372

FRANKLIN DISPATCHED TO PARIS.

[1776. encountered three British regiments and three troops of light horse marching to join Cornwallis. The 17th regiment cut its way through the American columns; the 40th and 55th were driven back to Brunswick, with the loss of three hundred prisoners. Washington was unable to follow up his advantage, for his men were exhausted by fatigue and hunger. He took up a position on the hills; and his well-timed success brought him large reinforcements, with which he held Jersey, which a month before was in the possession of the British. Washington's second campaign, although marked by great reverses— some of which the candid soldier attributed to his own inexperience—must have shown the British commanders that they were opposed by no common man ; that in courage, endurance, and vigilance, this gentleman of Virginia was equalled by few whose military training had been more regular and complete. It was clear that Congress had found the right man for command. It was more than probable that if there had been no such man the event of the war would have been very different.

When lord Howe arrived off New York in July, he addressed a kind letter to Dr. Franklin as "his worthy friend," to inform him that he was sent on a mission which would be explained by the official dispatches that he forwarded at the same time. Franklin replied in a like spirit of former friendship; but said, as the dispatches only showed that lord Howe was to offer pardon upon submission, he was sure it must give his lordship pain to be sent so far upon so hopeless a business.* In September, lord Howe arranged with general Sullivan, a prisoner of war, to proceed to Congress upon his parole, to inform them that although he could not treat with that Assembly as a body, he was desirous of having a conference with some of the members. Franklin, with John Adams and Edward Rutledge, had accordingly a meeting with lord Howe; but the conference was quickly broken off when the British Commissioner was informed that the United Colonies could only treat for peace as free and independent States. Franklin was now dispatched upon a more hopeful negotiation. He was to join Silas Deane in Paris; and these two, with Arthur Lee, were appointed as Commissioners to take charge of the American affairs in Europe, and to endeavour to procure a treaty of alliance with the court of France. At the beginning of November Franklin left America. On the 8th of December he had landed in France, and wrote from Nantes to the President of Congress. He says, "I understand that Mr. Lee has lately been at Paris, that Mr. Deane is still there, and that an underhand supply is obtained from the government of two hundred brass field-pieces, thirty thousand firelocks, and some other military stores, which are now shipping for America, and will be conveyed by a ship of war."+ From this period the French government is to be traced in many other "underhand" proceedings, hostile to England. On the 31st of October, in the debate on the Address at the opening of the Session, lord North and lord George Germaine expressed their reliance on the assurances of the pacific intentions of France. Franklin and Lee, early in January, saw the count de Vergennes, the French minister for foreign affairs, who received their memorial; and told them that the French and Spanish courts would act in perfect concert.

These Letters are in the "Annual Register" for 1777 + Franklin's Works, vol. viii. p. 191.

1776.]

UNDERHAND PROCEEDINGS OF FRANCE.

66

373

"Their fleets," Franklin writes, "are said to be in fine order, manned and fit for sea. The cry of this nation is for us; but the court, it is thought, views an approaching war with reluctance." Franklin, in Paris, was in a singular position to form a just estimate of "the cry of this nation." He writes to a lady in England, "Figure to yourself an old man, with gray hair appearing under a martin-fur cap, among the powdered heads of Paris." He looked with wonder upon the ladies at a ball in Nantes, with head-dresses five lengths of the face above the top of the forehead. At court the mode was less extravagant : We dined at the duke de Rochefoucauld's, where there were three duchesses and a countess, and no heads higher than a face and a half."* Schlosser, a German historian, has described Franklin's appearance in the Paris salons: "The admiration of Franklin, carried to a degree approaching folly, produced a remarkable effect on the fashionable circles of Paris. His dress, the simplicity of his external appearance, the friendly meekness of the old man, and the apparent humility of the Quaker, procured for freedom a mass of votaries among the court circles, who used to be alarmed at its coarseness and unsophisticated truths."+ During several years, when he resided at Passy, a village about three miles from Paris, the shrewd old man in the fur cap was a constant visitor in the highest society. To his exertions is to be chiefly attributed the eagerness with which the aristocracy embraced those vague notions of freedom which, misunderstood and exaggerated, were to become their own destruction.

