to London, left us in June, and in July, 1785, Dr. Franklin returned to
America, and I was appointed his successor at Paris. In February, 1786,
Mr. Adams wrote to me, pressingly, to join him in London immediately,
as he thought he discovered there some symptoms of better disposition
towards us. Colonel Smith, his secretary of legation, was the bearer of
his urgencies for my immediate attendance. I, accordingly, left Paris
on the 1st of March, and, on my arrival in London, we agreed on a very
summary form of treaty, proposing an exchange of citizenship for our
citizens, our ships, and our productions generally, except as to office.
On my presentation, as usual, to the King and Queen, at their levees, it
was impossible for any thing to be more ungracious, than their notice
of Mr. Adams and myself. I saw, at once, that the ulcerations of mind
in that quarter left nothing to be expected on the subject of
my attendance; and, on the first conference with the Marquis of
Caermarthen, the Minister for foreign affairs, the distance and
disinclination which he betrayed in his conversation, the vagueness
and evasions of his answers to us, confirmed me in the belief of their
aversion to have any thing to do with us. We delivered him, however, our
_Projet_, Mr. Adams not despairing as much as I did of its effect.
We afterwards, by one or more, notes, requested his appointment of an
interview and conference, which, without directly declining, he evaded,
by pretence of other pressing occupations for the moment. After staying
there seven weeks, till within a few days of the expiration of our
commission, I informed the minister, by note, that my duties at Paris
required my return to that place, and that I should, with pleasure, be
the bearer of any commands to his Ambassador there. He answered, that
he had none, and, wishing me a pleasant journey, I left London the 26th,
and arrived at Paris the 30th of April.
While in London, we entered into negotiations with the Chevalier Pinto,
Ambassador of Portugal, at that place. The only article of difficulty
between us was, a stipulation that our bread-stuff should be received
in Portugal, in the form of flour as well as of grain. He approved of it
himself, but observed that several nobles, of great influence at their
court, were the owners of windmills in the neighborhood of Lisbon, which
depended much for their profits on manufacturing our wheat, and that
this stipulation would endanger the whole treaty. He signed it, however,
and its fate was what he had candidly portended.
My duties, at Paris, were confined to a few objects; the receipt of
our whale-oils, salted fish, and salted meats, on favorable terms; the
admission of our rice on equal terms with that of Piedmont, Egypt,
and the Levant; a mitigation of the monopolies of our tobacco by the
farmers-general, and a free admission of our productions into their
islands, were the principal commercial objects which required attention;
and on these occasions, I was powerfully aided by all the influence and
the energies of the Marquis de la Fayette, who proved himself equally
zealous for the friendship and welfare of both nations; and, in justice,
I must also say, that I found the government entirely disposed to
befriend us on all occasions, and to yield us every indulgence, not
absolutely injurious to themselves. The Count de Vergennes had the
reputation with the diplomatic corps, of being wary and slippery in his
diplomatic intercourse; and so he might be, with those whom he knew
to be slippery, and double-faced themselves. As he saw that I had
no indirect views, practised no subtleties, meddled in no intrigues,
pursued no concealed object, I found him as frank, as honorable, as easy
of access to reason, as any man with whom I had ever done business; and
I must say the same for his successor, Montmorin, one of the most honest
and worthy of human beings.
Our commerce, in the Mediterranean, was placed under early alarm, by the
capture of two of our vessels and crews by the Barbary cruisers. I was
very unwilling that we should acquiesce in the European humiliation,
of paying a tribute to those lawless pirates, and endeavored to form an
association of the powers subject to habitual depredations from them.
I accordingly prepared, and proposed to their Ministers at Paris,
for consultation with their governments, articles of a special
confederation, in the following form.
‘Proposals for concerted operation among the powers at war with the
piratical States of Barbary.
‘1. It is proposed, that the several powers at war with the piratical
States of Barbary, or any two or more of them who shall be willing,
shall enter into a convention to carry on their operations against those
States, in concert, beginning with the Algerines.
‘2. This convention shall remain open to any other power, who shall, at
any future time, wish to accede to it; the parties reserving the
right to prescribe the conditions of such accession, according to the
circumstances existing at the time it shall be proposed.
