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City. Samuel Buell Gardiner was a man who enjoyed life rationally, spending most of his time in taking care of his property and was never anxious for public service, although he was twice a member of the New York State Legislature and was one of the Board of Supervisors. He was of slight, graceful figure, over six feet in height, with high forehead, handsome features, a pleasing smile, and a white, full beard-an

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agreeable, well-bred, unostentatious gentleman of the old school, holding a high place in the esteem and confidence of the community. At his death, in 1882, the island was left by will to his eldest son, David Johnson Gardiner; but the eleventh proprietor being a bachelor and not caring to assume the care and responsibilities of the position, has since transferred the property, with all its rights and privileges, to his brother,

John Lyon Gardiner, who married Coralie Livingston Jones, the greatgranddaughter of the celebrated New York City mayor, James Duane (whose portrait was published in this Magazine in May, 1883), and who is now the twelfth proprietor of the island. He has two young daughters, and an infant son appropriately named Lion Gardiner, who is expected to inherit the ancient estate.

In spanning the two hundred and fifty years since the founder of the manor of Gardiner's Island, moved by the conflict of European thought and the higher forces of manhood and culture, stepped from an old world into a new, a perfect chain may be wrought from the grains of gold in the miscellaneous mass of record and story-like a garment woven without seam—a combination of unity and grace. Neither remoteness of time nor colonial obscurity should cast a haze over our perceptions. A ripening mind, from an age of exhilarating intellectual activity, familiar with the policy of courts and the conclusions of philosophers, imparted lessons to his generation which went toward the preparation of succeeding genera

tions

"

For the day of greater power,

When the bell of Revolution might safely toll the hour."

The sword may carve the pathway to a throne, and imperial edicts may reconstruct kingdoms, but neither can engrave the enduring character of a people. We must look behind the scenery of battles for the subtle moral agencies which have not only advanced us to our present plane of intellectual freedom, but have given a tinge and a flavor to the whole anatomy of our sovereign organization. We are becoming better acquainted, year by year, with the men who shaped our social and political systems; but there is significance in the remark that "no biography will go into a dife without a remainder." There is always more to learn.

Martha I Lamb

COUNT DE VERGENNES

THE FRENCH STATESMAN'S INFLUENCE ON AMERICA

Charles Gravier, Count de Vergennes, born at Dijon, the 28th Dec., 1717, was the son of a member of parliament of that city. He was trained for a diplomatic career by M. de Chavigny, who was allied to his family, and had been employed as envoy of France in Switzerland, Spain, England, and Vienna. He accompanied Chavigny to Lisbon, and in 1750 he was named minister of the king to the Elector of Treves. Three years later he was advanced to Constantinople, where amid the intrigues of England, Prussia, Austria, Russia and Poland, he baffled the policy of England and Russia, and kept the Porte in a state of neutrality during the seven years' war. After two years of retirement on his estate in Burgundy, he was made ambassador to Sweden on the fall of Choiseul in 1771. Here he assisted Gustavus III to become an absolute monarch.

On the accession to the throne of Louis XVI, May, 1774, the young king, then in his twentieth year, on the recommendation of Maurepas appointed Vergennes, who was in his 55th year, Minister of Foreign Affairs. Among his associates in the cabinet were Sartine, Malesherbes, St. Germain, Turgot, and his successors in the department of finance, Neckar and Calonne. An elaborate sketch of Vergennes may be found in the Biographie Universelle Ancienne et Moderne (vol. 48 of the first edition). Another, less complete is given in a " Mémoire historique et politique sur la Louisiane," attributed to Vergennes, and published at Paris in 1802. He is described as modest in his desires and habits, of indefatigable zeal and extraordinary industry, never postponing till the morrow what could be done to-day, and working from daylight till ten at night, imitating in this the Cardinal de Bernis, who at an advanced age gave an audience at six in the morning. "His manners were grave and at times almost pedantic, and he enveloped himself in diplomatic forms even with the ambassadors of the family," the House of Bourbon. The Count d'Aranda, the able ambassador of Spain at Paris said, "I chat with M. de Maurepas, I negotiate with the Count de Vergennes," indicating the levity of the first and the gravity of the second. "He was never known," said M. Mayer, " for his luxury or his tastes, but for his talents and his virtues. His fortune was the result of forty years of work and economy, and he died in the arms of his wife and his two sons, 13 Feb. 1787." Among the great European treaties with

which his name is associated are the Pacification of Teschen, the Treaty of Fontainebleau with Joseph II., and commercial treaties with Russia and England.

