crease."

In a word, the English government attempted to adopt the western policy
of the French. From one point of view it was a successful policy. The
French traders took service under the English, and in the Revolutionary
war Charles de Langlade led the Wisconsin Indians to the aid of Hamilton
against George Rogers Clark,[176] as he had before against the British,
and in the War of 1812 the British trader Robert Dickson repeated this
movement.[177] As in the days of Begon, "the savages took the part of
those with whom they traded." The secret proposition of Vergennes, in
the negotiations preceding the treaty of 1783, to limit the United
States by the Alleghanies and to give the Northwest to England, while
reserving the rest of the region between the mountains and the
Mississippi as Indian territory under Spanish protection,[178] would
have given the fur trade to these nations.[179] In the extensive
discussions over the diplomacy whereby the Northwest was included within
the limits of the United States, it has been asserted that we won our
case by the chartered claims of the colonies and by George Rogers
Clark's conquest of the Illinois country. It appears, however, that in
fact Franklin, who had been a prominent member and champion of the Ohio
Company, and who knew the West from personal acquaintance, had persuaded
Shelburne to cede it to us as a part of a liberal peace that should
effect a reconciliation between the two countries. Shelburne himself
looked upon the region from the point of view of the fur trade simply,
and was more willing to make this concession than he was some others. In
the discussion over the treaty in Parliament in 1783, the Northwestern
boundary was treated almost solely from the point of view of the fur
trade and of the desertion of the Indians. The question was one of
profit and loss in this traffic. One member attacked Shelburne on the
ground that, "not thinking the naked independence a sufficient proof of
his liberality to the United States, he had clothed it with the warm
covering of our fur trade." Shelburne defended his cession "on the fair
rule of the value of the district ceded,"[180] and comparing exports and
imports and the cost of administration, he concluded that the fur trade
of the Northwest was not of sufficient value to warrant continuing the
war. The most valuable trade, he argued, was north of the line, and the
treaty merely applied sound economic principles and gave America "