length determined to make one common cause with
France against Great Britain. It was supposed that the two powers
would be able to obtain a complete ascendency at sea; and that their
combined fleets would maintain a superiority on the American coast, as
well as in Europe.

From the first determination of France to take part in the war, it
appears to have been the earnest wish of the cabinet of Versailles to
engage Spain likewise in the contest.

Her resentments against England, her solicitude to diminish the naval
strength of that nation, and her wish to recover Jamaica, Gibraltar,
and the Floridas, urged her to seize the fair occasion now offered of
dismembering the British empire, and accomplishing these favourite
objects. But her dread of the effect which the independence of the
United States might produce on her own colonies, mingled with some
apprehensions of danger from the contest she was about to provoke, had
produced an appearance of irresolution, which rendered her future
course, for a time, uncertain. In this conflict of opposite interests,
the influence of the cabinet of Versailles, and the jealousy of the
naval power of Britain, at length obtained the victory; and his
Catholic Majesty determined to prevent the reannexation of the United
States to their mother country; but to effect this object by
negotiation rather than by the sword.

[Sidenote: Spain offers her mediation to the belligerent powers.]

In pursuance of this pacific system, he offered his mediation to the
belligerent powers. This proposition was readily accepted by France;
but the minister of his Britannic Majesty evaded any explicit
arrangements on the subject, while he continued to make general verbal
declarations of the willingness of his sovereign to give peace to
Europe under the mediation of his Catholic Majesty. In consequence of
these declarations, the Spanish minister proposed a truce for a term
of years, and that a congress of deputies from the belligerent powers
should assemble at Madrid to adjust the terms of a permanent treaty;
into which deputies from the United States were to be admitted, as
the representatives of a sovereign nation. Although an explicit
acknowledgment of their independence was not to be required, it was to
be understood that they should be independent in fact, and should be
completely separated from the British empire.

This negotiation was protracted to a considerable length; and in the
mean time, all the