Adams' Journal of Peace Negotiations-Continued.*

NOVEMBER 15, 1782.

Mr. Oswald came to visit me, and entered with some freedom into conversation. I said many things to him to convince him that it was the policy of my Lord Shelburne, and the interest of the nation, to agree with us upon the advantageous terms which Mr. Strachey carried away on the 5th; showed him the advantages of the boundary, the vast extent of land, and the equitable provision for the payment of debts, and even the great benefits stipulated for the Tories.

He said he had been reading Mr. Paine's answer to the Abbé Raynal, and had found there an excellent argument in favor of the Tories. Mr. Paine says that "before the battle of Lexington we were so blindly prejudiced in favor of the English, and so closely attached to them, that we went to war at any time, and for any object, when they bid us." Now this being habitual to the Americans, it was excusable in the Tories to behave, on this occasion, as all of us had ever done upon all others. He said if he were a member of Congress he would show a magnanimity upon this occasion, and would say to the refugees take your property; we scorn to make any use of it in building up our system.

I replied that we had no power and Congress had no power, and, therefore, we must consider how it would be reasoned upon in the several legislatures of the separate States, if, after being sent by us to Congress, and by them to the several States, in the course of twelve or fifteen months, it should be there debated. You must carry on the war six or nine months certainly, for this compensation, and consequently spend, in the prosecution of it, six or nine times the sum necessary to make the compensation; for I presume this war costs every month to Great Britain a larger sum than would be necessary to pay for the for. feited estates.

"How," said I, will an inde dent man in one of our assemblies consider this? We will take man who is no partizan of England or France, one who wishes to do,ustice to both, and to all nations, but is the partizan only of his own." "Have you seen," says he, "a certain letter written to the Count de Vergennes, wherein Mr. Samuel Adams is treated pretty freely?" "Yes," says I, "and several other papers, in which Mr. John Adams has been treated so too. I do not know what you may have heard in England of Mr. Samuel Adams. You may ave been taught to velieve, for what I know, that he eats little chil dren. But se you he is a man of humanity and candor as well as integrity; and further, that he is devoted to the interest of his country, and, I believe, wishes never to be, after a peace, the partizan to France or England, but to do justice and all the good he can to oth. I thank you for mentioning him, for I will make him my orator.

What will he

say when the question of amnesty and compensation to the Tories comes before the Senate of Massachusetts, and when he is informed that England makes a point of it, and that France favors her? He will say, here are two old sagacious courts, both endeavoring to sow the seeds of discord among us, each endeavoring to keep us in hot water; to keep up continual broils between an English party and a French party, in hopes of obliging the independent and patriotic party to lean to its side. England wishes them here, and compensated, not merely to get rid of them and to save themselves the money, but to plant among us instruments of their own, to make divisions among us and between us and France, to be continually crying down the religion, the government, the manners of France, and crying up the language, the fashions, the blood, &c., of England. England also means, by insisting on our compensating these worst of enemies, to obtain from us a tacit acknowl edgment of the right of the war, an implicit acknowledgment that the Tories have been justifiable, or at least excusable, and that we, only by a fortunate coincidence of events, have carried a wicked rebellion into a complete revolution. At the very time when Britain professes to desire peace, reconciliation, perpetual oblivion of all past unkindnesses, can she wish to send in among us a number of persons whose very countenances will bring fresh to our remembrance the whole history of the rise and progress of the war and of all its atrocities? Can she think it conciliatory to oblige us to lay taxes upon those whose habitations have been consumed to reward those who have burned them? Upon those whose property has been stolen to reward the thieves? Upon those whose relations have been cruelly destroyed to compensate the murderers? What can be the design of France, on the other hand, by espousing the cause of those men? Indeed, her motives may be guessed at. She may wish to keep up in our minds a terror of England and a fresh remembrance of all we have suffered; or she may wish to prevent our ministers in Europe from agreeing with the British ministers until she shall say that she and Spain are satisfied in all points.

