highest pitch, and lessen in the same degree that of the enemy. We are confident it is practicable, and with very little danger." Many months passed before the Foreign Committee read these lines, and many more before Franklin had an answer to them. He did not forget the scheme, however. There was one Paul Jones coming to him from over the sea, who would, perhaps, think it feasible.

Readers perceive that Franklin was for waging war on warlike principles. His blood was up. He thirsted for vengeance-vengeance for his country's cruel wrongs. Read his heart in the following eloquent letter, addressed, October 14th, 1777, to his English friend, David Hartley, M. P. The letter so belongs to thispart of his history, that it would be essentially incomplete without it:

"I have been apprehensive that, if it were known that a correspondence subsisted between us, it might be attended with inconvenience to you. I have therefore been backward in writing, not caring to trust the post, and not well knowing whom else to trust with my letters. But being now assured of a safe conveyance, I venture to write to you, especially as I think the subject such a one as you may receive a letter upon without censure.

"Happy should I have been if the honest warnings I gave, of the fatal separation of interests, as well as of affections, that must attend the measures commenced while I was in England, had been attended to, and the horrid mischief of this abominable war been thereby prevented. I should still be happy in any successful endeavors for restoring peace, consistent with the liberties, the safety, and the honor of America. As to our submitting to the government of Great Britain, it is vain to think of it. She has given us, by her numberless barbarities (by her malice in bribing slaves to murder their masters, and savages to massacre the families of farmers, with her baseness in rewarding the unfaithfulness of servants, and debauching the virtue of honest seamen, intrusted with our property), in the prosecution of the war, and in the treatment of the prisoners, so deep an impression of her depravity, that we never again can trust her in the management of our affairs and interests. It is now impossible to persuade our people, as I long endeavored, that the war was merely ministerial, and that the nation bore still a good will to us. The infinite number of addresses printed in your gazettes, all approving the conduct of your gov

ernment towards us, and encouraging our destruction by every possible means, the great majority in Parliament constantly manifesting the same sentiments, and the popular public rejoicings on occasion of any news of the slaughter of an innocent and virtuous people, fighting only in defense of their just rights; these, together with the recommendations of the same measures by even your celebrated moralists and divines, in their writings and sermons, that are still approved and applauded in your great national assemblies, all join in convincing us that you are no longer the magnanimous, enlightened nation we once esteemed you, and that you are unfit and unworthy to govern us, as not being able to govern your own passions.

"But, as I have said, should be nevertheless happy in seeing peace restored. For though, if my friends and the friends of liberty and virtue, who still remain in England, could be drawn out of it, a continuance of this war to the ruin of the rest would give me less concern, I cannot, as that removal is impossible, but wish for peace for their sakes, as well as for the sake of humanity, and preventing further carnage.

"This wish of mine, ineffective as it may be, induces me to mention to you, that, between nations long exasperated against each other in war, some act of generosity and kindness towards prisoners on one side has softened resentment, and abated animosity on the other, so as to bring on an accommodation./ You in England, if you wish for peace, have at present the opportunity of trying this means, with regard to the prisoners now in your jails. They complain of very severe treatment. They are far from their friends and families, and winter is coming on, in which they must suffer extremely, if continued in their present situation; fed scantily on bad provisions, without warm lodgings, clothes, or fire, and not suffered to invite or receive visits from their friends, or even from the humane and charitable of their enemies.

"I can assure you, from my own certain knowledge, that your people, prisoners in America, have been treated with great kindness; they have been served with the same rations of wholesome provisions with our own troops, comfortable lodgings have been provided for them, and they have been allowed large bounds of villages in the healthy air, to walk and amuse themselves with on their parole. Where you have thought fit to employ contractors

to supply your people, these contractors have been protected and aided in their operations. Some considerable act of kindness would take off the reproach of inhumanity in that respect from the nation, and leave it where it ought with more certainty to lay, on the conductors of your war in America. This I hint to you, out of some remaining good will to a nation I once loved sincerely. But, as things are, and in my present temper of mind, not being over fond of receiving obligations, I shall content myself with proposing that your government would allow us to send or employ a commissary to take some care of those unfortunate people. Perhaps on your representation this might speedily be obtained in England, though it was refused most inhumanly at New York.

"If you could have leisure to visit the jails in which they are confined, and should be desirous of knowing the truth relative to the treatment they receive, I wish you would take the trouble of distributing among the most necessitous according to their wants, five or six hundred pounds, for which your drafts on me here shall be punctually honored. You could then be able to speak with some certainty to the point in Parliament, and this might be attended with good effects.

