Mr. Adams remained in congress from its first meeting till November, 1777, when he was appointed minister to France. He proceeded on that service in the February following, embarking in the Boston frigate on the shore of his native town at the foot of Mount Wollaston. The year following, he was appointed commissioner to treat of peace with England. Returning to the United States, he was a delegate from Braintree in the convention for framing the constitution of this commonwealth, in 1780. At the latter end of the same year, he again went abroad in the diplomatic service of the country, and was employed at various courts, and occupied with various negotiations, until 1788. The particulars of these interesting and important services this occasion does not allow time to relate. In 1782 he concluded our first treaty with Holland. His negotiations with that republic, his efforts to persuade the states-general to recognize our independence, his incessant and indefatigable exertions to represent the American cause favorably on the continent, and to counteract the designs of its enemies, open and secret, and his successful undertaking to obtain loans, on the credit of a nation yet new and unknown, are among his most arduous, most useful, most honorable services. It was his fortune to bear a part in the negotiation for peace with England, and in something more than six years from the declaration which he had so strenuously supported, he had the satisfaction to see the minister plenipotentiary of the crown subscribe to the instrument which declared that his "Britannic majesty acknowledged the United States to be free, sovereign, and independent." In these important transactions, Mr. Adams' conduct received the marked approbation of congress and of the countrty. While abroad, in 1787, he published his Defense of the American Constitution; a work of merit and ability, though composed with haste, on the spur of a particular occasion, in the midst of other occupations, and under circumstances not admitting of careful revision. The immediate object of the work was to counteract the weight of opinion advanced by several popular European writers of that day, Mr. Turgot, the Abbe de Mably and Dr. Price, at a time when the people of the United States were employed in forming and revising their system of government.