acquainted than I can be. I confess, that had the proposition of the mediators been laid before me to form my opinion upon, unaccompanied with the strictures of the French Minister, I should have laid my finger upon three words only in it, viz. _en meme tems_, and considered the others, to which he meant to draw my particular attention, by underscoring them, as merely colorable terms, and a specimen of that finesse, from which the politics of Europe can never be free. I should therefore have drawn from it a conclusion very different from that of the French Minister, viz.--"_It is therefore clear, that their design is to avoid compromiting themselves by recognising the independence of the United States, till England herself shall have done it_;" for if, as he would have me to understand, the mediators do in fact still consider the United States as British Colonies, and that neither the belligerent powers, or themselves, ought to interfere in settling the war between them and Great Britain, without being invited by both parties, how comes it to pass, that as mediators between the belligerent powers, meaning not to comprehend America under that predicament, they should go on to annex, in the nature of condition of their mediation, that "there shall be _at the same time_ a treaty between Great Britain and the American Colonies, respecting the re-establishment of peace in America;" thereby prescribing to a sovereign State _the time_ when it shall enter upon the settlement of a dispute, existing between the Sovereign of that State and a part of his subjects, in which they mean not to intermeddle; and, according to the French Ministers, even the manner of doing it. For, says he, "the mediating Courts intend thereby, that your deputies shall treat simply with the English Ministers, in the same manner as they have already treated in America with the Commissioners from Great Britain in the year 1778." I could have set him right in matter of fact here, but it would have answered no good purpose.