[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 address of the cabinet of London was used to detach either France or the United States from their alliance with each other.  Notice of it was given to the American government by the minister of France at Philadelphia, as well as by Mr. Arthur Lee, one of their agents in Europe; and congress was repeatedly urged by the former, to furnish those who might be authorized to represent them in the conferences for a general treaty, with ample powers and instructions to conclude it.  An extraordinary degree of solicitude was manifested to hasten the full powers, and to moderate the claims of the United States.

It seems to have been the policy of the cabinet of Versailles to exclude the American States from a share of the fisheries, and to limit their western boundary to the settlements then made.  Either from a real apprehension that the war might be protracted should the United States insist on the acknowledgment of their independence as a preliminary to any treaty, or from an opinion that such preliminary acknowledgment would leave the terms of the treaty less under the control of France, and the American plenipotentiaries more masters of their own conduct, Monsieur Girard laboured to persuade congress to recede from that demand.  If they could be independent in fact, he thought the form not worth contending for.[21]

[Footnote 21:  The author has seen notes taken by a member of congress, of communications made by Mr. Girard, when admitted to an audience, which avow these sentiments.  The secret journals of congress sustain this statement.]

While congress was employed in debating the instructions to their ministers, the negotiation was brought to a close.  As Spain became prepared for hostilities, the offered mediation was pressed in such terms as to produce the necessity of either accepting or rejecting it.  This drew from the cabinet of London a declaration that the independence of the United States was inadmissible; upon which his Catholic Majesty determined to take part in the war.