In consequence of my second letter to the Vice Chancellor, of the 21st instant, he sent me a verbal message with his compliments on the 23d in the morning, and desired to see me at four o'clock in the afternoon. I waited upon him accordingly, and had a conference with him upon the subject of my mission. He began by saying that he had received the letters I had done him the honor to write him; that her Majesty had been invited by the Courts of Versailles, Madrid, and London, to mediate in conjunction with the Emperor, at the conclusion of the definitive treaty of peace between them; that till those affairs were arranged, and the definitive treaty signed, her Majesty could not, consistent with her character of mediator, receive a Minister from America without the consent of those powers; that the treaty of America was provisional only, and dependent upon those arrangements; and though there was no doubt but they would take place, and that the definitive treaty would be concluded, yet, till that was done, her Majesty could not consider me in my character as the Minister of America.
Here he made a long pause, as if waiting for an answer, but knowing that the whole had not yet come out, I made no attempts to reply. He then added, that he supposed my letter of credence bore date before the acknowledgment of the independence of America by the King of Great Britain, and asked me if that was not the fact. I told him that it must necessarily be so, as a sufficient time had not since elapsed to receive one from America. He then said, that when the above arrangements should be completed, if I should produce new letters of credence, bearing date since the King of Great Britain had acknowledged the independence of America, her Majesty would be very willing to receive me as the Minister of America, but that it would be incompatible with that exact neutrality, which her Majesty had hitherto observed, to do it before; that it would be irregular also for her Majesty to admit a Minister from a power, whose letter of credence bore date before she had acknowledged the independence of that power; that besides, no Minister had been received from America at the Court of Great Britain yet, and that I must be sensible it would not be consistent for her Majesty to receive one before the King of Great Britain had done it. Here he stopped again; and knowing that he had gone through his whole subject, which comprises these simple matters only, viz.
1st. That her Majesty could not, consistent with the character of a mediator as above, receive a Minister from the United States, till the conclusion of the definitive treaty between France, Spain, and Great Britain;
2dly. That she could not do it even then, consistent with the laws of neutrality, while his letter of credence bore date prior to the acknowledgment of their independence by the King of Great Britain;
3dly. That she could not do it regularly, while his letter of credence bore date before she herself had acknowledged their independence;
4thly. That she could not do it consistently before a Minister had been received from the United States in Great Britain.
I desired him to favor me with a note containing the substance of this answer, as it was of great importance, and much in affairs of this sort depended upon the very expressions; that with the fairest intentions, I might misrepresent some parts of it through forgetfulness, and that I would deliver him my observations upon it in writing for consideration, when the exact state of the matter would be known. Finding, as I had expected, that he declined this, I began my reply with a preface of this sort; the answer, which your Excellency has given me on the part of her Imperial Majesty, is wholly unexpected, not only to myself, but to the United States. I cannot, therefore, take upon me to say anything upon it from instructions. I beg you would be pleased to consider whatever I may say as my private sentiments; whether they will accord with those of my Sovereign, I am not certain. At this great distance, I must use my best discretion in all such extraordinary cases. I have no design to oppose myself to her Majesty's pleasure, whatever that may be, but only to make some observations upon the answer, that if they are of any weight, they may be taken into consideration, as I have no doubt they will be. I would beg to take this occasion to express the high respect, which the United States entertain for her Imperial Majesty, and their sincere desire to cultivate her friendship; that they considered her as one of the first sovereigns of the world, and, in a manner, the great legislator of nations by her system of neutrality, which they had early highly applauded, and had made the principles of it the invariable rules of their conduct during the war; that, animated with sentiments of this kind, they wished to give some strong proofs of a distinguished attention and consideration for her Majesty's person and government. With this view, they had early named a Minister to reside near her, as a compliment to the Sovereign who presided over the Neutral Confederation with so much glory; that he might improve the earliest occasion to display his character, which the course of events should afford.
From these dispositions, they were naturally led to expect, as they had intended, that her Imperial Majesty would be the first of the neutral powers, which should receive a Minister from them; that as to the objections, which had been made to my present reception, I begged leave to observe, that the present mediation differed from the former one, which had been tendered by their Imperial Majesties, in two essential respects, that that was tendered during the continuance of hostilities, and that there was a proposition in it, which materially concerned the United States, but in this there was no question relative to them; that their negotiations with Great Britain had been conducted apart from those of the other belligerent powers, and were brought to a happy conclusion. I here took up all the facts stated to him in my second letter of the 21st instant, and enlarged upon them. I added to them, the bill pending before the House of Commons in the beginning of March, for regulating a commercial intercourse between Great Britain and America, as between States, in fact, and absolutely independent; and that the bill itself recited, that the King had concluded a peace with them, and expressly declared the vessels of their citizens should be admitted into all the ports of Great Britain, as the vessels of other independent States; that all were agreed to consider them as such. From these matters, I drew the same conclusion as is mentioned in that letter.
This closed my observations upon the first article. As to the second, I went over the reasons contained in my letter of the 22d instant to you, urging strongly the four first, but passing gently over the rest. Upon the third, it was to be observed, that the mode of expression "before her Majesty had acknowledged the independence of America," seemed to lead beside the matter. That there was no question in the acknowledgment of that independence. The only question was, whether her Majesty would receive a Minister from the United States, who now presents himself. The United States do not ask the acknowledgment of their independence, nor have they a wish, nor do they claim a right to impose their Minister upon any Sovereign. Every Sovereign will judge, whether it is for the interest of his empire to receive the Minister of another, and may do this without deciding upon the perfect rights of that other. This is rather what I would have said, than what I did say upon that point. I could not fully advance the idea, as he several times prevented me, by returning to the matter he had before spoken upon, as if he saw what I intended to say and wished to avoid it. The fourth and last point was chiefly answered by the arguments used upon the first. I did not, however, forget the distance of the countries as the only probable cause of that delay.
Thus, Sir, I have given you a clear idea of a conference, which rests wholly upon my memory, and which had continued an hour wanting a few minutes, as far as I am able to do. Other arguments occurred to me in the time, which might have been urged, but I was apprehensive of obtruding too much upon the patience of the Vice Chancellor, whose view it must be considered, was rather to communicate the answer, than to discuss the points of it.