On his return from an unsuccessful attempt to secure a commercial treaty with Great Britain in concert with John Adams, his counterpart in London, Jefferson writes to Williams Stephens Smith, the secretary of the American Legation to the Court of St. James. He opens by updating Smith on his swift, three-hour crossing from Dover to Calais thanks to favorable winds, and recommends a new scenic route for the overland journey to Paris: "Whenever you come again to Paris come by the way of St. Omer and Arras. By this means you do not travel one foot of the road you have always passed, and you see the whole way one of the most lovely countries imaginable, except on the D’Oise where there are a few miles of barrens, being in the skirt of the forest of Chantilly."

Turning to more official business, Jefferson advises that both Cardinal de Rohan ("de Rouen"), the former French ambassador to the court of Vienna, and the noted occultist (and charlatan), Alessandro Cagliostro, remained "in the Bastille as I left them, and there they were likely to remain." Both men had been implicated in the notorious scandal known as the "Affair of the Diamond Necklace," involving an accusation that Marie Antioinette had participated in a scheme to defraud the Crown's jewelers that did much to undermine the authority of the French monarchy on the eve of the French Revolution. Jefferson moves on to news from Prussia, and then complains of his inability to learn more about on the British diplomat William Eden's progress in the ongoing Anglo-French commercial treaty negotiations. This brought to mind Eden's role in the failed 1778 Carlisle commission which conveyed Lord North's offers of reconciliation to America: ("When you see the parliament laying other taxes to supply the deficiencies of revenue which a treaty with France would occasion, then believe that Mr. Eden is a more succesful negociator in France than he was in America.") Jefferson closes expressing his puzzlement over "your scrap about a something which has turned up of which you say you spoke to me in November &c. &c."
Jefferson had travelled to London on the urgent request of John Adams, who happened upon an opportunity to work out a settlement with the Barbary states as one of the North African state's envoys was then in London while securing a commercial treaty with Portugal. Jefferson also assisted Adams in last-ditch efforts on securing a commercial treaty with Great Britain, but the pair met with resistance at every turn. On the eve of his return journey to Paris, Jefferson admitted in a letter to James Madison, "With this nation [Great Britain] nothing is done; and it is now decided that they intend to do nothing with us. The king is against a change of measures; his ministers are against it, some from principle, others from attachment to their places, and the merchants and people are against it. They sufficiently value our commerce; but they are quite persuaded they shall enjoy it on their own terms. This political speculation fosters the warmest feeling of the king’s heart, that is, his hatred to us…. The treaty of peace being yet unexecuted it remains that each party conduct themselves as the combined considerations of justice and of caution require."¹

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¹The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Main Series, 9:433-435.