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218 could be come to immediately, Commissioners should be appointed to inquire into the question, with directions to report within a reasonable time. The fishery question was settled in the manner proposed by Fitzherbert to Vergennes. Rayneval during his second visit to England had proposed a form of declaration to be attached to the Treaty, but Grantham objected to it, as not marking with sufficient clearness that the concession to France was not to be "exclusive" in character, and he drew up another form of declaration, which Fitzherbert proposed to Vergennes. After a long debate, in the course of which Vergennes insisted most strenuously, but in vain, for the insertion of the word exclusive, the Declaration was made to stand in the shape in which it may be read attached to the Definitive Treaty; the English Government undertaking to see that the French fishermen should not be molested in their occupation.

All difficulties were now removed, and on the 20th of January 1783 the Preliminary Articles of peace between England and France and England and Spain were signed. A truce was at the same time settled between England and the States-General. It was high time. The war party in