In the low country of Virginia, and of the states next south of it, the majority of the inhabitants were bondmen of another race, except where modified by mixture. The course of legislation on their condition will be narrated elsewhere.

Provision was made for reforming the constitutions which were now established. The greatest obstacles were thrown in the way of change in Pennsylvania, where the attempt could be made only once in seven years by the election of a council of censors; the fewest in South Carolina, where the majority of a legislature expressly assumed to itself and its successors original, independent, and final constituent power.

The British parliament, in its bill of rights, had only summed up the liberties that Englishmen in the lapse of centuries had acquired; the Americans opened their career of independence by a declaration of the self-evident rights of man; and this, begun by Virginia, was repeated, with variations, in every constitution formed after independence, except that of South Carolina.

America neither separated abruptly from the past, nor clung to its decaying forms. The principles that gave life to the new institutions did not compel a sudden change of social or political relations; but they were as a light shining more and more into the darkness. In a country which enjoyed freedom of conscience, of inquiry, of speech, of the press, and of government, the universal intuition of truth promised the never-ending progress of reform.

CHAPTER X.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE CAMPAIGN OF 1777. FRANCE, HOLLAND, SPAIN, AND ENGLAND.

DECEMBER 1776-MAY 1777.

WHILE Washington was toiling without reward, a rival in Europe aspired to supersede him. The Count de Broglie, disclaiming the ambition of becoming the sovereign of the United States, insinuated his willingness to be for a period of years its William of Orange, provided he could be assured of a large grant of money before embarkation, an ample revenue, the highest military rank, the direction of foreign relations during his command, and a princely annuity for life after his return. The offer was to have been made through Kalb, the former emissary of Choiseul in the British colonies: the acknowledged poverty of the new republic scattered the great man's short-lived dream; but Kalb, though in his fifty-sixth year, affluent, and happy in his wife and children, remained true to an engagement which, in company with Lafayette, he had taken with Deane to serve as a major-general in the insurgent army. When the American commissioner told Lafayette plainly that the credit of his government was too low to furnish the volunteers a transport, "Then," said the young man, "I will purchase one myself;" and he bought and freighted the Victory, which was to carry him, the veteran Kalb, and twelve other French officers to America. During the weeks of preparation he made a visit to England. nineteen it seemed to him pardonable to be presented to the king against whom he was going to fight; but he declined the king's offer of leave to inspect the British navy yards.

At the age of

On the seventh of December, Franklin reached Nantes, after a stormy passage of thirty days in the Reprisal, during which the ship had been chased by British cruisers, and had taken two British brigantines. As no notice of his mission had preceded him, the story was spread in England that he was a fugitive for safety. "I never will believe," said Edmund Burke, "that he is going to conclude a long life, which has brightened every hour it has continued, with so foul and dishonorable a flight." All Europe inferred that a man of his years and great name would not have crossed the Atlantic but in the assured hope of happy results. The sayings that fell from him at Nantes ran through Paris and France; and on his word the nation eagerly credited what it wished to find true, that not twenty successful campaigns could reduce the Americans; that they would be forever an independent state, and the natural ally of France.

The British ambassador demanded the restoration of the prizes brought in to Nantes with Franklin, arguing that no prize can be a lawful one unless made under the authority of some power, whose existence has been acknowledged by other powers, and evidenced by treaties and alliances. "You cannot expect us," replied Vergennes, "to take upon our shoulders the burden of your war; every wise nation places its chief security in its own vigilance." Stormont complained that French officers were embarking for America. "The French nation,” replied Vergennes, "has a turn for adventure." The ambassador reported how little his remonstrances were heeded. To strike the nation's rival, covertly or openly, was the sentiment of nearly every Frenchman except the king. Artois, the king's second brother, avowed his good-will for the Americans, and longed for a war with England. "We shall be sure to have it," said his younger brother.

