‘A sincere friendship between A. and B.'

Lacking allies among world-class military powers, Congress found itself required to credential its envoys and prepare them to negotiate treaties with foreign powers. Drafting the Model Treaty in June 1776 gave John Adams the opportunity to render a detailed account of the intermediate steps which would be required when the Continental Congress undertook these negotia­tions.

natural course and order of things was this; for every colony to institute a government; for all the colonies to confederate, and define the limits of the continental Constitution; then to declare the colonies a sovereign state or a number of confederation sovereign states; and last of all to form treaties with foreign powers.³²

Adams’s Model Treaty gave Congress the opportunity to advance the work of envoys that body sent overseas on diplomatic missions.

There shall be a firm, inviolable, and universal Peace, and a true and sincere Friendship between A. and B. and the Subjects of A. and of B. and between the Countries, Islands, Cities, and Towns situate under the Jurisdiction of A. and of B. and the People and Inhabitants thereof of every degree; with out Exception of Persons or Places; and the Terms herein after mentioned shall be perpetual between A. and B.³³

This was no small achievement. Congress would not enjoy any convenient means of communicating with its envoys at any future conference, given that negotiations with potential allies would be conducted in Europe. The solution was to get as much treaty language onto paper as possible, in advance of these negotiations. A mass of formulaic offerings - on first reading - might distract the new nation’s envoys. Diplomats could gain familiar­ity with boilerplate via their study of Adams’s Model Treaty. Envoys could then concentrate their attention on deal points which were the meat-and- potatoes of bargaining.

The House of Commons brought a similar project to fruition via its model bill for internal improvements in 1801. A model petition accompanied this Act of Parliament which entered the statute books as 41 Geo. 3 c. 109. The conceit underlying this law-project ran parallel to that embodied in Adams’s Model Treaty. A modest and prior expression of legislative thinking on a subject - international agreements or canal projects - enabled actors to encounter the future present with enhanced confidence. Familiarity with the stage scenery enabled the actor to concentrate on the choreography which the future would require of him.

The vast majority of words, phrases and sentences in such legislative behemoths as 6 Geo. 3 c. 96 served such a stage-setting purpose. Idea for idea, these paragraphs are, for the non-lawyer, boilerplate, barely read­able and rarely parsed. What may be disregarded as scenery or vilified as boilerplate framed the logical conditions of possible experience. The stilted phrase, the most mind-numbing redundancy, and the longest concatenation of half-sentences was then and still is the key to understanding the passion for technical accomplishment among stakeholders and members as the end of the eighteenth century drew near.

It was Benjamin Franklin who put into Adams’s hands a printed volume of treaties, and on so doing Franklin explained to Adams that he marked certain articles of treaties for Adams’s attention. ‘Some of these were judi­ciously selected, and I took them with others which I found necessary into the draught’.³⁴ Adams’s reading made him familiar with the eighteenth century’s considerable inventory of treaties and - equally important - the various follow-on agreements, transmittals, ratifications and diplomatic correspondence and notations. One of these agreements must have been the 1763 treaty ending Great Britain’s Seven Years’ War with France. Adams’s study of ancillary texts would have informed him of the level of abstrac­tion at which diplomats must labour when finalizing the details of a treaty of alliance.

Franklin guided Adams to the most useful historical documents from which to draw his template. This effort served Adams as a learning aid.³⁶ By crafting the Model Treaty in detail, Adams obliged himself to consider prob­lems American diplomats might face in negotiating international treaties in the near future. Adams’s Model Treaty and the Trent-to-Mersey canal proj­ect bear close comparison. For example, take these two non-discrimination provisions, first American and second British.

It is the true Intent and Meaning of this Treaty, that no higher or other Duties shall be imposed on the Exportation of any Thing of the Growth, Production, or Manufacture of the Islands in the West Indies now belonging or which may hereafter belong to the most Christian King, to the said United States, or any of them, than the lowest that are or shall be imposed on the Exportation thereof to France or to any other Part of the World.³⁷

The House of Commons wrote equivalent provisions into its Trent-to- Mersey canal bill.

And be it further Enacted, by the Authority aforesaid, That the said Company of Proprietors, their Successors and Assigns, shall, at their first Meeting, to be held by Direction of this Act, fix the Rates, Tolls or Duties, to be taken by them by Virtue of this Act; which said Rates, Tolls or Duties, shall be equal throughout the whole Length of the said Canal.³⁸

Commons and Congress employed similar language when it articulated the concept of non-discrimination. Commons’ prescription via 6 Geo. 3 c. 96 that ‘Duties... shall be equal’ is the functional equivalent of Adams’s phraseology that ‘no higher... Duties shall be imposed... than the low­est imposed on... Exportation... to France’. Endowing child-agents offered legislative assemblies similar opportunities to craft mission specific instructions.