to their justice and humanity, will so obviously depend. But if, after having pressed this plan of treaty to the utmost, you should find the American Commissioners determined not to proceed unless the independence be irrevocably acknowledged, without reference to the final settlement of the rest of the treaty, you are to endeavour to obtain from them a declaration, that if this point of independence were settled, they would be satisfied, as far as relates to America, with such farther concessions as are contained in the four articles as above stated. You are then, but in the very last resort, to inform them, in manifestation of the King's most earnest desire to remove every impediment to peace, that His Majesty is willing, without waiting for the other branches of the negotiation, to recommend to his Parliament to enable him forthwith to acknowledge the independence of the Thirteen united Colonies, absolutely and irrevocably; and not depending upon the event of any other part of a treaty. But upon the whole, it is His Majesty's express command, that you do exert your greatest address to the purpose of prevailing upon the American Commissioners to proceed in the treaty, and to admit the article of independence as a part, or as one only of the other articles which you are hereby empowered to conclude."[1]
It now became impossible for Jay to deny the good faith of the English Ministers. He received almost simultaneously a further proof of the designs of France and Spain in the shape of an elaborate memorandum from Rayneval, showing the nullity of the right of the United States to the valley of the Mississippi;[2] and of a despatch from M. de Marbois, the French chargé d'affaires
- ↑ Townshend to Oswald, September 1st, 1782.
- ↑ Joseph-Matthias Gérard de Rayneval was chief of the première direction of the French Foreign Office. He was born in 1736, and became premier commis in 1774. This place he held until 1792, when he was dismissed by General Dumouriez during his short tenure of the Foreign Office just before the fall of Louis XVI. (See Masson, Le Departement des Affaires Étrangères pendant la Revolution, 21, 148.) He was the brother of Conrad Alexandre Gérard, minister to the revolted colonies. The covering letter from Rayneval to Jay containing the memorandum speaks of it as containing his personal ideas, and the writers who have underrated the importance of this memorandum are under the necessity of supposing that it was communicated to Jay by Rayneval à l'insu of his official chief, Vergcnnes. (See the subject discussed in Mr. John Jay's "Address delivered to the New York Historical Society," 101.)
