Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed, Volume 2 (of 2)

It was also Franklin's lot to receive many letters of inquiry about the New World from individuals in Europe, who were thinking of migrating to America for peaceable purposes. What of its climate, its trade, its people, its laws? These were some of the questions relating to the New Eldorado which these individuals wished answered. To all who questioned him about the opportunities held out by America, when he did not simply refer the questioners to Crèvecœur's "Letters from an American Farmer," his answers were substantially the same. The emigrants to America would find a good climate, good air, good soil, good government, good laws and liberty there, but no Lotus Land. One Reuben Harvey wrote to him from Cork that about one hundred poor Irish tradesmen and husbandmen desired to settle in America. Franklin replied sententiously, "They will go to a Country where People do not Export their Beef and Linnen to import Claret, while the Poor at home live on Potatoes and wear Rags. Indeed America has not Beef and Linnen sufficient for Exportation because every man there, even the poorest, eats Beef and wears a Shirt."

Numerous letters came to him from authors inviting his literary criticism, or asking him to accord to them the honor of permitting them to dedicate their works to him. Allamand, the Warden of the forests and waters of the Island of Corsica, wished to know from him what canals there were in America. None, he replied, unless a short water-way, cut, it was said, in a single night across a loop formed by a long bend in Duck Creek, in the State of Delaware, could be called such. Projectors of all kinds solicited his views about their several projects, sane or crack-brained. Sheer beggars, as we have already seen, were likewise among his correspondents. One, La Baronne de Randerath, tells him that she has been advised by the doctors to take her husband to Aix, and, as her justification for requesting a loan from Franklin for the purpose, she mentions that her husband and Franklin are both Masons, though members of different lodges. Another letter requests him to exercise his influence with the Minister of Marine in behalf of the writer, a sea captain, who wishes to be discharged from the King's service. Dartmouth College, Brown University, Princeton College and Dickinson College all appealed to him for his aid in their efforts to secure money or other gifts abroad. In a word, he was not only world-famous but paid fully all the minor as well as major penalties of world-fame.

How curdled by the animosities of the Revolutionary War was the milk of human kindness even in such an amiable breast as that of Franklin, we have already had reason enough to know. His nature yielded slowly to the intense feelings, aroused by the long conflict between Great Britain and her Colonies, but it was equally slow to part with them when once inflamed. The most notable thing about his attitude towards Great Britain, after the first effusion of American blood at Lexington, was the inexorable firmness with which he repelled all advances upon the part of England that fell short of the recognition of American Independence. When the English Ministry fully realized that Great Britain was not waging war against a few rebellious malcontents but against a whole people in arms, overture after overture was informally made to Franklin by one English emissary or another, in the effort to dissolve the alliance between France and the United States, and to restore, as far as possible, the old connection between Great Britain and America. Among the first of these emissaries was Franklin's good friend, James Hutton. Franklin received him with the most affectionate kindness, but a letter, which he wrote to Hutton, after Hutton had returned to England, showed how entirely fruitless the journey of the latter had been. A peace, Franklin said, England might undoubtedly obtain by dropping all her pretensions to govern America, but, if she did not, with the peace, recover the affections of the American people, it would be neither a lasting nor a profitable one. To recover the respect and affection of America, England must tread back the steps that she had taken and disgrace the American advisers and promoters of the war, with all those who had inflamed the nation against America by their malicious writings; and all the ministers and generals who had prosecuted the war with such inhumanity. A little generosity, in the way of territorial concessions added to the counsels of necessity, would have a happy effect. For instance, Franklin said, if England would have a real friendly as well as able ally in America, and avoid all occasions of future discord, which would otherwise be continually arising along its American frontiers, it might throw in Canada, Nova Scotia and the Floridas.

Hutton was succeeded by William Pulteney, a member of Parliament. All of his propositions were predicated upon the continued dependence of America. Every proposition, Franklin let him know, which implied the voluntary return of America to dependence on Great Britain was out of the question. The proper course for Great Britain, in his judgment, was to acknowledge the independence of the United States, and to enter into such a treaty of peace, friendship and commerce with them as France itself had formed. The concluding words of Franklin's letter were hardly necessary to convince Pulteney of the hopelessness of his task. "May God at last," they ran, "grant that Wisdom to your national Councils, which he seems long to have deny'd them, and which only sincere, just, and humane Intentions can merit or expect." Ten days before this letter was written, the American envoys had been presented to the French King. Then followed David Hartley and Mr. George Hammond, the father of the George Hammond, who, many years afterwards, became Minister Plenipotentiary from England to the United States. When they arrived at Paris, it was only to find that the treaty of alliance between France and the United States had already been signed, and to learn soon afterwards that one of its clauses obliged the United States to make common cause with France, in case England declared war against her. How authentic were the credentials of the next emissary it is impossible to say, but Franklin was entirely confident that he came over to France under the direct patronage of George III. The circumstances were these. One morning, a lengthy letter was thrown into a window of Franklin's residence at Passy, written in English, dated at Brussels, and signed Charles de Weissenstein. The letter conjured Franklin in the name of the Just and Omniscient God, before whom all must soon appear, and by his hopes of future fame, to consider if some expedient could not be devised for ending the desolation of America and preventing the war imminent in Europe. It then declared that France would certainly at last betray America, and suggested a plan for the union of England and America. Under the plan, among other things, judges of the American courts were to be named by the King, and to hold their offices for life, and were to bear titles either as peers of America, or otherwise, as should be decided by his Majesty; there were to be septennial sessions of Congress, or more frequent ones, if his Majesty should think fit to call Congress together oftener, but all its proceedings were to be transmitted to the British Parliament, without whose consent no money was ever to be granted by Congress, or any separate State of America to the Crown; the chief offices of the American civil list were to be named in the plan, and the compensation attached to them was to be paid by America; the naval and military forces of the Union were to be under the direction of his Majesty, but the British Parliament was to fix their extent, and vote the sums necessary for their maintenance. It was also proposed by the letter that, to protect Franklin, Washington, Adams, Hancock and other leaders of the American Revolution from the personal enmity in England, by which their talents might otherwise be kept down, they were to have offices or pensions for life at their option. The promise was also made that, in case his Majesty, or his successors, should ever create American peers, then those persons, or their descendants, were to be among the first peers created, if they desired. Moreover, Mr. Washington was to have immediately a brevet of lieutenant-general, and all the honors and precedence incident thereto, but was not to assume or bear any command without a special warrant, or letter of service for that purpose, from the King.

