Lord Bath argues for retaining Canada in A Letter addressed to Two Great Men on the Prospect of Peace (1759).  He is answered by another pamphlet called Remarks on the Letter to Two Great Men (1760).  The Gentleman’s Magazine for 1759 has an ironical article styled Reasons for restoring Canada to the French; and in 1761 a pamphlet against the restitution appeared under the title, Importance of Canada considered in Two Letters to a Noble Lord.  These are but a part of the writings on the question.]

If Pitt had been in office he would have demanded terms that must ruin past redemption the maritime and colonial power of France; but Bute was less exacting.  In November the plenipotentiaries of England, France, and Spain agreed on preliminaries of peace, in which the following were the essential points.  France ceded to Great Britain Canada and all her possessions on the North American continent east of the River Mississippi, except the city of New Orleans and a small adjacent district.  She renounced her claims to Acadia, and gave up to the conqueror the Island of Cape Breton, with all other islands in the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence.  Spain received back Havana, and paid for it by the cession of Florida, with all her other possessions east of the Mississippi.  France, subject to certain restrictions, was left free to fish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off a part of the coast of Newfoundland; and the two little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon were given her as fishing stations on condition that she should not fortify or garrison them.  In the West Indies, England restored the captured islands of Guadeloupe, Marigalante, Desirade, and Martinique, and France ceded Grenada and the Grenadines; while it was agreed that of the so-called neutral islands, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago should belong to England, and St. Lucia to France.  In Europe, each side promised to give no more help to its allies in the German war.  France restored Minorca, and England restored Belleisle; France gave up such parts of Hanoverian territory as she had occupied, and evacuated certain fortresses belonging to Prussia, pledging herself at the same time to demolish, under the inspection of English engineers, her own maritime fortress of Dunkirk.  In Africa France ceded Senegal, and received back the small Island of Goree.  In India she lost everything she had gained since the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle; recovered certain trading stations, but renounced the right of building forts or maintaining troops in Bengal.

On the day when the preliminaries were signed, France made a secret agreement with Spain, by which she divested herself of the last shred of her possessions on the North American continent.  As compensation for Florida, which her luckless ally had lost in her quarrel, she made over to the Spanish Crown the city of New Orleans, and under the name of Louisiana gave her the vast region spreading westward from the Mississippi towards the Pacific.