round that she would not
allow France to stand between her and her colonies. Returning to Holland
Mr. Adams, though still unsupported by Vergennes, pushed with great
energy his reception as embassador by the States general, which at
length, April 19th, 1782, he succeeded in accomplishing. Following up
this success with his CUSTOMARY PERSEVERENCE, he succeeded before the
end of the year in negotiating a Dutch loan of nearly two millions of
dollars, the first of a series which proved a chief financial resource
of the continental congress. He also succeeded in negotiating a treaty
of amity and commerce. His success in these negotiations, considering
the obstacles with which he had to contend, and the want of support from
Vergennes, he was accustomed to regard as the greatest triumph of his
life.

Before this business was completed, Mr. Adams received urgent calls to
come to Paris where Jay and Franklin, two of the new commissioners, were
already treating for peace, and where he arrived October 26th. Though
Mr. Jay had been put into the diplomatic service by the procurement of
the party in congress in the French interest, his diplomatic experience
in Spain had led him also to entertain doubts as to the sincere
good-will of Vergennes. A confidential dispatch from the French
Secretary of Legation in America, intercepted by the British, and which
Oswald, the British negotiator at Paris communicated to Franklin and
Jay, with a view of making bad feeling between them and the French
minister, had, along with other circumstances, induced Franklin and Jay
to disregard their instructions, and to proceed to treat with Oswald
without communicating that fact to Vergennes, or taking his advice as to
terms of the treaty, a procedure in which Adams, after his arrival,
fully concurred.

It was chiefly through his energy and persistence that the participation
of America in the fisheries was secured by the treaty, not as a favor or
a privilege, but as a right--a matter of much more importance then than
now, the fisheries then being a much more important branch than now of
American maritime industry.

Immediately upon the signature of the preliminary articles of peace,
Adams asked leave to resign all his commissions and to return home, to
which Congress responded by appointing him a commissioner jointly with
Franklin and Jay, to negotiate a treaty of commerce with Great Britain.
His first visit to England was, however, in a private charact