pacify Lord Stormont, the impossibility of borrowing money for Congress, the cautious movements of Spain, the timidity of Holland, the universal dread of giving offense to England, were evidences of a general distrust of the ability of America to maintain her independence.

CHAPTER III.

BEGINNING OF THE ARTHUR LEE MISCHIEF.

By midsummer, 1777, Congress had as many as twelve agents in Europe, most of whom lived in Paris. On Sundays, when the official Americans and their secretaries dined at Dr. Franklin's, and the American boys came from their schools to join the party, the company must have numbered twenty, or more. Separated as most of these gentlemen were from their country, uncertain, indeed, whether or not they had a country, having similar employments, a common interest and common danger, we should naturally look to see them living in perfect accord-a band of brothers gathered in a foreign land round a venerated father and chief. Alas! the truth is far otherwise. From 1776 to the end of the revolutionary struggle, the persons representing the United States in Europe were generally at open or secret war with one another; envy, jealousy, malice, and all the other passions of a small and morbid brain raged among them. Why was this? Answer: ARTHUR LEE! One such narrow, conceited, fidgety, suspicious, envious, covetous, plantation-bred person as he would be sufficient to introduce discord among a chorus of angels; and the American diplomatists in Paris were not angels.

Perhaps the most convenient way of unfolding the mischief caused by this ridiculous and perfidious man, will be to present here a kind of descriptive catalogue of the servants of Congress in Europe at this time, mentioning them in something like the order of their rank and importance.

DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. As the reader has some acquaintance with this gentleman already, I need but call to mind two cir

cumstances of his position in France. First: his popularity was such that, so long as he remained, no other American could be held in very great or very general estimation. His celebrity was completely overshadowing; no American could hope to shine in France, except as his satellite. In this fact, any man, not a fool, or plantation-bred, would have gladly and proudly coincided, as well for his own as for his country's sake; for Dr. Franklin's age, genius, and services, entitled him to pre-eminence, and the immense esteem in which he was held formed a great part, nay, the greater part of his country's European capital. Moreover, as we have seen, he bore his honors better than meekly; he bore them airily, gracefully, jocularly; often amused, never deceived by them; something like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Secondly: chief as Franklin unquestionably was of the Americans in Europe, he had no official authority over any of them; it was only his age, talents, character, and fame, that gave him the first place.

SILAS DEANE. During the whole of the year 1777 Mr. Deane continued to co-operate with Beaumarchais, to the great contentment of that gentleman, and with the approval of Dr. Franklin and the Count de Vergennes. But the contracts with Du Coudray and his train were giving Congress and General Washington such a world of trouble, that he was completely out of favor in America. The artillery service was all arranged before the arrival of Du Coudray; General Knox, "the father of the American artillery," having been appointed to the chief command. General Knox held the rank of major-general, and all the other divisions of the army were commanded by major-generals. "In this state of things," wrote the Foreign Committee, "arrived General Coudray, with an agreement by which he was to command the artillery and the greatest part of the major-generals of the army, by being of older commission. A plentiful crop of resignations began presently to sprout up, and the whole army must have been deranged and thrown into confusion, just on the opening of a campaign, or this agreement not acceded to in the whole. But Mons. Du Coudray would have every thing or nothing. An inflexible ambition that paid no regard to the situation and circumstances of the army, would be gratified. This produced a scene of contention, which was not ended when the unfortunate General was drowned in the Schuylkill, going to join the army. Immediately on his death, the rest of his corps

would return to France;" and back to France they went, Congress paying their passage, and continuing their pay until they reached home. General De Coudray, besides the confusion and perplexity he caused, cost Congress a hundred thousand francs; and, I see that, as late as 1785, his heirs were still clamoring at the door of Congress for money which they claimed to be due to his estate.* The odium of all this fell upon Silas Deane, for whom Congress could not, at that distance, make the requisite allowance. Franklin could, and did. Writing to the Foreign Committee on this subject, he observed: "I, who am upon the spot, and know the infinite difficulty of resisting the powerful solicitations of great men, who, if disobliged, might have it in their power to obstruct the supplies he was then obtaining, do not wonder that, being then a stranger to the people, and unacquainted with the language, he was at first prevailed on to make some such agreements, when all were recommended, as they always are, as officiers expérimentés, braves comme leurs épées, pleins de courage, de talents, et de zèle pour notre cause, &c., &c., in short, mere Cesars, each of whom would have been an invaluable acquisition to America. I hope, therefore, that favorable allowance will be made to my worthy colleague on account of his situation at the time, as he has long since corrected that mistake, and daily approves himself to my certain knowledge an able, faithful, active, and extremely useful servant of the public; a testimony I think it my duty to take this occasion of giving to his merit, unasked, as, considering my great age, I may probably not live to give it personally in Congress, and I perceive he has enemies."

