George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[263] good, had come in some way to know William Lee,

Chap. XII.} 1778.

an alderman of London as well as an American commissioner to Vienna and Berlin, and with the leave of the burgomasters of Amsterdam met him at Aixla-Chapelle, and concerted terms for a commercial convention, proper in due time to be entered into between the two republics. When Lee communicated to the commissioners at Paris this project of a convention, they reminded him that the authority for treating with their High Mightinesses belonged exclusively to themselves, and they looked upon his act as a nullity. The American congress likewise took no notice of his intermeddling, and in the following June dismissed him from its service. Amsterdam disclaimed ‘the absurd design of concluding a convention independent of their High Mightinesses.’ ‘The burgomasters only promised their influence in favor of a treaty of amity between the two powers, when the independence of the United States of America should be recognised by the English.’¹

To get rid of everything of which England could

Sept.

complain, the offer made in April by Franklin, Arthur Lee, and John Adams, to negotiate a treaty of commerce between America and the Netherlands, together with a copy of the commercial treaty between the United States and France, was, near the end of October, communicated to the states-general. They

Oct.

promptly consigned the whole matter to rest in the manner which the stadholder had concerted, and which met exactly the ‘hope’ of the British secretary of state.²