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The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United Slates of America
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Historical SummaryDorset was the English ambassador to the court of France. The commissioners to whom the letter was addressed were John Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson, who were authorized by Congress to negotiate treaties of commerce.—Bibliography as in No. 49 above.
Why England Would Not Treat (1785)
BY DUKE OF DORSET JOHN FREDERICK SACKVILLE
Paris, March 26, 1785.
. . . HAVING communicated to my Court the readiness you expressed in your letter to me of the 9th of December, to remove to London, for the purpose of treating upon such points as may materially concern the interests, both political and commercial, of Great Britain and America, and having at the same time represented that you declared yourselves to be fully authorized and empowered to negotiate, I have been, in answer thereto, instructed to learn from you, gentlemen, what is the real nature of the powers with which you are invested, whether you are merely commissioned by Congress, or whether you have received separate powers from the respective States. A committee of North American merchants have waited upon his Majesty’s principal Secretary of State for foreign affairs, to express how anxiously they wished to be informed upon this subject, repeated experience having taught them in particular, as well as the public in general, how little the authority of Congress could avail in any respect, where the interests of any one individual State was even concerned, and particularly so, where the concerns of that particular State might be supposed to militate against such resolutions as Congress might think proper to adopt.
The apparent determination of the respective States to regulate their own separate interests, renders it absolutely necessary, towards forming a permanent system of commerce, that my Court should be informed how far the Commissioners can be duly authorized to enter into any engagements with Great Britain, which it may not be in the power of any one of the States to render totally fruitless and ineffectual.
, 1783–1789 (Washington, 1833), II, 297–298.
Chicago: John Frederick Sackville, The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United Slates of America in American History Told by Contemporaries, ed. Albert Bushnell Hart (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1902), 172. Original Sources, accessed April 11, 2025, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=GSBE56BF21DJ7QT.
MLA: Sackville, John Frederick. The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United Slates of America, Vol. II, in American History Told by Contemporaries, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, Vol. 3, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1902, page 172. Original Sources. 11 Apr. 2025. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=GSBE56BF21DJ7QT.
Harvard: Sackville, JF, The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United Slates of America. cited in 1902, American History Told by Contemporaries, ed. , The Macmillan Company, New York, pp.172. Original Sources, retrieved 11 April 2025, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=GSBE56BF21DJ7QT.
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