which might be going forward, was pretty sure to come speedily into constant play when he found himself placed beside such an overshadowing colleague as Dr Franklin, among such a people as the French. Nevertheless, Franklin was not the chief mark of his malice during 'Seventy-Seven: Silas Deane occupied his thoughts and his pen at that time. But when he had accomplished the destruction of that victim (who was recalled at the beginning of the following year, to be treated by Congress with an injustice which practically unsettled his wits, and caused him to abjure his country), then Arthur Lee permitted his mind to settle upon Franklin. It was very bad for his mind. For the task of subverting such a man was a long task, and the effort was, in effect, futile; so that what with the glooms of disappointment, and an almost hysterical exacerbation of animosity, which the long obsession had created, Arthur Lee makes his exit from Europe in the condition of a quite presentable and welldressed monomaniac, but a monomaniac all the same. But in the interval he was able to do a vast amount of mischief, and to create an atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty, an atmosphere of conflict and cabal, in the midst of which Franklin had to keep his patience and serve his country as best he could. His country in the meanwhile, as he was perfectly aware, was well on the way, at any moment, to treat him as unjustly as it had treated the luckless Deane; so consistently and continuously did the wretched Lee send his official packets full of insinuation, and his private letters full of lies, across the Atlantic. For Lee could command a powerful interest there; and for his policy of thwarting and stinging and teasing, he had the support in Paris of his brother, William Lee, and his melodramatic crony, Ralph Izard, both members of legation.

Such men are, in the literal sense of a valuable and misused phrase, not worth a damn, so we need not damn them. But the attention would not be altogether wasted on a much better man, Mr John Adams. That is a name for which Americans have a respect, but which it is permitted to a British person who is, anyhow, more interested in Franklin, to regard with some dislike and contempt. A perception of the good points of Mr Adams lessens the dislike, but rather increases the contempt: for such a man ought to have known better. At any rate, when John Adams -the strong and honest John Adams, second President of the United States-came to Paris in the spring of 1778, taking the place of Deane, he fairly threw himself into the arms of the Lee coterie, and, without directly countenancing the extravagancies of Lee himself, yet took up an attitude of ill-disposition towards Franklin, which was an invaluable support to those weak-minded malcontents. For this unfortunate and dishonouring attitude of Adams towards his great countryman, Lee is largely to blame, since he "initiated " his new colleague to such effect, that it took Adams, working hard at the accounts and the general state of things, the better part of a year to unlearn what he had been taught, upon his arrival, in a few conversations or a short course of hints. the bulk of the blame must fall directly on Adams himself, for the root of the evil was in his own nature. His vice was the vice of Arthur Lee, with a personal difference. Arthur Lee was suspicious and also jealous; John Adams was jealous, morbidly jealous, and only rarely, and as a consequence, suspicious. He was jealous of the greatness, the importance, of other men. On that account he was jealous of Washington, of Hamilton, and of Franklin; and years after all three were dead he

But

would become almost furious at the mention of their names, or at the citation of an opinion of theirs, though it were in his own praise. Of course he did not arrive at that stage in a day; but even for the John Adams of 1778, France was not the proper place, nor Franklin-"the illustrious Dr Franklin!" -the most fortunate colleague. Not to linger over the matter, let me merely say that this covert ill-will of Adams, as yet not very definite nor very hearty,1

1 That came later; but as I shall not be able to find room in the text for the train of minor events out of which Mr Adams's more confirmed animosity arose, I may refer to the matter here.

Upon the Joint Commission being dissolved, Adams returned to America in the spring of 1779. But by next February he was back in Europe, having been sent thither by Congress, somewhat prematurely, in the capacity of a Peace Commissioner. De Vergennes, who had not much liking for Mr Adams, yet wished to make the best of him, and showed him a great deal of civility upon his return, and invited him to communicate from time to time. Very pleased with himself thereat was Mr Adams; and being pleased, became fatuous, and went headlong. That is, he fell into a way of communicating his views, generally on affairs that were not within his province, in very long letters to de Vergennes, too often, and for insufficient reasons. He argued with this great man of affairs about things that did not matter; and upon things that did matter, but which were no business of his, he presented his views in epistolary treatises which displayed a vast deal of intelligence and an astonishing want of sense. The remorseless correctness of Mr Adams's logic did not inspire so much confidence as the absence of tact and almost of courtesy created disgust in the mind of a French diplomatist. He was not only rude-for the amiable expressions of the king himself, as reported by de Vergennes, could not escape the schoolmasterly corrections and settings right of this superfluous and precise self-constituted colleague of the Foreign Office-but he was tiresome intolerably! At length there came a rupture, and de Vergennes reminded him that, after all, Dr Franklin was the only person with whom This Court need discuss the matters in question. He also appealed to Franklin for a disclaimer, on the part of Congress, of a certain policy (with regard to the redemption of the depreciated American paper currency) which had an appearance of being unjust to French merchants and others, but which Adams had gone out of his way to champion and explain, much in the manner of a schoolmaster driving knowledge into an unwilling head. Finally he (de Vergennes) sent the whole correspondence to Franklin, and required him to transmit it to Congress. Here is an example of the kind of situation that was made for Franklin from time to

