The cause of sending for Adams, who still occupied, so far as was known at Paris, the position of sole negotiator for peace, was the offer of a mediation on the part of Russia and the German empire. But this offer led to nothing. Great Britain haughtily rejected it on the ground that she would not allow France to stand between her and her colonies. - Returning to Holland, Mr. Adams, though still unsupported by Vergennes, pushed with great energy his reception as ambassador by the states general, which at length, April 19, 1782, he succeeded in accomplishing. Following up this success with his customary perseverance, he succeeded before the end of the year in negotiating a Dutch loan of two millions of dollars, the first of a series which proved a chief financial resource of the continental congress i a its later days. He also succeeded in negotiating a treaty of amity and commerce. His success in these negotiations, considering the obstacles he had to encounter, and the want of support from Vergennes, he was accustomed to regard as the greatest triumph of his life. - Before this business was completed, Mr. Adams received urgent calls to come to Paris, where Jay and Franklin, two of the new commissioners, were already treating for peace, and where he arrived Oct. 26. Though Mr. Jay had been put into the diplomatic service by the procurement of the party in congress in the French interest, his diplomatic experience in Spain had led him to entertain doubts also as to the sincere good will of Vergennes. A confidential despatch from M. Marbois, French secretary of legation in America, intercepted by the British, and which Oswald, the British negotiator at Paris, communicated to Franklin and Jay, with a view to make bad feeling between them and the French minister, had, along with other circumstances, induced Franklin and Jay to disregard their instructions, and to proceed to treat with Oswald without communicating that fact to Vergennes, or taking his advice as to the terms of the treaty - a procedure in which Adams, after his arrival, fully concurred.

It was chiefly through his energy and persistence that the participation of America in the fisheries was secured by the treaty, not as a favor or privilege, but as a right - a matter of much greater importance then than now, the fisheries being at that time a more important branch than now of American maritime industry. - Immediately upon the signature of the preliminary articles of peace, Adams asked leave to resign all his commissions and to return home, to which congress responded by appointing him a commissioner jointly with Franklin and Jay to negotiate a treaty of commerce with Great Britain. His first visit to England was, however, in a private character, to recruit his health, after a violent fever with which he had been attacked, shortly after signing the treaty of peace.' He spent some time first at London, and afterward at Bath; but while still an invalid he was recalled, in the dead of winter, to Holland, which he reached only after a very stormy and uncomfortable passage, there to negotiate a new loan, as the means of meeting government bills drawn in America, which were in danger of protest from want of funds - a business in which he succeeded, though not without paying a pretty high premium.

Adams was included, along with Franklin and Jefferson, the latter sent out to take the place of Jay, in a new commission to form treaties with foreign powers; and his being joined by Mrs. Adams and their only daughter and youngest son, his other two sons being already with him, reconciled him to the idea of remaining abroad. With his family about him he fixed his residence at Auteuil, near Paris, where he had an interval of comparative leisure and enjoyment. The chief business of the new commission was the negotiation of a treaty with Prussia, advances toward which had first been been made to Adams while at the Hague, negotiating the Dutch loan. But before that treaty was ready for signature, Adams was appointed by congress minister to the court of St. James's, where he arrived in May, 1785. The English government, of which the feelings were well represented by those of the king, had neither the magnanimity nor the policy to treat the new American states with generosity, nor hardly with justice.

Adams was received with civility, but no commercial arrangements could be made, and his chief employment was that of complaining of the non-execution of the treaty . of peace, especially in relation to the non-surrender of the western posts, and in attempting to meet similar complaints urged not without strong grounds on the part of the British, more particularly as to the obstacles put in the way of the collection of British debts, which were made an excuse for the detention of the western posts. Made sensible in many ways of the aggravation of British feelings toward the new republic, whose condition immediately after the peace was somewhat embarrassing, and not so flattering as it might have been to the advocates and promoters of the revolution, the situation of Adams was rather mortifying ' than agreeable. Meanwhile he was obliged to i pay a new visit to Holland to negotiate a new loan as a means of paying the interest on the Dutch debt. He was also engaged in a corre- spondence with his fellow commissioner, Mr. Jefferson, then at Paris, on the subject of a treaty with the Barbary powers and the return of the Americans held captive by them.

But his most engrossing occupation at this time was the preparation of his "Defence of the American Constitutions," of which the object i was the justification of balanced governments; and a division of powers, especially the legislative, against the idea of a single assembly and a pure democracy, which had begun to find many ardent advocates, especially on the continent. The greater part, however, of this book - the most voluminous of his publications - consists of summaries of the histories of the Italian republics, by no means essential to the argument, and rather an excrescence. Though it afterward subjected the author to charges of monarchical and anti-republican tendencies, this book was not without its influence on the adoption of the federal constitution, during the discussion upon which the first volume of it appeared. - Great Britain not having reciprocated the compliment by appointing a minister to the United States, and there being no prospect of his being able to accomplish any of the objects of his mission, Adams had solicited a recall, which was sent out to him in February, 1788, accompanied by a resolution of congress conveying the thanks of that body for "the patriotism, perseverance, integrity, and diligence " which he had displayed in his ten years' service abroad.