so to act, that posterity may not lay the downfall of this once respectable empire to my door; and that, if ruin should attend the measures that may be adopted, I may not long survive

them."

“An ex

On the twenty-sixth of September, Aranda, in company with Lafayette, encountered Jay at Versailles. Aranda asked: "When shall we proceed to do business?" Jay replied: "When you communicate your powers to treat." change of commissions," said Aranda, "cannot be expected, for Spain has not acknowledged your independence." "We have declared our independence," said Jay; "and France, Holland, and Britain have acknowledged it." Lafayette came to his aid, and told the ambassador that it was not consistent with the dignity of France that an ally of hers like the United States should treat otherwise than as independent. Vergennes pressed upon Jay a settlement of claims with Spain. Jay answered: "We shall be content with no boundaries short of the Mississippi."

So soon as Oswald received his new commission the negotiation, after the loss of a month, moved forward rapidly. The system which Franklin at the opening of the negotiation had established of making a separate peace without admitting France to a knowledge of its progress was adhered to. Jay, who was a skilful lawyer, and was now resolved "never to set his name to a peace that did not secure the fisheries," drew up its articles. The thirteen United States with every part of their territories were acknowledged to be free, sovereign, and independent; their boundaries were determined according to the unanimous instructions of congress which had reserved the line between Nova Scotia and New England for adjustment by commissioners after the peace. The fishery in the American seas was to be freely exercised by the Americans of right wherever they exercised it while united with Great Britain. A clause provided for reciprocal freedom of commerce. Oswald proposed articles protecting the refugees and English creditors, but did not insist on them, "as Franklin declared that whatever confiscations had been made in America were in virtue of the laws of particular states, which congress had no authority to repeal." Thus far the articles were those which had been agreed upon between Franklin and Shelburne.

Jay, on his own authority, added the gratuitous concession to the British of the free navigation of the Mississippi.* "He pleaded in favor of the future commerce of England as if he had been of her council and wished to make some reparation for her loss," insisting that she should recover West Florida, "engross the whole of the supplies from Canada to the mouth of the Mississippi, and particularly should embrace the whole of the fur trade." +

On sending the draft of the treaty to the secretary of state, the British plenipotentiary wrote: "I look upon the treaty as now closed." Franklin and Jay agreed that, if it should be approved, they would sign it immediately. Toward the French minister they maintained an absolute reserve, not even communicating to him the new commission of Oswald. +

After the capture of Minorca by the Duke de Crillon, the French and Spanish fleets united under his command to reduce Gibraltar; and Count d'Artois, the brother of the king, passed

* Franklin, ix., 418. Franklin ignores the cession of the navigation of the Mississippi.

+ Oswald to Secretary Townshend, 2 October 1782, and postscript of 3 October; same to same, 5 October 1782; same to same, 7 October 1782. “Mr. Jay came again upon the subject of W. Florida, and expects and insists that for the common good, our own as well as theirs, it may not be left in the hands of the Spaniards, and thinks we ought to prepare immediately for the expedition to execute it this winter." Extract from postscript of 3 October: "Before we parted, this gentleman [Mr. Jay] came again upon the subject of West Florida, and pleaded in favor of the future commerce of England, as if he had been of her council and wishing to make some reparation for her loss. Amongst other things he repeated that there is water-carriage by rivers or lakes all the way within land from Canada to the mouth of the Mississippi, excepting a few short stoppages of portage; so that for outward merchandise we might engross the whole of their supplies for a stretch of country between two and three thousand miles. And in like manner, chiefly by means of the Mississippi, receive their country commodities in return, and particularly should embrace the whole of the fur-trade. In all which I am satisfied he is well founded." Extract from dispatch of 7 October.

On m'a assuré que les négociations sur le fond étaient entamées et que le plénipotentiaire anglais était assez coulant. Mais je suis dans l'impossibilité de rien vous dire de positif et de certain à cet égard, Messrs. Jay et Franklin se tenant dans la réserve la plus absolue à mon égard. Ils ne m'ont même pas encore remis copie du plein pouvoir de Mr. Oswald. Je pense, Monsieur, qu'il sera utile que vous disiez cette particularité à Mr. Livingston, afin qu'il puisse s'il le juge à propos ramener les deux plénipotentiaires américains à la teneur de leurs instructions. Vergennes to Luzerne, 14 October 1782. For the instructions, see above, 472, 473.

through Madrid to be present at its surrender. But by showers of red-hot shot, and by a most heroic sortie under General Elliot, the batteries which were thought to be fireproof were blown up or consumed, and a fleet under Lord Howe was close at hand to replenish the stores of the fortress. The news increased the clamor of Paris for peace. France, it was said, is engaged in a useless war for thankless allies; she has suffered disgrace in the West Indies while undertaking to conquer Jamaica for Spain, and now shares in the defeat before Gibraltar. Vergennes, to obtain a release from his engagement to Spain, was ready to make great sacrifices on the part of his own country, and to require them of America. Congress was meanwhile instructing Franklin "to use his utmost endeavors to effect the loan of four millions of dollars through the generous exertions of the king of France;" and on the third of October it renewed its resolution to hearken to no propositions for peace except in confidence and in concert with its ally.