and the ceaseless, plotting, bitter hostility of the microcephalic Lee, united in contributing additional aspects of hardship, anxiety, and almost of thanklessness to that noble task-of helping his country to come prosperously through her struggle for Independence to which Franklin had devoted the time by so-called colleagues. It was serious beyond words. In dealing with this particular instance, as with others, it has been acknowledged (by all the world save Adams and the sons of Adams) that Franklin showed the greatest wisdom, moderation, generosity, tact. Any other man would have taken up a high position, not without cause, about the gratuitousness, the meddlesomeness of all this mischief-making. But not by a syllable did Franklin remind Adams that he had been wandering out of his province; and he gently suggested a way, as though Adams were a colleague who had blundered a little, by which he could easily make matters right. But Adams, for good and evil, was not of the compromising, flexible kind. He did not want that matters should be put right, but that he should be defended, justified, vindicated, at whatever cost to the general system of things, including his country. So his only reply was a short note to Franklin, saying that he also had sent the correspondence to Congress.

From this time dates that animosity against Franklin which was a quenchless, though quiet and smouldering fire in the breast of John Adams as long as he lived, a fire which it has become a duty of piety in his successors to keep alive. They have had a fortunate degree of success. Franklin's family may be said, for historical purposes, to have died with him, his only descendants being by the female line; whereas the "House of Adams" is one of the acknowledged institutions of America, both in politics and literature. It is very conscious of itself, and perhaps dreams of a destiny. No minutest particular regarding it is allowed to perish. It has a fire-proof building for its archives, as though it were the House of Hapsburg. Its influence, travelling underground, reappears in strange places. In the Cambridge "History of the United States," for instance, there is a passage about Franklinabsurd, and to my mind disgraceful in a work of that importance -which says that, "The whole tenor of his life shows him to have been a man of no delicate sense of honour," and that "in what he believed to be a good cause he could be unscrupulous in his choice of means.' I am not concerned here to examine or refute this. I only say that the writer (Mr Doyle) is better acquainted with the work of John Adams than with the character or even the career of Benjamin Franklin; and that in writing the above words he was influenced by an unconscious recollectionalmost resulting in verbatim quotation-of a particularly malevolent and absurd passage in the Life of John Adams, by his son.

remaining years and energies of a life already so full of works, and service, and praise, and the right to rest. In the story of what he had to endure from these causes during a course of years-years in which he was doing such great things for his country-there would be something pathetic were there not something magnificent and strong.

patience which he had with those people, his selfeffacing endurance, his determination not even to recognise the evil intention or the unfriendly act by defending himself, until the Independence of America was achieved-these are a measure of the moral reserves of wisdom and justice and strength within that rich and profound nature. Be it added that the importance, at least, of seeing that his services were not lost to his country, or rendered ineffective, was finally recognised by Congress at the beginning of 1779, when it sent Lafayette to France with a paper annulling the existing Commission, and appointing Franklin sole Minister-Plenipotentiary to the French Court. At the end of that year it took a still stronger step, by commanding Lee and his associates 1 -who had lingered on in Paris, doing more mischief than ever, as being more desperate with rage-to return to the States. Once they arrived there, family interest was strong enough to secure for them not only immunity but reward, and to enable them to exercise their animosity, if not to achieve their vengeance, upon the name of Franklin for many years.

It is time now to say something about what was, from first to last, the chief subject of Franklin's labours in Europe, and the special sphere of his victories the Financing of the Revolution. That is a

:

1 William Lee and Izard. John Adams had returned to the States early in the year, upon the joint-Commission being cancelled. He had even expressed an emphatic approval of that "masterly stroke," as he called it.