Despite these personal attentions, the differences to be adjusted were so numerous and complicated that on the surface the situation looked almost hopeless.
Conditions, however, were really more favorable than they appeared to be.
A change, latent but influential, had taken place in the mental attitude of the governing class in England.

There had been a notion that American independence would not last long and that the country would eventually be restored to the British Crown.

The drift of events was rather in that direction until Hamilton's measures gave the ascendancy to the forces making for American national development.

The practical statesmanship of Great Britain perhaps saw more clearly the significance of what was taking place than did that of America itself, and it was prepared to reckon with this new condition.

Moreover, the European commotion resulting from the French Revolution had brought to the front a new set of interests and anxieties, for the free handling of which a settlement of differences with the United States might be advantageous.