About the time that Commodore Parker sailed for the southern states, the commissioners appointed to give effect to the late conciliatory acts of Parliament, embarked for Europe.  They had exerted their utmost powers to effect the object of their mission, but without success.  Great Britain required that the force of the two nations should be united under one common sovereign; and America was no longer disposed, or even at liberty to accede to this condition.  All those affections, which parts of the same empire should feel for each other, had been eradicated by a distressing war; the great body of the people were determined, at every sacrifice, to maintain their independence; and the treaty with France had pledged the honour and the faith of the nation, never to consent to a reunion with the British empire.

[Sidenote:  Arrival of the British commissioners.]

[Sidenote:  Terms of conciliation proposed.]

The commissioners arrived in Philadelphia while that place was yet in possession of their army, and are understood to have brought positive orders for its evacuation.  Their arrival was immediately announced to General Washington by Sir Henry Clinton, who was joined with them in the commission, and a passport was requested for their secretary, Doctor Ferguson, as the bearer of their first despatches to congress.  The Commander-in-chief declined granting this passport until he should receive the instructions of his government; on which a letter addressed “To the president and other the members of congress,” was forwarded in the usual manner.  Copies of their commission, and of the acts of Parliament on which it was founded, together with propositions conforming to those acts, drawn in the most conciliatory language, were transmitted with this letter.

[Sidenote:  Answer of Congress to these propositions.]

Some observations having been introduced into it reflecting on the conduct of France,[10] the reading was interrupted, and a motion made to proceed no farther in consequence of this offensive language to his most Christian Majesty.  This motion producing some debate, an adjournment was moved and carried.  When congress reassembled, the warmth of the preceding day had not entirely subsided; but, after several ineffectual motions to prevent it, the letter was read and committed.  The answer which was reported by the committee, and transmitted to the commissioners, declared that “nothing but an earnest desire to spare the farther effusion of human blood, could have induced them to read a paper containing expressions so disrespectful to his most Christian Majesty, the good and great ally of these states, or to consider propositions so derogatory to the honour of an independent nation.

[Footnote 10:  The offensive words were “insidious interposition of a power which has, from the first settlement of the colonies, been actuated with enmity to us both; and notwithstanding the pretended date or present form of the French offers.”]