Volume I Part 2 (1/2)

From your letter, there are surely great hopes of detaching America; and from those we have just received from Petersburg, there appears the most favourable disposition in that quarter to enforce a peace with Holland; or if that cannot be, to take a decisive part. And I know how much this disposition will be increased, if we can fully convince His Imperial Majesty that the failure of your negotiation is not our fault.

With regard to all your diffidence of yourself, we laugh at it.

If, in order to save yourself bodily labour, you want a secretary, write, and you shall have one; but for any other purpose, you want no a.s.sistance, but are allowed by everybody, and the King in particular, to be the best writer of despatches that is known in this office.

Adieu. I envy you the pleasure of announcing the news from the West Indies, with all the modest insolence which belongs to the occasion.

Yours most affectionately,

Pray make my best respects to Dr. Franklin, whose letter to me contained some very promising expressions. a.s.sure him that, in spite of all that has happened, he and I are still of the same country.

St. James's, Tuesday night,

May 21st, 1782.

MR. SHERIDAN TO MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE.

St. James's, May 26th, 1782.

My dear Grenville,

Charles not being well, I write to you at his desire, that you may not be surprized at having no private letter from him with the despatch which Mr. Oswald brings you. There is not room, I believe, for much communication of any very private nature on the subject of your instructions and situation, as his public letter, you will see, is very sincerely to the purpose. If anything in it admits of modification, or is not to be very literally taken, I should conceive it to be the recommendation of explicitness with Oswald; on which subject I own I have suggested doubts; and Charles wishes you to have a caution for your own discretion to make use of.

I perceive uniformly (from our intercepted information) that all these _city_ negotiators--Mr. Wentworths, Bourdeaux, &c.--insinuate themselves into these sort of affairs merely for private advantages, and make their trust princ.i.p.ally subservient to stock-jobbing views, on which subject there appears to be a surprising communication with Paris. Mr. Oswald's officiousness in bringing over your despatch and other things I have been told since by those who know him, lead me to form this kind of opinion of him; but you will judge where this will apply to any confidence that should be placed in him.

Surely, whatever the preliminaries of a treaty for peace with France may be, it would be our interest, if we could, to drop even mentioning the Americans in them; at least the seeming to grant anything to them as at the requisition of France. France now denies our ceding Independence to America to be anything given to them, and declines to allow anything for it. In my opinion it would be wiser in them to insist ostentatiously (and even to make a point of allowing something for it) on the Independence of America being as the first article of their treating; and this would for ever furnish them with a claim on the friends.h.i.+p and confidence of the Americans after the peace.

But since they do not do this, surely it would not be bad policy, even if we gave up more to France in other respects, to prevent her appearing in the treaty as in any respect the champion of America, or as having made any claims for her; we giving her up everything she wants equally, and her future confidence and alliance being such an object to us. Were I the Minister, I would give France an island or two to choose, if it would expose her selfishness, sooner than let her gain the _esteem of the Americans_ by claiming anything essential for them in apparent preference to her own interest and ambition.

All people, of all descriptions, in America, will read the treaty of peace, whenever it comes, which France shall make with this country; and if they should see there that she has claimed and got a good deal for herself, but has not appeared to have thought of them, however they may have profited in fact, it would certainly give us a great advantage in those sort of arguments and compet.i.tions which will arise after a peace; whereas if it appears as a stipulated demand on the part of France that America should be independent, it will for ever be a most handy record and argument for the French party in that country to work with; and this, as things stand now, and as far as my poor judgment goes, appears not to be a very difficult thing to have either way. And so these are my politics on that subject for you.

You will find Rodney has taken some more s.h.i.+ps. The unluckiness of his recal, I think, appears to increase in its ill effect; and people don't seem to fancy Pigott. Rolle has given notice that he will move on Thursday to know who advised His Majesty to recal Rodney; and out of doors the talk is the same. Charles gave Johnson, who had been very violent on this subject the other day, an excellent tr.i.m.m.i.n.g; but there was a good deal of coy with the other.

The arming plan don't seem to take at all. We have not yet heard from Ireland since Burgoyne took them over a const.i.tution.[1]

There is nothing odd or new to tell you, but that here is a most untimely strange sort of an influenza which every creature catches. You must not mind the badness of my scrawl: and let me hear from you. Does Lafayette join your consultation dinners with Franklin, as some of our Roupell intelligence sets forth? I take it for granted the French Ministers will think it a point of spirit to seem rather less desirous of peace since your defeat in the West?

Howe is still off the Texel, and the Dutch safe within.

What mere politics I write to you! One might as well be a newspaper editor at once, I believe, as anything that politics can make one: but all other pursuits are as idle and unsatisfactory, and that's a comfort.

Yours ever,

R. B. Sheridan.

[Footnote 1: The Duke of Rutland had been appointed by the new Ministry Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland and General Burgoyne Commander-in-Chief there.]

MR. FOX TO MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE.

Dear Grenville,

I have only time to write a line to tell you that I have received your letter by Gregson, and also that by the post containing the letters that pa.s.sed between M. de Vergennes and you. I do not choose to tell you anything more of my opinion by this conveyance, than that all you have done is perfectly and exactly right, and that His Majesty is of the same opinion.