The view given in the Biographie Universelle of the policy of Vergennes in assisting the American colonies is to this effect: "The cabinet of Versailles saw only an occasion to humiliate a rival empire, and a young noblesse embued with the principles of the modern philosophy was the first to respond to the cries of liberty from the other side of the Atlantic, and to solicit as a favor permission to join the ranks of the insurgents. This same opinion led to the Alliance with the United States, of February 6, 1778. Without doubt the definitive Treaty of 1783, establishing the independence of America effaced the stain of that of 1763. Without doubt the French diplomacy in establishing the Maritime League of the North under the name of armed neutrality, and in arming Spain and Holland against England, placed England in a difficult position. But the deficit caused by that war and the principles of liberty and equality brought over from America, and little by little inoculating the French people, created the abyss in which the monarchy and the monarch were soon to be engulfed."

The early assistance given by Vergennes to the American colonists was in direct violation of the faith pledged to England by the treaty of 1763, and on this point Vergennes is condemned by French writers, who in other respects are disposed to eulogize him. Mr. Bancroft remarks that Vergennes never dissembled to himself on this subject, nor professed any justification except that England was an inveterate enemy, whose enfeeblement was required for the future tranquillity of France. Mr. Charles Francis Adams in discussing the policy of Vergennes refers to the fact that on the 2d May, 1776, Vergennes asked the king for a loan of a million of livres for the Americans, to which his majesty assented. This was two months. before the Declaration of Independence, and yet five years later, in 1782, when Mr. Thomas Grenville had come to Paris to negotiate a peace, the Count de Vergennes gave to Grenville in Franklin's presence, the assurance that he had never given the least encouragement to America until long after the breach was made and independence declared; and then he added, "there sits Mr. Franklin, who knows the facts and can contradict me if I don't speak the truth." Mr. Adams in a note severely condemns the audacity of the falsehood.

Vergennes, when he heard the conditions of the Treaty of France with England in 1763, made a notable prediction, which he afterward recalled to the British Ministry, that the cession of Canada would lead to the inde

pendence of the American colonies. In 1775, when the news of the battle of Bunker Hill reached Europe, he said, "two more such victories and England will have no army left in America."

He overcame the objections of the young King, of Maurepas, of Malesherbes and of Turgot to a war with England, and the "Considerations" which he submitted to the King were marked by an acute analysis of what he called "this important problem," looking to the interests of France and the necessity of her acting in self-defense.

In December, 1776, Vergennes received the American Commissioners, when he assured them of protection and received their project of a treaty with France.

December, 1777, came the news of Burgoyne's surrender, and on the 6th of February, 1778, the treaties of alliance and of amity and commerce, the object of which, as Vergennes showed in a memoir in March, 1784, had been to curb the ambition and pride of England, and to prevent the American revolution from turning to the disadvantage of France. The idea of an alliance with America was most unpalatable to Spain, which was extremely hostile to American independence, and the success of Vergennes in inducing Spain to join in the war was regarded as a triumph of diplomacy. Mr. Bancroft has shown in his last volume that the price demanded by Spain and agreed to by France as the quid pro quo for her entering into the war, was the sacrifice to Spain of the interests of the republic in two particulars. First, the division of the Newfoundland fisheries between France and Spain to the exclusion of the United States; secondly, Spain was to be left free to exact from the United States "a renunciation of every part of the basin of the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, of the navigation of the Mississippi, and all the land between that river and the Alleghanies."*

Mr. Bancroft's text and notes on this point offer a perfect explanation. of the policy of Vergennes in reference to the American claims, of which Mr. Charles Francis Adams had remarked that nothing is more remarkable throughout this struggle than the patient deference manifested by the Count to all the caprices, the narrow ideas, and the vacillations of the Spanish court." John Adams was told that it was often said among the French people that M. de Vergennes was too complaisant to the Spanish Court, and that he wished to be made a grandee of Spain to cover his want of birth. †

A collection of letters and parts of letters bearing on the American war gathered by Mr. Bancroft from European archives was given by him to

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