he neutral confederation. This should
not be considered as a mere voluntary act on the part of Portugal. For
Portugal sent on hither, in the course of last winter, a consul, in
expectation of forming a commercial treaty, which her Majesty
declined, unless Portugal would accede to the neutral confederation.
The commercial treaty is not yet finished. It seems to be the present
determination of her Majesty, not to grant any special commercial
favors to any nation, but to make treaties with all upon equal
principles. The treaty with Britain, which will expire on the 20th of
June, 1786, I am assured is not likely to be renewed, so that that
nation will presently lose the benefits derived from a kind of
monopoly, which they have long enjoyed here.

You acquaint me that Congress have ordered the salaries of all their
foreign Ministers to be paid in America, and that you shall transmit
bills to Dr Franklin, upon whom they are to draw quarterly. I shall
attend to this new arrangement in future. I wish you would be pleased
to inform me in your next, whether Congress have taken into
consideration the questions I stated in my letter of the 24th of
March, 1781, relative to my salary; and what has been done upon it. I
am inclined to think, from the concluding paragraph of the preamble to
my instructions, that Congress supposed, "the diplomatic order, in
which I am placed by my commission;" was inferior to that in which
their other Ministers in Europe are placed by their commissions. That
paragraph seems to have been taken from Vattel's Law of Nations, where
he treats of the several orders of public Ministers. He supposes a
great difference in point of ceremony or etiquette, and says, that
Ministers Plenipotentiary are of much greater distinction than simple
Ministers. In both these suppositions he is certainly mistaken, at
least as to this Court, where they are treated in the same manner in
every respect. Indeed Envoys Extraordinary, and Extraordinary
Ministers Plenipotentiary, and Ministers simply so named, being all in
the second class of public Ministers, and of equal rank, are treated
in the same manner. No distinction is made between them on account of
their different titles.

Precedency among Ministers of the same class, is not settled here
throughout. The general rule of adjusting here and elsewhere, is the
relative rank of their respective masters or sovereigns. No Minister,
for instance, of the second class, would dispute