This document, on the evidence at hand, cannot be precisely dated. It was written to help the commissioners draft the one that follows, their memorandum of September 25 to the Bourbon courts, which they had been considering for almost a month. On August 29 Arthur Lee received a letter from John Berkenhout, a close friend from their student days together at Edinburgh, suggesting that the two meet at Calais to explore the possibility of peace negotiations. Lee communicated this overture to Vergennes, by way of Grand, and the Minister agreed that it should be pursued in order to discover British intentions; Lee and Grand then drafted a reply. On the 31st, presumably in the context of this nibble from Whitehall, Grand informed Vergennes that the commissioners were about to ask for more money.6 But, as explained in the headnote that follows, they took another three weeks and more to frame their request. During those weeks Grand was their adviser as well as their go-between with the court, and might have contributed this memorandum at any time. The opening sentences, with their threat of an Anglo-American rapprochement, were clearly written after Lee had had Berkenhout’s letter, and were too strong for the commissioners; in their own memorandum they toned down the threat to a delicate hint. But they did embody in that memorandum, though in quite different form, the other points that Grand raises.