The writer further asked for a personal interview with Franklin for the purpose of discussing the details of the project, or, he stated, if that was not practicable, he would be in a certain part of the Cathedral of Notre Dame on a certain day at noon precisely, with a rose in his hat, to receive a written answer from Franklin which he would transmit directly to the King himself. Franklin laid the letter before his colleagues, and it was agreed that it should be answered by him, and that both it and the answer should be laid before Vergennes, and that the answer should be sent or kept back as Vergennes believed best. The French Minister decided that it had best not be sent. At the hour fixed for the interview, however, an agent of the French police was on hand, and he reported that a gentleman, whose name he afterwards ascertained to be an Irish one by tracking him to his hotel, did appear at the appointed time, and, finding no one to meet him, wandered about the Cathedral, looking at the altars and pictures, but never losing sight of the place suggested for the tryst, and often returning to it, and gazing anxiously about him as if he expected some one. The scornful tone of the letter, drafted by Franklin, which is not unlike one of the scolding speeches, with which the Homeric heroes expressed their opinions of each other, leaves little room for doubt that he truly believed himself to be assailing no less a person than the bigoted King himself. After some savage thrusts, which remind us of those aimed by Hamlet at Polonius behind the arras, he bursts out into these exclamatory words:

This proposition of delivering ourselves, bound and gagged, ready for hanging, without even a right to complain, and without a friend to be found afterwards among all mankind you would have us embrace upon the faith of an act of Parliament! Good God! An act of your Parliament! This demonstrates that you do not yet know us, and that you fancy we do not know you; but it is not merely this flimsy faith, that we are to act upon; you offer us hope, the hope of places, pensions, and peerages. These, judging from yourselves, you think are motives irresistible. This offer to corrupt us, Sir, is with me your credential, and convinces me that you are not a private volunteer in your application. It bears the stamp of British court character. It is even the signature of your King.

The next bearer of the olive branch, who came over to Paris, came under very different auspices. This was William Jones, afterwards Sir William Jones, who was at the time affianced to Anna Maria Shipley. He did not come as the representative of the King or his Ministers, but as the representative of the generous and patriotic Englishmen, who had cherished the same dream of world-wide British unity as Franklin himself, and whose sacrifices in behalf of their fellow-Englishmen in America should be almost as gratefully remembered by us as the Continental soldiers who perished at Monmouth or Camden. Draping his thoughts with academic terms, he submitted a paper to Dr. Franklin entitled A Fragment from Polybius in which England, France, the United States and Franklin are given names borrowed from antiquity, and various suggestions are made for the settlement of the existing controversy between Great Britain and America. England becomes Athens, France, Caria, America, the Islands, and Franklin, Eleutherion; and Jones himself is masked as an Athenian lawyer.

This I know [observes the latter-day Athenian] and positively pronounce, that, while Athens is Athens, her proud but brave citizens will never expressly recognize the independence of the Islands; their resources are, no doubt, exhaustible, but will not be exhausted in the lives of us and of our children. In this resolution all parties agree.

There should be, the writer suggested, "a perfect coordination between Athens and the Thirteen United Islands, they considering her not as a parent, whom they must obey, but as an elder sister, whom they can not help loving, and to whom they shall give pre-eminence of honor and co-equality of power." Other suggestions were that the new constitutions of the Islands should remain intact, but that, on every occasion, requiring acts for the general good, there should be an assembly of deputies from the Senate of Athens, and the Congress of the Islands, who should fairly adjust the whole business, and settle the ratio of the contributions on both sides; that this committee should consist of fifty Islanders and fifty Athenians, or of a smaller number chosen by them, and that, if it was thought necessary, and found convenient, a proportionate number of Athenian citizens should have seats, and the power of debating and voting on questions of common concern in the great assembly of the Islands, and a proportionable number of Islanders should sit with the like power in the Assembly at Athens. The whole reminds the reader of the classical fictions to which the first Parliamentary reporters were driven by press censorship. The paper, drafted by Jones, was little more than a mere literary exercise, prompted by ingenuous enthusiasm, but we may be sure that it kindled in Franklin very different feelings from those aroused in him by the insidious appeal of Charles de Weissenstein.

The shortcomings, which Franklin is supposed by his enemies to have exhibited in France with respect to the duties of his post, require but little attention. Apart from a lack of clerical neatness and system, such as might more justly be imputed as a serious reproach to a book-keeper or clerk, they rest upon evidence easily perverted by enmity or jealousy.[41 - A Commissioner, Thomas Barclay, was appointed by Congress to audit the accounts of all the servants of the United States who had been entrusted with the expenditure of money in Europe during the Revolutionary War. "I rendered to him," said Franklin in a letter to Cyrus Griffin, the President of Congress, dated Nov. 29, 1788, "all my accounts, which he examined, and stated methodically. By this statement he found a balance due me on the 4th of May, 1785, of 7,533 livres, 19 sols, 3 den., which I accordingly received of the Congress banker; the difference between my statement and his being only seven sols, which by mistake I had overcharged; – about three pence half penny sterling."] Adams had no little to say about Franklin's love of ease and tranquillity, the social and academic distractions, to which he was subject, and the extent to which his time was consumed by curious visitors. It is a sufficient answer to all such disparagement to declare that he successfully dispatched an enormous amount of public business with but very little aid, and unflinchingly bore a load of responsibility only less weighty than that of Washington; that no spy, such as obtained secret access to the papers of Silas Deane and Arthur Lee for the purposes of the British Government, ever abstracted any valuable information from his papers; and that his position in the polite and learned world, and the popular curiosity, excited by his fame, were among the things which tended most effectually to recommend him to the favor of the French People and Ministry. The effort was also made by John Adams to create the impression that Franklin was unduly subservient to the influence of France, and that, but for the superior firmness of John Jay and himself, the United States would not have concluded a peace with England on terms anything like so favorable as those actually obtained from her.