* * *

Long before this letter reached Philadelphia, before it was written even, the fate of Silas Deane was sealed. The question of his recall was debated in Congress with extreme asperity, since it was originally proposed to accompany the resolution of recall with a preamble of censure. John Jay took the lead in the defense of his absent friend, and succeeded in getting the offensive preamble, which condemned a servant of the public unheard, stricken out. The family seat of the Jays in New York is close to the Connecticut line, and, I presume, Mr. Jay was intimate with Deane before the war. He was warmly his friend and defender, not on this occasion

* Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, i., 281.

only, but whenever he was attacked in Congress. He even had a portrait of Deane hanging in his study, which he carried abroad with him, in later years, when he went embassador to Madrid. It was not possible, however, at this time, to avert the recall of his Connecticut friend. December 8th, Congress passed the following order: "Whereas, it is of the greatest importance that Congress should at this critical juncture be well informed of the State of affairs in Europe, and whereas Congress have resolved that the Hon. Silas Deane be recalled from the Court of France, and have appointed another Commissioner to supply his place there: ORDERED, that the Committee of Foreign Affairs write to the Hon. Silas Deane, and direct him to embrace the first opportunity to return to America, and, upon his arrival, to repair with all possible dispatch to Congress." This was the message which, during the exciting, momentous months of January and February, 1778, was winging its way across the Atlantic to the envoys at Paris. The reader will note that it contains not the least intimation of censure: Mr. Deane was merely notified that Congress desired information respecting 'the state of affairs in Europe."

ARTHUR LEE. This gentleman, never too happy, was miserable in the extreme on his return to Paris in July, 1777, from the court of Frederick the Great. He had suffered a long series of galling disappointments. He had expected to be the medium through which the French King would convey his liberal subsidies to Congress; but the founding of the great House of Roderique Hortalez and Co. had deprived him of that honor. With M. de Beaumarchais he had once been in confidential intercourse, writing him mysterious letters signed "Mary Johnson," and receiving epistles from him in cipher, unfolding the secrets of the French cabinet. The arrival of Silas Deane had robbed him of this interesting friend; who much preferred to act with the commissioned envoy of Congress. Then, on reaching Paris in December, 1776, to join his colleagues, he found all France exulting in the arrival of le grand Franklin; no one much regarding the presence of the great Lee. His unsuccessful missons to Spain, Vienna, and Berlin occupied most of the spring and summer of 1777, without yielding to his morbid self-love much consolation. He returned to Paris in July to find his colleagues immersed in the most important affairs, naval and commercial, of the details of which he was ignorant, and the whole

history of which it was a work of time to impart to him. He was really a superfluous member of the commission, and conceived that his colleagues both regarded and treated him as a superfluity, which, in the hurry of that stirring time, may have been, in some degree, the case. I presume he had the pleasure of reading in a London newspaper (the Public Ledger) of July 12th, a complimentary allusion to himself: "Dr. Lee is certainly joined in the (American) commission, but he understands the business of courts so ill, that not one of the ministers will negotiate with him. He is the straight-laced image of awkward formality. To the preciseness of a Presbyterian he endeavors to add the Jesuitism of a Quaker. The one renders him ridiculous, the other suspected. When he thinks he is imposing on mankind, they are laughing at him." Perhaps, also, he had the comfort of perusing the following lines from the same paper of September 2d: "Two of these commissioners, for the third is a cipher, are protected in their public capacities by the court of Versailles; the court of London hath sent one embassador, the Congress of America have sent two, to France."

It must be owned that these were disagreeable paragraphs, particularly to a man of the disposition of Arthur Lee. But every public man has to submit to such annoyances. He might have read, in other London papers, of the autumn of 1777, paragraphs of which the following is a mild specimen: "They write from Paris that Silas Deane meets with repeated insults every time he goes through the streets of that city, and is pointed at by the populace as one of the wretches who meditated the ruin of his country by the basest strategems. The old fox, Franklin, secures himself from similar treatment by silence and seclusion." How absurd to care for such harmless nonsense!*

*An American paper, the New Jersey Gazette, of nearly the same date, published the following: "October 2d. A correspondent in Paris says: When Doctor Franklin appears abroad, it is more like a public than a private gentleman; and the curiosity of the people to see him is so great, that he may be said to be followed by a genteel mob. A friend of mine paid something for a place at a two-pair-of-stairs window to see him pass by in his coach, but the crowd was so great that he could but barely say he saw him.'

"We are well assured (adds the New Jersey editor) that Dr. Franklin, whose knowledge in philosophical sciences is universally allowed, and who has carried the powers of electricity to a greater length than any of his contemporaries, intends shortly to produce an electrical machine, of such wonderful force that instead of giving a slight stroke to the elbows of fifty or a hundred thousand men, who are joined hand in hand, it will give a violent shock even to nature herself, so as to disunite kingdoms, join islands to continents, and render men of the same nation stran