ers to enter into a private treaty, without
consulting the French ministry.

A full account of the diplomatic conflict which ensued, would fill a
volume. On one occasion the British minister, Mr. Grenville, said,

"In case England grants America Independence."

The French minister, M. de Vergennes, smiled and said, "America has
already won her Independence. She does not ask it of you. There is Dr.
Franklin; he will answer you on that point."

"To be sure," Franklin said, "we do not consider it necessary to
bargain for that which is our own. We have bought our Independence at
the expense of much blood and treasure, and are in full possession of
it."

Many of these preliminary interviews took place in Paris. The amount
of money and blood which the pugnacious government of England had
expended in totally needless wars, can not be computed. The misery
with which those wars had deluged this unhappy globe, God only can
comprehend. Mr. Richard Oswald, a retired London merchant, of vast
wealth, was sent, by Lord Shelburne, prime minister, as a confidential
messenger, to sound Dr. Franklin. He was frank in the extreme.

"Peace," said he, "is absolutely necessary for England. The nation has
been foolishly involved in four wars, and can no longer raise money to
carry them on. If continued, it will be absolutely necessary to stop
the payment of interest money on the public debt."

Mr. Adams and Mr. Jay were soon associated with Dr. Franklin in these
negotiations. Mr. Jay was in entire sympathy with Mr. Adams in his
antipathy to the French. They both assumed that France was meanly
seeking only her own interests, making use of America simply as an
instrument for the accomplishment of her selfish purposes.[36]

[Footnote 36: Mr. Adams wrote, in his diary, November, 1782, "Mr. Jay
don't like any Frenchman. The Marquis de la Fayette is clever, but he
is a Frenchman."]

Dr. Jared Sparks, after carefully examining, in the Office of Foreign
Affairs in London, the correspondence of the French ministers with the
American envoys, during the whole war, writes,

"After examining the subject, with all the care and accuracy
which these means of information have enabled me to give to
it, I am prepared to express my belief, most fully, that Mr.
Jay was mistaken, both in regard to the aims of the French
court and the plans pursued by them to gain their supposed
ends."[37]

[Footnote 37: Diplomatic Correspo