"3dly. Colony ships and trade to be received, and have the same privileges in Britain and Ireland, as British ships and trade. I did not ask any explanation on that head for the present. British and Irish ships in the colonies to be in like manner on the same footing with their own ships.

"4thly. Giving up every part of Canada.

66

If there were any other articles of either kind, I cannot now recollect them; but I do not think there were any of material consequence, and I perhaps was the less attentive in the enumeration, as it had been agreed to give me the whole in writing. But, after some reflection, the Doctor said he did not like to give such writing out of his hands, and, hesitating a good deal about it, asked me if I had seen Mr. Jay, the other commissioner, lately come from Madrid. I said I had not. He then told me it would be proper I should see him, and he would fix a time for our meeting, and seemed to think he should want to confer with him himself before he gave a final answer.

* * *

"From this conversation, I have some hopes, my lord, that it is possible to put an end to the American quarrel in a short time; and when that is done, I have a notion that the treaty with the other powers will go more smoothly on."

To promote his views respecting the treaty, he wrote, and printed upon his private press, an imaginary piece, as from a peasant philosopher, who had trudged on foot from the mountains of Provence to recommend justice and good will to the great men at Paris. His rustic and poor appearance, said Franklin, prevented his access to them; so he had himself taken him by the hand and struck off a few copies of his production. The piece, unfortunately, has not been preserved. I mention it to show that in this, the most important transaction of his life, he fell upon expedients similar to those by which he had promoted affairs of less consequence; the great feature of his policy as a public man being to enlighten public opinion, and to bring an enlightened public opinion to bear upon the counsels of public men. He wanted this treaty negotiated, not as jockeys with jockeys, each assuming that the other has no thought but to cheat; but as statesmen with statesmen, strenuous solely to know and do what justice and the interests of man required.

CHAPTER XV.

SECOND ATTEMPT TO NEGOTIATE.

"MR. JAY likes Frenchmen as little as Mr. Lee and Mr. Izard did. He says they are not a moral people; they know not what it is; he don't like any Frenchman; the Marquis de Lafayette is clever, but he is a Frenchman." So wrote John Adams in his Diary, one day in November, 1782, of a man whose great grandfather was a French protestant refugee.

But in John Jay the vivacious blood of his French ancestors was tempered by that of the Dutch Van Cortlandts, a fair daughter of whom his father married. How could John Jay like the French of 1782?-he, the pure, devout Episcopalian, nurtured in that clean, plain, paternal mansion in rural Westchester, by parents who knew no standard of human worth except that which is expressed with such severe simplicity in their prayer-book. Obey the commandments of God, and you go to Heaven when you die: disobey them, and you go to hell, unless you repent. This was the simple creed of the excellent Jay, and he held it in the literal sense of moral and pious Westchester county, in the State of New York, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-two. Franklin, and all the good men that have ever lived, held precisely the same opinion; only, Franklin would have given to the words. a larger, a wiser interpretation. It was as natural and as right for John Jay to abhor the French, as it was for Benjamin Franklin to like them, and to be happy in their society. It was unfortu nate, though, that a gentleman who detested Frenchmen should have been selected to negotiate a difficult treaty in conjunction with Frenchmen. He tried hard to escape the task, but Congress I would not let him off.

He was, moreover, a young man, only thirty-seven, and without experience in diplomacy; and being most sensitively conscientious, and having a painful sense of the responsibility of his position, he fell into a state of miserable distrust. He suspected the English, he suspected the Spanish, and he more than suspected the French.

When Franklin's sickness, later in the year, left him practically alone, he was like an Alpine traveler out on the mountains after dark, who dreads a precipice at every step, and dares not stir till he has felt the ground before him. Franklin knew the road, and, sick as he was, could have guided the timid adventurer safely through; but Mr. Jay, though he was never capable of distrusting the integrity of Dr. Franklin, became thoroughly distrustful of the soundness of his judgment.

Mr. Jay reached Paris at noon on the 23d of June, and as soon as he had placed his family at a hotel, went out to Passy, and spent the rest of the day in learning from Dr. Franklin the state of the negotiation. A few days after, they called together upon the Count d'Aranda, the Spanish Embassador, with whom Mr. Jay was to negotiate. This call was a notable event, for it was the first time that the plenipotentiaries of the United States had had official intercourse with any of the diplomatic corps in Paris. D'Aranda gave them a reception of unusual cordiality. As one of the grandest of the grandees of Spain, and one of the richest men in Europe, he lived at Paris in great splendor. He had such a profusion of plate that he maintained a silversmith in his house to keep it burnished as bright as new; and instead of buying his wine of wine merchants, he employed agents to go from vineyard to vineyard, selecting the choicest varieties.* "On our going out," says Dr. Franklin, "he took pains himself to open the folding doors for us, which is a high compliment here; and told us he would return our visit (rendre son devoir), and then fix a day with us for dining with him." He said, also, that he should be ready to begin business as soon as Mr. Jay found it convenient.

