Volume Ii Part 17 (2/2)
he observes in his Diary. On another occasion, when Arthur Lee suggested that the papers of the mission should be kept in a room in his own house, Adams objected for the reason, among others, that nine tenths of the public letters would ever be carried where Dr. Franklin was. These were but temporary reactions. When down, the vanity of Adams was soon on its legs again. The reminder given by Vergennes to the officious, tactless reasonings and strictures, to which he was subjected by Adams, that Franklin was the sole American plenipotentiary in France, and the steps that the latter was compelled to take, both by the request of Vergennes and his own sense of the peril, that such injudicious conduct on the part of Adams signified to the American cause, to smooth over the rupture, sent Adams off to Holland in a resentful but subdued state of mind. But his success in negotiating a loan in Holland and the prospect of engaging in a matter of such supreme importance as the final negotiations for peace lifted him up to giddy heights of intoxicated self-importance again.
Referring to the loan in his Diary, he says: ”The compliment of _Monsieur_, _Vous etes le Was.h.i.+ngton de la negociation_ (Sir, you are the Was.h.i.+ngton of the negotiation) was repeated to me by more than one person.... A few of these compliments would kill Franklin if they should come to his ears.” His observations in his Diary on Jay and Franklin, when he came over to France to partic.i.p.ate with them in the final negotiations for peace, are equally characteristic. ”Between two as subtle spirits as any in this world, the one malicious, the other, I think honest, I shall have a delicate, a nice, a critical part to act. Franklin's cunning will be to divide us; to this end he will provoke, he will insinuate, he will intrigue, he will manoeuvre. My curiosity will at least be employed in observing his invention and his artifice.”
[34] ”I think,” said Franklin in a letter to Charles W. F. Dumas, in 1778, ”that a young State like a young Virgin, should modestly stay at home, & wait the Application of Suitors for an Alliance with her; and not run about offering her Amity to all the World; and hazarding their Refusal.” ”Our Virgin,” he added a line or so later, ”is a jolly one; and tho. at present not very rich, Will in time be a great Fortune.”
[35] Franklin was entirely cognizant of the motive by which Lee was influenced. Referring in a letter to Thomas Cus.h.i.+ng, dated July 7, 1773, to censure with which he had been visited for supposed neglect in not sending earlier intelligence to Ma.s.sachusetts of certain English measures affecting her welfare, he said, ”This Censure, tho. grievous, does not so much surprize me, as I apprehended from the Beginning, that between the Friends of an old Agent, my Predecessor, who thought himself hardly us'd in his Dismission, and those of a young one impatient for the Succession, my situation was not likely to be a very comfortable one, as my Faults could scarce pa.s.s un.o.bserved.”
[36] On one occasion this expression gave rise to an incident that is worth recalling. We tell it as it is told by Parton. A large cake was sent to the apartment in which the envoys were a.s.sembled, bearing this inscription: _Le digne Franklin_--the worthy Franklin. Upon reading the inscription, Mr.
Deane said: ”As usual, Doctor, we have to thank you for our accommodation, and to appropriate your present to our joint use.” ”Not at all,” said Franklin, ”this must be intended for all the Commissioners; only these French people can not write English. They mean no doubt, Lee, Deane, Franklin.” ”That might answer,” remarked the magnanimous Lee, ”but we know that whenever they remember us at all they always put you first.”
[37] ”It must,” Adams says in his letter to the Boston _Patriot_ of Aug.
21, 1811, with the whiff of bombast that is wafted to us from so many of his vigorous and vivid utterances, ”suffice to say that Mr. Izard, with a fund of honor, integrity, candor and benevolence in his character, which must render him eternally estimable in the sight of all moral and social beings, was, nevertheless, the most pa.s.sionate, and in his pa.s.sions the most violent and unbridled in his expressions, of any man I ever knew.”
[38] In the latter part of his life, it must have severely taxed the memory of Franklin to recollect all the honors paid to him by educational inst.i.tutions and learned societies of one kind or another. The honorary degree of Master of Arts was conferred on him in July, 1753, by Harvard College, and in September of the same year by Yale College. In April, 1756, the degree of Master of Arts was bestowed on him by William and Mary College. In 1759, he received the degree of Doctor in Laws from the University of St. Andrews, and in 1762, he was made a Doctor of Civil Laws by the University of Oxford. At various times in his life, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an Honorary Fellow of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, a member of the Royal Society of London, one of the eight foreign a.s.sociates of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, an honorary member of the Medical Society of London, the first foreign a.s.sociate of the Royal Society of Medicine at Paris, and a member of other learned societies or academies at Padua, Turin, Orleans, Madrid, Rotterdam, Gottingen and elsewhere.
[39] ”It would be difficult,” says Count Segur, ”to describe the eagerness and delight with which the American envoys, the agents of a people in a state of insurrection against their monarch, were received in France, in the bosom of an ancient monarchy. Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between the luxury of our capital, the elegance of our fas.h.i.+ons, the magnificence of Versailles, the still brilliant remains of the monarchical pride of Louis XIV., and the polished and superb dignity of our n.o.bility on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the almost rustic apparel, the plain but firm demeanor, the free and direct language of the envoys, whose antique simplicity of dress and appearance seemed to have introduced within our walls, in the midst of the effeminate and servile refinement of the eighteenth century, some sages contemporary with Plato, or republicans of the age of Cato and of Fabius. This unexpected apparition produced upon us a greater effect in consequence of its novelty, and of its occurring precisely at the period when literature and philosophy had circulated amongst us an unusual desire for reforms, a disposition to encourage innovations, and the seeds of an ardent attachment to liberty.”
[40] Compa.s.sion, it must be confessed, was not the only motive that made Franklin so eager to secure the freedom of his imprisoned countrymen. ”If we once had our Prisoners from England,” he wrote to M. de Sartine on Feb.
13, 1780, ”several other privateers would immediately be manned with them.”
[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.”
[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 Amba.s.sador 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.”
[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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 circ.u.mstances 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.
[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 Const.i.tution, 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 Const.i.tution 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 a.s.sembly should no longer consist of a single chamber but of an Upper House based on property and a Lower House based on population.
[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.”
[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 a.s.sured 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.”
[47] The princ.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.al was to be paid each year with the proper proportion of interest. They were to be a legal tender.
[48] ”Here in England,” Franklin wrote to Humphrey Marshall on Apr. 22, 1771, ”it is well known and understood, that whenever a Manufacture is established which employs a Number of Hands, it raises the Value of Lands in the neighbouring Country all around it; partly by the greater Demand near at hand for the produce of the Land; and partly from the Plenty of Money drawn by the Manufacturers to that part of the Country. It seems therefore the Interest of all our Farmers and Owners of Lands, to encourage our Young Manufactures in preference to foreign ones imported among us from distant Countries.”
[49]
The patriot, fresh from Freedom's Councils come, Now pleas'd retires to lash his slaves at home; Or woo, perhaps, some black Aspasia's charms, And dream of freedom in his bondsmaid's arms.
To Thomas Hume, Esq., M.D.
From the City of Was.h.i.+ngton.
[50] By his will Franklin released his son-in-law from the payment of a bond for 2172, 5s, with the request that he would immediately after the death of the testator set free ”his negro man Bob.”
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