* * See John Jay, "On the Peace Negotiations of 1782-1788 as Illustrated by the Secret Correspondence of France and England," New York, 1888.
So intent was Vergennes on these aims that he sent a secret emissary to England to further them there.

This act of his perhaps gave the first inkling to the English statesmen * that American and French desires were not identical and hastened England's recognition of American independence and her agreement to American demands in regard to the western territory.

When, to his amazement, Vergennes learned that England had acceded to all America's demands, he said that England had "bought the peace" rather than made it.

The policy of Vergennes in regard to America was not unjustly pronounced by a later French statesman "A VILE SPECULATION." * "Your Lordship was well founded in your suspicion that the granting of independence to America as a previous measure is a point which the French have by no means at heart and perhaps are entirely averse from." Letter from Fitzherbert to Grantham, September 3, 1782.
Through England's unexpected action, then, the Bourbon cousins had forever lost their opportunity to dominate the young but spent and war-weakened Republic, or to use America as a catspaw to snatch English commerce for France.

It was plain, too, that any frank move of the sort would range the English alongside of their American kinsmen.