JOHN ADAMS 89 wished no further complications to the war, and, provided the English colonies should be definitely separated from the mother country, which he considered indispensable to the in- terest of France, he was not disposed to insist on anything else. It was for this reason that he had urged upon congress, through the French minister at Philadelphia, and just about this time had succeeded in obtaining from congress though the information had not yet reached Paris not only the with- drawal of Adams's commission to treat of commerce, and the enlargement to five of the
- number of commissioners to treat of peace, but
an absolute discretion intrusted to the nego- tiators as to everything except independence and the additional direction that in the last re- sort they were to be governed by Vergennes's advice. The cause of sending for Adams, who still occupied, so far as was known at Paris, the position of sole negotiator for peace, was the offer of a mediation on the part of Russia and the German empire. But this offer led to nothing. Great Britain haughtily rejected it on the ground that she would not allow France to stand between her and her colonies. Re- turning to Holland, Mr. Adams, though still unsupported by Vergennes, pushed with great energy his reception as ambassador by the states general, which at length, April 19, 1782, he succeeded in accomplishing. Following up this success with his customary perseverance, ha succeeded before the end of the year in ne- gotiating a Dutch loan of two millions of dol- lars, the first of a series which proved a chief financial resource of the continental congress iu its later days. He also succeeded in nego- tiating a treaty of amity and commerce. His success in these negotiations, considering the obstacles he had to encounter, and the want of support from Vergennes, he was accustomed to regard as the greatest triumph of his life.- Before this business was completed, Mr. Adams received urgent calls to come to Paris, where Jay and Franklin, two of the new commission- ers, were already treating for peace, and where he arrived Oct. 26. Though Mr. Jay had been put into the diplomatic service by the procure- ment of the party in congress in the French interest, his diplomatic experience in Spain had led him to entertain doubts also as to the sincere good will of Vergennes. A confiden- tial despatch from M. Marbois, French secre- tary of legation in America, intercepted by the British, and which Oswald, the British nego- tiator at Paris, communicated to Franklin and Jay, with a view to make bad feeling between them and the French minister, had, along with other circumstances, induced Franklin and Jay to disregard their instructions, and to proceed to treat with Oswald without communicating that fact to Vergennes, or taking his advice as to the terms of the treaty a procedure in which Adams, after his arrival, fully con- curred. It was chiefly through his energy and persistence that the participation of America in the fisheries was secured by the treaty, not as a favor or privilege, but as a right a matter of much greater importance then than now, the fisheries being at that time a more important branch than now of American maritime indus- try. Immediately upon the signature of the preliminary articles of peace, Adams asked leave to resign all his commissions and to re- turn home, to which congress responded by appointing him a commissioner jointly with Franklin and Jay to negotiate a treaty of com- merce with Great Britain. His first visit to England was, however, in a private character, to recruit his health, after a violent fever with which he had been attacked, shortly after sign- ing the treaty of peace. He spent some time first at London, and afterward at Bath; but while still an invalid he was recalled, in the dead of winter, to Holland, which he reached only after a very stormy and uncom- fortable passage, there to negotiate a new loan, as the means of meeting government bills drawn in America, which were in danger of protest from want of funds a business in which he succeeded, though not without pay- ing a pretty high premium. Adams was in- cluded, along with Franklin and Jefferson, the latter sent out to take the place of Jay, in a new commission to form treaties with foreign powers; and his being joined by Mrs. Adams and their only daughter and youngest son, his other two sons being already with him, recon- ciled him to the idea of remaining abroad. With his family about him he fixed his resi- dence at Auteuil, near Paris, where he had an interval of comparative leisure and enjoy- ment. The chief business of the new commis- sion was the negotiation of a treaty with Prussia, advances toward which had first been been made to Adams while at the Hague, ne- gotiating the Dutch loan. But before that treaty was ready for signature, Adams was appointed by congress minister to the court of St. James's, where he arrived in May, 1785. The English government, of which the feel- ings were well represented by those of the king, had neither the magnanimity nor the policy to treat the new American states with generosity, nor hardly with justice. Adams was received with civility, but no commercial arrangements could be made, and his chief employment was that of complaining of the non-execution of the treaty of peace, es- pecially in relation to the non-surrender of the western posts, and in attempting to meet similar complaints urged not without- strong grounds on the part of the British, more par- ticularly as to the obstacles put in the way of the collection of British debts, which were made an excuse for the detention of the west- ern posts. Made sensible in many ways of the aggravation of British feelings toward the new republic, whose condition immediately after the peace was somewhat embarrassing, and not so flattering as it might have been to the advocates and promoters of the revolution,