Mr. Jay was taken sick a few days after this visit, and was laid aside for a month. No time was lost, however; for, during the interval, the British cabinet was recast, Mr. Grenville recalled, a new agent, Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert, sent over in his stead, and Mr. Oswald formally commissioned to treat with the Americans. By the middle of August, when Oswald's commission arrived, Mr. Jay, though still debilitated, was able to attend to business.

Upon reading over Mr. Oswald's commission, Mr. Jay observed that he was empowered to treat with the thirteen "Colonies or

"Life of John Jay," i., 40.

Plantations." The document was long and minute, but wherever there was occasion to speak of the United States, they were called by the same name, "Colonies or Plantations." Mr. Jay was surprised at this appellation, and the more he thought of it, the less he liked it. The wildest suspicions tormented him. The English ministry, he thought, had changed their system, and meant to withhold the acknowledgment of independence. It chanced that two Englishmen, Franklin's old acquaintance, William Jones, and a Mr. Paradise, passed through Paris on their way to America. Paradise, who had inherited an estate in Virginia, was going out to take possession, and Jones was accompanying him as his friend and legal adviser. But, on arriving at the coast, Paradise was seized with such a terror of the sea, that he could not be persuaded to embark. Jones returned to England, and Paradise to Paris; where Mr. Jay again met him, and found him "very reserved” upon the cause of his return-as well he might be. Mr. Jay was so sure that this mysterious affair contained some lurking peril for America, that he gave a dozen pages of details respecting it, in one of his public letters to the Foreign Secretary. Colonies and Plantations! NEVER!

Mr. Jay carried the document to the Count de Vergennes, pointed out the offensive words, and said to him that it would be "descending from the ground of independence," to treat under the donomination of Colonies and Plantations. The minister thought not. Names, said he, signify little; the King of England styles himself King of France, yet the King of France treats with him. Besides, an acknowledgment of independence would naturally occur in the treaty, not precede it; for that would be to place the effect before the cause. In various ways, too, the King of England had acknowledged the independence of the United States. The minister turned to Dr. Franklin, and asked him what he thought of the matter. "I think the commission will do," he replied; "what do you think, Mr. Jay ?" Mr. Jay said he did not like it, and that it was best to proceed cautiously.

In the carriage, on their return to Passy, Mr. Jay expressed to Dr. Franklin a total distrust of all the courts. It was evident he said, that M. de Vergennes did not want to see our independence acknowledged by Britain until "they had made all their uses of us." It was easy for France to foresee, he added, that Spain VOL. II.-21

would, with great difficulty, be brought to conclude a reasonable treaty, and "if we once found ourselves standing on our own legs, our independence acknowledged, and all our other terms ready to be granted, we might not think it our duty to continue the war for the attainment of Spanish objects. But, on the contrary, as we were bound by treaty to continue the war until our independence should be attained, it was the interest of France to postpone that event until their own views, and those of Spain, could be gratified." Only in that way, Mr. Jay said, could he account for the minister's advising us to act in a manner inconsistent with our dignity, and for reasons which he himself had too much understanding not to see the fallacy of.

In vain, did Dr. Franklin essay to remove these groundless impressions from the mind of Mr. Jay. In vain, he dwelt upon the past generosity, the tried honor, the proved sincerity, of the French court during the whole of the war. In vain, he produced the instructions of Congress, which ordered the commissioners to defer to the advice of the French government. In vain, he pointed out the true reasons of M. de Vergennes' conduct-his moderation, and his desire to remove every obstacle to peace. In vain, did Mr. Oswald offer to write to the American Commissioners a letter, in which he would expressly state, that he treated with them as the representatives of an independent power. In vain, did he exhibit an article of his instructions, which empowered him to concede "the complete independence of the Thirteen Colonies." Mr. Jay remained unconvinced, and, at length, refused, point blank, to go on with the negotiation, until a commission was shown in which the power he represented was styled the United States.

This is not the road to Canada, Franklin must often have groaned, during the month that was wasted upon this nonsense. He lay on his bed much of the time, tormented with the pains of the gravel; and Mr. Jay had every thing his own way.

Mr. Oswald, finding him inflexible, communicated the difficulty to the Secretary of State, who replied that it was the king's "determination to exercise, in the fullest extent, the powers with which the act of Parliament had invested him, by granting to America full, complete, and unconditional independence, in the most explicit manner, as an article of treaty."

But even this did not satisfy Mr. Jay. On the contrary, it did