George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

The necessity of appeals to France for aid promoted obsequiousness to its wishes. He that accepts subsidies binds his own hands, and consents to play a secondary part. A needy government, reduced to expedients for getting money, loses some degree of its consideration.

To persuade congress to propitiate Spain by conceding all her demands, the French minister at Philadelphia sought interviews with its separate members and with its newly appointed committee on foreign affairs, which was composed of one from each state; and insisted with them on the relinquishment of the fisheries, and of the valley and navigation of the Mississippi. It was answered, that that valley was already colonized by men who would soon be received into the union as a state. He rejoined that personal considerations must give way to the general interests of the republic; that the king of Spain, if he engaged in the war, would have equal rights with the United States to acquire territories of the king of England; that the persistence in asserting a right to establishments on the Ohio and the Illinois, and at Natchez, would exhibit an unjust desire of conquest; that such an acquisition was absolutely foreign to the principles of the American alliance with France, and of the system of union between France and Spain, as well as inconsistent with the interests of the latter power; and he formally declared, ‘that his king would not prolong the war one single day to secure ’