RC and enclosure (MHi: John Adams, Embassy MSS); addressed: “His Excellency John Adams Hague”; endorsed: “L. R. Morris 6. July 1782 relative to Salary.” This letter was written on a sheet folded to make four pages. On the third page is a duplicate of Lewis Morris' letter of 9 Aug. (Adams Papers) concerning JA's salary from 1 April to 1 July, and enclosed is a bill signed by Robert Morris and drawn on the Grands at Paris for JA's salary for that period. For other copies of this letter, see note 1, below.

The figures given by Morris in this letter are confusing. The first problem is that he entered the wrong sum for JA's salary. In 1779, Congress set the yearly salary of a minister at £2,500 sterling per year or, as in this letter, £625 per quarter ( JCC , 15:1145). In fact, Morris used that figure when he computed the sum in dollars, but the dollar amount should be 2,777 70/90 at an exchange rate of 4s. 6d. per dollar. In the second conversion to French livres tournois, Morris refers to the exchange rate between Pennsylvania currency and livres tournois. At par value, £166.67 Pennsylvania currency was worth £100 sterling. Therefore, £625 sterling equaled £1,041.67 Pennsylvania currency, which, at 6s. 3d. Pennsylvania currency per 5 , equaled 16,666 13s., rather than the 14,583 that Morris gives in this letter. However, Morris' figure is the same as that produced by using the exchange rate Congress adopted on 7 March 1783 and applied retroactively to salaries due on 1 Jan. 1783 ( JCC , 24:175–176). For the effect this had on ministerial salaries, see Laurens, Papers , 16:257.

There are two other extant copies of Morris' letter, both in the Adams Papers. One is virtually identical to this letter as printed, containing the same figures and a copy of Morris' letter of 9 Aug. on the third page. The other, designated as a quadruplicate, does not give JA's salary in pounds sterling, only the dollar amount, and gives the amount in livres tournois, converted from Pennsylvania currency, correctly as 16,666 13s. The reason for the discrepancy is unknown, since all of the copies are in Morris' hand. It should be noted, however, that when JA received his salary from the Grands, the exchange rate was 24 per pound sterling, or 15,000 for the quarter (Foreign Ledgers, Public Agents in Europe, 1776–1787, DNA: RG 39 [Microfilm], f. 190).

RC (NNC: John Jay Papers); endorsed: “adams. 8 July 1782 ansd 2 Augt.”

JA apparently learned of Jay's arrival at Paris from Matthew Ridley on 7 July (Ridley to JA, 13 July, note 1, below).

For JA's earlier comments on Jean Antoine de Mesme, Comte d'Avaux, and Godefroi, Comte d'Estrades, both French ambassadors at The Hague in the seventeenth century, and their accounts of negotiations with the Dutch, see vol. 12:18, 20.

For the intrigues and their outcome, see JA's letter of 2 July to Elbridge Gerry, and note 4, above.

William Carmichael was Jay's secretary at Madrid.

When JA wrote this letter, he did not yet know that a new ministry had been formed and that Shelburne had replaced Rockingham (for which see Matthew Ridley to JA, 13 July, note 4, below), but when he reprinted this letter in the Boston Patriot, 20 April 1811, he included the following note:

“N. B. in 1810. A single hint will explain not only this letter but the history of that time. Lord Shelbourne was an Irishman, and although equal at least, if not superior, as a statesman, to all, at least to any of either of the other parties, he was equally hated by the Scotch and the English parties. To my knowledge Fox and Burke hated him as much as North and Bute.”