74 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



"/ think it right you should know"; and I am perfectly sure that 

 he asked from me no engagement of secresy, nor do I conceive myself 

 under any with regard to him, other than that general secresy which 

 is always attached to business of a confidential nature, such as was 

 the business I related to you. I recollect asking if he had showed the 

 paper to you ; he said no, but did not add any injunction to me not to 

 do so, and indeed if he had, I should have stated to him the impossi- 

 bility of my keeping from you a circumstance of that importance, 

 or of my becoming by my silence in it a separate party to a business 

 which it was my duty fully and entirely to lay before you and receive 

 from you. Nor indeed at this moment is the knowledge of it con- 

 fined to Lord Shelburne, as I am pretty sure Oswald told rne that 

 Lord Ashburton was with Lord Shelburne when he, Oswald, asked 

 if he might give any answer to Franklin about the paper, or rather 

 observed that he supposed he could not then have any answer to it. 

 Under these circumstances the difficulty with regard to the Canada 

 paper, of which I have no copy, lies possibly more in the indelicacy, 

 and perhaps bad policy, of bringing forward Franklin where he 

 wished so much not to appear than in quoting it from me. I do not 

 wish to be quoted if there exists the least doubt whether I should; 

 but I cannot more exactly explain to you the whole extent of that 

 doubt, than by showing you that it does not exist in any specific obli- 

 gation on my part, but only in the nature of what was told to me; 

 the subject itself carrying with it, as you will see, many reasons for 

 secresy, and ever} 7 mark of it in the manner of conducting it : but as 

 to positive engagement or obligation upon this subject I have none. 

 The remaining circumstance of the intention mentioned to Mr. Os- 

 wald by Lord Shelburne of giving him a commission if it should be 

 necessary, stands altogether clear of the slightest shade of difficulty 

 upon the point of confidence : indeed at the time I wrote you word of 

 it I did not imagine I was informing you of anything new or un- 

 known to you, and only so far meant to dwell upon it as to regret its 

 happening precisely at the instant when it was most important it 

 should not. I apprehended that Lord Shelburne might have already 

 expressed such an intention to the rest of the King's Ministers, upon 

 the ground of the American share of this business; which ground, in 

 the present stage of it. I thought possibly you had not found it easy 

 to object to. In this idea you will find that I have written, and in 

 this idea it was that Lord FitzwiHiam's appointment occurred to me, 

 not to prevent a clandestine negotiation, but to unite a separated one, 

 always imagining that you knew of. but did not resist, the intended 

 commission to Mr. Oswald, and therefore hinting the expedi- 

 46 ency of superseding it, by giving to another person an appoint- 

 ment of such rank and magnitude as should include a power 

 which it seems neither for the public interest, nor yours and your 

 friends' interests, to leave separate and distinct. To return, how- 

 ever, to the point of confidence: upon this last subject, there is none, 

 and you are certainly at full liberty to proclaim at Charing Cross, 

 that Lord Shelburne told Mr. Oswald he supposed he would not 

 object to a commission, if it should be necessary, and that, since his 

 last return to Paris, Mr. Oswald has told me he found it very much 

 Franklin's wish likewise. If I may repeat, therefore, in a few words, 

 what I have tried to express to you in a good many, it is, that as to 

 Franklin's first intention of a private and confidential communication 



