Volume Ii Part 14 (2/2)

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 d.i.c.kinson 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 att.i.tude 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, friends.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances were these. One morning, a lengthy letter was thrown into a window of Franklin's residence at Pa.s.sy, written in English, dated at Brussels, and signed Charles de Weissenstein. The letter conjured Franklin in the name of the Just and Omniscient G.o.d, 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 t.i.tles 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, Was.h.i.+ngton, Adams, Hanc.o.c.k 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._ Was.h.i.+ngton was to have immediately a brevet of lieutenant-general, and all the honors and precedence incident thereto, but was not to a.s.sume 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 a.s.sailing 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 G.o.d! 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 s.h.i.+pley. 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 ent.i.tled _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 p.r.o.nounce, 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 const.i.tutions of the Islands should remain intact, but that, on every occasion, requiring acts for the general good, there should be an a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembly of the Islands, and a proportionable number of Islanders should sit with the like power in the a.s.sembly at Athens. The whole reminds the reader of the cla.s.sical fictions to which the first Parliamentary reporters were driven by press censors.h.i.+p. 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]

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 Was.h.i.+ngton; 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] 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 fas.h.i.+oned of ign.o.ble 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 a.s.sumed 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 circ.u.mstances. And, even after this crisis had pa.s.sed, 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 princ.i.p.als 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 friends.h.i.+p of an ally which had not only aided the United States with soldiers, s.h.i.+ps 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 compa.s.s 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 statesmans.h.i.+p 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.

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