Additional Instructions to Benjamin Franklin, Silas Dean, and Thomas Jefferson, Commissioners from the United States of America to the King of France (Draft)
Document text, 16 October 1776
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Additional instructions to BF, SD, and TJ, commissioners from the United States of America to the king of France.
Whilst you are negotiating the affairs you are charged with at the court of France, you will have opportunities of conversing frequently with the ministers and agents of other european princes and states residing there.
You shall endeavour, when you find occasion fit and convenient, to obtain from them a recognition of
theour independency and sovereignty [struck out], and to conclude treaties of peace,andamity between their princes or states and us ^ *. If that cannot be effected, you shall, to the utmost of your power, prevent their taking part with Great Britain in the war ^which his britannic majestyisprosecutes^ against us, or entering into offensive alliances with that king, and protest and present remonstrances [struck out] against the same, [struck out] desiring ^ the [struck out] interposition mediation and good offices on our behalf of his most christian majesty, the king of France, and of any other princes or states whose dispositions are not hostile towards us. In case overtures be made to you by the ministers or agents of any european ^princes or states for commercial treaties between them and us,* you may conclude such treaties accordingly, + provided^ that
the terms thereof be first imparted to his most christian majesty and approved of by him, that theythat the same be not inconsistent with the treaty you shall make with his most christian majesty, that they ^do not oblige us to become a party in any war which may happen in consequence thereof, and that the immunities, exemptions, privileges, protection
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tection
anddefense and advantages, or the contrary, thereby stipulated, be equal and reciprocal.[1]
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280
Report of the Comee. on preparing
further instructions to the
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Commissioners 277postponed. — Agreed to Octr. 16, 1776
References
- ↑ Published in the Journal of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 ed. Worthington C. Ford, vol. 6, 1776, October 9-December 31 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1906), 884.
External links
- Read this document at Founders Online, National Archives.
- Read this document in Google Books.
