equally in error. The first pluming themselves in vain upon the name of Independents, cannot in all respects assume the manners it implies, when they have an indispensable need of a tutelary support. The second omit to reflect that their excessive condescension does but imbolden their ally to crave without measure as without end. To observe a just medium between these extremes, requires a consummate prudence. The latter class are, of course, by far the most agreeable to the agents of the guardian power; they find them docile instruments, and, if, as too often happens, assailable on the side of avarice, or ambition, prompt to serve as spies, as informers, as tools whose base devotion no longer knows a check. The contrast and rivalship of these two factions soon degenerate into open war. The one reproaches the other with sacrificing the state to their cupidity, with betraying it, selling it to their protectors; with no longer having a country save that of their new masters; they load them with contempt and execration. These answer their adversaries that an ill timed arrogance may deprive the state of an indispensable prop; that it will be time enough to put on airs of independence when it is actually achieved; that in all their discussions wise men, and especially statesmen, describe a curve, when a right line leads to a precipice; that affairs of state should not be swayed by the self-love of individuals; that in policy the most useful is always the most honorable; and, finally, that no one ought to blush when he attains the object of his aim. Such was the language of the more moderate among those called Dependents. But others, hurried away by the spirit of party, or wishing to disguise their baseness, exclaimed aloud that the Independents were the enemies of France; that they were friends of England; with her they kept up a traitorous correspondence; to her they betrayed the secrets of the state; that they would fain violate the faith of treaties, and dissolve the alliance solemnly concluded with the French, in order to listen to the proposals of England, and throw themselves into her arms. It is to be observed, in effect, that at this very time, the British ministers were laboring incessantly to seduce the chiefs of the American government with new offers of peace, even at the acknowledgment of independence. The scope of this conduct might have been to excite the jealousy of France, or to foment factions in America, or perhaps really to obtain peace and alliance with the United States.

However it was, these overtures had in part the effect which the British cabinet probably had expected; they were but too well seconded by a species of men who find their proper element in confusion; and intestine dissentions agitated every part of the American continent. Not private citizens only, but the very members of the government, applied themselves with infinitely more ardor to pull each other to pieces, than to the discharge of their duties. These

seeds of discord had long been germinating, they developed themselves with still greater rapidity, when Silas Deane returned to the United States aboard the squadron of the count d'Estaing. At first commercial agent of America in Europe, he had been one of the three commissioners who had signed the treaty of alliance at Paris. Secretly irritated at having been recalled, in haste to turn accuser before being accused himself, and careful to make his court to the French, he declared every where, and afterwards printed, that the Congress would not hear the report of his mission to Paris; that they refused to adjust his accounts; that Arthur Lee, one of the three commissioners, William Lee, American consul in Europe, and their two brothers, members of Congress, kept up a secret correspondence with England; that they, and all their adherents, endeavored in various ways to disgust the court of France, and especially in opposing the reimbursement to particular Frenchmen of sums which they had expended at the commencement of the war in the purchase of arms and military stores for account of America. That they were now intriguing to displace Franklin as they had before attempted to pull down Washington; that, in a word, they had conspired to change men and things, and to give another direction to the policy of the state. The writing which Deane published and distributed with profusion, in the month of December 1778, produced a vehement stir; the spirit of party eagerly seized this new subject of discord and hatred. The brothers Lee answered with moderation ; but Thomas Paine and William Drayton stepped forward to avenge them roundly. They retorted upon Deane, that the Congress not only consented to hear him, but that they had already heard him, and had notified him that they were ready to give him audience anew; that if they had not passed his accounts, it was for want of verifications; Deane having himself, either through forgetfulness or design, left them behind in France; that if Arthur Lee kept up a correspondence with England, he was sufficiently authorised in it by his character of ambassador; that during his residence at Paris, he had addressed the Congress letters incomparably more able, luminous and fraught with intelligence than those of his calumniator, who had never written a word of any solidity; that the friendship of a power so generous as France, could be better preserved by an erect and noble deportment, than by a servile adulation towards its agents; that if the reimbursement of those Frenchmen who had furnished arms and munitions had not been yet effected, it was because that Deane himself, in concert with the other commissioners of Congress, had written that no payment was to be made for these supplies, which were to be considered as the voluntary gifts of zealous friends of America; that no thought had ever been entertained of recalling Franklin, because it was perfectly well known how much the advices furnished by that estimable man, as well as the contracts he had made

in France, differed from every thing in the correspondence and operations of Silas Deane; that neither was it forgotten what difference of manners and pretensions existed between those Frenchmen who had treated with Franklin for an engagement in the American service, and those whom Deane had sent out to America; that no one could better judge than himself whether the facts recapitulated were likely to redound to his honor; that, as for the rest, it little became Deane to call up the intrigues, real or supposed, of which Washington had been the object, since himself, when he resided at Paris as agent for the Congress, had suggested for serious deliberation, whether it would not be advantageous to confide the supreme command of the American troops to one of the most distinguished generals of Europe, as for example, to prince Ferdinand, or Mareschal de Broglie; that it was right and proper to keep the faith pledged to France, but that it was right and proper also, agreeably to the usage of all states, to hear the propositions, and to receive the overtures, which promised to promote the welfare of the country, from whatever quarter they might come.

