Note 12 — Chapter XXVII

"Finding it impossible to proceed with their negotiations, the Commissioners prepared to re-embark for England. First, however, they issued a manifesto, or proclamation, to the American people, appealing to them against the decisions of the Congress, and offering to the colonies at large, or singly, a general or separate peace. This proclamation was in most parts both ably and temperately argued. But there was one passage liable to just exceptions. The Commissioners observed, that hitherto the hopes of a reunion had checked the extremes of war. Henceforth the contest would be changed. If the British colonies were to become an accession to France, the law of self-preservation must direct Great Britain to render the accession of as little avail as possible to her enemy. Mr. Fox and others in the House of Commons inveighed with great plausibility against this passage, us threatening a war of savage desolation. Others again, as friends of Lord Carlisle and Mr. Eden (afterwards Lord Auckland), asserted that no such meaning was implied. The error, whatever it might be, lay with the Commissioners, and in no degree with the Government at home; for Lord North denied, in the most express terms, that his Ministers had intended to give the least encouragement to the introduction of any new kind of war in North America." (Debate in the House of Commons, Dec. 4, 1778.)

Lord Mahon's History of England, etc., Vol. VI., Chap. lviii., pp. 376, 377.