Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/107

Rh always owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Adams for the clear-sightedness with which he thus read the designs of Vergennes and estimated at its true value the purely selfish intervention of France in behalf of the United States. This clearness of insight was soon to bear good fruit in the management of the treaty of 1783. For the present, Adams found himself uncomfortable in Paris, as his too ready tongue wrought unpleasantness both with Vergennes and with Franklin, who was too much under the French minister's influence. On his first arrival in Paris society there had been greatly excited about him, as it was supposed that he was"the famous Mr. Adams" who had ordered the British troops out of Boston in March, 1770, and had thrown down the glove of defiance to George III. on the great day of the Boston tea-party. When he explained that he was only a cousin of that grand and picturesque personage, he found that fashionable society thenceforth took less interest in him.

In the summer of 1780 Mr. Adams was charged by congress with the business of negotiating a Dutch loan. In order to give the good people of Holland some correct ideas as to American affairs, he published a number of articles in the Leyden "Gazette" and in a magazine entitled "La politique hollandaise"; also "Twenty-six Letters upon Interesting Subjects respecting the Revolution in