A limit was to be settled, but settled as
a limit to secure that peace, and not at all on a system of equivalents,
for which, as we then stood with the United States, there were little or
no materials.
At the preceding Treaty of Paris, I mean that of 1763, there was
nothing at all on which to fix a basis of compensation from reciprocal
cession of conquests. They were all on one side. The question with us
was not what we were to receive, and on what consideration, but what we
were to keep for indemnity or to cede for peace. Accordingly, no place
being left for barter, sacrifices were made on our side to peace; and we
surrendered to the French their most valuable possessions in the West
Indies without any equivalent. The rest of Europe fell soon after into
its ancient order; and the German war ended exactly where it had begun.
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was built upon a similar basis. All the
conquests in Europe had been made by France. She had subdued the
Austrian Netherlands, and broken open the gates of Holland. We had taken
nothing in the West Indies; and Cape Breton was a trifling business
indeed. France gave up all for peace. The Allies had given up all that
was ceded at Utrecht. Louis the Fourteenth made all, or nearly all, the
cessions at Ryswick, and at Nimeguen. In all those treaties, and in all
the preceding, as well as in the others which intervened, the question
never had been that of barter.
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