knew that Shelburne's tenure of power was precarious, and that any possible successor of Shelburne would be vastly less well-disposed to the States. This induced him to stretch a point in order to go on with the treating. Parliament was to meet on November 26, and unless peace could be concluded before that time, the chance for it thereafter would be diminished almost to the point of hopelessness. But Adams wrote from Holland that he also disapproved the unusual form of the commission, though a commission to treat with envoys of "the United States of America" would satisfy him, as a sufficient implication of independence without an explicit preliminary acknowledgment of it. [Note 83: Franklin's _Works_, viii. 99, 101, 150, note.] About the middle of August Jay drew up a letter, suggesting very ingeniously that it was incompatible with the dignity of the king of England to negotiate except with an independent power; also that an obstacle which meant everything to the States, but nothing to Great Britain, should be removed by his majesty. Franklin thought that the letter expressed too positively the resolve not to treat save upon this basis of pre-acknowledged independence. He evidently did not wish to bolt too securely the door through which he anticipated that the commissioners might in time feel obliged to withdraw. Moreover Jay thought that at this time "the doctor seemed to be much perplexed and fettered by our instructions to be guided by the advice of this court," a direction correctly supposed to have been procured by the influence of the French envoy at Philadelphia.