vide than
conciliate; and that they empowered commissioners to treat with America,
and then called them back again to consult parliament. His grace also
stated as a notorious fact that ministers had sent persons over to Paris
to tamper with Dr. Franklin and Silas Deane, and that these American
agents had rejected their offers, together with the terms of the new
bills, in scorn. Lord Temple opposed the bills on different grounds. He
denounced them as mean and truckling, and as tending to prostrate the
king, the parliament, and the people of Great Britain at the feet of
Franklin and Silas Deane, to whom ministers had paid homage in sackcloth
and ashes. The people, he said, had recovered from the shock occasioned
by Burgoyne's reverses, and ministers were now going to depress their
newly-awakened animation by succumbing to an arrogant enemy. Lord
Shelborne also opposed the bills as tending to separate the two
countries. He never would consent, he said, that America should
be independent of England, and he represented that his idea of the
connexion between the two countries was, that they should have one
friend, one enemy, one purse, and one sword; that Britain, as the great
controlling power, should superintend the whole; and that both the
countries should have but one will, though the means of expressing it
might be different. This, he said, might have been obtained long ago
without bloodshed or animosity. The bills passed without a division: a
protest was entered against them, but it was only signed by one solitary
peer, Lord Abingdon.

INTIMATION OF THE FRENCH TREATY WITH AMERICA.

The conciliatory bills were scarcely passed when Lord North delivered
a message from the throne to the commons, stating the receipt of
information from the French king, that he had concluded a treaty of
amity and commerce with his majesty's revolted subjects in America,
and that in consequence of this offensive communication, the British
ambassador at Paris had been ordered home. His majesty, the minister
said, fully relied on the zeal and affection of his people to repel the
insult and maintain the honour of the country. The note of the French
ambassador was laid before parliament, and it was to this effect:--"The
United States of North America, who are in full possession of
independence, as pronounced by them on the 4th of July, 1766, having
proposed to the King of France to consolidate, by a formal convention,
the connexion begun t