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for Tuscany, and William Lee for Vienna and Berlin.*

The functions of the Secret Committee of Correspondence, after its first action, do not appear to have been important. Arthur Lee and Thomas Morris, who acted as the commercial agents of the Colonies while the committee was still in existence, did not correspond with it, but were under the jurisdiction of the Secret Committee of Congress, a separate committee from the Secret Committee of Correspondence. "As all affairs relative to the conduct of commerce and remittance," wrote the latter to the Commissioners at Paris, "pass through another department, we beg leave to refer you to the Secret Committee, and Mr. Thomas Morris, their agent in France, for every information on these subjects."+

On April 17, 1777, the title of the Committee was changed, and it became the "Committee of

*Secret Journals of Congress, II, 45. They did not perform diplomatic functions at these courts, however.

+ Letters of William Lee, I, 195.

Foreign Affairs."

The first members were

Benjamin Harrison, Robert Morris, Thomas Hayward, jr., and James Lovell. Hayward did not act after August, and in October John Witherspoon went on the Committee, and later Richard Henry Lee. The first Secretary of the Committee was Thomas Paine, appointed at a salary of $70 per month.* He severed his connection with it in January, 1779.† The chief function of the Committee was to furnish the agents of the Government abroad with full accounts of the course of events in America. Beyond that it acted simply as an agent to execute the orders of Congress, and was intrusted with few of the duties that subsequently pertained to it. The members of the Committee were being constantly changed, and the communications reflected the opinions of those who happened to be serving at the time they were

sent.

*Department of State MS. archives.

† Paine was dismissed by Congress for making an official matter public. An explanation and a defense of his conduct may be found in Conway's Life of Paine, I, 90 et seq.

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Communications relative to foreign affairs were usually referred by Congress to special committees; and May 1,1777, less than a month after the Foreign Affairs Committee had been instituted, John Wilson, John Adams, and Richard Henry Lee were selected a committee to "inquire into the laws and customs of nations respecting neutrality, and to report their opinion, whether the conduct of the King of Portugal, in forbidding the vessels of the United States to enter his ports, and ordering those already there to depart at a short day is not a breach of the laws of neutrality."* Inquiries of this character, it might reasonably be expected, would fall within the functions of the Foreign Affairs Committee, but rarely did so.

The communications of the Committee were usually signed by several of the members; but Lovell signed them-often "for the Committee"-continuously up to the time the Committee was superseded by the Department of

*Secret Journals of Congress, II, 44.

Foreign Affairs. It is fair to presume, therefore, that he was the most active member of the Committee, and that its business was carried on chiefly by him.*

The first public recognition of the independence of the United States by a foreign power was recorded in the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and of Alliance Eventual and Defensive between the United States and France, signed at Paris, February 6, 1778, by Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee, on the part of the United States, and by C. A. Gérard, on the part of France; and following this treaty, in July, 1778, came Gérard, the first representative of a foreign state to the United States. He was styled Minister Plenipotentiary, † and bore a commission also as Consul-General. ‡

* James Lovell was born in Boston, October 31, 1737, graduated at Harvard in 1756, and was a school-teacher. He was imprisoned by the British after Bunker Hill battle, but exchanged, and entered Congress December, 1776, serving till 1782. He espoused the cause of General Gates against Washington (Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography). He was a member of the Committee of 1779 to furnish a design for a seal of the United States, but the design was not adopted (The Seal of the United States, Department of State, 1892).

†Secret Journals of Congress, II, 92.

Department of State MS. archives.

Soon after his arrival, he transmitted to the President of Congress a copy of the speech he intended to deliver at his first audience, and it was referred, with the question of the ceremonies to be observed in receiving him, to R. H. Lee, Robert Morris, and Witherspoon.* They prefaced their report with the following "observations:"

That Ministers being of three different classes, viz. 1. ambassadors, 2. Ministers Plenipotentiary and Envoys and 3. Residents, it will be necessary to establish a ceremonial for each according to their respective Dignity. That your Committee report for an Ambassador the following Ceremonial, viz

When he shall arrive within any of the United States he shall receive from any Battery, Fort or Castle the same salute or other Honors which are paid to the Flag of the Prince or State which he shall represent† and when he shall arrive at the Place which the Congress shall be he shall wait upon the President and deliver his credentials or copies thereof. Three members of Congress shall then be deputed to wait upon him.*

*Department of State MS. archives.

"Also at all Places where there are guards Centries and the like he shall receive the same military Honors and Respect which are paid to a General officer in the service of the United States of the highest Rank." (Note in original MS.)

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