DOCUMENTS BEARING ON TREATY OF 1783. 93 



These were the doctor's sentiments and conditions of settlement on 

 the said 10th July; and which he read to me from y. minute in writ- 

 ing, and only declined putting it imtp my hands from a motive of 

 delicacy regarding his colleague then just arrived. And so consistent 

 the doctor still appears to be, that upon the production of my Com- 

 mission on the 7th instant, he repeated the words which he had used 

 on a former occasion, " that he hoped we should do well enough, and 

 not be long about it," as already mentioned. That could not but be 

 very agreeable to me; if my expectations had not been so soon after 

 damped by the said unpleasant reception from Mr. Jay. 



******* 



Dr. Franklin, as I have said, had often touched upon this subject 

 in a general way : " that peace could not be too dearly bought " ; and 

 always ending with a wish that it could be made lasting, and at the 

 same time observing that England, in a state of peace for a hundred 

 years, would become a perfect garden. I did not clearly perceive the 

 meaning of proposal: yet I own I did not much like any of these 

 prescriptions of quietism, as believing they would not be entirely 

 suitable to the English taste or interest ; nor did I foresee any benefit 

 intended for England, by what M. de Vergennes, in Dr. Franklin's 

 hearing, humanely proposed in April, of settling the peace solide- 

 ment, and for a long standing; which I then suspected as an intima- 

 tion of an intended scheme of some sort for putting the naval power 

 of England under some unusual and particular limitation. 



On these occasions with Dr. Franklin, I never chose to say much, 

 or ask for an explanation as to his idea of the effectual means of pre- 

 venting the return of war. 



But upon Mr. Jay's mentioning the same proposal the other day of 

 their design of settling the depending treaty on such a solid founda- 

 tion, as that the peace should be lasting, I asked him how a sufficient 

 security could be found to make it so. He answered as before men- 

 tioned; The best security in the world, viz., that it shall not be the 



interest of either party to break it. 



57 There was no explanation necessary here, as I knew he could 



not mean treaty, since he had just before declared, that he made 

 no account of any treaty whatever, when any Prince or State found 

 it convenient to break it, and therefore I concluded he must mean a 

 guarantee of some intermediate Power who he thought would not 

 chose to be principals ki any war, and yet (in that state of neutrality 

 respecting their own concerns) might be capable of controlling other 

 States, by adopting the cause of those in whose safety they might be 

 particularly interested, or to whom protection was due, under the 

 stipulations of a general guarantee. 



* * * * * * * 



As yet, their intention has come out only in the unexplained man- 

 ner which I have mentioned; but as something (as has been said) was 

 hinted by M. de Vergennes so early as in April, and has been from 

 time to time since then repeated by Dr. Franklin in the same way, 

 and at last in a manner openly declared by Mr. Jay upon the first 

 perusal of my Commission, I think it my duty to lay the same (as 

 far as I can yet judge of it) before His Majesty's Ministers, so as 



