be

trust of and repugnance to France he subsequently displayed may explained in part by the solution given by Adams, that to Jay French morals and manners, when he became familiar with them. were intolerable. Jay's temper, naturally grave, reserved, and austere, coupled with punctilious conscientiousness in the discharge of duty, and a tendency to reason not from the condition of things about him, but from high principles to which those conditions should be forced to bend, found comparatively little in Spain at which to revolt. There might be crime there, but it was hidden out of sight; there was no frivolity; court life was solemn and decorous; certainly there was no tendency to surrender political traditions to fluctuating fashions. But it was otherwise in Paris. The King was undoubtedly personally pure and conscientious; there was not in the court the vulagrity of dissoluteness that had been dominant under Louis XV.; but still, in the levity of the Queen, in the reckless folly of the King's brothers, in the unconcealed depravity of some of the chief ecclesiastics about the throne, in the ostentatious immorality of fashion, there was as much to distress a pure and sensitive character such as Jay's as there would have been in the time of Louis XV. And there was something more which made this levity and vice the more monstrous. In the time of Louis XV. court favorites played with foreign wars; with the pragmatic sanction; with the conquest of Silesia. But to Jay's eye these dissolute people of fashion were playing with a volcanic revolution seething under their very feet. Then, again, their irreligion, covered over with only a thin veneering of Catholic ritual, was horrible to him. It took him back to the old struggles under the Valois kings between the court and the Huguenots-all that was frivolous and hollow and depraved, with the court; with the Huguenots all that was earnest and pure and devout. As he viewed the more closely the court and the dominant society of the capital he seemed to rise upwards to the level of his Huguenot ancestry, sharing their sombre hatred of their opponents, preferring exile in America and in England to subjection to France where these opponents ruled. Of this exaltation of standpoint on Jay's part we have a remarkable illustration in the following passage from a letter of July 19, 1783, by him to Mr. R. R. Livingston, then Secretary of Foreign Affairs:

"Our little one is doing well. If people in heaven see what is going on below, my ancestors must derive much pleasure from comparing the circumstances attending the expulsion of some of them from this country with those under which my family has increased

in it.'

"It may have been in part from this idealizing himself with that high-toned race who, though French in origin, became, as was the case with the Huguenot captains of William III., among the most

relentless enemies of France, as well as in part from the antagonism of his own stern and stoical morality to the disregard of all morality which he held to be prevalent in Paris, that he lent a willing ear to Oswald's suggestions of French intrigue in London against the United States. But in the character of this intrigue he was greatly mistaken, since Vergennes, while not desirous of seeing the United States take Canada, the Mississippi Valley, and the fisheries, yet nevertheless made the independence of the United States the one essential condition of his policy, and acquiesced without murmur in the provisional treaty giving the United States the Mississippi Valley and the fisheries, though his veto might have killed the settlement in which the concessions were secured. And into one other error Jay was led by the tendency to fall back on his old traditions. As a young man, on the breaking out of the war, he was ardently devoted to the old Whig English historical school. Of that school he and other Whigs in the colonies regarded Fox and Burke as the then orthodox exponents. Nothing could have been more natural than that he should have taken up Fox's cry of independence by grant, and have insisted that the United States should be solemnly recognized as independent by Great Britain before she could be treated with as thus independent. Yet such a position on its face involved a fallacy, since a dissolution of political connection, which is essential to independence, is a bilateral act, and if independence based on treaty was to be rejected, then there could be no acknowledgment of independence at all. And aside from this it was only by a treaty made at the time the United States was sustained on all sides by allies, and when a liberal ministry, acting on wise economical principles, was in power, that a pacification could have been effected that would, from its beneficial relations to both parties, have had any chance of permanency.

"In this temper of disgust and distrust of France it was easy for Jay to convince himself that Vergennes was secretly plotting with Shelburne, if not to divide the colonies between France and England, at least to reduce them to the level of a group of petty seaboard provinces. And Jay claimed that he was justified in this suspicion by the fact that Oswald's commission was addressed to the American colonies and plantations,' and that Vergennes advised them that this was a mere matter of form.

"The very sending by Vergennes to London of Rayneval as a confidential agent strengthened Jay's distrust; for the mission of Rayneval, so he argued, must have for its object the prejudicing Lord Shelburne against America. To counteract this supposed pernicious intrigue, Jay, without any notice whatever to Franklin, sent Benjamin Vaughan on a special errand of elucidation to Shelburne. A more extraordinary step could scarcely have been taken by a diplo

matist so distinguished for integrity and capacity as Jay. Jay and Franklin were the sole members of the commission in Paris, Adams not having yet arrived. Franklin, as Jay well knew, was resolute in maintaining Vergennes' loyalty to the United States, so far as concerned the question of independence; and Franklin had heretofore conducted with singular skill all the negotiations with Shelburne. Yet Jay, himself unacquainted with Shelburne, sent to Shelburne, as a special envoy, Benjamin Vaughan, a gentleman to say the least not distinguished for prudence or diplomatic skill, to counteract with Shelburne the supposed anti-American intrigues of Rayneval. one of the most subtle and seductive diplomatists in the French service. It must have required on Shelburne's part great determination to perfect the peace, and great faith in Franklin's capacity to right matters at last, to have enabled him to disregard this singular side action of Jay.

