‘To treat with any commissioners, named by the colonies or plantations’
Americans had been shopping for allies on the other side of the Atlantic before Maryland ratified the nation into formal existence. Maryland’s ratiÂfication of Constitution I (1781) was effective to validate treaties previously negotiated with France and Spain (1778, 1779).
Parliament was well aware of this problem when it authorised a peace commission via 18 Geo. 3 c. 13 (1778). The Earl of Carlisle was appointed to lead the delegation. On‘The eternal rules of justice and reason’ 59 4 June 1778, the commissioners launched their mission in Philadelphia; on failure, they went their separate ways, departing North America in August and November of that year. The episode was marked by manifesto and counter-manifesto, charges of bribery, and casual insults to French arms. The Marquis de Lafayette took serious offense.
British diplomats in the eighteenth century might count, to their credit, many successful negotiations on the international stage. The Carlisle comÂmission was not one of them. The British commissioners initiated their dipÂlomatic attentions to the Continental Congress by challenging Congress to a duel. Congress was vulnerable on this score. Over two and half years after the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, the 13 provinces had yet to complete ratification of that constitution. The commissioners declared: ‘We likewise think ourselves, entitled to a full communication of the powers by which you conceive yourselves Authorized to make Treaties with Foreign Nations’.30 Congress required an ‘Act or resolution of the Assembly’s of particular States conferring this power [of treaty-making] on you’.
It would be over two years before Congress could comply with this rather simple if pointed request that the British commissioners made on behalf of Parliament, the future bargaining partner of the Continental Congress.
Even after Yorktown (19 October 1781), the House of Commons remained unconvinced that Congress had learned how to confer authority on its envoys to any respectable, that is, international, standard. The Act of ParÂliament addressing this predicament, 22 Geo. 3 c. 46 (1782), granted British diplomats the authority to negotiatewith any Body or Bodies Corporate or Politick, or any Assembly or Assemblies, or Description of Men, or any Person or Persons whatsoÂever, a Peace or a Truce with the said Colonies or Plantations, or any of them, or any Part or Parts thereof.31
Parliament publicly committed itself to making peace in North America even if the American delegates wore coonskin caps to the bargaining table. Members’ ambivalence on the treaty terms then acquired a life of its own. The Shelburne ministry - in office 4 July 1782 through 2 April 1783 - laid the terms of the preliminary treaty with the United States (signed 20 JanuÂary 1783) before the House of Commons. The administration’s purpose was to obtain a resolution approving these terms so that negotiators could move forward with their French and Spanish counterparts. Thomas Townshend, Shelburne’s leader in the House of Commons, laid the treaty preliminaries before the House (27 January 1783). Townshend then managed the governÂment’s resolution through troubled waters (21 February 1783).32
Resolved, That His Majesty, in acknowledging the Independence of the United States of America, by virtue of the Powers vested in Him by the Act of the last Session of Parliament, to enable His Majesty to conclude
a Peace or True with certain Colonies in North America, has acted as the Circumstances of Affairs indispensably required, and in Conformity to the Sense of Parliament.33
Having passed this measure, the House adopted a resolution that Lord John Cavendish (Member for York) moved 17 February 1783. ‘That the ConÂcessions made to the Adversaries of Great Britain, by the said Provisional Treaty and Preliminary Articles, are greater than they were entitled to, either from the actual Situation of their respective Possessions, or from their comÂparative Strength’.34 As a feel-good offering, this resolution did not unravel what was to become the Treaty of Paris: Great Britain was on course to give up ‘an immense tract of land belonging to the province of Canada’, as Lord John Cavendish described it.35
American and British negotiators were well aware that the concession of imperial territory from the crest of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River - the Trans-Appalachia region - would engender serious objections in London.
By putting the draft treaty before Commons when the conflict with France and Spain was not yet resolved, both British and American envoys pushed the House of Commons into a corner. Unravelling the American deal would strengthen the hands of Spanish and French negoÂtiators. By settling terms with the United States, British negotiators retained the upper hand. Supporters of the treaty preliminaries were able to pass the required resolution approving the preliminaries by acclamation. This action permitted at least some members to go on record - evidenced by a 207-190 tally - as grieving the same treaty terms which members approved earlier in the same day. The purpose of this volta face was to permit, as Cavendish put it, the House of Commons to make an end of the war itself. ‘Were we continually to brood over our own misfortunes, losses, debts and disgraces?’ he asked his colleagues.36