The tenor of the paragraphs published by Paine and Drayton, was far from being agreeable to Gerard, the minister of France; he noticed with pain the avowal of negotiations kept up with England, and the declaration of a refusal to liquidate the disbursements made by his countrymen. He addressed very energetic complaints to the Congress: in order to appease him, that assembly declared that they disapproved the contents of the published memorials, and that they were convinced that the supplies furnished by certain French individuals, could not be considered as a gift. The Congress had, in truth, been made debtor for them in the accounts presented, whether the intention of those who furnished them had never been to offer them as a mere donative, or that Deane had made them the object of a sordid speculation. Opinions were then much divided on that point. The Congress, moreover, renewed the declaration that the United States would never conclude either peace or truce with Great Britain, without the formal and previous consent of their august ally. Thomas Paine requested and obtained leave to resign the office he filled, of secretary of Congress for the foreign department. The government either was, or pretended to be dissatisfied with him, for the disclosure he had made, in this discussion, of facts which it would rather have kept still under the veil.

So many elements of discord would perhaps have sufficed to kindle civil war in America, if its inhabitants had been less familiarised with liberty. Their attention was, besides, taken up by two important objects; one was the imminent peril to which the two Carolinas were exposed a short time after, in consequence of the siege of Charleston by sir Henry Clinton; the other, the negotiations opened with Spain, and, soon afterwards, the active part she took in

the war. The court of Madrid, as we have already seen, glowed with desire to interfere in the grand quarrel which had just broken out. Besides the mutual hatred which animated the English and Spanish nations, Spain had also in view to humble the ódious British arrogance, to recover Gibraltar and Jamaica, and to conquer the two Floridas, which appeared to her essential to the entire command of the Gulf of Mexico. She was now also stimulated by France, who, not content with representing to her the common interest she had in this war, pressed her and summoned her every day to fulfill the stipulations of the family compact. Meanwhile, particular considerations pointed her to a more circumspect procedure. American independence could scarcely seem to smile upon her entirely, when she reflected on the contagion of example, and her own colonies. Her backwardness to declare herself was also perhaps concerted with France, in order to obtain better conditions from the Americans. The court of Versailles had regretted to find itself constrained to take a decisive step, after the unexpected victory of general Gates, which had started the apprehension that England would consent, for the sake of reconciliation with her colonies, to acknowledge their independence. France would much rather have persisted in her original plan, and stood aloof still for a long time, waiting for the Americans to be reduced to the last extremity, in order to wring from them more advantageous conditions for herself, than those of the two treaties of commerce and alliance. But the success of the Americans having baffled her designs, she still had in reserve the chance of making them pay a round price for the accession of Spain. With this drift, she magnified excessively the advantages they might expect from it, in order to extort from their impatience, what precipitation had defeated her of at the time of her own declaration. The ultimate object of all these manœuvres, was to secure to the subjects of France, in the future treaty of peace, the fisheries of Newfoundland, to the exclusion of the citizens of the United States; and to Spain, the possession of the two Floridas, the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi, with the sovereignty of the regions situated on the left bank of that river, and behind the frontiers of the confederate provinces. Accordingly, to prove to the Americans how strong an interest he took in their cause, and to Europe, according to usage, his ardent desire to preserve peace, the king of Spain offered his mediation. He considered it, moreover, as a justificative measure of the war he was about to undertake, for he was by no means ignorant that England would not accept it. The court of London knew too well that Spain, united to France by the strictest ties, could not be an impartial mediatrix; it knew also, that mediators of this description always finish with becoming declared enemies. The court of Madrid intending also to establish, as the basis of the negotiation for peace, that Great Britain should treat her colonies as

independent, it was not presumable that she would accept a condition which was precisely the principal point in contest. Nevertheless, the marquis d' Almodovar, his catholic majesty's ambassador, presented to the court of London a plan of accommodation, which contained, besides the article above, those which follow. That, in order the more easily to extinguish the flames of war, the crowns of France and of Great Britain should lay down arms and consent to a general truce; that their respective plenipotentiaries should convene at a place agreed upon, for the purpose of adjusting their differences; that Great Britain should grant a like truce to the American colonies; that a line of boundary should be drawn, which neither of the belligerent parties might transcend during the armistice; that both his Britannic majesty and the colonies should send one or more commissioners to the city of Madrid, in order to consent to the preceding conditions, and all such others as might tend to conciliation. To this offer of mediation the British ministers made only evasive and dilatory answers. If they were not disposed to accept it, since it involved the acknowledgment of independence, they avoided also to reject it too ostensibly, as well not to excite the discontent of their nation, as to gain time to open negotiations with the courts of Europe. Their intention was to offer advantageous conditions to France, in order to detach her from America, and to America, in order to detach her from France. And, in case, as they presumed, these negotiations should fail of success, they purposed to use strenuous endeavors with the other powers, in order to excite some movement in Europe against France. They hoped thus to find her so much employment on shore that she would be obliged to neglect her marine, and that it would of course become an easy task to vanquish it. They conceived also, that when America should see her ally engaged in a new struggle, she would show herself more disposed to enter into an arrangement with England. Such was then the policy of the powers at war, and of those that were inclined to take part therein.

Meanwhile, France and Spain, with a view of obtaining from America the conditions which, since her separation with England, were the main scope of their counsels, notified to the Congress, through M. Gerard, the French minister at Philadelphia, the offer of mediation made to the court of London by that of Madrid. He was directed to observe, that the object of all mediation being peace, it was natural to presume that conferences were about to be opened for its negotiation and conclusion. He invited the Congress to appoint plenipotentiaries to take part in these negotiations, whether with England or with Spain; he also urged the expediency of their making known the basis on which they were disposed to treat. He added, that he felt it his duty to intimate that circumstances did not permit the United States to carry their pretensions higher than their