482 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



Vergennes, the territorial limits of the United States were 

 to be confined to a narrow strip along the Atlantic seaboard ; 

 they were to be " circumscribed," he wrote, " with the great- 

 est exactness, and all the belligerent powers [England, 

 France, and Spain] must bind themselves to prevent any 

 transgression of them." In the furtherance of his project to 

 perpetuate the glory of France on the Western continent, 

 and to humiliate his Anglo-Saxon enemy, he flattered himself 

 upon having made an excellent beginning. By timely aid to 

 the United States in its period of distress he had won the 

 gratitude and confidence of the young nation, and it needed 

 but the exercise of vigilance and political sagacity to guide 

 its future steps in paths of his own making. As a guardian 

 it was necessary to gain control of the nation's diplomatic 

 bureau, and for himself to negotiate for his ward its treaty 

 of peace with Great Britain. The young eagle's wings were 

 to be clipped at once. 



French diplomatic agents in Philadelphia exerted all their 

 influence over Congress to bring about this end, and with 

 such skill, be it said, that in July, 1781, Congress instructed 

 the peace commission (now to be enlarged by the appoint- 

 ment of Jay, Franklin, Jefferson, and Laurens), to take no 

 initiative in the coming negotiations for peace without the 

 knowledge and consent of the king of France, and, " ulti- 

 mately to govern ourselves by their advice and opinion, 

 endeavoring in our whole conduct to make him sensible how 

 much we rely on His Majesty's influence for effectual sup- 

 port." Madison bitterly denounced this resolution of Con- 

 gress as a "sacrifice of the national dignity." About one 

 year later an intercepted letter of Marbois, a French diplo- 

 mat in the United States, to De Vergennes, when made pub- 

 lic, aroused great and well-merited indignation, as it furnished 

 the first real proof of French duplicity toward the United 

 States. It had a wholesome effect in determining the course 

 of action to be followed by the peace commissioners in Paris. 



The letter is in part as follows : 



But Mr. Samuel Adams is using all his endeavors to raise in 

 the State of Massachusetts a strong opposition to peace if the 