In what respects Franklin can be truly said to have been servile to French influence, it is impossible to see. If by this is meant that he did not share the prejudices of Adams and Jay against the French people, did not harbor their keen distrust of the motives of the French ministry and did not feel as free as they to ignore the proprieties, arising out of the profound obligations of America to France, the reflection is just enough. Neither Adams nor Jay ever succeeded in making himself sufficiently acceptable to the French people or ministry, or obtained sufficient benefits from them for his countrymen, to feel any sense of personal indebtedness to them, or to be inclined to show any unusual degree of consideration to them. This was true of Jay, if for no other reason, because his intercourse with them was but limited in point of time. Franklin, on the other hand, was the idol of the French people, and received from Vergennes as decisive proofs of confidence as one individual can confer upon another. No one could have been in a better position than he was to know that the French alliance was hardly more the fruit of selfish policy upon the part of the French ministry, or of a desire upon its part to avenge historic injuries, than of the generous sensibility of the French people to the liberal and democratic impulses, which were hurrying them on to the fiercest outbreak of uncalculating enthusiasm that the world has ever seen. He had never entered the cabinet of the French Minister to sue for pecuniary aid without coming away with a fresh cordial for the drooping energies of his people. That upright and able minister, he wrote to Samuel Huntington, on one occasion, had never promised him anything which he did not punctually perform.[42 - The dogged steadfastness with which Vergennes pursued his task of humbling the pride and power of England through her rebellious colonies was in keeping with the main point of what Choiseul had said about him as the French Ambassador at Constantinople: "The Count de Vergennes has something to say against whatever is proposed to him, but he never finds any difficulty in carrying out his instructions. Were we to order him to send us the Vizier's head, he would write that it was dangerous, but the head would come." The levity of Maurepas, as President of the Council of State, and the grave diligence of Vergennes, as Minister for Foreign Affairs, led D'Aranda to say of them, "I chat with M. de Maurepas, I negotiate with M. de Vergennes."] No matter how dark were the thick clouds that enveloped the fate of his country, no matter how acute was the pecuniary distress of France herself, there was always another million at the bottom of the stocking of the French tax-payer for the land of freedom and opportunity. Franklin had even known what it was to beg for a loan from the French King and to receive it as a gracious gift. He would have been fashioned of ignoble materials, indeed, if he had been too quick, in seeking the selfish advantage of his country, to forget the extraordinary magnanimity of her ally, and to suspect a disposition upon her part to deprive the United States of the just rewards of the triumph, which they might never have achieved but for her. And he, at any rate, with his strong sense of justice, was not likely to commit himself with unhesitating alacrity to a coldblooded scramble for concessions from England to America which took no account of the fact that France not only had the interests of America, but also her own necessities to consult, and that it was as essential to her interests that America should not make peace with England before she did, as it was to the interests of America that France should not make peace with England before America did. In the Treaty of Alliance, France had assumed no obligation to the United States except that of continuing to wage war against England until their independence was acknowledged, and of not concluding any peace with England that did not include them. She had never bound herself to secure to America the right of fishery on the Newfoundland Banks, or to oppose every restriction upon the extension of her western boundaries. In the course of the war, there was a time when the situation of America was so desperate that Vergennes was, with perfect fidelity to the American cause, brought to the conclusion that the Thirteen States might well afford to surrender a part of their territory to England as the price of independence; and this was a conclusion to which any honest American mind might have been brought under the circumstances. And, even after this crisis had passed, and negotiations for peace were pending between Great Britain and the Allies, it is not surprising that he should not have foreseen that he would ever have occasion to say, as he did after England and America came to terms, that England had bought rather than made a peace, but should have thought that England might still hold out stubbornly enough to cause even America to feel that she could be reasonably expected by France to forego more than one minor expectation to make certain of her independence. There was also the fact, which could hardly escape the attention of a man so deferential to the authority of his principals as Franklin always was, that Congress had positively instructed its Commissioners to make the most candid and confidential communications upon all subjects to the minister of its generous ally, the King of France, to undertake nothing in the negotiations for peace or a truce without the knowledge and concurrence of the Minister and King, and ultimately to govern themselves by their advice and opinion.

And there was also the fact that Franklin had always had such marked success in influencing the conclusions of Vergennes, that he might well have confided in his ability to bring the French minister over to any reasonable views that he might form about the results that America had the right to expect from the Peace; particularly as Vergennes had long been possessed with a haunting fear that America might be detached from her alliance with France.

In the light of all these circumstances, it is not strange that Franklin should have been reluctant, in the first instance, to unite with Adams and Jay in signing the preliminary treaty of peace with England without previously consulting with Vergennes; for that is the only tangible foundation for the claim that he was too submissive to the selfish designs of France; and there is no substantial evidence that any real point was gained by America by the act, or that it awakened any feeling in Vergennes profounder than the passing disappointment, born of realized distrust and affronted pride, which led him to write to M. de la Luzerne, the French Minister to the United States, immediately after it as follows:

I think it proper that the most influential members of Congress should be informed of the very irregular conduct of their Commissioners in regard to us. You may speak of it not in the tone of complaint. I accuse no person; I blame no one, not even Dr. Franklin. He has yielded too easily to the bias of his colleagues, who do not pretend to recognize the rules of courtesy in regard to us. All their attentions have been taken up by the English whom they have met in Paris. If we may judge of the future from what has passed here under our eyes, we shall be but poorly paid for all that we have done for the United States, and for securing to them a national existence.

When we recollect how faithfully France had rejected every effort upon the part of England to treat for peace with her separately, and insisted that the treaty of peace between England and France, on the one hand, and the treaty of peace between England and the United States, on the other, should go hand in hand, how entirely Vergennes had refrained from inquiring into the course of the pending negotiations between England and our commissioners, which resulted in the signing of the preliminary treaty of peace between England and the United States; and how singularly limited was the measure of concession that France asked for herself from England, these words cannot be read by any true American without a highly painful impression.

