Source: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-16-02-0242-0009
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 14:23:50+00:00

Document:
We had the honour of receiving your Letter of Janry: 24. covering a translation into French of the Draught of a treaty proposed between His Majesty the King of Prussia & the United States of America, together with answers to the several articles. We have considered them with attention, & with all those dispositions to accomodate them to the wishes of His Majesty which a respect for his character, & a desire of connecting the two nations in amity & commerce would naturally produce. We will now take the liberty of troubling you with the result of our deliberations article by article.
Art. 4. Three effects of this article are objected to.
1. the permission to export & import all the merchandize of either country without exception.
2. the permission to all persons to be buyers & sellers.
3. the not extending in express terms the right of transportation beyond the vessels of the two contracting parties.
Art. 12. Agreed to omit the clause “on the other hand enemy vessels shall make enemy goods” &c to the end of the article & to leave that question undecided.
Art. 19. A clause in the treaty with France, the first the United States ever entered into, renders necessary the exception subjoined to this Article.4 It has not been repeated, nor is proposed to be repeated in any subsequent treaty. If any antecedent treaties would require a like exception on the part of his Prussian Majesty, we shall chearfully concur in its insertion, the case being either particularly specifyed or generally described. The practice of carrying prizes into neutral ports & there selling them, is admitted by the usage of nations, & can give offence to none where they have not guarded against it by particular contract. Were the clause now under cosideration to be so changed as to exclude the prizes made on the enemies of either from being sold in the ports of the other, and that kind of stipulation to take place generally, it would operate very injuriously against the United States in cases wherein it is not presumed his Majesty would wish it. For suppose them to be hereafter in war with any power in Europe, their enemy, tho’ excluded from the ports of every other State, will yet have their own ports at hand, into which they may carry & sell the prizes they shall make on the United States, but the United States under a like general exclusion, having no ports of their own in Europe their prizes in those seas must be hazarded across the ocean to seek a market at home: an incumbrance which would cripple all their efforts on that element, & give to their enemies great advantage over them.
1. In responding to the Prussian suggestions for revisions that Thulemeier enclosed with his letter of 24 Jan. (No. VI, above), the commissioners accepted virtually all of the Prussian proposals with little if any change. This likely reflected at least to some degree the confidential advice that Thulemeier offered JA in his letter of 24 Jan. and which JA, replying on 13 Feb., indicated he had relayed to his colleagues (Nos. V and VII, above). The annotation has been limited to those instances in which the language offered by the commissioners differs from that in the treaty of 10 Sept., or where the commissioners commented at length on the Prussian proposals. It should also be noted that the commissioners may have enclosed with this letter a list of proposed changes to Thulemeier’s French translation of the treaty, and while the Prussian diplomat does not mention receiving it, several of the proposed changes appear in the final treaty (Jefferson, Papers description begins The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, Princeton, 1950–. description ends , 8:9–10).
2. Here and in the second line below, the word “persons” was replaced in the final treaty with the phrase “Subjects or Citizens.” In addition, the final sentence, referring to the laws of Königsberg, does not appear in the 10 Sept. treaty (Miller, Treaties description begins Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, ed. Hunter Miller, Washington, D.C., 1931–1948; 8 vols. description ends , 2:165–166). For the decision to add that phrase and to remove the reference to Königsberg, see Thulemeier’s 3 May 1785 letter to the commissioners (Jefferson, Papers description begins The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, Princeton, 1950–. description ends , 8:135). There the Prussian diplomat indicated that the Königsberg law had been mentioned only as an example of an internal trade regulation with reference to Articles 2 and 3 of the draft treaty.
3. The text proposed by the commissioners is their translation of a passage in Art. 8 of the draft treaty presented by Thulemeier to JA in April 1784. At least in part owing to their lack of any power to negotiate, neither JA nor his colleagues, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay, apparently raised any objection to Art. 8’s language concerning inheritance or the right of aliens to hold property in their proposals for changes in the draft (Proposed Prussian-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce, [9 April – post 5 May], Nos. I and II, above). It should be noted that Art. 8 of the draft is virtually identical to Art. 6 of the 1783 Swedish-American treaty, which does not mention any disqualification owing to “alienage” (Miller, Treaties description begins Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, ed. Hunter Miller, Washington, D.C., 1931–1948; 8 vols. description ends , 2:127–128).
4. Art. 19 (as originally numbered) of the 1778 Franco-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce (same, p. 16–17).
5. This letter effectively ended negotiations for the Prussian-American treaty. The American response and the revisions suggested by the commissioners were apparently accepted by the Prussian foreign ministry. In Thulemeier’s reply of 3 May 1785, which he enclosed in his letter to JA of the same date, he advised the commissioners that it remained for them only to prepare an English language version of the treaty (Jefferson, Papers description begins The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, Princeton, 1950–. description ends , 8:134–135; Adams Papers, JA, Works description begins The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, ed. Charles Francis Adams, Boston, 1850–1856; 10 vols. description ends , 8:238–239).

References: Art. 4

Art. 12

Art. 19
 Art. 8
 Art. 8
 Art. 8
 Art. 6
 Art. 19