Luigi Pio to the American Commissioners: Résumé, 26 September 1784
Luigi Pio9 to the American Commissioners1
LS and copy: National Archives
⟨Paris, September 26, 1784, in French: I received the letter you had the honor to write me on the 22nd of this month,2 concerning a treaty of amity and commerce that the United States of America wishes to make with the king, my master,3 for the good of our respective subjects. I will forward it to His Sicilian Majesty and as soon as I receive a response, I will communicate it to you.4⟩
9. Pio’s first term as chargé d’affaires in Paris of the court of the Two Sicilies had ended in August, 1783: XXXVIII, 38n. He resumed the post from June to October, 1784, and again from January, 1785, to October, 1786: Repertorium der diplomatischen Vertreter, III, 423.
1. Published in Jefferson Papers, VII, 424.
2. The commissioners’ circular letter of Sept. 22 to foreign ambassadors is nearly the same as that to Sousa, Sept. 9, with the exceptions noted in the headnote there.
3. Ferdinand III of Sicily, who was also Ferdinand IV of Naples.
4. Similar answers were written on Sept. 26 by Riviere and Scarnafiggi (who signed as “De Scarnafis,” the name he used in France); on Sept. 27 by Dolfin and Sousa; and on Oct. 10 by Favi. They are published in Jefferson Papers, VII, 424, 425, 427, 428, and 437–8.
Rivière had written to WTF several months earlier, enclosing a letter to be forwarded to Philadelphia on behalf of his court: Rivière to WTF, June 21, 1784, APS. The dispatch may have been for Thieriot, the Saxon agent (XL, 350–1, 555), whose reports on American economic conditions were negative. The Saxon Commerce Commission weighed the risks and benefits of the American treaty proposal. After recommending to the cabinet that certain items be negotiated, the matter seems to have been dropped: William E. Lingelbach, “Saxon-American Relations, 1778–1828,” American Hist. Rev., XVII (1911–12), 523–4.