Franklin reached Paris on the twenty-first of December. His fame as a philosopher, his unfailing good-humor, the dignity and ease of his manners, the plainness of his dress, his habit of wearing his straight, thin, gray hair without powder, contrary to the fashion of that day in France, acted as a spell. The venerable impersonation of the republics of antiquity seemed to have come to accept the homage of the gay capital.

The national cry was that the cause of the "insurgents," for so they were called, and never rebels, was the cause of all mankind; that they were fighting for the liberty of France in defending their own. Some of the American constitutions, separating the state from the church and establishing freedom of worship, were translated, and read with rapture. The friends of Choiseul clamored that France should use the happy moment to take a lasting revenge on her haughty enemy.

Franklin scattered every discouragement by the hopefulness with which he spoke of the United States. Charles Fox, being in Paris, sought his intimacy. As the aged and the youthful statesmen conversed together on the subject of the war, Franklin called to mind the vain efforts of Christendom, in the days of the crusades, to gain possession of the Holy Land; and foretold that, "in like manner, while Great Britain might carry ruin and destruction into America, its best blood and its treasure would be squandered and thrown away to no manner of purpose."

In the morning of the twenty-eighth the three American commissioners waited by appointment on Vergennes. He assured them protection, received the plan of congress for a treaty with France, and spoke freely to them of the attachment of the French nation to their cause. Prizes taken under the American flag might be brought into French ports, with such precautions as would invalidate complaints from Great Britain. Of Franklin he requested a paper on the condition of America. Their future intercourse he desired might be most strictly secret, without the intervention of any third person; but, as France and Spain were in accord, the commissioners might communicate freely with the Spanish ambassador.

A

The Count de Aranda, then fifty-eight years old, was of the grandees of Aragon; by nature proud, impetuous, restless, and obstinate; of undisciplined temper and ungenial manners. soldier in early life, he had been attracted to Prussia by the fame of Frederic; he admired Voltaire, Alembert, and Rousseau; and in France he was honored for his superiority to superstition. His haughty self-dependence and force of will fitted him for the service of Charles III. in driving the Jesuits from Spain. As an administrative reformer, he began too

vehemently; thwarted by the stiff formalities of officials and

the jealousies of the clerical party, he withdrew from court to fill the embassy at Paris. There he soon became eager to resume active employment. Devoted to the French alliance, he longed to see France and Spain inflict a mortal blow on the power of England; but he was a daring schemer and bad calculator; and, on much of the business of Spain with France relating to America, he was not consulted. On the twentyninth of December 1776, and again six days later, he held secret interviews with the American commissioners. He could only promise American privateers and their prizes the security in Spanish ports which they found in those of France.

On the fifth of January the commissioners presented to Vergennes a written request for eight ships of the line, ammunition, brass field-pieces, and twenty or thirty thousand muskets. Their reasoning was addressed alike to France and Spain: "The interest of the three nations is the same; the opportunity now presents itself of securing a commerce which in time will be immense; delay may be attended with fatal consequences." At Versailles the petition was brought before the king, in the presence of Maurepas; and, on the thirteenth, Conrad Alexander Gerard, one of the ablest secretaries of Vergennes, meeting the commissioners by night, at a private house in Paris, read to them the careful answer which had received the royal sanction. The king could as yet furnish the Americans neither ships nor convoys. "Time and events must be waited for, and provision made to profit by them. The United Provinces," so the new republic was styled, "may be assured that neither France nor Spain will make them any overture that can in the least interfere with their essential interests. The commercial facilities afforded in the ports of France and Spain, and the tacit diversion of the two powers whose expensive armaments oblige England to divide her efforts, manifest the interest of the two crowns in the success of the Americans. The king will not incommode them in deriving resources from the commerce of his kingdom, confident that they will conform to the rules prescribed by the precise and rigorous meaning of existing treaties, of which the two monarchs are exact observers. Unable to enter into the VOL. V.-9