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146 the English Court intended by the general words "any other Prince or State" to include a people whom they did not allow to be a State, and that therefore he doubted the sufficiency of Grenville's credentials for treating with America, though they might be good for Spain and Holland.

Grenville himself was doubtful. "I have already," he writes to Fox, "felt myself under some embarrassment respecting Mr. Franklin, not seeing precisely how far the expression of "Princes and States" in the full power can apply to America, till the independence is acknowledged, and knowing that he finds and expresses much doubt about it himself, and some disposition to ask a more explicit description."

Meanwhile an explanation was being come to in England. It was decided that the negotiations with America were in the department of Shelburne, those with the other belligerents in that of Fox. "It is well," the King writes, "that the omission of Mr. Grenville in the American commission will create no more words; certainly it is every way highly proper he should not be mixed in that business. … Lord Shelburne will certainly act very properly in directing Mr. Oswald not to hazard opinions on parts of the peace, as to which he cannot have had any ministerial information, but being employed he may be supposed not to speak without foundation."

Shelburne accordingly wrote to Oswald that he was to be careful not to give any cause of offence to Grenville. "I thank your Lordship," Mr. Oswald replied, "for the caution with respect to affairs under Mr. Grenville's direction. It would have been quite wrong in me to meddle with it in any shape, and so cautious was I, that