Your letter discovering the same disposition has made me send to you Mr. Oswald.
"I have had a longer acquaintance with him, than even I have had the pleasure to have with you. I believe him an honest man, and after consulting some of our common friends, I have thought him the fittest for the purpose. He is a practical man, and conversant in those negotiations which are most interesting to mankind. This has made me prefer him to any of our speculative friends, or to any person of higher rank. He is fully apprized of my mind, and you may give full credit to every thing he assures you of. At the same time if any other channel occurs to you, I am ready to embrace it. I wish to retain the same simplicity and good faith which subsisted between us in transactions of less importance."[1]
With this letter Oswald arrived in Paris on the 12th of April, and immediately informed Franklin that the new Ministry was sincerely desirous of peace; but he intimated that if France should insist upon humiliating terms, England would continue the war, her resources not being exhausted. Franklin replied "That America was ready to treat, but only in concert with France, and that as Mr. Jay, Mr. Adams, and Mr. Laurens were all absent from Paris, nothing of importance could be done in the affair." At the same time he offered to introduce Oswald to Vergennes, an invitation which Oswald accepted;[2] and a meeting accordingly took place between the English emissary and the French minister on the 17th of April.
Oswald not having any command over the French language, Rayneval, Chief of the Première Direction of the Foreign Office, acted as interpreter. The French minister told Oswald that the engagements of his royal master were such as to prevent him treating alone; the treaty must therefore be general, not partial; if the parties intended to avail themselves of the mediation recently proposed by the Northern Powers, they might treat at Vienna; otherwise at Paris: the King his master was
