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

[542] the very moment of his selection of an emissary, he

Chap. XXVII.} 1782. April.

declared that he did not think it much signified how soon he should break up the cabinet. The person of whom he made choice to treat on the weightiest interests with the most skilful diplomatist of Europe was Thomas Grenville, one of his own partisans, who was totally ignorant of the relations of America to France, and very young, with no experience in public business, having a very scant knowledge of the foreign relations of his own country.

Arriving in Paris on the eighth of May, Grenville

May 8.

delivered to Franklin a most cordial letter of introduction from Fox, and met with the heartiest welcome. After receiving him at breakfast, Franklin took him in his own carriage to Versailles; and there the dismissed postmaster-general for America, at the request of the British secretary of state, introduced the son of the author of the American stamp act as the British plenipotentiary to the minister for foreign affairs of the Bourbon king. Statesmen at Paris and Vienna were amused on hearing that the envoy of the ‘rebel’ colonies was become ‘the introductor’ of the representatives of Great Britain at the court of Versailles.

Vergennes received Grenville most cordially as the nephew of an old friend, but smiled at his offer to grant to France the independence of the United States, and Franklin refused to accept at second hand that independence which his country had already won. Grenville remarked that the war had been provoked by encouragement from France to the Americans to revolt; to which Vergennes answered with warmth that France had found and not