On the fourteenth of the same month Vergennes explained to the French envoy at Philadelphia the policy of France: "If we are so happy as to make peace, the king must then cease to subsidize the American army, which will be as useless as it has been habitually inactive. We are astonished at the demands which continue to be made upon us, while the Americans obstinately refuse the payment of taxes. It seems to us much more natural for them to raise upon themselves, rather than upon the subjects of the king, the funds which their defence exacts." "You know," continued Vergennes, "our system with regard to Canada. Everything which shall prevent the conquest of that country will agree essentially with our views. But this way of thinking ought to be an impenetrable secret for the Americans. Moreover, I do not see by what title the Americans can form pretensions to lands on Lake Ontario. Those lands belong to the savages or are a dependency of Canada. In either case, the United States have no right to them whatever. It has been pretty nearly demonstrated that to the south of the Ohio their limits are the mountains following the shed of the waters, and that everything to the north of the mountain range, especially the lakes, formerly made a part of Canada. These notions are for you alone; you will take care

not to appear to be informed about them, because we the less wish to intervene in the discussions between the Count de Aranda and Mr. Jay, as both parties claim countries to which neither of them has a right, and as it will be almost impossible to reconcile them."

When the first draft of the treaty with the United States reached England, the offer of Jay of the free navigation of the Mississippi was gladly accepted; but that for a reciprocity of navigation and commerce was put aside. The cabinet complained of Oswald for yielding everything, and appointed Henry Strachey, Townshend's clear-headed and earnest undersecretary of state, to be his assistant. On the twentieth of October, both of the secretaries of state being present, Shelburne gave Strachey three points specially in charge: no concession of a right to dry fish on Newfoundland; a recognition of the validity of debts to British subjects contracted by citizens of the United States before the war; but, above all, security for loyalists, and adequate indemnity for the confiscated property of the loyal refugees. The allegation of the American commissioners that they had no authority to restore the loyalists to their old possessions was objected to as a confession that, though they claimed to have full powers, they were not plenipotentiaries; that they were acting under thirteen separate sovereignties, which had no common head. Shelburne proposed either an extension of Nova Scotia to the Penobscot or the Kennebec or the Saco, so that a province might be formed for the reception of the loyalists; or that some part of the revenue from sales of the old crown lands within the United States might be set apart for their benefit. To the ministry it was clear that peace, if to be made by them at all, must be made before the meeting of parliament, which had been summoned for the twenty-fifth of November.

The American commission was, on the twenty-sixth of October, recruited by the arrival of John Adams, its chief. It had been the proudest moment of his life when he received from congress the commission of sole plenipotentiary for negotiating peace and commerce between the United States and Great Britain. The year in which he was deprived of it he has himself described as "the most anxious and mortifying

year of his whole life." He ascribed the change in part to the French government, in part to Franklin. In his better moments, even at that day, he did justice to France; toward Franklin he never relented. Both Franklin and John Adams had done great deeds which give them a place in the history of mankind. The one best understood his fellow-men and how to deal with them; the other the principles on which free constitutions should be formed. Both sons of Massachusetts, they were stars shining in the same constellation, and now in framing a treaty of peace with the British empire each of the two seemed living not a life of his own, but as if prophetically inspired with all the coming greatness of their country.

Adams came fresh from the grand achievement of prevailing on the United Provinces to acknowledge the independence of the United States, and to form with them a treaty of commerce; but his first step in the negotiation at Paris was a wrong one. Franklin had hitherto warded off the demand. that the treaty of peace should guarantee to English merchants the right to collect debts that had been due to them in the United States, because the British armies had in many cases robbed the merchants of the very goods for which the debts were incurred; and had wantonly destroyed the property of the planters, which would have furnished the means of payment. Moreover, the British themselves had confiscated the debts as well as all other property of the patriots of South Carolina. The day after Strachey's arrival in Paris, Adams, encountering him and Oswald at the house of Jay, to their sur prise and delight gave his assent to the proposed stipulation in behalf of British creditors. In the evening of the same day Adams called for the first time on Franklin, who at once put him on his guard as to the British demands relating to debts and the compensation of tories.

On the thirtieth the American commissioners met Oswald and Strachey, and for four several days they discussed the unsettled points of the treaty.

Massachusetts desired to extend to the St. John; unless that boundary could be obtained, congress unanimously agreed the question should be reserved for settlement by commissioners after the war. The British commission, aided by a veteran