For once the Count lost his famous self-control. “I am at a loss, sir,” he wrote Franklin, “to explain your conduct and that of your colleagues on this occasion. You have concluded your Preliminary Articles without any communication between us, although the instructions from Congress prescribed that nothing shall be done without the participation of the King. You are about to hold out a certain hope of peace to America, without even informing yourself on the state of the negotiation on our part. You are wise and discreet, sir; you perfectly understand what is due to propriety; you have all your life performed your duties. I pray you to consider how you propose to fulfill those, which are due to the King! I am not desirous of enlarging these reflections; I commit them to your own integrity. When you shall be pleased to relieve my uncertainty, I will entreat the King to enable me to answer your demands.”
Franklin pondered this challenge for a day and a half, and then answered it in a letter which was a masterpiece of diplomatic double entendre, a reply that neither sacrificed American dignity nor the French alliance, that neither crawled nor pleaded, but was rooted in that personal independence that was the essence of his spirit. He began by assuring Vergennes that he had not requested the British passport for the Washington. They had sent it voluntarily. Nor were the Americans letting them use the ship to send any letters of their own which might “convey inconvenient expectations into America.” He reminded Vergennes once more that “nothing has been agreed in the preliminaries contrary to the interests of France; and no peace is to take place between us and England, till you have concluded yours.” Nevertheless, he smoothly admitted that the Count’s observation “is however, apparently just, that, in not consulting you before they were signed, we have been guilty of neglecting a point of bienséance [propriety]. But, as this was not from want of respect for the King, whom we all love and honour, we hope it will be excused, and that the great work, which has hitherto been so happily conducted, is so nearly brought to perfection, and is so glorious to his reign, will not be ruined by a single indiscretion of ours. And certainly the whole edifice sinks to the ground immediately, if you refuse on that account to give us any further assistance.”
They would hold the ship until Friday, Franklin said, and he would visit him on that day for his answer. Once more Franklin reiterated the gratitude which he and “every American” felt for the “great benefits and favours” the King had bestowed upon them. Then, once more, came the hinted threat. “The English, I just now learn, flatter themselves they have already divided us,” Franklin underlined the sentence, as if the idea had just been whispered to him for the first time in his study at Passy. “I hope this little misunderstanding will therefore be kept a secret, and that they will find themselves totally mistaken.”
A few days later, Franklin was able to tell Robert Morris, the frantic Superintendent of Finances, that the “little misunderstanding” between America and France had been “got over” and the Washington had sailed with 600,000 livres in her hold. The balance of a 6,000,000 livre loan would be paid quarterly, throughout 1783. Franklin had done the almost impossible; he had reconciled such opposites as John Adams and John Jay and the Count de Vergennes. Independence had been won, and bankruptcy averted. For a final touch, the British passport for the Washington was made out to the “United States of America” and signed by George III, his first acknowledgment in writing that such a nation existed.
Less than a month later, the French and British agreed on terms, and Vergennes invited Franklin and Adams to join him in signing the document, one more hint that the Count was still smarting over his exclusion from the American signing. The ceremony was brief and matter-of-fact. The “mighty system” of a world war was, John Adams noted in his diary, terminated “as perfunctorily as a marriage settlement.” But it did mean that the war was, for all effects, over. Later that day, when Franklin arrived at the home of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld for dinner, he could not restrain his joy. He threw his arms around this staunch supporter of America and exclaimed, “My friend, could I have hoped, at my age, to enjoy such a happiness?”
Although he was practically certain that peace had at last been won, Franklin warned Congress to keep America’s guard up. They had only signed the Preliminary Articles, which had to be ratified by Parliament. Success on another battlefront, such as the West Indies, might well turn England’s “giddy” head and reawaken her dreams of conquest. The wisdom of this warning became grimly evident when Shelburne’s government crumpled under violent attack by diehards such as Lord Stormont and Lord Hillsborough and harassment from fellow liberals such as Charles James Fox. Shelburne did himself no favors by talking on all sides of the issue of independence, declaring it “equivocal” until the treaty was ratified and insisting that it was granted only as a price of peace, not a prior gift to the Americans. Meanwhile, in the House of Commons, his lieutenant, young William Pitt, was saying the precise opposite. Pitt was looking at the situation with the de facto eyes of a realist, not a legalist. But the struggle with Jay over prior recognition, which Shelburne had won, made him hypersensitive on the point. The House of Lords approved the treaty by thirteen votes, thanks largely to Shelburne’s eloquent self-defense. In the Commons, after an all-night debate, peace and American independence were accepted, but Shelburne’s government was censured by a vote of 207 to 190, for making too many concessions to the belligerents, especially the Americans.
Out of office went Shelburne, and into power came the most unlikely political marriage in British history, Lord North and Charles James Fox, in a kind of tandem ministry. These very strange bed-fellows proceeded to do exactly what Shelburne had done when he first opened negotiations. They found a man who was personally acceptable to Benjamin Franklin. Their choice was Franklin’s old friend, David Hartley, who had been corresponding with him about peace since the war began. Hartley soon became almost as much a Franklin mouthpiece as Oswald had been. He agreed wholeheartedly with Franklin on the need for complete freedom of trade between the two countries, and even succumbed to Franklin’s favorite siren song and recommended that England throw in Canada.
But in England the political mood was running strongly against the liberal spirit. Fox, a politician first and a liberal second, followed the tide and suppressed all thought of gestures aimed at reconciliation. This hard line toward America also demolished Franklin’s hopes of creating in the final peace treaty a new approach to war. Franklin had urged on Oswald, and now on Hartley, a clause that would end all privateer, and another clause that would exempt ships carrying non-combat materiel from destruction by belligerents. But England was too embittered by defeat to do more than concede what she had already lost. So the Preliminary Articles became the final Treaty of Peace, signed on September 3, 1783.
