o reach forth their hands and divide the
spoils. The Spanish monarch then, with these visionary hopes in view,
altered his line of conduct. On | the first breaking out of a war with
France he pretended great anxiety for maintaining his treaties with
Great Britain, and expressed a compassionate interest for his brother
the King of England, and his utter abhorrence of the proceedings of
congress against so just and good a prince. He tendered his services as
a mediator, and when it was hinted that the King of England could not
submit a quarrel between him and his own subjects to another prince,
he expressed his readiness to mediate in the French part of the quarrel
alone, and to reconcile the differences existing between the courts of
St. James's and Versailles. To this latter proposal it was replied, that
it was inconsistent with national honour to admit the interference of
a third power, till the views of France were known; and then Charles
expressed his readiness to open the negociation himself, so as to spare
both parties the humiliation of making the first step towards a peace.
He suggested, that each government should transmit its conditions to
Madrid, and that he should be allowed to draw from both a plan for the
conclusion of a treaty. To this the British ministers assented, and the
conditions they sent were comprised in this one article--that, assuming
the right of England to treat with her own colonies independently of
foreign intervention, as an unquestionable principle, if France would
cease her interference, and withdraw her troops from America, they
would readily concur in establishing the harmony which had subsisted
for fifteen years between the two crowns. On the other hand, the French
ministers required that England should withdraw her forces from America;
that she should acknowledge the independence of the United States; and
that the French court should be granted the power of bringing forward
additional demands for amending and explaining treaties. Such demands
as these could not be conceded, and then the King of Spain offered
these three different proposals of his own, as proper to produce a
pacification--namely, that there should either be a truce between
England and the colonies for twenty-five years, during which a peace
might be negociated, and the separate articles in dispute with France
amicably adjusted; or that there should be a truce with France,
including the colonies; or that there should be an