There France was in the position of a man who has little to lose.

Already despoiled of Canada, she had every reason to believe that a renewal of war, with Europe neutral and the Americans friends instead of enemies, would not rob her of her islands.

Recognizing that the Americans, who less than twenty years before had insisted upon the conquest of Canada, would not consent to her regaining it, she expressly stipulated that she would have no such hopes, but exacted that in the coming war she should retain any English West Indian possessions which she could seize.

Spain was differently situated.

Hating England, wanting to regain Gibraltar, Minorca, and Jamaica,--no mere jewels in her crown, but foundation-stones of her sea power,--she nevertheless saw that the successful rebellion of the English colonists against the hitherto unrivalled sea power of the mother-country would be a dangerous example to her own enormous colonial system, from which she yearly drew so great subsidies.