Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/326

 312 Franklin informed me that the articles were signed! The reservation retained on our account does not save the infraction of the promise which we have made to each other, not to sign, except conjointly. This negotiation is not yet so far advanced in regard to ourselves as that of the United States; not but that the king, if he had shown as little delicacy in his proceedings as the American commissioners, might have signed articles with England long before them."

On the 5th of December parliament met, and the king, though not yet able to announce the signing of the provisional treaty with France and America, intimated pretty plainly the approach of that fact.



Indeed, lord Shelburne had addressed a letter to the lord mayor of London eight days before the articles with America were actually signed, that this event was so near at hand that parliament would be prorogued from the time fixed for its meeting, the 26th of November, to the 5th of December. It was, indeed, hoped that by that day the preliminaries with France and Spain would be signed too. This not being the case, the king could only declare that conclusion all but certain. He admitted that he had sanctioned a provisional compact with America, granting full independence. With much emotion George said:—"In thus admitting the separation of those colonies from the crown of these kingdoms, I have sacrificed every consideration of my own to the wishes and opinions of my people. I make it my humble and earnest prayer to Almighty God, that Great Britain may not feel the evils which might result from so great a dismemberment of the empire, and that America may be free from the calamities which have formerly proved, in the mother country, how essential monarchy is to the enjoyment of constitutional liberty. Religion, language, interest, affections may, and I hope will, yet prove a bond of permanent union between the two countries; to this end neither attention nor disposition on my part shall be wanting."

This announcement drew from the opposition a torrent of abuse of ministers, who, in reality, had only been carrying out the very measure which they had long recommended, and which Fox, in particular, had been zealously endeavouring to accomplish whilst in office. Their censures appeared to arise rather from the fact that the war was ended without their mediation than from anything else. Fox upbraided lord Shelburne with having once said that, when the independence of America should be admitted, the sun of England would have set. Yet this had been the opinion not of lord Shelburne merely, but of numbers who now saw reason to doubt that gloomy view of things, and there was the less reason for Fox to throw this in the face of the prime minister, as he had been himself, whilst his colleague, earnestly labouring with him for that end. Burke declared the king's speech to be a medley of hypocrisies and nonsense, yet it only announced what Burke had himself warmly and long called for, and for which, with a strange inconsistency, he thanked