Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/220

192 additional negotiator to his assistance. At the time of the Albany Convention in 1754, as Rayneval reminded Jay, the whole course of the Ohio was generally admitted to be French. (See Life of Jay, ii. 477.) When Vaudreuil surrendered Montreal in 1760, the capitulation included all Canada, which was said at the time to extend to the crest of land dividing the branches of the Erie and the Michigan from those of the Miami, the Wabash, and the Illinois (Bancroft, iv. 361); but the valley of the Ohio was then also considered by the French to be attaché au Canada, even if not actually forming part of it (see Flassan, vi. 432433). The 4th article of the Treaty of Paris ceded Canada to England, "avec toutes les dépendences de la manière et dans la forme la plus absolue." Then came the Proclamation of 1763 restricting Canada within narrow limits (see Vol. I. p. 265-268), which were however again greatly enlarged by the Quebec Act of 1774. In 1754-1755 it is clear that Franklin would not have admitted the French claim to the valley of the Ohio as part of Canada (see Bancroft, iv. 121-126). The Canada Act of 1774 included in what was called the Government of the Province of Quebec, besides Canada, the area of the present States of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin (see supra, Vol. I. p. 474). The policy of keeping the United States weak was persevered in by France at a later date, when the States were engaged in framing the Federal Constitution. In a letter from Talleyrand to Lord Lansdowne in 1795, written from Philadelphia, the following passage occurs: "{{lang|fr|Lorsque l'Amérique, affranchie du joug de l'Angleterre, périssait sous le poids de sa propre anarchie, lorsqu'au milieu de son indépendance, il lui manquait la liberté; lorsqu'elle faisait effort pour se la procurer et arriver a sa constitution fédérale, les chefs du pays découvrirent que l'Ambassadeur de France avait des instructions pour traverser cette entreprise. Le même allié qui avait tout sacrifié pour les'séparer de l'Angleterre voulait les tenir désunis entre eux." (Talleyrand to Lord Lansdowne, February 1st, 1795; Pallain, {{lang|fr|La Mission de Talleyrand à Londres}}, p. 428.) M. de Ternan is the Minister alluded to. M. Genêt, who succeeded him, pursued a similar course. Talleyrand himself afterwards encouraged the policy of "shutting up the States within the limits which nature has traced for them." See Henry Adams, United States, i. 355. This was Henry Strachey, once the Secretary of Clive and of Lord Howe's Commission. After serving as Secretary of the Treasury under Lord Rockingham, he had become Under-Secretary in Townshend's Department, where he was known as a man of great discretion, accuracy, and learning. He left with instructions to urge the claims of England, under the Proclamation of 1763, to the lands between the Mississippi and the western boundary of the States, and to bring forward the French boundary of Canada, which was more extensive at some points than that of the Proclamation of 1763. He was to urge these claims, and the right of the King to the ungranted domain, not indeed for their own sake, but in order to gain some compensation for the refugees, either by a direct cession of territory in their favour, or by engaging the half or some proportion of what the back lands might produce when sold, or a sum secured on those lands; or by the grant of a favourable boundary of Nova Scotia, extending, if possible, so as to include the province of {{smallrefs}}