When Franklin appealed, after the peace, to both Adams and Jay to deny the statement, current in America, that he had not stood up stoutly for American rights, when the peace was being concluded, Jay complied with unreserved emphasis, and Adams with a reluctant note which rendered his testimony but the stronger. The truth is that, if Franklin's conduct during the peace negotiations was not admirable in every respect, it was only because he found that he could not decline to unite with his colleagues in violating the instruction of Congress without breaking with them and hazarding discord that might be fatal to the interests of his country. He did not, of course, believe that France, after the enormous sacrifices that she had made for American independence, was engaged in a treacherous effort to shackle the growth of the United States. He could not readily have entertained such a totally ungrounded suspicion as that which led Jay, when he learnt that De Rayneval was going over to London to have an interview with Shelburne, to leap to the conclusion that it was for the purpose of confounding American aspirations, and to inform Shelburne that now was the time for England to outbid France for the favor of America by executing at once preliminary articles of peace, conceding to America the points about which she was most concerned. The overture was a bold one, but if it had not been accepted in the manner that it was, and had been communicated by Shelburne to Vergennes, it might have been attended by consequences inimical to the Alliance which even the personal influence of Franklin might not have been able to prevent. Franklin was too prudent to risk rashly the support of an ally, from which the United States still found it necessary to borrow money, even after their independence was acknowledged, and too grateful to risk lightly the friendship of an ally which had not only aided the United States with soldiers, ships and money to secure their independence, but had repeatedly declined to treat with England except on the basis of American independence. His inclination naturally and properly enough was to maintain with Vergennes until the last the frank and intimate relations that he had always maintained with him; to avoid everything that might have the least savor of faithlessness or sharp practice in the opinion of our ally, and to rely upon our growing importance and the ordinary appeals of argument and persuasion for a peace at once fair and just to both the United States and France. But never once from the time that he wrote to Lord Shelburne the brief letter, that initiated the negotiations for peace between England and the United States, until the day that he threw himself, after the consummation of peace, into the arms of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, saying, "My friend! Could I have hoped at my age to enjoy such a happiness," was he animated by any purpose except that of securing for his countrymen the most generous terms that he could. It is by no means improbable that, if he had been our sole negotiator, he would not only have obtained for us all that was secured by his Fellow-Commissioners and himself but Canada besides, and would, moreover, have saved the United States the reproach that justly attached to them because of the precipitate signature of the preliminary articles of peace. As we have already seen, the acquisition of Canada by the United States was something that he had definitely in mind even before the negotiations for peace began, and, when they did begin, this was one of the things that he specified in a memorandum that he gave to Oswald, the British envoy, as concessions that it was advisable for England to make, and we also know from the correspondence of Oswald that it was a topic to which his conversation frequently turned. With such address did he ply Oswald upon this point that the latter went so far as to say that it might be conceded. To compass it, he was even willing to agree that the Loyalists should be compensated by the United States for their losses; which was the point upon which the English Ministry was most earnestly bent, and the one which aroused in him feelings of the deepest antagonism. What a trifling recompense the compensation of the Loyalists would have been for such an addition to our national domain as Canada we hardly need say; nor need we dilate upon the far-sighted statesmanship which so surely foresaw what futurity held in store for a country which, as late as 1760, had been gravely proposed to be exchanged with France for the Island of Guadeloupe. It is to be regretted by the United States, if the present happy lot of Canada is to be the subject of regret at all, that the desire of Franklin to secure Canada for them was not more urgently seconded by Adams and Jay. The former was enthusiastically resolved, as was but proper, to secure for New England the right to fish on the Newfoundland Banks, and the latter was especially eager, as any statesman with the slightest glow of imagination might well have been, to remove every obstacle in our pathway westward. Neither appears to have been zealously alive to the considerations, which led Franklin to cast a covetous eye upon Canada, and to make it one of the primary objects of his efforts to promote the interests of America during the peace negotiations. On the other hand, Franklin was not less impressed than they were with the importance of our North Eastern Fisheries and our Western Destiny; and was quite as stiff as they in maintaining our rights with respect to them. Moreover, when the insistence of the English Ministry upon compensation for the Loyalists threatened to be the only rock, upon which the negotiations were likely to split, it was his suggestiveness which relieved the situation by proposing, as an offset to the losses of the Loyalists, the payment by England of the pecuniary losses wantonly inflicted by her upon the inhabitants of such towns as Fairfield and Norfolk on our Atlantic seaboard. After this timely counter-claim, a compromise was soon reached, under which it was agreed that the Loyalists should be referred to the justice of the individual States with a favorable recommendation from the Commissioners. This was but a diplomatic way of disposing of the proposition adversely without seeming to do so, for Shelburne as well as the American Commissioners must have realized that the recommendation was the only form of indemnity that the Loyalists were likely to obtain.

Friendly as Franklin was to the French Court, it was only where some treaty stipulation was involved, or some definite rule of courtesy was to be observed, that he recognized the right of France to influence the course of the negotiations between England and the American Commissioners. He knew as well as Adams and Jay that French policy, partly because of considerations, peculiar to France herself, and partly because of obligations, that France owed to Spain, differed in some very material respects from American policy. But he entertained the belief, and justly entertained the belief, that this was no reason why Vergennes should necessarily be moved by the settled, perfidious purpose of arresting an agreement between England and America until the negotiations between England and France and Spain had gone too far for the United States to be any longer in the position to insist effectively upon their fishery and boundary claims. The disposition of the French Minister to contemplate contingencies, in which concessions would have to be made by America, was in Franklin's judgment "due to the moderation of the minister and to his desire of removing every obstacle to speedy negotiations for peace"; and there is no real reason to believe that he was not right. It is quite true that Marbois, when he was the French Secretary of Legation in the United States, in his famous letter to Vergennes, which the English were at pains to bring to the notice of John Jay, suggested to Vergennes that he should let the Americans know that their pretensions to the Newfoundland fisheries were not well founded, and that the French King did not mean to support them; but, as Vergennes wrote to M. de la Luzerne, the successor of Gérard, the opinion of Marbois was not necessarily that of the King, and, moreover the views of his letter had not been followed. When Franklin made his suggestion to Oswald in respect to Canada, he did not bring it to the knowledge of Vergennes. In the very commencement of the negotiations between England and the United States, he let it be known to Grenville, the envoy of Charles James Fox, that, when Great Britain acknowledged the independence of America, the treaty, that America had made with France for gaining it, ended, and no conventional tie remained between America and France but that of the treaty of commerce which England, too, might establish between America and herself, if she pleased. Indeed, Vergennes himself clearly recognized the right of the American Commissioners to make the best terms that they could for themselves in the matter of the fisheries, the western boundaries or any other object of American policy.

