to abandon the close and intimate connection which they have formed with the Court of Versailles, and place a due degree of confidence in Great Britain. In regard to the three other Commissioners, I know but little of Messrs. Adams and Laurens, but I must say in justice to Mr. Jay that he has always appeared to me to judge with much candour and consistency of the true interests and policy of his country as considered in relation to the three Powers of Europe, being convinced that the assistance afforded to America by such of them as are leagued against England, had originated not from any motive of good will towards the former country but from enmity to us, and that therefore she was under no obligation to support them at present (her own peace being settled), in the prosecution of their quarrel, any otherwise that is to say than as she is strictly bound by the letter of her treaty with France. Though from the difference of the views and opinions of some of his colleagues, Mr. Jay has not had in his power to enforce these sentiments in the public letter which he has written conjointly with them, on the present occasion of the signature of the Provincial Treaty, to their committents in America, I have great reason to think that he has stated them very strongly in his individual capacity to several of the leading members of the Congress."[1]
To all these alarms, suspicions and intrigues, a term was now definitely put, and Oswald and Fitzherbert at once began to turn their attention to the preliminary discussion of the commercial treaties with France and the United States. "You will already," so Shelburne, in alluding to the cession of the back lands of Canada and of Senegal, wrote to Morellet, "have recognized in the treaties of peace, the great principle of free trade, which inspires them from beginning to end. I have no hesitation in saying that in my own opinion, a peace is good in the exact proportion that it recognizes that principle."[2] It was in this spirit that Fitz-