‘3. The object of the convention shall be to compel the piratical States
to perpetual peace, without price, and to guaranty that peace to each
other.
‘4. The operations for obtaining this peace shall be constant cruises on
their coast, with a naval force now to be agreed on. It is not proposed,
that this force shall be so considerable, as to be inconvenient to any
party. It is believed, that half a dozen frigates, with as many tenders
or xebecs, one half of which shall be in cruise, while the other half is
at rest, will suffice.
‘5. The force agreed to be necessary, shall be furnished by the parties,
in certain quotas, now to be fixed; it being expected, that each will
be willing to contribute, in such proportion as circumstances may render
reasonable.
‘6. As miscarriages often proceed from the want of harmony among
officers of different nations, the parties shall now consider and
decide, whether it will not be better to contribute their quotas in
money, to be employed in fitting out and keeping on duty a single fleet
of the force agreed on.
‘7. The difficulties and delays, too, which will attend the management
of these operations, if conducted by the parties themselves separately,
distant as their courts may be from one another, and incapable of
meeting in consultation, suggest a question, whether it will not
be better for them to give full powers, for that purpose, to their
Ambassadors, or other Ministers resident at some one court of Europe,
who shall form a Committee, or Council, for carrying this convention
into effect; wherein, the vote of each member shall be computed in
proportion to the quota of his sovereign, and the majority so computed,
shall prevail in all questions within the view of this convention. The
court of Versailles is proposed, on account of its neighborhood to the
Mediterranean, and because all those powers are represented there, who
are likely to become parties to this convention.
‘8. To save to that Council the embarrassment of personal solicitations
for office, and to assure the parties, that their contributions will be
applied solely to the object for which they are destined, there shall
be no establishment of officers for the said Council, such as
Commissioners, Secretaries, or any other kind, with either salaries
or perquisites, nor any other lucrative appointments, but such whose
functions are to be exercised on board the said vessels.
‘9. Should war arise between any two of the parties to this convention,
it shall not extend to this enterprise, nor interrupt it; but as to
this, they shall be reputed at peace.
‘10. When Algiers shall be reduced to peace, the other piratical States,
if they refuse to discontinue their piracies, shall become the objects
of this convention, either successively or together, as shall seem best.
‘11. Where this convention would interfere with treaties actually
existing between any of the parties and the said States of Barbary, the
treaty shall prevail, and such party shall be allowed to withdraw from
the operations against that state.’
Spain had just concluded a treaty with Algiers, at the expense of three
millions of dollars, and did not like to relinquish the benefit of that,
until the other party should fail in their observance of it. Portugal,
Naples, the Two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Denmark, and Sweden were
favorably disposed to such an association; but their representatives at
Paris expressed apprehensions that France would interfere, and, either
openly or secretly, support the Barbary powers; and they required, that
I should ascertain the dispositions of the Count de Vergennes on the
subject. I had before taken occasion to inform him of what we were
proposing, and, therefore, did not think it proper to insinuate
any doubt of the fair conduct of his government; but stating our
propositions, I mentioned the apprehensions entertained by us that
England would interfere in behalf of those piratical governments. ‘She
dares not do it,’ said he. I pressed it no further. The other Agents
were satisfied with this indication of his sentiments, and nothing was
now wanting to bring it into direct and formal consideration, but
the assent of our government, and their authority to make the formal
proposition. I communicated to them the favorable prospect of protecting
our commerce from the Barbary depredations, and for such a continuance
of time, as, by an exclusion of them from the sea, to change their
habits and characters, from a predatory to an agricultural people:
towards which, however, it was expected they would contribute a
frigate, and its expenses, to be in constant cruise. But they were in no
condition to make any such engagement. Their recommendatory powers for
obtaining contributions, were so openly neglected by the several states,
that they declined an engagement, which they were conscious they could
not fulfil with punctuality; and so it fell through.
[In the original MS., the paragraph ending with ‘fell
through,’ terminates page 81; between this page and the
next, there is stitched in a leaf of old writing,
constituting a memorandum, whereof note G, in the Appendix,
is a copy.]