In the letters of Franklin there is no allusion to a very remarkable series of occurrences in England in which his coadjutor, Mr. Silas Deane, was asserted to have been mixed up in a manner disgraceful to his character. On the 7th of December, 1776, the rope-house of the dockyard at Portsmouth was burnt down. With difficulty the flames were prevented from reaching other buildings. The fire was considered accidental, until, on the 15th of January, 1777, a quantity of combustibles were found in the hemp-house of the same yard. About this period an incendiary attempt was also made upon the docks at Plymouth, and then some warehouses were set on fire upon the quay at Bristol, with an evident design to burn the shipping lying alongside. Suspicion at length fell upon a man who had been seen lurking about the dockyard at Portsmouth, on the day of the fire, who was known to some persons as John the Painter. He was apprehended at Odiham early in February; and having been induced to confide in another painter, who was permitted to visit him, be at length revealed to his supposed friend the transactions in which he had been engaged. The incendiary's real name was Aitken; his native place Edinburgh; he had been in America three years, and had returned from France a short time before these fires broke out. In March he was brought to trial at the Winchester Assizes, and then, to his surprise, his confidential friend came forward as evidence against him. This suspicious testimony was, however, confirmed by a variety of circumstances proved by other witnesses; and John the Painter paid the penalty of his crimes. His own confession, of which the following is the substance, removed every possible doubt of his guilt. After his return from America he followed

"Works," vol. viii. p. 195 and 197.

+ Quoted in "Life of Steuben," p. 89. New York. 1859.

374

JOHN THE PAINTER, THE INCENDIARY.

[1777.

the trade of a painter at Birmingham, and also at Titchfield, in Hampshire. Here he conceived the first idea of setting fire to the dockyards. He went to France, and applied to Mr. Silas Deane, who told him, when the work was done, he should be rewarded. On his return to England, and after setting fire to the rope-yard at Portsmouth, he went to London, and waited on Dr. Bancroft, to whom he had a verbal recommendation from Mr. Deane; but the doctor gave him no countenance. He afterwards wrote to Bancroft, and the day following met him at the Salopian coffee-house, and told him he would do. all the prejudice he could to this kingdom; but the doctor not approving of his conduct, he took his leave, hoping that the doctor would not inform against him, to which the doctor said, he did not like to inform against any man. At Plymouth, he twice attempted to set fire to the dockyard, and twice reached the top of the wall for that purpose; but the watchman being within hearing, he desisted. He then went to Bristol, where he attempted to set fire to the shipping in the harbour, and afterwards set fire to a warehouse in Quay-lane. These details are given in the Annual Register for 1777, so that Silas Deane had ample opportunity to deny the charges under which he laboured. Dr. Bancroft, an American by birth, was settled as a physician in London, and was favourably known as a man of science and an author. Silas Deane was instructed by the Committee of Secret Correspondence of Congress to communicate with Dr. Bancroft, who could give him a good deal of information about what was going on in England. He saw Deane in Paris, where he remained several months. "He then returned to London," says Mr. Jared Sparks, "and being attached to the interests of the United States, he rendered some valuable assistance to the American agents and ministers in Europe."*

Great Britain, at this period, was ill-prepared for a naval war. Her system of manning the navy was as inefficient as it was disgraceful to a country calling itself free. And yet, like many other evil things, it was long held essential to the safety of the nation. On the 11th of March, Mr. Temple Luttrell proposed to the House of Commons a measure for the more easy and effectual manning of the navy. In describing the horrors of impressment, he showed the tumults, fear, and confusion which arose in every town and village within ten or twelve miles of a press-gang. labourers were so terrified by a press-gang at Tadcaster, that they fled from In Yorkshire the their work like a covey of partridges. In the West of England the fishermen had deserted the coasts, and their families were reduced to poverty. Seamen had been drowned in attempting to swim from their ships to the shore, or were shot by the sentinels. Some committed suicide; some mutilated themselves. In the impress-tenders, where captive seamen were thrust together, fevers and other contagious diseases broke out. The guard-ship at the Nore was a seminary of contagion to the whole fleet. The inefficiency of the system was shown to be as palpable as its cruelty. In 1770, during five months when press warrants were in execution through the kingdom, only eight thousand persons could be added to the navy, although the refuse of the jails, and the outcasts of every town and hamlet, were of the number. The motion was of course negatived by a large majority. Any system of

Franklin's Works, vol. viii. Note on p. 266.

1777.]

MANNING THE NAVY-DEFENCES OF THE COUNTRY.

375

rational expenditure for the defence of the country was constantly opposed by the jobbers in parliament. A plan of registry for seamen, and of bounties for enlistment, was rejected for that plan of brute force which was far more costly, and made the naval service so hateful that not a ship of the line in commission was properly manned. "You have a goodly show of pendants and streamers waving at Spithead," said Mr. Luttrell," but so far are they from being formidable, as their appearance bespeaks, that your ships hardly ride secure against the equinoctial gales of the present,season, much less are they in any condition to put to sea, and bid defiance to an enemy.' The coast defences were so neglected as to leave England equally exposed to attack. Marshal Conway writes in 1774: "The most important places in the English dominions are either left quite defenceless, or such scanty provision made, from the horror of expense, as will neither give security to the objects concerned, nor do honour to those who have the conduct of the works. I speak feelingly, when I consider that even Portsmouth is in this case."t Looking back upon many such instances of the neglect of the commonest means of national preservation, we can scarcely regard our country in any other light than as an energetic man, who, by the inherent vigour of his constitution, has survived the cruelty and folly of the silly nurses of his childhood, of the ignorant quacks who were the torment of his youth, and of the venal guardians who starved him in his adult age.