We are [he wrote Luzerne on April 9, 1782], and shall always be, disposed to consent that the American plenipotentiaries in Europe should treat according to their instructions directly and without our intervention with those of the Court of London, while we on our side shall treat in the same way, provided that the two negotiations continue at the same rate, and that the two treaties shall be signed the same day, and shall not be good the one without the other.

The hesitation of Franklin about executing the preliminary articles of peace between England and the United States was not due to any doubt as to the technical right of the American Commissioners to sign it, aside from the instruction of Congress that they were not to take any important step without the advice of the French Ministry. He hesitated to sign it because he was subject to this instruction, and also because he felt that for the Commissioners to sign such a treaty, without taking Vergennes into their confidence, was hardly compatible with the scrupulous deference due to such a timely, generous and powerful ally as France had proved herself to be and might be again. His reason for disregarding the instruction of Congress, and uniting with his colleagues in signing the articles doubtless was that he deemed it unwise, in any view of the case, not to subordinate his own judgment, after full discussion, to that of the majority of the Commission in a case where, if the French Minister were acting in bad faith, it was but proper that his bad faith should be anticipated, and where, if he were acting in good faith, his resentment was not likely to be more serious than that which is usually visited upon a mere breach of diplomatic decorum. The execution of the articles was expressly made subject to the proviso that they were to have no force, if England did not reach an understanding with France also. Without such a proviso, the action of our Commissioners, of course, would have merited the contempt of the world. With it, Franklin was left free to say, disingenuously it must be confessed, to Vergennes that, in signing the articles, the Commissioners had at the most been guilty of neglecting a point of bienséance. No one knew better than he that no such soothing pretence could be set up by Adams and Jay, and that, even as respected himself, though the extent of his offence consisted, as Vergennes truly divined, in yielding to the bias of his colleagues, he had been drawn into a position in which it was impossible for him to separate himself wholly from either the motives or the moral responsibilities of his colleagues. In transmitting with them to Congress a copy of the articles, he united with them in this statement:

As we had reason to imagine that the Articles respecting the boundaries, the refugees and fisheries, did not correspond with the policy of this court, we did not communicate the preliminaries to the Minister until after they were signed, and not even then the separate Article. We hope that these considerations will excuse our having so far deviated from the spirit of our instructions. The Count de Vergennes, on perusing the Articles, appeared surprised, but not displeased, at their being so favorable to us.

The separate article was one fixing the northern boundary of West Florida, in case Great Britain, at the conclusion of the war, should recover, or be put in possession of, that Province. In reply to a letter from Robert R. Livingston, disapproving the manner, in which the articles had been signed, Franklin said that they had done what appeared to all of them best at the time, and, if they had done wrong, the Congress would do right, after hearing them, to censure them. The nomination by Congress of five persons to the service, he further said, seemed to mark that they had some dependence on their joint judgment, since one alone could have made a treaty by direction of the French Ministry, as well as twenty. But there can be no doubt that the individual views of Franklin about the aims of the French Court, in relation to the United States, are to be found not in the letter of the Commissioners to Congress, but in his own words in this same reply to Livingston:

I will only add [he said] that, with respect to myself, neither the Letter from M. de Marbois, handed us thro' the British Negociators (a suspicious Channel) nor the Conversations respecting the Fishery, the Boundaries, the Royalists, &c., recommending Moderation in our Demands, are of Weight sufficient in my Mind to fix an Opinion, that this Court wish'd to restrain us in obtaining any Degree of Advantage we could prevail on our Enemies to accord; since those Discourses are fairly resolvable, by supposing a very natural Apprehension, that we, relying too much on the Ability of France to continue the War in our favour, and supply us constantly with Money, might insist on more Advantages than the English would be willing to grant, and thereby lose the Opportunity of making Peace, so necessary to all our friends.

It is impossible, however, to believe that Franklin could have taken such a step except with grave misgivings as to its effect on the mind of Vergennes. This is shown by the reserve which he, as well as his fellow-commissioners, maintained towards Vergennes, while the preliminary articles were being matured.

According to the injunctions of Congress [Vergennes wrote to Luzerne], they should have done nothing without our participation. I have pointed out to you, Sir, that the King would not have sought to interest himself in the negotiations, save in so far as his offices might be necessary to his friends. The American Commissioners will not say that I have sought to intervene in their business, still less that I have wearied them by my curiosity. They have kept themselves carefully out of my way.

It must have taxed even the nice judgment of Franklin to calculate precisely the degree of resentment that the act of the Commissioners would excite. He took the precaution of sending a copy of the articles to Vergennes the day after they were signed. His receipt of them was followed by an ominous silence. Some days later, Franklin called upon Vergennes, and the latter took pains to let him perceive that the signing of the articles had little in it which could be agreeable to the King, and Franklin advanced such excuses for his colleagues and himself as the case permitted. According to Vergennes, the conversation was amicable, but for a time it did not efface the impression that his mind had received. A week or so later, when Franklin proposed to send the preliminary articles to America by a ship, for which an English passport had been provided, and was soliciting a loan of twenty millions of francs from France, Vergennes gave him a bad quarter of an hour.

I am at a loss sir [he said] to explain your conduct, and that of your colleagues on this occasion. You have concluded your preliminary articles without any communication between us, although the instructions from Congress prescribe that nothing shall be done without the participation of the King. You are about to hold out a certain hope of peace to America, without even informing yourself on the state of the negotiation on our part. You are wise and discreet, sir; you perfectly understand what is due to propriety; you have all your life performed your duties. I pray you to consider how you propose to fulfill those, which are due to the King! I am not desirous of enlarging these reflections; I commit them to your own integrity. When you shall be pleased to relieve my uncertainty, I will entreat the King to enable me to answer your demands.

The reply of Franklin was almost abject.

Nothing [he said] has been agreed in the preliminaries contrary to the interests of France; and no peace is to take place between us and England, till you have concluded yours. Your observation is, however, apparently just, that, in not consulting you before they were signed, we have been guilty of neglecting a point of bienséance. But, as this was not from want of respect for the King, whom we all love and honour, we hope it will be excused, and that the great work, which has hitherto been so happily conducted, is so nearly brought to perfection, and is so glorious to his reign, will not be ruined by a single indiscretion of ours. And certainly the whole edifice sinks to the ground immediately, if you refuse on that account to give us any further assistance.

