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 Beginning of Peace Negotiations with America

I. THE HISTORICAL SETTING OF THE PROBLEM

HE Seven Years' War was a long reach forward in the history of English expansion. If English politicians and diplomats failed to hold for England all the winnings of her warriors, the Peace of Paris, nevertheless, gave the British Empire a secure place in the sun. She received nearly all the French possessions in America except Louisiana (including the city of New Orleans and the isle of Orleans upon which it stands), she gained Florida from Spain, she got some of the French islands in the West Indies, and she established her position more firmly in India. It was Turgot, the French statesman, who then prophesied that the French loss of Canada would eventually cost England the loss of her American colonies. Whatever partial truth there was in this, from the Peace of Paris on, tendencies were at work which were to drive the thirteen colonies out of the English fold. In 1775 the disaffection came to a head and in the next year the Declaration of Independence committed the colonies to the policy of complete separation. George III., who with the help of Lord North was attempting in England to substitute for the system of cabinet and party government his personal rule through ministers, strove no