In 1786, while at Paris, I became acquainted with John Ledyard, of
Connecticut, a man of genius, of some science, and of fearless courage
and enterprise. He had accompanied Captain Cook in his voyage to the
Pacific, had distinguished himself on several occasions by an unrivalled
intrepidity, and published an account of that voyage, with details
unfavorable to Cook’s deportment towards the savages, and lessening our
regrets at his fate; Ledyard had come to Paris, in the hope of forming
a company to engage in the fur-trade of the Western coast of America. He
was disappointed in this, and being out of business, and of a roaming,
restless character, I suggested to him the enterprise of exploring the
Western part of our continent, by passing through St. Petersburg to
Kamtschatka, and procuring a passage thence in some of the Russian
vessels to Nootka sound, whence he might make his way across the
continent to the United States; and I undertook to have the permission
of the Empress of Russia solicited. He eagerly embraced the proposition,
and M. de Semoulin, the Russian Ambassador, and more particularly
Baron Grimm, the special correspondent of the Empress, solicited her
permission for him to pass through her dominions, to the Western coast
of America. And here I must correct a material error, which I have
committed in another place, to the prejudice of the Empress. In writing
some notes of the life of Captain Lewis, prefixed to his ‘Expedition to
the Pacific,’ I stated, that the Empress gave the permission asked, and
afterwards retracted it. This idea, after a lapse of twenty-six years,
had so insinuated itself into my mind, that I committed it to paper,
without the least suspicion of error. Yet I find, on returning to my
letters of that date, that the Empress refused permission at once,
considering the enterprise as entirely chimerical. But Ledyard would
not relinquish it, persuading himself, that, by proceeding to St.
Petersburg, he could satisfy the Empress of its practicability, and
obtain her permission. He went accordingly, but she was absent on a
visit to some distant part of her dominions, and he pursued his course
to within two hundred miles of Kamtschatka, where he was overtaken by an
arrest from the Empress, brought back to Poland, and there dismissed.
I must, therefore, in justice, acquit the Empress of ever having for
a moment countenanced, even by the indulgence of an innocent passage
through her territories, this interesting enterprise.
The pecuniary distresses of France produced this year a measure,
of which there had been no example for near two centuries; and the
consequences of which, good and evil, are not yet calculable. For its
remote causes, we must go a little back.
Celebrated writers of France and England had already sketched good
principles on the subject of government: yet the American Revolution
seems first to have awakened the thinking part of the French nation
in general from the sleep of despotism in which they were sunk. The
officers, too, who had been to America, were mostly young men, less
shackled by habit and prejudice, and more ready to assent to the
suggestions of common sense, and feeling of common rights, than
others. They came back with new ideas and impressions. The press,
notwithstanding its shackles, began to disseminate them; conversation
assumed new freedoms; politics became the theme of all societies, male
and female, and a very extensive and zealous party was formed, which
acquired the appellation of the Patriotic party, who, sensible of the
abusive government under which they lived, sighed for occasions for
reforming it. This party comprehended all the honesty of the kingdom,
sufficiently at leisure to think, the men of letters, the easy
Bourgeois, the young nobility, partly from reflection, partly from mode;
for these sentiments became matter of mode, and, as such, united most
of the young women to the party. Happily for the nation, it happened,
at the same moment, that the dissipations of the queen and court, the
abuses of the pension-list, and dilapidations in the administration of
every branch of the finances, had exhausted the treasures and credit of
the nation, insomuch, that its most necessary functions were paralyzed.
