it
would be fulfilled on our part; and the same things were said all over
Europe. Toward the close of the war most of the European nations had
seemed ready to enter into commercial arrangements with the United
States, but all save Holland speedily lost interest in the subject. John
Adams had succeeded in making a treaty with Holland in 1782. Frederick
the Great treated us more civilly than other sovereigns. One of the last
acts of his life was to conclude a treaty for ten years with the United
States; asserting the principle that free ships make free goods, taking
arms and military stores out of the class of contraband, agreeing to
refrain from privateering even in case of war between the two countries,
and in other respects showing a liberal and enlightened spirit.

[Sidenote: Failure of American credit; John Adams begging in Holland,
1784.]

This treaty was concluded in 1786. It scarcely touched the subject of
international trade in time of peace, but it was valuable as regarded
the matters it covered, and in the midst of the general failure of
American diplomacy in Europe it fell pleasantly upon our ears. Our
diplomacy had failed because our weakness had been proclaimed to the
world. We were bullied by England, insulted by France and Spain, and
looked askance at in Holland. The humiliating position in which our
ministers were placed by the beggarly poverty of Congress was something
almost beyond credence. It was by no means unusual for the
superintendent of finance, when hard pushed for money, to draw upon our
foreign ministers, and then sell the drafts for cash. This was not only
not unusual; it was an established custom. It was done again and again,
when there was not the smallest ground for supposing that the minister
upon whom the draft was made would have any funds wherewith to meet it.
He must go and beg the money. That was part of his duty as envoy,--to
solicit loans without security for a government that could not raise
enough money by taxation to defray its current expenses. It was
sickening work. Just before John Adams had been appointed minister to
England, and while he was visiting in London, he suddenly learned that
drafts upon him had been presented to his bankers in Amsterdam to the
amount of more than a million florins. Less than half a million florins
were on hand to meet these demands, and unless something were done at
once the greater part of this paper would go back to America protested.
Adams