Volume I Part 3 (1/2)

MR. FOX TO MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE.

(Private.)

St James's, June 10th, 1782.

Dear Grenville,

I received late the night before last your very interesting letter of the 4th, and you will easily conceive am not a little embarra.s.sed by its contents. In the first place, it was not possible to comply with your injunction of perfect secrecy in a case where steps of such importance are necessary to be taken; and therefore I have taken upon me (for which I must trust to your friends.h.i.+p to excuse me) to show your letter to Lord Rockingham, the Duke of Richmond and Lord John, who are all as full of indignation at its contents as one might reasonably expect honest men to be. We are perfectly resolved to come to an explanation upon the business, if it is possible so to do, without betraying any confidence reposed in me by you, or in you by others.

The two princ.i.p.al points which occur are the paper relative to Canada, of which I had never heard till I received your letter, and the intended investment of Mr. Oswald with full powers, which was certainly meant for the purpose of diverting Franklin's confidence from you into another channel. With these two points we wish to charge Shelburne directly; but pressing as the King is, and interesting as it is both to our own situations and to the affairs of the public--which are, I fear, irretrievably injured by this intrigue, and which must be ruined if it is suffered to go on--we are resolved not to stir a step till we hear again from you, and know precisely how far we are at liberty to make use of what you have discovered. If this matter should produce a rupture, and consequently become more or less the subject of public discussion, I am sensible the Canada paper cannot be mentioned by name; but might it not be said that we had discovered that Shelburne had withheld from our knowledge matters of importance to the negotiation? And with respect to the other point, might it not be said, without betraying anybody, that while the King had one avowed and authorized Minister at Paris, measures were taken for lessening his credit and for obstructing his inquiries by announcing a new intended commission, of which the Cabinet here had never been apprized.

Do, pray, my dear Grenville, consider the incredible importance of this business in every view, and write me word precisely how far you can authorize us to make use of your intelligence. It is more than possible that, before this reaches you, many other circ.u.mstances may have occurred which may afford further proofs of this duplicity of conduct; and if they have, I am sure they will not have escaped your observation. If this should be the case, you will see the necessity of acquainting me with them as soon as possible. You see what is our object, and you can easily judge what sort of evidence will be most useful to us. When the object is attained--that is, when the duplicity is proved--to what consequences we ought to drive; whether to an absolute rupture, or merely to the recal of Oswald and the simplification of this negotiation, is a point that may be afterwards considered. I own I incline to the more decisive measure, and so I think do those with whom I must act in concert.

I am very happy indeed that you did not come yourself: the mischief that would have happened from it to our affairs are incredible; and I must beg of you, nay, entreat and conjure you, not to think of taking any precipitate step of this nature. As to the idea of replacing you with Lord Fitzwilliam, not only it would be very objectionable on account of the mistaken notion it would convey of things being much riper than they are, but it would, as I conceive, be no remedy to the evil. Whether the King's Minister at Paris be an Amba.s.sador Extraordinary or a Minister Plenipotentiary, can make no difference as to the question. The clandestine manner of carrying on a separate negotiation, which we complain of, would be equally practicable and equally blameable if Lord Fitzwilliam was Amba.s.sador, as it is now that Mr. Grenville is Plenipotentiary. I must therefore again entreat you, as a matter of personal kindness to me, to remain a little longer at Paris; if you were to leave it, all sorts of suspicions would be raised. It is of infinite consequence that we should have it to say that we have done all in our power to make peace, not only with regard to what may be expected from America, but from Europe.

The King of Prussia is certainly inclined to be our friend; but he urges and presses to make peace if possible. If we could once bring the treaty to such a point as that, stating the demands on each side to him, we could have his approbation for breaking it off, I think it not impossible but the best consequences might follow; and with regard to North America, it is surely clear to demonstration, that it is of infinite consequence that it should be publicly understood who is to blame if the war continues. I do hope, therefore, that you will at all events stay long enough to make your propositions, and to call upon them to make others in return. I know your situation cannot be pleasant; but as you first undertook it in a great measure from friends.h.i.+p to me, so let me hope that the same motive will induce you to continue in it at least for some time.

What will be the end of this, G.o.d knows; but I am sure you will agree with me, that we cannot suffer a system to go on which is not only dishonourable to us, but evidently ruinous to the affairs of the country. In this instance, the mischief done by intercepting, as it were, the very useful information we expected through you from Franklin, is I fear in a great degree irremediable; but it is our business, and indeed our duty, to prevent such things for the future.

Everything in Ireland goes on very well; and I really think there is good reason to entertain hopes from Prussia and Russia, if your negotiation either goes on or goes off as it ought to do.

