e weeks
to agree upon a draft treaty.

During all this time the Americans violated their instructions by
failing to consult Vergennes. Here Franklin was again overruled by Jay
and Adams, whose antipathy to French and Spanish influence was
insuperable. It does not appear that Vergennes had any definite
intention to work against American boundaries or fishery rights; but
there can be no doubt that Rayneval and Marbois, two of his agents,
committed themselves openly in a sense unfavourable to American claims,
and it is likely that, had the negotiations taken place under his
control, the outcome would have been delayed in every way in order to
allow France to keep its contract with Spain, whose attacks on
Gibraltar were pushed all through the summer. As it was, the
negotiators managed to agree on a treaty of peace which reflected the
Whig principles of Shelburne and the skill and pertinacity of the three
Americans. Little trouble was encountered over boundaries, Shelburne
ceding everything east of the Mississippi and north of Florida, and
designating as a boundary between the United States and Canada in part
the same line as that in the Proclamation of 1763, from the {123} St.
Croix River to the eastward of Maine, to the Great Lakes and thence
westward by a system of waterways to the headwaters of the Mississippi.
At the especial urgence of Adams, whose Massachusetts constituents drew
much of their wealth from the Newfoundland fisheries, the right of
continuing this pursuit was comprised in the treaty, together with the
right to land and dry fish on unoccupied territories in Labrador and
Nova Scotia. As a possible make-weight, the navigation of the
Mississippi was guaranteed to citizens of both the United States and
Great Britain.

The chief difficulty arose over the question of the treatment of
American loyalists and the payment of British debts which had been
confiscated in every colony. Shelburne insisted that there must be
restoration of civil rights, compensation for damages, and a pledge
against any future confiscations or disfranchisements for loyalists,
and also demanded a provision for the payment of all debts due to
British creditors. Here the negotiation hung in a long deadlock, for
Franklin, Adams, and Jay were unanimously determined to concede no
compensation for individuals whom they hated as traitors; while the
British negotiators felt bound in honour not to abandon the men who had
lost all and suff