But there was some reason to believe that the Jay appointment would not meet the same fate, for while the states could and did remain sovereign when it came to taxes, they could not plausibly claim to exercise the same control over foreign policy, which almost by definition needed to speak with one voice. (Abigail Adams, writing from London, somewhat caustically observed that British diplomats loved to ridicule her husband for allegedly representing a government that in fact did not exist.) Jay was being asked to convert the American cacophony on foreign policy into a chorus.
