A draft of instructions as to a treaty of commerce with Great Britain was also prepared. The commercial treaty with France was to be the guide. No privilege was to be granted to Great Britain not granted to France, and no peculiar restrictions or limitations to be consented to in favor of Great Britain. The common right of fishing was to be in no case given up. The importance of its enjoyment was declared. France was to be induced to enter into articles for its better security.

Should its enjoyment be interrupted by Great Britain, the force of the Union was to be exercised to obtain redress; and Congress pledged themselves, that no treaty of commerce should be entered into, nor any commerce be carried on with Great Britain, without an express stipulation on her part for the unmolested taking of fish in the American seas beyond three leagues from the shores of the British territories.

The votes on the articles of these treaties affecting the Fisheries and the Mississippi, assumed too much a geographical character, but satisfied for a time the extreme sections of the United States. To France they were of little interest.

Having removed these obstacles to a peace with Great Britain, Gerard, feeling he had accomplished his errand, on the seventeenth of September took public leave of Congress.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE choice of persons to conduct these negotiations was the next great matter of interest. John Jay and John Adams were both in contemplation as ministers to treat with England. The first effort was to exclude Jay, then President of Congress; and with this obvious intent, a member from South Carolina, who might not be suspected of being prompted by a preference of Adams, offered a resolution, which was seconded by his friend Gerry, declaring that Congress would not appoint any person being a member of their body to any office under the United States for which he would receive any emolument. This resolution was defeated by the votes of all the members except four. These were the delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and one from South Carolina.*

Adams and Jay were then placed in nomination. The next day a vote was taken, but no election was had, and the expedient of first choosing an envoy to Spain was resorted to. This was ordered, and Jay was appointed the following day to this mission. Thus he was removed from competition with Adams, and the latter was chosen to negotiate with England.

The preference of Adams to Jay has been ascribed to

* Peabody, Lovell, Gerry, and Matthews.-S. J. U. S. 51.

his having "so generally fallen in with the policy of the Southern States, and of the French minister, by refusing to insist upon the fisheries, as a fundamental principle of national independence, as to rouse in the New England delegates the greatest repugnance to intrusting him with the vital interests of that negotiation." * This statement is not warranted by the record. Jay, it is true, voted against insisting on a stipulation from England of a right to cure fish on the coast of Nova Scotia as an ultimatum, it being obvious, if Nova Scotia were to remain a British possession, that the United States had no right to require the use of that coast for any purpose. But as to requiring an acknowledgment of the common right of fishing, and a declaration, that, in no case, by any treaty of peace, it be given up, he voted in favor of it in unison with all the members, seven excepted.†† The course of this matter would indicate that the vote as to these missions involved no principle, but that the election of Adams was a concession to the wishes of his immediate friends. If there was an intrigue for this appointment, it was not on the part of the friends of Jay. To please South Carolina, John Laurens was appointed Secretary to the Legation, which place he declining, his father, Henry Laurens, was chosen Minister to Holland.

A few days after, the Chevalier de la Luzerne presented his letters of credence as the successor of Gerard. His high connections-for he was grandson of De la Moignon, chancellor of France, nephew of Malesherbes, and nearly allied to De Broglio-showed it to have been a complimentary selection. He recently had filled the

*Life of Adams, i. 295.

N. H., R. I. 3, Penn. 4, Virginia 1.

"You shall never see my name," Jay writes to Livingston, "to a bad peace, nor to one that does not secure the fishery.”—D. C. 8–128.

place of ambassador to Bavaria, during the negotiations which preceded the treaty of Tischen, Marbois being his secretary, who accompanied him to Philadelphia, and was perhaps the more efficient person.

In the first month of the new year, the French envoy announced to Congress the preparations of France to bring the war to a conclusion, the importance of commensurate exertions on their part, and the aids he proposed to furnish. A communication of the correspondence between England and Spain followed, showing the failure of the mediation. The probability of an armed intervention of other European powers was alleged as a motive for vigorous exertions to expel the British from all the United States, inasmuch as the principle of uti possidetis might govern in a forced peace. An assurance was given, that France and Spain would make a very powerful diversion, and would exert themselves to maintain and improve their naval superiority. Congress, in reply, stated their measures to raise troops, their dependence on their ally for clothing and stores of war; pressed earnestly the dispatch of a naval force to control that of the enemy in the American seas, and gave fullest assurance of the determination of the States to secure their independence and to observe their treaties.

In a second conference, the terms of an alliance to be formed with Spain were set forth by the French ambassador. These were, a precise and invariable boundary to the United States, as limited by the British proclamation of seventeen hundred sixty-three; the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi to be reserved to Spain; her possession of the Floridas, and of the lands on the castern side of that river, they being "possessions of the crown of Great Britain, and proper objects against which the arms of Spain may be employed for the purpose of making a permanent conquest for the Spanish crown."

The policy of acceding to these terms was enforced by a statement, that France cannot deem the revolution which has set up the independence of these United States as past all danger of unfavorable events, until his Catholic Majesty and the United States shall be established "on terms of confidence and amity."

No immediate action was taken by Congress on this suggestion, they waiting such advices as Jay, who had recently sailed for Spain, should give.

The appointment of Adams, who, on his return to America, had placed before Congress a wide view of European affairs, was most welcome to him. He pronounced it an acquittal "with much splendor.” * "I could compare it to nothing," he writes Laurens, “but Shakespeare's idea of Ariel, wedged in the middle of a rifted oak, for I was sufficiently sensible, that it was owing to an unhappy division in Congress; and pains enough were taken to inform me, that one side were for sending me to Spain, and the other to Holland, so that I was flattered to find that neither side had any decisive objection against trusting me, and that the apparent question was only where."

Thus elated, Adams reached Paris a few days after the recent conference with La Luzerne had taken place at Philadelphia.†

In the early part of his sojourn there during his first mission, nothing of a very marked character occurred. He arrived with impressions not unfavorable to France, ‡

* 4 D. C. 330–335.

+ Feb. 5, 1780.

+ "It is a rock" (the alliance) "upon which we may safely build. Narrow and illiberal prejudices, peculiar to John Bull, with which I might, perhaps, have been in some degree infected when I was John Bull, have now no influence over me. I never was, however, much of a John Bull; I was John Yankee; and such I shall live and die."-4 D. C. 261.