ered every indignity and {124} humiliation as a
penalty for their loyalty. At length, progress was made when Adams
suggested that the question of British debts be separated from that of
Tory compensation; so a clause was agreed upon guaranteeing the full
payment of bona fide debts heretofore contracted.

Finally, after Franklin had raised a counter-claim for damages due to
what he called the "inhuman burnings" of the British raids since 1778,
it was agreed to insert a clause against any future confiscations or
prosecutions of loyalists and to add that Congress should "earnestly
recommend" to the States the restoration of loyalists' estates and the
repealing of all laws against them. At the time the commissioners drew
up this article, they must have known that the Congress of the United
States had no power to enforce the treaty, and that any such
recommendations, however "earnest," would carry no weight with the
thirteen communities controlled by embittered rebels, who remembered
every Tory, alive or dead, with execration. Nevertheless, it offered a
way of escape, and the British representative signed, on November 30,
1782. The great contest was at an end.

When Franklin revealed to Vergennes that, unknown to the French court,
the American commissioners had agreed on a {125} draft treaty, the
French minister was somewhat indignant at the trick, and communicated
his displeasure to his agent in America. This induced the easily
worried Congress to instruct Livingston, the Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, to write a letter censuring the commissioners; but, although
Jay and Adams were hotly indignant at such servility, the matter ended
then and there. Vergennes's displeasure was momentary, and the French
policy continued as before. The European war was, in fact, wearing to
its end. Already, in April, 1782, Admiral Rodney had inflicted a sharp
defeat on De Grasse, capturing five of his vessels, including the
flagship with the admiral himself. This, together with the extreme
inefficiency of the Spanish fleet, put an end to the hope of further
French gains in the West Indies. Before Gibraltar, also, the allied
fleet of forty-eight vessels did not dare to risk a general engagement
with a British relieving fleet of thirty, and when in September, 1782,
a final bombardment was attempted, the batteries from the fort proved
too strong for their assailants. The allies felt that they had
accomplished all they could hope to, an