I am well informed that our credit is now the first at that exchange (Amsterdam), (England not borrowing at present). Our five per cent. bonds have risen to ninety-seven and ninety-nine. They have been heretofore at ninety-three. There are, at this time, several companies and individuals here, in England and Holland, negotiating to sell large parcels of our _liquidated debt_. A bargain was concluded by one of these the other day, for six hundred thousand dollars. In the present state of our credit, every dollar of this debt will probably be transferred to Europe within a short time.[153]
Even an incomplete survey of Jefferson's activities in Paris would convince any one that at all times the preoccupation uppermost in his mind was to defend and further the interests of the United States. He shared practically without any reservation the commonly accepted theory of his time that self-interest is the most powerful motive of human actions, and that enlightened self-interest is the true foundation of morality. Never a sentimentalist, he felt it his duty to put all the questions he had to discuss on a purely practical basis, neglecting every other consideration. He had been welcomed enthusiastically and would have been lionized if he had permitted it. But in the midst of the adulation showered upon him by Madame d'Houdetot, Madame de Tessé and the friends of liberty, he endeavored to keep a cool head; and at the end of his first year in France, he summed up as follows his views of the situation:
The body of the people of this country love us cordially. But ministers and merchants love nobody. The merchants here, are endeavoring to exclude us from their islands, the ministers will be governed in it by their political motives, and will do it or not do it, as these shall appear to dictate, without love or hatred to anybody. It were to be wished that they were able to combine better, the various circumstances which prove, beyond a doubt, that all the advantages of their colonies result in the end, to the mother country.[154]
Representing a country hardly organized, without any diplomatic traditions, and inexperienced in dealing with foreign affairs, Jefferson had no easy task. One of his first duties was to convince the diplomats he was dealing with that America was a country to be trusted, in which existed a certain permanency and some sort of responsible organization with which it was possible to deal. This preoccupation influenced to such an extent his views on the American Constitution that they can be considered to a large extent a result of his experiences in Europe.