On the 28th of May, lord Camden acquainted the House of Lords that the earl of Chatham intended to move the consideration of the American war on the 30th. Two years had elapsed since Chatham had made his ap pearance in public. These were days of suffering and solitude. On the 17th of November, 1776, lady Chatham transmitted to Dr. Addington, “a Memorandum of that declaration concerning America which, from his confidence in your experienced friendship, he reposed, last July, in your breast." The memorandum, "expressed with due precision, and in the exact terms," in the hand-writing of lady Chatham, is a document of singular interest. It set forth, "That he continued in the same sentiments, with regard to America, which he had always professed, and which stand so fully explained in the Provisional Act offered by him to the House of Lords. Confiding in the friendship of Dr. Addington, he requested of him to preserve this in memory; that in case he should not recover from the long illness under which he laboured, the doctor might be enabled to do him justice, by bearing testimony that he persevered unshaken in the same opinions. To this he added, that unless effectual measures were speedily taken for reconciliation with the colonies, he was fully persuaded that, in a very few years, France will set her foot on English ground. That, in the present moment, her policy may probably be to wait some time, in order to see England more deeply engaged in this ruinous war, against herself, in America, as well as to prove how far the Americans, abetted by France indirectly only, may be able to make a stand, before she takes an open part by declaring war upon England." The great statesman did recover for a short period. The sensation his appearance produced is forcibly described in the speech of

"Parliamentary Debates," vol. xix. col. 89.

+ Unpublished Collection of Letters.

"Chatham Correspondence," vol. iv. p. 423.

376

CHATHAM APPEARS AGAIN IN PARLIAMENT.

[1777. the duke of Grafton on that occasion. After Chatham had spoken, the duke congratulated the House and the nation upon the evidence that the people retained a grateful sense of the high obligation they owed to the great man who had returned to his duty in parliament. The space before the bar, he said, was filled by gentlemen of all parties; the avenues of the house were so crowded as not to leave room for the peers to come to their seats. Swathed in flannel, and tottering on his crutch, Chatham had passed through this admiring crowd, and not a sound was heard as that inelodious voice, a little enfeebled, again charmed every listener. His speech is imperfectly reported; but a few passages show how the pristine vigour of his intellect survived his bodily infirmities: "America has carried you through four wars, and will now carry you to your death, if you don't take things in time. In the sportsman's phrase, when you have found yourselves at fault, you must try back. You have ransacked every corner of Lower Saxony; but forty thousand German boors never can conquer ten times the number of British freemen. You may ravage-you can not conquer; it is impossible: you can not conquer the Americans. You talk, my lords, of your numerous friends among them to annihilate the Congress, and of your powerful forces to disperse their army. I might as well talk of driving them before me with this crutch! . . . . You have been three years teaching them the art of war; they are apt scholars; and I will venture to tell your lordships that the American gentry will make officers enough, fit to command the troops of all the European powers. What you have sent there are too many to make peace-too few to make war. If you conquer them, what then? You cannot make them respect you; you cannot make them wear your cloth; you will plant an invincible hatred in their breasts against you. Coming from the stock they do, they can never respect you." The motion of Chatham was for an humble Address to the king, to advise his majesty to take the most speedy and effectual measures for putting a stop to such fatal hostilities. The motion was lost by a majority of 76 against 26. The king wrote this note the next day to lord North :-"Lord Chatham's motion can have no other use but to convey some fresh fuel to the rebels. Like most of the other productions of that most extraordinary brain, it contains nothing but specious words and malevolence."

Lord Chatham, in his declaration to his physician, conjectured rightly that France would abet the Americans indirectly only till they were able to make a stand; after which she would declare open war against England. In May, 1777, Von Steuben, who had been aide-de-camp to Frederick of Prussia, went to Paris; and had various interviews with the count de St. Germain, secretary-at-war, and with the count de Vergennes, the minister of foreign affairs. The German was sent for by St. Germain, who, spreading a map upon the the table, and pointing to America, said "Here is your field of battle; here is a republic which you must serve." Steuben was told that the Congress and the commander-in-chief wanted an officer of military experience, who would bring their army into a regular and permanent formation. He was referred to Beaumarchais, the author of Figaro, who made him acquainted with Silas Deane, and Deane introduced him to Franklin. The wary American would make no promises about money payments; but talked about presenting him with two thousand acres of land. Steuben did not relish