Again, unpromising as the conditions were, there was no resisting the voice of the seductive mendicant. France did not lend the twenty millions of francs to the United States because she did not have that much to lend; but she did lend six. If any loss of dignity or self-respect was suffered on this occasion it was not by her.

The definitive treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States was signed at Paris on September 3, 1783, and was ratified a few months later by both the contracting powers. Several weeks after it was signed, Franklin again tendered his resignation to Congress, but it was not accepted until March 7, 1785. Three days later, Jefferson, who had been in France ever since August, 1784, for the purpose of co-operating with Franklin and Adams in the negotiation of commercial treaties with England and other European countries, was appointed the American plenipotentiary at the Court of Versailles in the place of Franklin.

Shortly after the return of Franklin to Philadelphia, he was elected President of the Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and, in 1787, he was elected a member of the convention which adopted the Federal Constitution. There was only one man in the United States whose claims to the Presidency of the Convention could possibly be deemed paramount to his; and that was Washington. The nomination of Washington to the position was to have been made by him, but the weather on the day, fixed for it, was too bad to permit him at his advanced age, and in his infirm condition, to venture abroad. The honor of making the nomination, therefore, fell to Robert Morris, another member of the Pennsylvania delegation. It was thought becoming and graceful in Pennsylvania, Madison tells us, to pass by her own distinguished citizen as President, and to take the lead in giving that pre-eminence to the late Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, which the country felt to be his due.[43 - In a letter to William Carmichael in 1788, after saying that he presumed that there would not be a vote against the election of Washington to the Presidency, Jefferson added: "It is more doubtful who will be Vice-President. The age of Dr. Franklin, and the doubt whether he would accept it, are the only circumstances that admit a question, but that he would be the man." Some twenty-two years afterwards, he wrote to Col. William Duane that he believed that a greater or better character than Franklin had rarely existed.] At the next session of the Convention, Franklin was present, and thereafter he attended its sessions regularly for five hours each day for more than four months. His stone made it impossible for him to stand long upon his feet, and, when he participated on any important occasion in the discussions of the body, it was his habit to reduce his thoughts to writing, and to have them read to the body by one of his colleagues, usually James Wilson. Copies of these speeches were made by Madison from the original manuscripts for his reports of the debates of the Convention, and, unlike the speeches of the other leading members of the Assembly, the speeches of Franklin have consequently come down to us in their entirety. Of his general course in the Convention, it is enough to say that it was strongly marked by liberalism, faith in the popular intelligence and virtue, and the aversion to arbitrary power which was always such a prominent feature of his conduct in every relation. He had a quick eye to the abuses of authority, and it is probable that, if he had been a younger man, when the Convention met, and had lived until the clash between the Federalists and the Republicans arose, he would have been a Republican. Inane idealism, lack of energy and resolution did not belong to his character, but, to say nothing more, what he had seen of the workings of monarchical and aristocratic institutions, during the long dispute between England and her colonies, was not calculated to prejudice him in their favor.[44 - Optimist and thorough-going democrat as Franklin was, Shays' Rebellion and the heated conflict of opposing principles, concomitant with the adoption of the Federal Constitution, set up a slight current of reaction in his sanguine nature. On May 25, 1789, he wrote to Charles Carroll of Carrollton: "We have been guarding against an evil that old States are most liable to, excess of power, in the rulers; but our present danger seems to be defect of obedience in the subjects." Some six months later, in his Queries and Remarks respecting Alterations in the Constitution of Pennsylvania, he quoted the advice of the prophet, "Stand in the old ways, view the ancient Paths, consider them well, and be not among those that are given to Change." But in this instance Franklin was really invoking the spirit of conservatism in aid of liberalism; for the occasion for the Biblical reference was the suggestion that the Pennsylvania Assembly should no longer consist of a single chamber but of an Upper House based on property and a Lower House based on population.]

The compensation that should be paid to the Chief Magistrate of the Union was the first topic to which he formally addressed himself as a member of the Convention. In his opinion, no pecuniary compensation should be paid to him. The argument that he pursued in support of his proposition was one that he had often made with respect to the Government of Great Britain.

Sir [he said] there are two Passions which have a powerful Influence in the Affairs of Men. These are Ambition and Avarice; the Love of Power and the Love of Money. Separately, each of these has great Force in prompting Men to Action; but when united in View of the same Object, they have in many Minds the most violent Effects. Place before the Eyes of such Men a Post of Honour, that shall at the same time be a Place of Profit, and they will move Heaven and Earth to obtain it. The vast Number of such Places it is that renders the British Government so tempestuous. The Struggles for them are the true source of all those Factions which are perpetually dividing the Nation, distracting its Councils, hurrying it sometimes into fruitless and mischievous Wars, and often compelling a Submission to dishonorable Terms of Peace.

The argument, of course, fell upon deaf ears. It really presupposes a numerous class, at once sufficiently free from pecuniary anxieties to give its exclusive attention to public duties, and sufficiently qualified to discharge them with the requisite degree of success. Such a class was not to be found in America, at any rate, and, even if it was, it would have been invidious in the eyes of a democratic community to limit the enjoyment of public office to it. The subsequent history of the Republic showed that, in the beginning of our national existence, even moderate salaries did not suffice to keep some of the ablest men in the United States from declining or resigning federal office. The long journeys and the bad roads and taverns of that day were probably responsible for this state of things. In the first thirty years after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, no less than one hundred and ten seats in the United States Senate were resigned, and Washington experienced great difficulty in inducing lawyers to accept positions even on the Supreme Bench of the United States. It is a remarkable fact that, during the first thirty years after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, ten persons either declined to serve as associate justices of the Supreme Court, or resigned the office. It is a still more remarkable fact that both Jay and Ellsworth resigned as Chief Justice after brief terms of office. There was, however, undoubtedly an element of expediency in the views of Franklin, for it is no uncommon thing in the United States to see the supervisory functions of certain offices, connected with the educational or eleemosynary systems of the country, more efficiently and faithfully exercised, when exercised without pay by men, in whom public spirit or philanthropic zeal is highly developed, than they would be, if exercised by the very different kind of men who would be attracted to them, if salaried.

