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Rh and was then in Europe, were altered. Independence was to be the sole ultimatum, and Adams was to undertake to submit to the guidance of the French Minister in every respect. "You are to make the most candid and confidential communications," so his amended instructions ran, "upon all subjects to the Ministers of our generous ally the King of France; to undertake nothing in the negotiations for peace or truce without their knowledge or concurrence, and to make them sensible how much we rely upon his Majesty's influence for effectual support in every thing that may be necessary to the present security or future prosperity of the United States of America." As a climax La Luzerne suggested and Congress agreed to make Jay, Franklin, Jefferson, and Laurens joint Commissioners with Mr. Adams.

Of the body thus appointed Jefferson refused to serve, while Laurens, as already seen, was captured on his way to England. Of the remaining Commissioners, John Adams was doubly odious to the diplomatists of France and Spain, because of his fearless independence of character, and because of the tenacity with which as a New Englander he clung to the American rights in the Newfoundland fisheries; Jay had been an enthusiastic advocate for the Spanish alliance, but the cavalier treatment he had received at Madrid, and the abandonment of the Mississippi boundary by Congress, had forced upon him the conviction that his own country was being used as a tool by the European powers, for their own ulterior objects. The French he hated. He said "they were not a moral people, and did not know what it was."

Not so Franklin, influenced partly by his long residence in the French capital, and also by the idea that the Colonies were more likely to attain their objects by a firm reliance upon France than by confidence in the generosity of England. He also pointed to the terms of the treaty which he had negotiated with France, forbidding either party to conclude a separate peace without the