I entered largely with Mr. Oswald into the consideration of the influence this question would have upon the councils of the British cabinet and the debates in Parliament. The king and the old ministry might think their personal reputations concerned in supporting men who had gone such lengths and suffered so much in their attachment to them. The king may say, "I have other dominions abroad, Canada, Nova Scotia, Florida, the West India Islands, the East Indies, Ireland. It will be a bad example to abandon these men. Others will lose their encouragement to adhere to my government." But the shortest answer to this is the best, let the king by a message recommend it to Parliament to compensate them.

But how will my Lord Shelburne sustain the shock of opposition? When Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke shall demand a reason why the essential interests of the nation are sacrificed to the unreasonable demands of

those very men who have done this great mischief to the empire? Should these orators indulge themselves in philippics against the refugees, show their false representations, their outrageous cruelties, their innumerable demerits against the nation, and then attack the first lord of the treasury for continuing to spend the blood and treasure of the nation for their sakes?

SUNDAY, November 17.

Mr. Vaughan came to me yesterday and said that Mr. Oswald had that morning called upon Mr. Jay and told him if he had known as much the day before as he had since learned he would have written to go home. Mr. Vaughan said Mr. Fitzherbert had received a letter from Mr. Townsend that the compensation would be insisted on. Mr. Oswald wanted Mr. Jay to go to England; thought he could convince the ministry. Mr. Jay said he must go with or without the knowledge and advice of the court, and, in either case, it would give rise to jealousies. He could not go. Mr. Vaughan said he had determined to go on account of the critical state of his family, his wife being probably abed. He should be glad to converse freely with me and obtain from me all the lights and arguments against the Tories, even the history of their worst actions. That in case it should be necessary to run them down it might be done, or at least expose them, for their true history was little known in England. I told him I must be excused; it was a subject that I had never been desirous of obtaining information upon; that I pitied those people too much to be willing to aggravate the sorrows and sufferings even of those who had deserved the worst. It might not be amiss to reprint the letters of Bernard, Hutchinson, and Oliver to show their rise. It might not be amiss to read the history of Wyoming, in the Annual Register for 1778 or 1779, to recollect the prison ships and the churches at New York, where the garrison of Fort Washington were starved in order to make them enlist into refugee corps; it might not be amiss to recollect the burning of cities and the thefts of plate, negroes, and tobacco.

I entered into the same arguments with him that I had used with Mr. Oswald, to show that we could do nothing, Congress nothing; the time it would take to consult the States, and the reason to believe that all of them would at last decide against it. I showed him that it would be a religious question with some; a moral one with others; and a political one with more; an economical one with very few. I showed him the ill effect which would be produced upon the American mind by this measure; how much it would contribute to perpetuate alienation against England, and how French emissaries might, by means of these men, blow up the flames of animosity and war. I showed him how the Whig interest and the opposition might avail themselves of this subject in Parliament, and how they might embarrass the minister.

He went out to Passy for a passport, and in the evening called upon me again; said he found Dr. Franklin's sentiments to be the same with

9

Mr. Jay's and mine, and hoped he should be able to convince Lord Shelburne. He was pretty confident it would work right. The ministry and nation were not informed upon the subject. Lord Shelburne had told him that no part of his office gave him so much pain as the levee he held for these people, and hearing their stories of their families and their estates, their losses, sufferings, and distresses. Mr. Vaughan said he had picked up here a good deal of information about these people from Mr. Allen and other Americans.