In connection with another question, the extent to which the superior wealth and population of the larger states were to be represented in Congress, it was the fortune of Franklin to exert a powerful and decisive influence. The debate over this question was so protracted and heated, the smaller States demanding equal representation with the larger in both Houses of Congress, and the larger repelling the claim as utterly unreasonable and unjust, that it looked, at one time, as if the Convention would break up like a ship lodged on a fatal rock. Then it was that Franklin found out to his surprise that his colleagues did not set the same value as himself upon the harmonizing influence of prayer. Not only was his suggestion that the proceedings of the Convention be opened each day with it rejected, but the controversy became more acrimonious than ever; John Dickinson, one of the members from Delaware, who always had a way of chafing in harness, even declaring that rather than be deprived of an equality of representation in the Legislature he would prefer to be a foreign subject. At this point, Franklin came forward with a proposition of compromise, accompanied by one of his happy illustrations.

The diversity of opinion [he said] turns on two points. If a proportional representation take place, the small States contend that their liberties will be in danger. If an equality of votes is to be put into its place, the larger States say their money will be in danger. When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of the planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint.

He then proposed that all the States should have an equal number of delegates in Congress, and that on all questions affecting the authority or sovereignty of a State, or, when appointments and confirmations were under consideration, every State should have an equal vote, but that on bills to raise or expend money every State should have a vote proportioned to its population. This compromise did not meet with the favor of the smaller States. Under the lead of Dickinson, they still contended for unvarying equality between them and the larger States. At length, a committee was appointed to consider the matter, and to report a compromise, and Franklin was one of its members. It came back with a plan, proposed by his constructive intellect, namely, that, in the Senate, every State should have equal representation, but that, in the other House, every State should have a representation proportioned to its population; and that bills to raise or expend money should originate in the other House. The report of the committee was adopted, and no device of the Constitution has, in practice, more strikingly vindicated the wisdom of the brain by which it was conceived than that hit upon by Franklin for disarming the jealousy and fears of the smaller States represented in the Convention.

He approved the proposed article making the presidential term of office seven years, and declaring its incumbent ineligible for a second term. The sagacity of this conclusion has been confirmed by experience. There was nothing degrading, Franklin thought, in the idea of the magistrate returning to the mass of the people; for in free governments rulers are the servants, and the people are their superiors and sovereigns. The same popular bias manifested itself when the proposition was made to limit the suffrage to freeholders. "It is of great consequence," he said, "that we should not depress the virtue and public spirit of our common people, of which they displayed a great deal during the war, and which contributed principally to the favorable issue of it." The British statute, setting forth the danger of tumultuous meetings, and, under that pretext, narrowing the right of suffrage to persons having freeholds of a certain value, was soon followed, he added, by another, subjecting the people, who had no votes, to peculiar labors and hardships. Some days later, Madison informs us, he expressed his dislike to everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people. If honesty was often the companion of wealth, and, if poverty was exposed to peculiar temptations, it was not less true, he declared, that the possession of property increased the desire for more property. Some of the greatest rogues he was ever acquainted with were the richest rogues. They should remember the character which the Scriptures require in rulers, that they should be men hating covetousness. The Constitution would be much read and attended in Europe, and, if it should betray a great partiality to the rich, would not only cost them the esteem of the most liberal and enlightened men there, but discourage the common people from removing to America.

He strongly favored the clause giving Congress the power to impeach the President. When the head of the government cannot be lawfully called to account, the people have no recourse, he said, against oppression but revolution and assassination. These, it should be recollected, were the utterances of a man who was from age too near the end of political ambition to be possibly influenced by demagogic designs of any sort. Franklin also opposed the idea of conferring an absolute veto upon the President, and the requirement of fourteen years' residence as a condition of citizenship. Four years he believed to be enough. He approved the article making an overt act essential to the crime of treason, and exacting the evidence of two witnesses to establish the overt act.

He also forcibly expressed his views with regard to the respective powers with which the two Houses of Congress should be invested. When the Convention was drawing to a close, he urged its members in a tactful and persuasive speech to lay aside their individual disappointments, and to give their work to the world with the stamp of unanimity. As is well known, when the last members were signing, he looked towards the President's chair, at the back of which there was a representation of a rising sun, and, after observing to some of his associates near him that painters had found it difficult in their art to distinguish a rising from a setting sun, he concluded with this exultant peroration: "I have often and often, in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: but now, at length, I have the happiness to know, that it is a rising and not a setting sun." And a rising sun, indeed, it was, starting out upon its splendid circuit like the sun in the lines of Charles Lamb, "with all his fires and travelling glories round him."

The opinions of Franklin with regard to general political topics are always acute and interesting, and, unlike the opinions of most great men, even the greatest, are rarely, if ever, flecked by the errors of his time. In some quarters, there has been a disposition to reproach him with being an advocate of what since his day has come to be known in the United States as rag or fiat money. The reproach loses sight of the fact that the currency problems, with which he had to deal, did not turn upon the true respective functions of paper and real money, under conditions that permit their application to their several natural and proper uses. No such conditions existed in America during the colonial period or the Revolutionary War. There was no California, Alaska, Nevada, or Colorado then. "Gold and Silver," Franklin said in 1767, in his Remarks and Facts Concerning American Paper Money, "are not the Produce of North-America, which has no Mines."

Every civilized community, unless it is to be remanded to mere barter, must have some kind of convenient medium for the exchange of commodities and the payment of debts, even though it be no better than wampum or tobacco. Paper money, whether it bore interest or not, and whether it was a legal tender or not, was, unsupported by any real provision for its redemption, a dangerous currency for America, in her early history, as it is for any country, whatever its state of maturity; but she had no choice. It was either that or something not even as good on the whole for monetary purposes. Not only were there no gold or silver mines in North America, but the balance of trade between the Colonies and Great Britain was so greatly in favor of the latter country that even such gold and silver coin, as found its way to them, was at once drawn off to her.

However fit [bitterly declared Franklin in the pamphlet, to which we have just referred], a particular Thing may be for a particular Purpose, wherever that Thing is not to be had, or not to be had in sufficient Plenty, it becomes necessary to use something else, the fittest that can be got, in lieu of it.

