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22 permitted—namely, that any conquests that should, after the signing of these conditions, be made, should be restored by all parties. Now, Bute and the ministry knew that we had expeditions out against Cuba and the Philippines, and that the only conquests likely to be made were in those quarters. To throw away without equivalent the blood and money expended in these important enterprises was a most unpatriotic act.



Still, there was opportunity for more rational terms, for Grimaldi, the Spanish ambassador at Paris, held back from signing, in hope that we should be defeated at the Havanna, and that then he could raise his terms. When the news of the loss of both Havanna and Manilla arrived, Grimaldi was in great haste to sign, and Mr. Granville and lord Egremont very properly insisted that we should demand an equivalent for the conquest in Cuba. Pitt would have stood firm for the retention of that conquest as by far the most important to us, and as justly secured to us, by the refusal of the Spanish ambassador to sign at the proper time. But Bute would have signed without any equivalent at all. Fortunately, there was too strong an opposition to this in the cabinet, and the duke of Bedford was instructed to demand Florida or Porto Rico in lieu of the Havanna. Florida was yielded—a fatal, though at the moment it appeared a valuable concession, for it only added to the compactness of the American colonies, hastening the day of independence, whilst Cuba would have remained under the protection of our fleet, one of the most valuable possessions of the British empire.

This point settled, the preliminaries of peace were signed at Fontainebleau on the 3rd of November. To console Spain for her losses by her unlucky alliance with France, Louis XV. ceded Louisiana to that country by a private convention. Besides the blame which Bute incurred by his unstatesmanlike hurry to conclude the peace, aggravated by the general opinion that he might with ease have secured Goree, Porto Rico, as well as Florida, and some other of the French West Indian Islands, he did not escape the violent suspicion of having so readily sacrificed the interests of the country to a weighty bribe from France. This charge for years was loudly made without satisfactory refutation. In 1770 it was again brought forward in the house of commons, but was got rid of; but we still find in Wilberforce's Diary of 1789 this entry:—"I dined with lord Camden. He is sure that lord Bute got money from the peace of Paris. He can account for his sinking near three hundred thousand pounds in land and houses; and his paternal estate in the island which bears his name is not above one thousand five hundred pounds a year, and he is a life tenant only of Wortley, which may be eight thousand or ten thousand pounds." When we recollect the short tenure of office by lord Bute, and his previous poverty, there certainly were great grounds for the suspicion.

The violent discontent with the conduct of Bute and his ministry gave considerable strength to the opposition, at the head of which now stood Pitt, supported by lord Temple and the duke of Newcastle. Bubb Dodington, who had begun his career as the son of an apothecary, and made his way, by many wriggling manœuvres, to a peerage, died about this time. Lord Auson, who had rendered more real services to his country, also died in the course of the summer, and the earl of Halifax succeeded him at the board of admiralty. George Grenville, not satisfied with the' terms of the peace, resigned the post of secretary to Halifax, and took his new one at the head of the admiralty; and Mr. Fox, paymaster of the forces, became the leader of the commons. The duke of Devonshire and the marquis of Rockingham also resigned their places in the royal household;