"The best despatch I can receive from you will be those preliminaries signed. May Providence, in compassion to human misery, give you the means of executing this great and noble work."
The terms proposed to the French according to the same authority were severe and even humiliating, and Choiseul is reported as having said:
"But what can we do? The English are furiously imperious; they are drunk with success; and, unfortunately, we are not in a condition to abase their pride."
The preliminaries of a peace which was to bring a certain stability to the colonies in America and permanently settle the claims of the three nations that had for three centuries been striving for supremacy in the New World, were signed on the third of November, 1762. They contained the following stipulations: England was to receive the Floridas and some islands in the West Indies, but abandon Havana; it was to have Louisiana to the Mississippi, but without the island of New Orleans; it was likewise to have all Canada, Acadia, Cape Breton and its independent islands, Newfoundland, except a share of France in the fisheries, with the two islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon as shelter for their fishermen. In Africa England was to have Senegal, which insured for it the monopoly of the slave-trade. In the East Indies, too, France recovered only what she possessed on the first of January, 1749, the rest going to England and assuring its sway over that territory. France, on the other hand, to indemnify Spain for the loss of Florida, ceded to Spain New Orleans and all Louisiana west of the Mississippi. There is no doubt that France came off worst in this settlement; but, as her minister Choiseul said, it was at the time helpless. In England, which by this settlement laid the foundations of her great power, there was a great display of flamboyant oratory. The king was reported to have said:
"England never signed such a peace before, nor, I believe, any other power in Europe."
Granville, then, on his deathbed, exclaimed:
"The country never saw so glorious a war or so honorable a peace," and Bute, roused to defend it against some opponents in Parliament, uttered these words significant of the high esteem in which he held himself and whatever services he rendered England as favorite of the king: