The disfranchisement of Protestants already began to be modified: the office of comptroller-general, of which the incumbent was required to take an oath to support the Catholic religion, was abolished; and, on the second of July, the Calvinist Necker, a rich Parisian banker, by birth a republican of Geneva, the defender of the protective system against Turgot, after a novitiate as an assistant, was created director-general of the finances, but without a seat in the cabinet. The king consented because he was told that the welfare of France required the appointment; Maurepas was pleased, for he feared no rivalry from a Protestant alien.

The king "would break out into a passion whenever he heard of help furnished to the Americans," but he could not suppress the enthusiasm of the French nation. After a stay of three weeks on the north side of the channel, Lafayette, with Kalb as his companion, travelled from Paris by way of Bordeaux to the Spanish port of Los Pasages. There he received the order of the king to give up his expedition; but, after some vacillation and a run to Bordeaux and back, he braved the order, and, on the twenty-sixth of April, embarked for America. The English lay in wait for him. To his wife he wrote while at sea: "From love to me become a good American; the welfare of America is closely bound up with the welfare of all mankind; it is about to become the safe asylum of virtue, tolerance, equality, and peaceful liberty." The queen of France applauded his heroism; public opinion extolled "his strong enthusiasm in a good cause;" the indifferent spoke of his conduct as "a brilliant folly." "The same folly," said Vergennes, "has turned the heads of our young people."

He was followed by Casimir Pulaski, a Polish nobleman, illustrious for his virtues and misfortunes. In the war for the independence of his native land he lost his father and his brothers. After his attempt to carry off the king of Poland, his property was confiscated, and he was sentenced to outlawry and death. He was living in exile at Marseilles, in the utmost destitution, under an adopted name, when, through Rulhière, the historian of Poland, Vergennes paid his debts and recommended him to Franklin, who gave him a conveyance to the

United States, and explained to congress how much he had done for the freedom of Poland. Stormont called him "an assassin," as he had called the American deputies malefactors that deserved the gallows.

In April and May, Joseph II. of Austria passed six weeks at Paris, in the hope of winning the consent of France to his inheriting Bavaria. In conversation he was either silent on American affairs, or took the side which was very unpopular in the French capital, excusing himself to the duchess of Bourbon by saying: "I am a king by trade;" nor would he permit a visit from Franklin and Deane, or even consent to meet them in his walks; though from the Abbé Niccoli, the Tuscan minister, who was a zealous abettor of the insurgents, he received a paper justifying their conduct and explaining their resources.

Ships were continually leaving the ports of France for the United States, laden with all that they most needed, and American trading-vessels were received and protected. When Stormont remonstrated, a ship bound for America would be stopped, and, if warlike stores were found on board, would be compelled to unload them; but presently the ship would take in its cargo and set sail, and the ever-renewed complaints of the English ambassador would be put aside by the quiet earnestness of Vergennes and the polished levity of Maurepas.

The Reprisal, after replenishing its stores at Nantes, still cruised off the French coast, and its five new prizes, one of which was the royal packet between Lisbon and Falmouth, were unmoored in the harbor of L'Orient. Stormont hurried to Vergennes to demand that the captive ships, with their crews and cargoes, should be delivered up. "You come too late," said Vergennes; "orders have already been sent that the American ship and her prizes must instantly put to sea." The Reprisal continued its depredations till midsummer, when it was caught by the British; but, before its capture, two other privateers were suffered to use French harbors as their base. Stormont remonstrated incessantly, and sometimes with passion; but the English ministers were engaged in a desperate effort to reduce their former colonies in one campaign, and avoided an immediate rupture. France always expressed the

purpose to conform to treaties, and England would never enumerate the treaties which she wished to be considered as still in force. Vergennes, though in the presence of Lord Stormont he incidentally called America a republic, did not as yet recognise the Americans as a belligerent power; but, viewing the colonies as a part of the British dominions, threw upon England the burden of maintaining her own municipal laws. England claimed that France should shut her harbors against American privateers; and Vergennes professed to admit them only when in distress, and to drive them forth without delay. England insisted that no arms or munitions of war should be exported to America, or to ports to which Americans could conveniently repair for a supply; Vergennes represented the Americans and their friends as escaping his vigilance. England was uneasy at the presence of American commissioners in Paris; Vergennes compared the house of a minister to a church which any one might enter, but with no certainty that his prayers would be heard. England claimed the right of search; Vergennes demurred to its exercise in mid-ocean. England seized and confiscated American property wherever found; France held that on the high seas American property laden in French ships was inviolable. England delayed its declaration of war from motives of convenience; France knew that war was imminent and prepared for it with diligence.