I can hardly read Monsieur de Guemene's letter, but wish to have two hundred bottles of the champagne, if there is really reason to think it good. By the way, I beg you will remember me to Monsieur de Guemene, and put him in mind of our former acquaintance in the Rue St. Pierre. If the wine in question is as good as that he used to rob from Monsieur de Soubise, I shall be very well satisfied. I will give Brooks directions to acquaint you with the proper manner of sending it. I am quite ashamed of dwelling so long upon this, after the very serious business of this letter; but you know I cannot help being a friend to the _poor abuses_; and besides, in a political light, good wine is no mean ingredient in keeping one's friends in good humour and steady to the cause.

I am,

My dear Grenville,

Yours most affectionately,

C. J. Fox.

MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE TO MR. FOX.

(Private.)

Paris, June 16th, 1782.

Dear Charles,

I received your letter of the 10th by Ogg on the night of the 14th, and would have sent him back as immediately as you seemed to wish; but having no other messenger to carry M. de Vergennes's answer, I was obliged to keep him till he could be the bearer of that likewise.

I can easily conceive the embarra.s.sment occasioned to you by my letter, and have so much confidence in the honour of the persons to whom you communicated it, that I am not under the smallest uneasiness on that account; the explanation, however, that you wish to come to, certainly has its difficulties; and amongst them some so sacred, that unless they can be kept altogether clear, you cannot but agree with me in thinking that they must be buried at least in silence, though not in oblivion. In order therefore that you may see into every part of this business, I will, as you desire, state in the most explicit manner the circ.u.mstances of it, as far as I think they affect any confidence reposed in me.

In the first place, then, you will have observed, that although Franklin has actually made me no confidence, owing, as I believe, without doubt, to the reasons I stated, yet as the communication he had said he would make to me was of the most confidential nature, and in full trust that the subjects which he should mention should not be given as propositions coming from him, I think it would be a breach of that confidence to make it known even that he had promised to hold such a conversation with me; and therefore to charge Lord Shelburne with having diverted from me that expected communication, would be to proclaim Franklin's promise to me; which promise, though it has not been followed up, I cannot think myself at liberty to quote. The delicacy of Franklin's situation with respect to the French Court was, as he said, the ground of the caution which he observed, and which, nevertheless, he was once inclined to risk in my trust. He would certainly have both to repent and to complain if anything on my part should lead to betray even the confidential disposition he had entertained. These reasons you will, I am sure, agree with me in considering as decisive against any mention being to be made of the expectations I had formed from the conversation I was to have had with Franklin.

The Canada paper is not perhaps quite under the same circ.u.mstances. The only knowledge I have of that is from Oswald; and as I before told you, I had it from him at a moment when I fancy he apprehended I had heard or should hear of it from Franklin. No other reason, indeed, can account for his not mentioning it from the end of April till the 31st of May. He told it me under no express limitation of confidence: the words in which he introduced it were, ”I think it right you should know;” and I am perfectly sure that he asked from me no engagement of secrecy, nor do I conceive myself under any with regard to him, except that general secrecy which is always attached to business of a confidential nature, such as was the business I related to you. I recollect asking whether he had showed the paper to you: he said No; but did not add any injunction to me not to do so; indeed, if he had, I should have stated to him the impossibility of my keeping from you a circ.u.mstance of that importance, or of my becoming, by my silence in it, a separate party to a business which it was my duty fully and entirely to lay before you and to receive from you; nor indeed at this moment is the knowledge of it confined to Lord Shelburne; as I am pretty sure Oswald told me that Lord Ashburton was with Lord Shelburne when he, Oswald, asked if he might give any answer to Franklin about the paper, or rather observed that he supposed he could not then have any answer to it. Under these circ.u.mstances, the difficulty with regard to the Canada paper, of which I have no copy, lies more possibly in the indelicacy and perhaps bad policy of bringing forward Franklin where he wished so much not to appear, than in the quoting it from me. I do not wish to be quoted, if there exists the least doubt whether I should. But I cannot more exactly explain to you the whole extent of that doubt, than by showing you that it does not exist in any specific obligation on my part, but only in the nature of what was told to me; the subject itself carrying with it, as you will see, many reasons for secrecy, and every mark of it in the manner of conducting it; but as to positive engagement or obligation upon this subject, I have none.

The remaining circ.u.mstance--of the intention mentioned to Mr.

Oswald by Lord Shelburne, of giving him a commission if it should be necessary--stands altogether clear of the slightest shade of difficulty upon the point of confidence; indeed, at the time I wrote you word of it, I did not imagine I was informing you of anything new or unknown to you; and only so far meant to dwell upon it, as to regret its happening precisely at the instant when it was most important it should not. I apprehended that Lord Shelburne might have already expressed such an intention to the rest of the King's Ministers, upon the ground of the American share of this business, which ground, in the present stage of it, I thought possibly you had not found it easy to object to. In this idea it was that Lord Fitzwilliam's appointment occurred to me, not to prevent a clandestine negotiation, but to unite a separated one; always imagining that you knew of, but did not resist, the intended commission to Mr.

Oswald, and therefore hinting the expediency of superseding it, by giving to another person an appointment of such rank and magnitude as should include a power which it seems neither for the public interest, nor for yours and your friends' interests, to leave separate and distinct.