To reform these abuses would have overset the Minister; to impose new
taxes by the authority of the king, was known to be impossible, from the
determined opposition of the Parliament to their enregistry. No resource
remained, then, but to appeal to the nation. He advised, therefore, the
call of an Assembly of the most distinguished characters of the nation,
in the hope, that, by promises of various and valuable improvements in
the organization and regimen of the government, they would be induced to
authorize new taxes, to control the opposition of the Parliament, and
to raise the annual revenue to the level of expenditures. An Assembly of
Notables, therefore, about one hundred and fifty in number, named by the
King, convened on the 22nd of February. The Minister (Calonne) stated to
them, that the annual excess of expenses beyond the revenue, when Louis
XVI. came to the throne, was thirty-seven millions of livres; that four
hundred and forty millions had been borrowed to re-establish the navy;
that the American war had cost them fourteen hundred and forty millions
(two hundred and fifty-six millions of dollars), and that the interest
of these sums, with other increased expenses, had added forty millions
more to the annual deficit. (But a subsequent and more candid estimate
made it fifty-six millions.) He proffered them an universal redress
of grievances, laid open those grievances fully, pointed out sound
remedies, and, covering his canvass with objects of this magnitude, the
deficit dwindled to a little accessory, scarcely attracting attention.
The persons chosen, were the most able and independent characters in the
kingdom, and their support, if it could be obtained, would be enough
for him. They improved the occasion for redressing their grievances,
and agreed that the public wants should be relieved; but went into an
examination of the causes of them. It was supposed that Calonne was
conscious that his accounts could not bear examination; and it was said,
and believed, that he asked of the King, to send four members to the
Bastile, of whom the Marquis de la Fayette was one, to banish twenty
others, and two of his Ministers. The King found it shorter to banish
him. His successor went on in full concert with the Assembly. The
result was an augmentation of the revenue, a promise of economies in
its expenditure, of an annual settlement of the public accounts before a
council, which the Comptroller, having been heretofore obliged to
settle only with the King in person, of course never settled at all; an
acknowledgment that the King could not lay a new tax, a reformation
of the Criminal laws, abolition of torture, suppression of _corvees_,
reformation of the _gabelles_, removal of the interior custom-houses,
free commerce of grain, internal and external, and the establishment of
Provincial Assemblies; which, altogether, constituted a great mass of
improvement in the condition of the nation. The establishment of the
Provincial Assemblies was, in itself, a fundamental improvement. They
would be, of the choice of the people, one third renewed every year, in
those provinces where there are no states, that is to say, over
about three fourths of the kingdom. They would be partly an Executive
themselves, and partly an Executive Council to the Intendant, to whom
the executive power, in his province, had been heretofore entirely
delegated. Chosen by the people, they would soften the execution of
hard laws, and, having a right of representation to the King, they
would censure bad laws, suggest good ones, expose abuses, and their
representations, when united, would command respect. To the other
advantages, might be added the precedent itself of calling the Assemblée
des Notables, which would perhaps grow into habit. The hope was, that
the improvements thus promised would be carried into effect; that they
would be maintained during the present reign, and that that would be
long enough for them to take some root in the constitution, so that they
might come to be considered as a part of that, and be protected by time,
and the attachment of the nation.
The Count de Vergennes had died a few days before the meeting of the
Assembly, and the Count de Montmorin had been named Minister of foreign
affairs, in his place. Villedeuil succeeded Calonne, as Comptroller
General, and Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, afterwards of
Sens, and ultimately Cardinal Lomenie, was named Minister principal,
with whom the other Ministers were to transact the business of their
departments, heretofore done with the King in person; and the Duke de
Nivernois, and M. de Malesherbes, were called to the Council. On the
nomination of the Minister principal, the Marshals de Segur and de
Castries retired from the departments of War and Marine, unwilling to
act subordinately, or to share the blame of proceedings taken out of
their direction. They were succeeded by the Count de Brienne, brother
of the Prime Minister, and the Marquis de la Luzerne, brother to him who
had been Minister in the United States.