In the evening the M. de la Fayette came in and told me he had been to see M. de Fleury on the subject of a loan. He told him he must afford America this year a subsidy of twenty millions. M. de Fleury said France had already spent two hundred and fifty millions in the American war, and that they could not allow any more money to her; that there was a great deal of money in America; that the king's troops had been paid and subsisted there; that the British army had been subsisted and paid there, &c. The Marquis said that little of the subsistence or pay of the British had gone into any hands but those of the Tories within the lines. I said that more money went in for their goods than came out for provisions or anything. The Marquis added to M. Fleury that Mr. Adams had a plan for going to the States General for a loan or a subsidy. M. Fleury said he did not want the assistance of Mr. Adams to get money in Holland; he could have what he would. The Marquis said Mr. Adams would be glad of it; he did not want to go, but was willing to take the trouble if necessary.

The Marquis said he should dine with the Queen to-morrow, and would give her a hint to favor us; that he should take leave in a few days, and should go in the fleet that was to sail from Brest; that he wanted the advice of Mr. Franklin, Mr. Jay, and me before he went, &c.; said that there was a report that M. Gerard had been in England and that M. de Rayneval was gone. I told him I saw M. Gerard at Mr. Jay's a few evenings ago. He said he did not believe M. Gerard had been; that he had mentioned it to Count de Vergennes, and he did not appear confused at all, but said M. Gerard was here about the limits of Alsace. The Marquis said that he believed the reason why Count de Vergennes said so little about the progress of Mr. Fitzherbert with him was because the difficulty about peace was made by the Spaniards, and he was afraid of making the Americans still more angry with Spain. He knew the Americans were very angry with the Spaniards.

MONDAY, November 18.

Returned Mr. Oswald's visit. He says Mr. Strachey, who set out the 5th, did not reach London until the 10th. Couriers are three, four, or five days in going, according as the winds are.

We went over the old ground concerning the Tories. He began to use arguments with me to relax. I told him he must not think of that, but must bend all his thoughts to convince and persuade his court to

give it up; that, if the terms now before his court were not accepted, the whole negociation would be broken off, and this court would prob ably be so angry with Mr. Jay and me that they would set their engines to work upon Congress, get us recalled, and some others sent who would do exactly as this court would have them. He said he thought that very probable. In another part of his conversation he said: We should all have gold snuff-boxes set with diamonds; you will certainly have the picture I told him no: I had dealt too freely with this court; I had not concealed from them any useful or necessary truth, although it was disagreeable. Indeed, I neither expected or desired any favors from them, nor would I accept any; I should not refuse any customary compliment of that sort, but it never had been or would be offered to me. My fixed principle never to be the tool of any man, nor the par. tizan of any nation, would forever exclude me from the smiles and favors of courts.

In another part of the conversation I said that when I was young and addicted to reading I had heard about dancing upon the points of metaphysical needles; but by mixing in the world I had found the points of political needles finer and sharper than the metaphysical ones. I told him the story of Josiah Quincy's conversation with Lord Shelburne in 1774, in which he pointed out to him the plan of carrying on the war which has been pursued this year, by remaining inactive at land and cruising upon the coast to distress our trade.

He said he had been contriving an artificial truce since he found we were bound by treaty not to agree to a separate truce. He had pro· posed to the ministry to give orders to their men-of-war and privateers not to take any unarmed American vessels.

I said to him supposing the armed neutrality should acknowledge American independence by admitting Mr. Dana, who is now at Petersburgh with a commission in his pocket for that purpose, to subscribe to the principles of their marine treaty, the King of Great Britain could find no fault with it; he could never hereafter say it was an affront or hostility; he had done it himself. Would not all neutral vessels have a right to go to America? and could not all American trade be carried on in neutral bottoms? I said to him that England would always be a country which would deserve much of the attention of America, independently of all considerations of blood, origin, language, morals, &c.; merely as a commercial people she would forever claim the respect of America, because a great part of her commerce would be with her, provided she came to her senses and made peace with us, without any points in the treaty that should ferment in the minds of the people. If the people should think themselves unjustly treated they would never be easy, and they are so situated as to be able to hurt any power. The fisheries, the Mississippi, the Tories, were points that would rankle, and that nation that should offend our people in any of them would sooner or later feel the consequences.