for by the glorious founder of
their liberties as well as of their Constitution.

France came out exhausted from the struggle, but relieved in her own eyes
as well as those of Europe from the humiliation inflicted upon her by the
disastrous Seven Years' War and by the treaty of 1763. She saw
triumphant the cause she had upheld and her enemies sorrow-stricken at
the dismemberment they had suffered. It was a triumph for her arms and
for the generous impulse which had prompted her to support a legitimate
but for a long while doubtful enter