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

[502] all but two frigates had been taken or destroyed.

Chap. XXV.} 1781. May.

Tired of the war and conscious of weakness, congress, yielding to the influence of the French Minister, made for its sole condition of peace the independence of the United States. The mediation of the empress of Russia and the emperor of Germany was accepted. The American commissioners were not restrained by absolute instructions with respect to boundaries, fisheries, the navigation of the Mississippi, or the country west of the Ohio; and they were charged ‘to undertake nothing in their negotiations for peace or truce without the knowledge and concurrence of the ministers of the king of France, and ultimately to govern themselves by their advice and opinion.’ That New Hampshire abandoned the claim to the fisheries was due to Sullivan, who at the time was a pensioner of Luzerne.

Madison still persevered in the effort to obtain power for congress to collect a revenue, and that body named a committee to examine into the changes which needed to be made in the articles of confederation. ‘The difficulty of continuing the war under them,’ so

Aug. 27.

wrote Luzerne on the twenty-seventh of August, ‘proves equally the necessity of reforming them, produced, as they were, at an epoch, when the mere name of authority inspired terror, and by men who thought to make themselves agreeable to the people. I can scarcely persuade myself that they will come to an agreement on this matter. Some persons even believe that the actual constitution, all vicious as it is, can be changed only by some violent revolution.’

The French government declined to furnish means