"Yet near as were these proceedings of Jay's to imperiling the relations of the United States to both France and Great Britain, in one important respect he brought into prominence a truth which Franklin, while cognizant of it, did not consider it necessary to proclaim. Vergennes, determined as he was to have the independence of the United States established, had, as we have seen, made known that he had no desire to see the United States retain her old rights in the fisheries, or absorb Canada, or push Spain out of the Mississippi Valley. But that Jay was wrong in his doubts of Vergennes' loyalty to the cause of America's independence is shown by the fact that after the United States gained, not, indeed, Canada, but the fisheries and the Mississippi Valley, France continued her support as generously and efficiently as she had done before these causes of difference had arisen. And if Franklin appears in his correspondence to attach comparatively little consequence to Jay's representations in this respect, we must remember that Franklin, while knowing the desire of France not to offend Spain, or to impair her own claims to the fisheries, was also aware that she would not permit her preferences in this respect to stand in the way of the recognition by Great Britain of the independence of the United States.

a" Mr. Lecky (4 Hist. Eng., 282) says: Two of the commissioners had conceived a profound distrust of the French minister. They believed that Rayneval had been sent to England to retard or prevent the recognition of American independence, that the French minister desired to keep America in a state of ferment and humiliating dependence, and that they were acting falsely and tracherously towards her. For this suspicion there does not appear to have been the smallest real ground. The independence of the Americans had been the great aim which France had steadily pursued, and she was not in the least disposed to abandon it; nor does Vergennes ever appear to have opposed American interests on any point on which he had promised to support them.'

"Mr. Adams was marked by a singular combination of apparently inconsistent characteristics which were displayed in

John Adams. peculiar prominence during the peace negotiations in which he took part. His patriotism was ardent and even fierce; attempts to corrupt or intimidate him would only have intensified its fires. He was capable of bold, sudden action; and he could defend such action by oratory singularly thrilling, exhibiting like lightning the path and the perils ahead, and in doing so dazzling as well as guiding. But with these great qualities were associated great defects. He could recognize no one as in any respect superior to himself. He paid but a grudging obeisance to Washington even when he was Washington's associate in office; and when in Congress he gave a ready ear, if not a sympathetic assent, to the expressions of discontent with which Washington's war policy was sometimes received. It is questionable whether he was ever truly conscious of the supreme grandeur of Washington's character; at least there is nothing in his diary or his confidential letters, from which his true views can be best collected, from which such a consciousness can be inferred. Of Franklin's extraordinary capacity and signal successes as a diplomatist he was equally unconscious; and towards Franklin he showed, when in Congress, a dislike which, in Paris, ripened into a blind jealousy. His vanity was so great as to make all flattery, no matter how delicate, odious to him when offered to others, and no flattery appeared to him too gross when offered to himself. In council he could direct and inspire, but he could not consult; a peculiarity afterwards illustrated during his Presidency, when for long periods he would let his cabinet officers, all of them representing a line of politics distinct from his own, carry out their views without their conferring with him, when suddenly, as in the case with the French mission of February 25, 1799, he would proclaim a new and bold policy without his conferring with them. His enthusiasm for public affairs in fact, splendid as were its occasional manifestations, was not continuous, and was broken in upon, from time to time, by parentheses of torpid seclusion, or, what was stranger, by social displays for which he had no tact, and which consorted but illy with the abruptness, the self-consciousness, and the want of consideration for others, by which he was often marked.

"Of these peculiarities of Mr. Adams we have ample illustration in the diary left by him in 1782-'83, during his French negotiations, as published in 1851, by his grandson, the late Mr. C. F. Adams (Works of John Adams, vol. iii., pp. 298 ff). Adams, after a mission to Holland, in which, by singular energy and zeal, he had succeeded in negotiating a treaty recognizing the independence of the United States, arrived in Paris about noon on Saturday, October 26, 1782.

"The period was one of extreme anxiety, requiring grave and prompt action by the American commissioners. Adams' name was the first in the list of these commissioners, and his immediate presence in Paris had been earnestly solicited by Franklin and Jay.

"Of his action on his first day in Paris, his journal narrates the following:

"The first thing to be done in Paris is always to send for a tailor, peruke-maker, and shoemaker, for this nation has established such a domination over the fashions that neither clothes, wigs, nor shoes made in any other place will do in Paris. This is one of the ways in which France taxes all Europe, and will tax America. It is a great branch of the policy of the court to preserve and increase this national influence over the mode, because it occasions an immense commerce between France and all other parts of Europe. Paris furnishes the materials and the manners, both to men and women, everywhere else."

6

"On the next day he meets with Ridley,' apparently one of the outside agitators by whom the commissioners were beset, who informed him that Jay refused to treat with Oswald until he had a commission to treat with the commissioners of the United States of America. Franklin was afraid to insist upon it.' 'Ridley,' in a subsequent conversation, was full of Jay's firmness and independence; Jay] has taken upon himself to act without asking advice, or even communicating with the Count de Vergennes, and this even in opposition to an instruction.' On the same day is the entry, 'Then to Mr. Jay and Mrs. Izard; but none at home.' The following ends the day's comments: Between two as subtle spirits as any in this world (Franklin and Jay), the one malicious, the other, I think, honest, I shall have a delicate, a nice, a critical part to act. Franklin's cunning will be to divide us; to this end he will provoke, he will insinuate, he will intrigue, he will manoeuver. My curiosity will at least be employed in observing his invention and his artifice. Jay declares roundly that he will never set his hand to a bad peace. Congress may appoint another, but he will make a good peace or none.' "Yet, in his journal for June 20, 1779, after speaking of Gouverneur Morris as 'of a character très léger, he says, and with much injustice, so far as concerns Jay, the character and cause of America has not been sustained by such characters as that of Gouverneur Morris or his colleague, Mr. Jay.'

"It was not until Tuesday, October 29, in the evening, that he paid his first visit to Franklin. At this visit, and in the interviews immediately succeeding, Franklin was informed by Adams that he entirely concurred with Jay in the points as to which Franklin and Jay differed as to Jay's hasty and ill-judged avowal of preference for Fox's scheme of peace to that of Shelburne; as to Jay's demand on