Verily, one's brain evolves reflections when one stands at the fountainhead of national greatness. That was, in truth, the commencement of the French alliance upon which our success was founded.

Silas Deane goes to France, and the important portions of his letters to his home Government are written in invisible ink.

Explaining to John Jay how to read Deane's letters, Beaumarchais writes:

"You will use a certain liquid (that Mr. Deane told me you had) upon the margin of the printed sheets so as to make legible what Mr. Deane has wrote. Should it not have its proper effect, which I am afraid of, as the letters were put into a tin box in a barrel of rum, which has eat through, and I am afraid has damaged them, the inclosed letter is of the same contents."

Think of the correspondence between France and America going by way of a tin box hid in a barrel of rum!

Vergennes, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, not daring to openly show his hand, gives from the French treasury a million francs ($200,000) to the struggling colonies, but does it on the sly, covering up the transaction so that his go-between, Beaumarchais, seems to be simply a merchant selling goods to the Americans. So well, indeed, is the matter concealed that, after the

death of Vergennes, Beaumarchais attempts to compel the United States to pay him the million which had been donated. It was not till 1794 that Gouverneur Morris, our then minister to France, was able to find the receipt which Beaumarchais gave to the French treasury for the million francs.'

While French aid was coming to us in their roundabout way, Tom Paine published a statement in Philadelphia which let the secret out, and the French minister, Gerard, made such an outcry about it that Congress had to denounce it as false. Paine's indiscretion was so palpable that efforts were made to dismiss him from his post as Foreign Secretary. To relieve Congress as well as himself, he resigned.2

Dr. Franklin goes abroad to make friends for the colonies. At first he is a mere private citizen, living modestly at Passy, on the outskirts of Paris. He cultivates everybody, and waits. Agreeable to the women as well as the men, to philosophers and politicians, to Masons and to Catholics, to atheists and to Calvinists, to financiers and to literary menall are fish for his net. Franklin soon becomes the fashion, the rage; and the French alliance begins to walk on its own feet.

1778.

Three million francs were advanced, in all, previous to the treaty of

'Mr. Pellew, in his John Jay, states that Paine then became a paid writer for France. Gerard offered him such employment, but Mr. M. D. Conway declares that Paine never took a cent of Gerard's money.

A careless man with his papers and his accounts is the good Dr. Franklin. When he returns to America and faces a congressional committee he is found to be half a million dollars short.

"How about this deficit, doctor?" In answer to so natural a question the good doctor says: "I was taught when a boy to read the Scriptures and attend to them, and it is there said: muzzle not the ox that treadeth out his master's grain."

Of Franklin's honesty there could be no reasonable doubt; the money had probably been used in Europe as secret-service funds are generally used.

CHAPTER XXXII

ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION

OUT of the Committees of Correspondence grew the Congress, suggested by Massachusetts and brought into being by the prompt, warm-hearted action of South Carolina. Out of the Congress grew the Articles of Confederation. The principal defects of these articles were: (1) They gave the General Government no right of taxation; (2) no power to regulate commerce; (3) no power over the citizen directly; (4) no power to enforce its will; (5) no real executive.

Congress might need money and troops, but it could not directly raise either. Requisitions had to be made on the States; and when the States refused to honor the requisitions, the General Government had no power to enforce its demands. Every State could lay its duties upon commerce, and thus there could be thirteen different, antagonistic systems in operation within the Confeder ation. Undoubtedly this government was too weak. The central power was not a power. The thirteen sovereign, independent States had too jealously retained their own sovereignty.

Against these defects Washington had strug·