A dislocated wrist, unsuccessfully set, occasioned advice from
my surgeon, to try the mineral waters of Aix, in Provence, as a
corroborant. I left Paris for that place therefore, on the 28th of
February, and proceeded up the Seine, through Champagne and Burgundy,
and down the Rhone through the Beaujolais by Lyons, Avignon, Nismes, to
Aix; where, finding on trial no benefit from the waters, I concluded to
visit the rice country of Piedmont, to see if any thing might be learned
there, to benefit the rivalship of our Carolina rice with that, and
thence to make a tour of the seaport towns of France, along its Southern
and Western coast, to inform myself, if any thing could be done to
favor our commerce with them. From Aix, therefore, I took my route by
Marseilles, Toulon, Hieres, Nice, across the Col de Tende, by Coni,
Turin, Vercelli, Novara, Milan, Pavia, Novi, Genoa. Thence, returning
along the coast by Savona. Noli, Albenga, Oneglia, Monaco, Nice,
Antibes, Frejus, Aix, Marseilles, Avignon, Nismes, Montpellier,
Frontignan, Sette, Agde, and along the canal of Languedoc, by Beziers,
Narbonne, Carcassonne, Castelnaudari, through the Souterrain of St.
Feriol, and back by Castelnaudari, to Toulouse; thence to Montauban,
and down the Garonne by Langon to Bordeaux. Thence to Rochefort, la
Rochelle, Nantes, L’Orient; then back by Rennes to Nantes, and up the
Loire by Angers, Tours, Amboise, Blois, to Orleans, thence direct to
Paris, where I arrived on the 10th of June. Soon after my return from
this journey, to wit, about the latter part of July, I received my
younger daughter, Maria, from Virginia, by the way of London, the
youngest having died some time before.
The treasonable perfidy of the Prince of Orange, Stadtholder and Captain
General of the United Netherlands, in the war which England waged
against them, for entering into a treaty of commerce with the United
States, is known to all. As their Executive officer, charged with the
conduct of the war, he contrived to baffle all the measures of the
States General, to dislocate all their military plans, and played false
into the hands of England against his own country, on every possible
occasion, confident in her protection, and in that of the King of
Prussia, brother to his Princess. The States General, indignant at
this patricidal conduct, applied to France for aid, according to the
stipulations of the treaty, concluded with her in ‘85. It was assured
to them readily, and in cordial terms, in a letter from the Count de
Vergennes, to the Marquis de Verac, Ambassador of France at the Hague,
of which the following is an extract.
‘_Extrait de la dépêche de Monsieur le Comte de Vergennes à Monsieur le
Marquis de Verac, Ambassadeurde France à la Haye, du ler Mars, 1786.
‘Le Roi concourrera, autant qu’il sera en son pouvoir, au succès de la
chose, et vous inviterez, de sa part, les Patriotes de lui communiquer
leurs vues, leurs plans, et leurs envies. Vous les assurerez, que le
roi prend un interêt véritable à leurs personnes cornme à leur cause, et
qu’ils peuvent compter sur sa protection. Us doivent y compter d’autant
plus, Monsieur, que nous ne dissimulons pas, que si Monsieur le
Stadtholder reprend son ancienne influence, le système Anglois ne
tardera pas de prévaloir, et que notre alliance deviendroit un être de
raison. Les Patriotes sentiront facilement, que cette position seroit
incompatible avec la dignité, comme avec la considération de sa Majesté.
Mais dans le cas, Monsieur, ou les chefs des Patriotes auroient à
craindre une scission, ils auroient le temps suffisant peur ramener ceux
de leurs amis, que les Anglomanes ont égarés, et préparer les choses,
de maniere que la question de nouveau mise en délibération, soit decidée
selon leurs desirs. Dans cette hypothèse, le roi vous autorise à agir
de concert avec eux, de suivre la direction qu’ils jugeront devoir
vous donner, et d’employer tous les moyens pour augmenter le nombre des
partisans de la bonne cause. Il me reste, Monsieur, de vous parler de la
sureté personelle des Patriotes. Vous les assurerez, que dans tout état
de cause, le roi les prend sous sa protection immédiate, et vous
ferez connoître, partout où vous le jugerez nécessaire, que sa Majesté
regarderoit comme une offense personelle, tout ce qu’on entreprenderoit
contre leur liberté. Il est á presumer que ce langage, tenu avec
énergie, en imposera á l’audace des Anglomanes, et que Monsieur
le Prince de Nassau croira courir quelque risque en provoquant le
ressentiment de sa Majesté.’_ *
[*Extract from the despatch of the Count de Vergennes, to
the Marquis de Verac, Ambassador from France, at the Hague,
dated March 1, 1788.