In America, this undoubtedly was a paper currency, even though issued as real, and not representative, money. At times, in the history of the Colonies, it worked much pecuniary loss and debasement of morals, but, makeshift as it was, it was the best makeshift that the situation of the Colonies allowed; and, when New England petitioned for the Act of Parliament, depriving it of the legal-tender quality within her limits, it was only, Franklin contended, because the close intercourse between the four provinces, of which she was constituted, and the large supply of hard money, derived by her from her whale and cod fisheries, took the sting out of the act. But, when the act was afterwards extended to the other colonies, it became a real grievance, and, as such, was stated by Franklin, in his examination before the House of Commons, to be one of the causes, which had lessened the respect of the Colonies for Parliament. "It seems hard therefore," he said in the paper just mentioned, "to draw all their real Money from them, and then refuse them the poor Privilege of using Paper instead of it." In the same essay, the circumstances, in which the need for a paper currency in the Colonies originated, are stated in his perspicuous manner: "The Truth is, that the Balance of their Trade with Britain being generally against them, the Gold and Silver is drawn out to pay that Balance; and then the Necessity of some Medium of Trade has induced the making of Paper Money, which could not be carried away."

In his capacity as colonial agent, Franklin earnestly strove to secure the repeal of the British legislation, forbidding the use of paper money in the Colonies as a legal tender, and he even enlisted for this purpose the aid of a large body of London merchants, engaged in the American trade, but his efforts met with slight success. Some of the members of the Board of Trade, who had united in recommending the restraint upon colonial paper money, were, it was said, at the time in the state of mind of Soame Jenyns, who had laughingly declared, when he was asked as a member of the Board to concur in some measure, "I have no kind of objection to it, provided we have heretofore signed nothing to the contrary."[45 - This remark brings up in a timely way another member of the Board of Trade, Lord Clare, whose habits were such as to aid us in understanding why the Board did not always retain a clear recollection of its past transactions. Speaking of an interview with him, Franklin wrote to his son: "He gave me a great deal of flummery; saying, that though at my Examination (before the House of Commons) I answered some of his questions a little pertly, yet he liked me, from that day, for the spirit I showed in defence of my country; and at parting, after we had drank a bottle and a half of claret each, he hugged and kissed me, protesting he never in his life met with a man he was so much in love with."] Worse still, Grenville threw out the chilling suggestion in the House of Commons that Great Britain should make the paper money for the Colonies, issue it upon loan there, take the interest and apply it as Parliament might think proper.[46 - The story told by Franklin of a running colloquy between George Grenville, who had on one occasion, as usual, been denouncing the Americans as rebels and Colonel Onslow, a warm friend of America, is good enough to be related. After recalling the Roman practice of sending a commission to a disaffected province for the purpose of investigating the causes of its discontent, Onslow declared his willingness, if the House of Commons should think fit to appoint them, to go over to America with that honorable gentleman. "Upon this there was a great laugh, which continued some time, and was rather increased by Mr. Grenville's asking, 'Will the gentleman engage, that I shall be safe there? Can I be assured that I shall be allowed to come back again to make the report?' As soon as the laugh was so far subsided, as that Mr. Onslow could be heard again, he added: 'I can not absolutely engage for the honorable gentleman's safe return, but if he goes thither upon this service, I am strongly of opinion the event will contribute greatly to the future quiet of both countries.' On which the laugh was renewed and redoubled."] This suggestion, and the interest excited by it led to a letter from Franklin to Galloway in which he said that he was not for applying again very soon for a repeal of the restraining act. "I am afraid," he remarked, "an ill use will be made of it. The plan of our adversaries is to render Assemblies in America useless; and to have a revenue independent of their grants, for all the purposes of their defence, and supporting governments among them."

These comments were followed by the suggestion that the Pennsylvania Assembly might be petitioned by the more prominent citizens of Pennsylvania to authorize a moderate emission of paper money, though without the legal-tender feature; the petition to be accompanied by a mutual engagement upon the part of the petitioners to take the money in all business transactions at rates fixed by law. Or, perhaps, Franklin said, a bank might be established that would meet the currency needs of the community. In any event, should the scarcity of money continue, they would rely more upon their own industrial resources, to the detriment of the British merchant, and by keeping in Pennsylvania the real cash, that came into it, would, in time, have a quantity sufficient for all their occasions. The same thought, tinged with a trace of resentment, emerges in one of his letters to Lord Kames:

As I think a scarcity of money will work with our other present motives for lessening our fond extravagance in the use of the superfluous manufactures of this country, which unkindly grudges us the enjoyment of common rights, and will tend to lead us naturally into industry and frugality, I am grown more indifferent about the repeal of the act, and, if my countrymen will be advised by me, we shall never ask it again.[47 - The principal features of a plan for the issuance of a stable colonial currency proposed by Franklin and Governor Pownall to the British Ministry, in 1764, 1765 and 1766 were these: bills of credit to a certain amount were to be printed in England for the use of the Colonies; and a loan office was to be established in each colony, empowered to issue the bills, take security for their payment and receive payment of them. They were to be paid in full in ten years, and were to bear interest at the rate of five per centum per annum; and one tenth of the principal was to be paid each year with the proper proportion of interest. They were to be a legal tender.]

The relations sustained by Franklin to the Continental paper currency we have already seen. There was an apparent element of inconsistency in his suggestion that it should bear interest; for interest-bearing bills, he had contended in his Remarks and Facts Concerning American Paper Money, were objectionable as currency, because it was tedious to calculate interest on one of them, as often as it changed hands, and also because a distinct advantage was to be gained by hoarding them.

The Continental bills depreciated so rapidly that in 1777 the price of a bushel of salt at Baltimore was nine pounds. Three years later, the price of a yard of cassimere in America was $300, and of a yard of jean and habit cloth $60. Inflated as the bills were, Franklin with his cheerful habit of mind was not at a loss to say a good word for them. There was some advantage to the general public, at any rate, he wrote to Stephen Sayre, in the facility with which taxes could be paid off with the depreciated paper. Congress, he wrote to Dr. Cooper, had blundered in not earlier adopting his suggestion that the interest on the bills should be paid in real money.

The only Remedy now [he said] seems to be a Diminution of the Quantity by a vigourous Taxation, of great nominal Sums, which the People are more able to pay, in proportion to the Quantity and diminished Value; and the only Consolation under the Evil is, that the Publick Debt is proportionably diminish'd with the Depreciation; and this by a kind of imperceptible Tax, everyone having paid a Part of it in the Fall of Value that took place between his receiving and Paying such Sums as pass'd thro' his hands.