They were: (1) the abolition of salutes to the British flag on the high seas; (2) an _absolute_ ownership of the eastern and western coasts of Newfoundland in return for a proposed cession of the isles of St.Pierre and Miquelon to us--which would have practically ceded to France _in full sovereignty_ all the best fishing coasts of that land, with every prospect of settling the interior, in exchange for two islets devastated by war and then in British hands; (3) the right of the French to a share in the whale fishery in those seas; (4) the establishment of a French fishing station in the Falkland Isles; and (5) the extension of the French districts around the towns of Yanaon and Mahe in India.[188] To all these demands Lord Cornwallis opposed an unbending opposition.

Weak as our policy had been on other affairs, it was firm as a rock on all maritime and Indian questions.

In fact, the events to be described in the next chapter, which led to the consolidation of British power in Hindostan, would in all probability never have occurred but for the apprehensions excited by these French demands; and our masterful proconsul in Bengal, the Marquis Wellesley, could not have pursued his daring and expensive schemes of conquest, annexation, and forced alliances, had not the schemes of the First Consul played into the hands of the soldiers at Calcutta and weakened the protests of the dividend-hunters of Leadenhall Street.
The persistence of French demands for an increase of influence in Newfoundland and the West and East Indies, the vastness of her expedition to Saint Domingo and the thinly-veiled designs of her Australian expedition (which we shall notice in the next chapter), all served to awaken the suspicions of the British Government.

The negotiations consequently progressed but slowly.

From the outset they were clogged by the suspicion of bad faith.