April 15

The Pennsylvania Packet (Philadelphia) of April 15, 1783 featured a summation of remarks in the House of Lords, the upper house of the British Parliament, upon the preliminary peace between Britain and the United States of America.  Of Thomas de Grey (Lord Walsingham), the Packet reported, “Lord Walsingham questioned the right of the crown to dismember the empire without the consent of parliament.... ”  Frederick Howard, the Fifth Earl of Carlisle, worried about the vulnerability of Loyalists to  “cruel and inveterate malice” of their revolutionary neighbors.

On April 15, 1783, Congressman from Virginia James Madison wrote to Edmund Randolph, “The paper inclosed will amuse you with the bickerings in the British Parliament on that subject [i.e., the provisional articles of a peace between Britain and the United States].”

Madison remarked, “Genl. Carlton is very importunate for an immediate execution of the provisional articles on the part of Congress in the two points of liberating the prisoners, and recommending restitution to the Loyalists.  On his part he has set the example in the first point, but says nothing of executing the other important conditions which are in our favor.”

Paul H. Smith, ed., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789: Volume 20: March 12, 1783-September 30, 1783 (Washington, D. C.:  Government Printing Office, 1993), 187.