"If you cannot obtain for us permission to send a commissary, possibly you may find a trusty, humane, discreet person at Plymouth, and another at Portsmouth, who would undertake to communicate what relief we may be able to afford those unfortunate men, martyrs to the cause of liberty. Your king will not reward you for taking this trouble, but God will. I shall not mention the gratitude of America; you will have what is better, the applause of your own good conscience. Our captains have set at liberty above two hundred of your people, made prisoners by our armed vessels and brought into France, besides a great number dismissed at sea on your coasts, to whom vessels were given to carry them in. But you have not returned us a man in exchange. If we had sold your people to the Moors at Sallee, as you have many of ours to the African and East India Companies, could you have complained?

"In revising what I have written, I found too much warmth in it, and was about to strike out some parts. Yet I let them go, as they will afford you this one reflection: 'If a man naturally cool, and rendered still cooler by old age, is so warmed by our treatment

of his country, how much must those people in general be exasperated against us? And why are we making inveterate enemies by our barbarity, not only of the present inhabitants of a great country, but of their infinitely more numerous posterity; who will in future ages detest the name of Englishman, as much as the children in Holland now do those of Alva and Spaniard.' This will certainly happen, unless your conduct is speedily changed, and the national resentment falls, where it ought to fall heavily, on your ministry, or perhaps rather on the king, whose will they only execute."

A noble, noble letter; the gush of a compassionate, brave heart, maddened by the spectacle of meanness and iniquity.

The envoys never ceased their exertions in behalf of their countrymen who languished in British prisons, always finding in Mr. Hartley a faithful and cordial co-operator. Mr. Hartley, it is extremely probable, showed Dr. Franklin's letter to Lord North, and Lord North was not a man who could have read it unmoved. the moment, however, it produced no perceptible effects.

For

One unimportant incident of this year casts a gleam of light upon Franklin's way of life, and, therefore, deserves brief mention. The emperor, Joseph II., of Austria, brother of the Queen of France, was in Paris this summer, traveling under the title of Count Falkenstein: emperor only in name, until the death of his mother, King Maria Theresa. He sought an interview with Dr. Franklin, but with unusual precautions to make it appear accidental. Franklin received, one day in May, an invitation to breakfast with the envoy of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in terms like these: "The Abbé Nicoli begs M. Franklin to do him the honor of breakfasting with him on Wednesday, the 28th instant, at nine o'clock. The Abbé promises him a good cup of chocolate. He assures Dr. Franklin of his respect." Upon this invitation, which was found among Franklin's papers, was written the following explanation: "The intention of the above was to give the emperor an opportunity of an interview with me, that should appear accidental. Monsieur Turgot and the Abbé were to be present, and by their knowledge of what passed, to prevent or contradict false reports. The emperor did not appear, and the Abbé Nicoli since tells me, that the number of other persons who visited him (the Abbé) that morning, of which the emperor was not informed, prevented his com

ing; that, at 12, understanding they were gone, he came, but I was gone also."* It is said that they afterwards met; which is not improbable, for the two men had much in common. Joseph II., indeed, endeavored to be a kind of crowned Franklin, when, at length, he was really emperor.

So passed the spring and the summer of the year 1777. It cannot be said, I think, that the prospects of America, as viewed by European observers, had materially brightened as the year wore on. As the two great British armies in America were acting upon a concerted plan, which could not begin to be developed till the spring was far advanced, the accounts of General Burgoyne's movements were late in reaching Europe, and came through England. No man could reasonably doubt that, with such a force as he commanded, he would do great mischief in New York, even if he failed to penetrate to the Hudson, and sever New England from the rest of the States. In June of this year, Dr. Franklin was shown a letter, written by his old friend Dr. Fothergill, and written with a view to its being shown, which contained this passage: "Should thy friend think proper to go to Passy, he may say to Dr. Franklin, that if he has enemies in this country, he has also friends, and must not forget these because the former are ignorant and malicious, yet all powerful. He will, doubtless, inform the Doctor, that there remains not a doubt on this side of the water that American resistance is all at an end-that the shadow of congressional authority scarce exists-that a general defection from that body is apparent-that their troops desert by shoals-that the officers are discontented-that no new levies can be made-that nothing can withstand the British forces, and prevent them from being masters of the whole continent; in short, that the war is at an end, and that nothing remains to be done but to divide the country among the conquerors. This is the general language; and that neither France nor Spain will afford them any other than a kind of paralytic aid; enough to enable them to protract a few months longer a miserable existence." t

People did not talk or write in that strain on the continent, but great numbers of them secretly thought so, particularly the better informed. The extreme care taken by the French Government to

+ Memoirs of Dr. Franklin, by W. T. Franklin, p. 313.

+ Ibid., p. 318.