CHAP. LV. 1783. State of the Ar this period, the state of the ministry was unusual, and beset with more than ordinary embarrassments. However combined in party views, they could not, to judge by their past political conduct, be sup- ministry. posed united in any common general principle of public action. The Rockingham administration had been Retrospect. formed on a cautious and jealous plan of mutual counterpoise: an equal number of the adherents of the Marquis and of Lord Shelburne was admitted into the cabinet, with Lord Thurlow as a neutral or middle party, agreeing rather in the views of Lord Shelburne than those of the apparent head of the administration, but not likely to be the close adherent of either. Lord Shelburne's assumption of pre-eminence was deeply and bitterly resented by all, but particularly by Mr. Burke, who had hoped to retain over the Duke of Portland the influence, amounting, it is said, to an absolute and unlimited ascendancy, which had been allowed by the Marquis. His vehemence on the occasion is said to have rendered the breach between Lord Shelburne and Mr. Fox irreparable; and although Mr. Fox's uncle, the Duke of Richmond, was proposed to the Rockingham party, as a substitute for their departed leader, even that was rejected, through the repugnance of Mr. Burke*. To the public, the latent causes of the coalition Public were unknown; they saw men, who, in unmeasured opinion. terms, had been reprobated and held up to public detestation, united with those who had most vehemently reviled them; they saw their accession to office, influence, and power, the immediate result of this combination; and it was not easy to make them believe that the hope of these advantages was not the sole cause of it. These sentiments, which were very widely diffused and assiduously propagated, were not confined the uninformed and distant observers of public events; they were shared by men of superior information, whose attachment to the parties was not to be impaired, although their judgment was seriously * Recollections, &c. by John Nicholls, vol. i. p. 296. CHAP. 1783. Debts and embarrassments of America. tract of Cassius was translated by the Comte de Mirabeau, and his friend Chamfort, and being published, with copious additions decrying hereditary nobility, the golden eagle and blue ribband were renounced in Paris, and in America the society assumed a shape perfectly unobtrusive, and insufficient to give alarm to the most susceptible feelings*. Although the gross sum of their debt appeared trifling, yet the pecuniary embarrassments of the United States presented great difficulties, even in temporary arrangement, and threatened to prove a permanent bar to future prosperity. Their domestic debt was somewhat above thirty-four millions of dollars, or seven millions six hundred thousand pounds sterling. This admitted debt was in great part a reduced allowance or composition for two hundred millions of dollars in paper, which, following the advice of Franklin, had been issued, and in a course of progressive depreciation, until a thousand dollars in paper were deemed equivalent only to one in silver, and at last, notwithstanding all the efforts of government, no person would receive them at any ratet. To France America was indebted, for pecuniary aids, eighteen millions of livres‡, which it was agreed to liquidate by instalments, with interest at five per cent. in twelve years. A further sum of five millions of florins, or ten millions of livress, for which the King of France stood jointly engaged with Congress to the States of Holland, was to be paid, with similar interest, in five years. Their remaining foreign debts amounted to about five hundred thousand pounds sterling. The limited authorities of Congress, and the discretionary powers of the several provinces, formed great impediments to the funding of this sum; to a scheme formed by the general legislature, * For an ample account of these proceedings, see Jefferson's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 417; also, Sparks's Life of Washington, vol. i. p. 431; Marshall's Life of Washington, and the two pamphlets above mentioned; and for an account of that by Mirabeau and Chamfort, Memoirs of Dr Franklin, vol. i. p. 365; vol. ii. p. 69; and for the Doctor's own opinion on the subject, p. 46. p. 401. An interesting statement of this matter is in Jefferson's Memoirs, vol. i. 787,500 pounds sterling. §£437,500. some acceded totally, and some partially; while others withheld their consent from any measure which had a tendency to lodge the purse and the sword in the same hands, and resisted, by force of arms, the agents employed by Congress to collect the levies. In vain were exhortation and pathetic addresses issued, invoking the public justice, and appealing to the honour of the country; the disregard of those motives, when incompatible with private interest, had been so long sanctioned, that such appeals met with little regard; and the impotency of government and dishonesty of the people afforded serious apprehensions of general bankruptcy. CHAP. LIV. 1783. The eagerness of European powers to obtain a pre- Commerce. ference in the boasted commerce of America, added to these evils. An inundation of manufactures, tendered on easy terms of credit, tempted the merchants to adventure in purchases much exceeding their powers of payment. Debts were contracted by some to the full amount of their claims on the