The financial condition of France was desperate.  Her people were crushed with taxation; her debt grew apace; and her yearly expenditure was nearly double her revenue.  Choiseul felt the need of immediate peace; and George III. and Bute were hardly less eager for it, to avert the danger of Pitt’s return to power and give free scope to their schemes for strengthening the prerogative.  Therefore, in September, 1762, negotiations were resumed.  The Duke of Bedford was sent to Paris to settle the preliminaries, and the Duc de Nivernois came to London on the same errand.  The populace were still for war.  Bedford was hissed as he passed through the streets of London, and a mob hooted at the puny figure of Nivernois as he landed at Dover.

The great question was, Should Canada be restored?  Should France still be permitted to keep a foothold on the North American continent?  Ever since the capitulation of Montreal a swarm of pamphlets had discussed the momentous subject.  Some maintained that the acquisition of Canada was not an original object of the war; that the colony was of little value and ought to be given back to its old masters; that Guadeloupe should be kept instead, the sugar trade of that island being worth far more than the Canadian fur trade; and, lastly, that the British colonists, if no longer held in check by France, would spread themselves over the continent, learn to supply all their own wants, grow independent, and become dangerous.  Nor were these views confined to Englishmen.  There were foreign observers who clearly saw that the adhesion of her colonies to Great Britain would be jeopardized by the extinction of French power in America.  Choiseul warned Stanley that they “would not fail to shake off their dependence the moment Canada should be ceded;” while thirteen years before, the Swedish traveller Kalm declared that the presence of the French in America gave the best assurance to Great Britain that its own colonies would remain in due subjection.[874]

[Footnote 874:  Kalm, Travels in North America, I. 207.]

The most noteworthy argument on the other side was that of Franklin, whose words find a strange commentary in the events of the next few years.  He affirmed that the colonies were so jealous of each other that they would never unite against England.  “If they could not agree to unite against the French and Indians, can it reasonably be supposed that there is any danger of their uniting against their own nation, which it is well known they all love much more than they love one another?  I will venture to say union amongst them for such a purpose is not merely improbable, it is impossible;” that is, he prudently adds, without “the most grievous tyranny and oppression,” like the bloody rule of “Alva in the Netherlands."[875]

[Footnote 875:  Interest of Great Britain in regard to her Colonies (London, 1760)