countries of the Old World. We were independent, but alone. We were known as "successful rebels," but not as good customers. We had, to be sure, made a fairly favorable treaty of commerce with France in 1778, but the grip of monopoly and privilege on the old régime prevented Louis XVI's ministers from putting it into operation. Holland and Sweden also had made commercial treaties with us during the war and so opened a modest opportunity for the "economic invasion" of Europe by our fish and rice, our lumber, whale-oil, tobacco, and wheat. But Great Britain refused to open to the United States the trade with the West Indies which we had enjoyed as British colonies. She even refused to put us on the footing of "the most favored nation" in our trade with the home land. We had no trade agreements, hence no security of commerce, with Russia, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Tuscany, Naples, Venice, Rome, Turkey, Morocco, Algiers-in short, with hardly any of the maritime nations of the Old World.

Congress decided in the spring of 1784 to make an effort to break down the protective barriers in Europe. On May 7 it resolved that "a minister plenipotentiary be appointed to active conjunction with Mr. Adams and Doctor Franklin in negotiating treaties of commerce with foreign nations." The choice of Congress fell on Jefferson. It was his fourth invitation since the Declaration of Indepen

dence to go to Paris on a public mission. And this time he was not to be disappointed. As the appointment was for only two years, he left his younger daughter and his nephews at home, taking only his eldest daughter, Martha, who since Mrs. Jefferson's death had become his inseparable companion. He left Annapolis for Philadelphia and Boston four days after his appointment. "While passing through the different States," he says in his Memoir, "I made a point of informing myself of the state of commerce in each, went on to New Hampshire with the same view, and returned to Boston." He was enthusiastically received in Boston, where, as he wrote Gerry, much of his time was "occupied by the hospitality and civilities of this place." A guest's chair was provided for him in the general court of Massachusetts. He sailed for Europe on Monday, July 5, in the Ceres, and as his ship dropped down the harbor, through its emerald islands, she was wafted on her way by the cheers of thousands of patriots gathered in Faneuil Hall, the "Cradle of Liberty," to listen to the annual oration on the text of his immortal Declaration. A pleasant voyage of nineteen days brought the Ceres to Cowes, where Jefferson was detained by the illness of his daughter. He reached Paris early in August. "Immediately called on Doctor Franklin at Passy," he writes, "communicated to him our charge, and we wrote to Mr. Adams, then at the Hague, to join us."

As soon as the plenipotentiaries were all together in Paris they drew up the general form of a commercial treaty on a plan proposed by Jefferson and reflecting his humanitarian principles. This treaty has seldom received its due notice at the hands of historians, because, unfortunately, instead of being written into the law of nations, it was consigned to the archives of the diplomatic correspondence of the United States. Washington called it "the most original and liberal treaty ever negotiated," and declared that it would open "a new era in negotiation." Some of its twenty-seven articles reveal the inhuman practices which prevailed even among friendly nations toward the close of the eighteenth century. Others run far in advance of the position yet reached by nations that call themselves civilized, in the delimitation of the inevitable horrors of war and in the protection of the rights of neutrals. The coasts of the enemy were not to be ravaged, privateering was forbidden, non-combatants on land and sea were not to be molested, neutral property was not to be confiscated. "It seems a mockery of noble endeavor," says James Parton in his entertaining biography of Jefferson, "that such a draft should have been placed on record on the eve of

1 The articles, for example, providing that mariners who were shipwrecked should not be plundered, and that "when subjects or citizens of one party shall die within the jurisdiction of the other," their bodies "shall be decently buried and protected from violence or disturbance."

wars which desolated Europe for twenty years, during which every principle of humanity and right was ruthlessly trampled under foot." So the moralist of to-day might view the noble labors of The Hague conferences and Lake Mohonk peace meetings!

John Adams was appointed minister to England in February, 1785, and the aged Franklin was relieved of the burden of his diplomatic post at Paris a few weeks later. Jefferson was appointed minister to France in Franklin's place, for a period of three years from March 10, 1785. He entered on his mission with the best of auguries for its success with the French Court-a neatly turned phrase. "You replace Doctor Franklin, I hear," said the foreign minister, Vergennes. "I succeed him," replied Jefferson; "nobody could replace him."

There is little that is exciting or even picturesque in the strictly official life of Jefferson in his four years residence in Paris. He says himself: "My duties at Paris were confined to a few objects, the receipt of our whale-oils, salted fish, and salted meats on favorable terms, the admission of our rice on equal terms with that of Piedmont, Egypt, and the Levant, a mitigation of the monopolies of our tobacco by the Farmers-General, and a free admission of our productions into their islands." He found the foreign minister, Vergennes, "frank, honorable, and easy of access," though he had the reputation with the diplomatic corps at Paris of being "wary

and slippery." But frank and honorable as Vergennes might be, he did not advance far on the way of commercial confidence in the new American nation.1 Jefferson returned again and again to his assault on the privileges of the tobacco monopolists and the salt ring. "His diplomatic correspondence with Vergennes and Montmorin," says Morse, "fairly reeks with the flavor of whale-oil, salt-fish, and tobacco." He declared that his countrymen were ready and eager to buy French goods if they could only find the return market in France for their own. He drew up statistics to show that King Louis would gain, as well as the American government, by breaking up the monopoly of the farmers-general and collecting his own royal imposts directly on American importations. But it was of no avail. Vergennes confessed that he saw the force of Jefferson's arguments, but replied that the King received $28,000,000 a year from the Farm now, that this method of collecting the revenue "was of very ancient date, and that it was always hazardous to alter arrangements of long standing"

1 In his Memoir, written nearly forty years later, Jefferson speaks of Vergennes and the French Government as "entirely disposed to befriend us on all occasions and to yield us every indulgence not absolutely injurious to themselves." But in a letter of January 30, 1787, to Madison, he says of Vergennes: "He is a great minister in European affairs, but has a very imperfect idea of our institutions and no confidence in them. His devotion to the principles of pure despotism renders him unaffectionate to our governments [notice the plural!]. But his fear of England makes him value us as a makeweight."