American government; while the daily depression of public securities involved the demands of individuals in a general state of confused speculation. Those who were indebted to British merchants on contracts made before the war, were additionally distressed. By the terms of peace, all these debts were to be paid; money was the only medium, since no hope could exist that a depreciated paper currency would be accepted by the merchant, whom a long and hazardous war had greatly injured by delay and risk. Thus the little specie brought by the French armies, or raised by loans in Europe, rapidly disappeared; while the means of restoring it were suppressed by the new circumstances of America, in consequence of her separation from the mother-country. Commercial treaties were formed with Sweden, Prussia, and the Emperor of Morocco; but the attempts to negotiate with Great Britain were for some time unsuccessful. The intercourse with the West India Islands, from which, as colonies, they derived large supplies of gold and silver, was of course prohibited by the colonial and navigation system of СНАР. 1783. Powers of Great Britain; their fisheries were unproductive, through the want of the same favourable markets, and the discontinuance of British bounties; and their maritime weakness rendered unavailing their liberty of traffic in the Mediterranean, where they could no longer protect themselves against the Algerine corsairs. Thus surrounded by calamity, terror, and poverty, the people viewed with disgust the independence which they had been taught so highly to prize; they held a degraded and precarious rank among the powers of the universe, nor did they emerge from their disgraceful situation, till experience pointed out the necessity of a permanent and general government, sufficiently strong to coerce all the members of the commonwealth, and sufficiently respected to restrain the effusions of visionary theory. Then was Washington again called from his domestic retreat, to guide by his wisdom those councils which owed their authority to his valour* ; and then the government of America assumed stability, and acquired respect†. The powers of Europe, who had joined, without provocation, in an infamous conspiracy against Great Britain, even in their success had no cause for selfgratulation. They had brought the rival country to the necessity of accepting terms of peace which her own legislature had censured; but their triumph was not attended with correspondent advantages. If the hope of supplanting or rivalling Great Britain in the American trade animated their efforts, their expectations received a severe shock, even in the progress of the contest, when Mr. Laurens expended the money lent by France in the purchase of British manufactures, justifying his conduct, by pleading his duty to buy the best and cheapest commodities. This principle will always regulate the course of trade. A nation free to choose, not fettered by treaties, or restrained by the * In 1789. + Chiefly from Ramsay, vol. ii. chapters xxvi. and xxvii. I have also consulted Stedman, chapter xlvi. and the papers in the Annual Register and the Remembrancer. See Lord Sheffield's Observations on American Commerce; and also the Commerce of America with Europe, by Brissot and Claviere, p. 119, English translation. desire of protecting internal or colonial commerce, will pursue the system by which individuals are guided, and deal with those who display the greatest integrity, and sell the best goods at the lowest prices, with the most advantageous terms of credit. If the expectation of reducing England to bankruptcy or despair influenced their conduct, they must have seen with astonishment and anguish the noble exertion of national justice in behalf of the loyalists, to whose claims was devoted a sum much larger than the whole debt which rendered America insolvent, and have beheld with surprise those public and private exertions which promised to efface the memory of a long contest, by providing ample funds for paying the interest of the increased debt, and by giving unprecedented extension and vigour to commerce. CHAP. LIV. 1783. France entered into war without any sympathy France. with the Americans in their claims to liberty or senatorial representation, but purely in the hope of ruining England; and she met, in the immediate consequences, 2nd Oct. the just punishment of her perfidy. The ruined state of her finances rendered her the prey of speculists, and the scorn of Europe. Hardly was the definitive treaty executed, when, notwithstanding the efforts of government, the deliberations of capitalists, and an aid from Spain, the Paris bank, called the Caisse d' Escompte, was declared insolvent; and the people discovered that the absurd system of economy, and avoiding of taxes, on which the war had been conducted, was founded on delusion, and led only to ruin and disgrace. When the peace had subsisted nearly a year, the British ambassador at Paris stated the condition of the country, as one in which every thing persuaded him of the necessity by which it was bound to remain in peace: the very deep wounds it had received in the navy, commerce, and finances, could only be healed by delicate management and long repose. As a proof, he adverted to the state of Bordeaux, where a hundred and twenty-five bankruptcies had taken place; shipping had fallen fifty per cent. within a few months; not one American vessel had been seen in |
