Not long after this change a messenger was privately dispatched to
Louis XIV to ask if he wished for peace. "It was," says the French
minister, "like asking a dying man whether he would wish to be
cured."[3] Later, terms were secretly agreed upon between the Tories
(S479) and the French, and in 1713, in the quaint Dutch city of
Utrecht, the allies, together with France and Spain, signed the treaty
bearing that name.
[2] Morris's "The Age of Anne."
By it Louis XIV bound himself:
(1) To acknowledge the right of England to limit the succession to
the crown to Protestant sovereigns (S497).
(2) To compel Prince James Edward, the so-called "Pretender" (SS490,
491) to quit France.
(3) To renounce the union of the crowns of France and Spain; but
Philip was to retain the Spanish throne (S508).
(4) To cede to England all claims to Newfoundland, Acadia, or Nova
Scotia, and that vast region known as the Hudson Bay Company's
Possessions.
Next, Spain was to give up:
(1) The Spanish Netherlands to Austria, an ally of Holland, and grant
to the Dutch a line of forts to defend their frontier against France.
(2) England was to have the exclusive right for thirty-three years of
supplying the Spanish-American colonists with negro slaves.[1]
[1] This right (called the "Assiento," or Contract) had formerly
belonged to France. By its transfer England got the privilege of
furnishing 4800 "sound, merchantable negroes "annually," "two thirds
to be males" between ten and forty years of age.
This trade had long been coveted by the English, and had been carried
on to some extent by them ever since Sir John Hawkins entered upon it
in Queen Elizabeth's reign. Sir John grew very rich through his
traffic in human flesh, and he set up a coat of arms emblazoned with a
slave in fetters, so that all might see how he had won wealth and
distinction.