France preferred to act in concert with Spain, which, by its advanced position on the Atlantic, seemed destined to be the great ocean power of Europe, and which, more than any other kingdom, dreaded colonial independence. One of its own poets, using the language of imperial Rome, had foretold the discovery of the western world; its ships first entered the harbors of the New Indies, first broke into the Pacific, first went round the earth; Spanish cavaliers excelled all others as explorers of unknown realms, and, at their own cost, conquered for their sovereigns almost a hemisphere. After a long period of decline this proud and earnest people, formed out of the most cultivated races and nations-Aryan and Semitic, Iberians, Celts, Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals crossed with Slavonian blood, Germans, and Saracens, counting among its great men Seneca and Trajan, Averrhoes and the Cid, Cervantes

and Velasquez, devout even to bigotry in its land of churches, the most imaginative and poetic among the nations—was seen to be entering on a career of improvement. Rousseau contemplated its promise with extravagant hope; Alembert predicted its recovery of a high position among the powers of the world; Frederic of Prussia envied its sovereign, for the delights of its climate, and the opportunity offered to its ruler to renew its greatness.

The grandson of Louis XIV. of France, Charles III., who in 1777 held the sceptre in Spain, was the best of the Spanish Bourbons. The degeneracy of his immediate successors led Spanish historians to dwell on his memory with affection. He was of a merciful disposition, and meant well for the land he ruled; he asserted the principle of the absolute and inviolable right of a king against the pope; and in its defence he had exiled the Jesuits and demanded of the pope the abolition of their order. Yet, under the influence of his confessor, a monk of the worst type, he restored vitality to the inquisition, suffered it to publish the papal bull which granted it unlimited jurisdiction, and declared that "he would have delivered up to its tribunal his own son." He stood in need of a powerful ally; between the peoples of France and Spain there was no affection; so, in August 1761, a family compact was established between their kings. In forming this alliance, the agents of the Spanish branch were Wall, an Irish adventurer, and Grimaldi from Italy.

It seemed the dawn of better days for Spain when, in February 1777, the universal popular hatred, quickened by the shameful failure of the expedition against Algiers, drove Grimaldi from the ministry and from the country. On the eighteenth he was succeeded by Don Jose Moniño, Count de Florida Blanca. For the first time for more than twenty years Spain obtained a ministry composed wholly of Spaniards; and, for the first time since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, a Spanish policy began to be formed.

The new minister, son of a provincial notary, had been carefully educated; following his father's profession, he became one of the ablest advocates of his day and attained administrative distinction. In March 1772, he went as am

bassador to Rome, where by his influence Cardinal Ganganelli was elected pope, and the order of the Jesuits was abolished. He, too, controlled the choice of Ganganelli's successor. Now forty-six years old, esteemed for strong good sense and extensive information, for prudence, personal probity, and honest intentions, he was bent upon enlarging the commerce of Spain and making the kingdom respected. A devoted Catholic, he was equally "a good defender of regality;" he restrained the exorbitant claims of the church, and was no friend to the inquisition. Given to reflection, and naturally slow of decision, he was cold and excessively reserved; a man of few words, but those words were to the purpose. Feebleness of health unfitted him for indefatigable labor, and was perhaps one of the causes why he could not bear contradiction, nor even hear a discussion without fretting himself into a passion. To his intercourse with foreign powers he brought duplicity and cunning; he professed the greatest regard for the interests and welfare of France; but his heart was the heart of a Spaniard. In his manners he was awkward and ill at ease. He spoke French with difficulty. With the vanity of a man of considerable powers, who from a humble station had reached the highest under the king, he clung to office with tenacity; and, from his character and unfailing subservience, his supremacy continued to the end of the reign of Charles III.

His ablest colleague was Galvez, the minister for the Indies —that is, for the colonies. Like Florida Blanca, he had been taken from the class of advocates. A mission to Mexico had made him familiar with the business of his department, to which he brought honesty and laborious habits, a lingering prejudice in favor of commercial monopoly, and the purpose to make the Spanish colonies self-supporting both for production and defence.

Florida Blanca was met by the question of the aspect of the American revolution on the interests of Spain; and, as Arthur Lee was on his way to Madrid, as envoy of the United States, it seemed to demand an immediate solution. The king would not sanction a rebellion of subjects against their sovereign, nor, with his vast dominions in America, could he concede the right of colonies to claim independence.