Throughout this second summer of frustrating negotiations, Franklin had to cope with the problem of John Adams, who became more and more hysterical on the subject of France and Franklin. “One of my colleagues,” Franklin told Robert Livingston, “thinks the French Minister one of the greatest enemies of our country; that he would have straitened our boundaries, to prevent the growth of our people; contracted our fishery, to obstruct the increase of our seamen; and retained the Royalists among us, to keep us divided; that he privately opposes all our negotiations with foreign Courts, and afforded us, during the war, the assistance we receiv’d, only to keep it alive, that we might be so much the more weaken’d by it; that to think of gratitude to France is the greatest of follies, and that to be influenced by it would ruin us. He makes no secret of having these opinions, expresses them publicly, sometimes in the presence of the English Ministers, and speaks of hundreds of instances which he could produce in proof of them. None of them, however, have yet appeared to me....”
Behind Franklin’s back, Adams was doing some verbal knife-work worthy of Arthur Lee. He told one correspondent that the mere fact that Franklin was “trumpeted” by Versailles was proof of his dishonesty. On September 3, 1783, the very day that peace was si
gned, Adams struck an even lower blow. “The moment an American minister gives a loose to his passion for women, that moment he is undone; he is instantly at the mercy of the spies of the court, and the tool of the most profligate of the human race.” The contentious puritan then enunciated a principle which was final proof of his incapacity as a diplomat. “No man will ever be pleasing at a court in general, who is not depraved in his morals or warped from [America’s] interests.”
To Robert Morris, Franklin had earlier written a confidential letter saying that he hoped “the ravings of a certain mischievous madman” against France would not damage the alliance, “which is indeed the solid foundation of our present importance in Europe.” Franklin showed, moreover, that he was very much alert to the attacks Adams was making on his reputation among friends in America. On September 10, 1783, he told John Jay that he had received a letter “from a very respectable person in America” saying that “it was entirely owing to the firmness, sagacity and disinterestedness of Mr. Adams, with whom Mr. Jay united” that the western lands and the fishing rights were obtained by the negotiators. “It is not my purpose to dispute any share of the honor of that treaty,” Franklin said, but he refused to tolerate “an accusation which falls little short of treason to my country.” Jay promptly replied, affirming that Franklin had fought beside them every step of the way. Adams, after three days of silence, replied with a much more perfunctory letter, saying the same thing in a cold, unfriendly way. Grimly, in a letter to another Massachusetts friend, Josiah Quincy, Franklin remarked “that his adversaries may find they presum’d a little too much” upon his age and weakness when they attacked him.
But Franklin was much too intelligent to carry such a petty feud beyond the absolute minimum required to protect his reputation. With peace, his spirits soared, and his letters abounded with good humor. To David Hartley he wrote proposing “a family compact” between England, France, and America to guarantee the world against future wars. “America would be as happy as the Sabine girls, if she could be the means of uniting in perpetual peace her father and her husband,” he declared. As for Hartley’s concern that America might fall apart, because the government under the Articles of Confederation was so weak, Franklin told him that America’s domestic quarrels were “monstrously magnified by your microscopic newspapers.” Anyone who judged from them that Americans were tottering into anarchy was like a man who was shown sunspots through a telescope, and concluded that “the whole disk would soon be overspread by them, and that there wou’d be an end of daylight. The great body of intelligence among our people surrounds and overpowers our petty dissensions, as the sun’s great mass of fire diminishes and destroys his spots.”
When John Jay wrote to tell Franklin that he had many enemies in England, Franklin replied that the fact did not trouble him. “They are my enemies as an American.” He added that he also had two or three enemies in America “who are my enemies as a minister.” But he was able to thank God “there are not in the whole world any who are my enemies as a man; for by His grace, thro a long life, I have been enabled so to conduct myself, that there does not exist a human being who can justly say, ‘Ben. Franklin has wrong’d me.’”
William Strahan wrote to Franklin lamenting the political instability which was bringing down one British ministry after another. Franklin told him not to despair. “We have some remains of affection for you, and shall always be ready to receive and take care of you in case of distress. So if you have not sense and virtue enough to govern yourselves . . . dissolve your present old crazy Constitution, and send members to Congress.”
Henry Laurens wrote again from England, lamenting the British regulations inhibiting American trade in the West Indies. Franklin professed to be unbothered, confident that a growing America would soon force John Bull to regret his selfishness. “Those who at present wish to kick the hedgehog, will grow tired of that sport when they find that their own toes bleed.” In his letter, Laurens also assured Franklin that, although he did not think Franklin was infallible, as long as he lived he would never cease defending him against the untruths that Adams was spreading against him. Franklin thanked him and then added the following inimitable comment: “As to my infallibility, which you do not undertake to maintain, I am too modest myself to claim it, that is, in general; tho when we come to particulars, I, like other people, give it up with difficulty. Steele says that the difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England on that point, is only this; that the one pretends to be infallible and the other to be never in the wrong. In this latter sense, we are most of us Church of England men, though few of us confess it. . .”
Franklin had in his years at the court of Versailles developed a rather powerful political connection with the Church of Rome. The papal legate was utterly charmed by him, and about this time he gave Franklin a chance to repay an old debt of gratitude. The clerical diplomat told the Ambassador that America’s independence had convinced the Pope that the church in the New World was ready to take a major step toward maturity. It was time to appoint an American bishop. Did he have any suggestions? Franklin had only one, his old friend Father John Carroll, who had saved his life on the trip down the lakes from Canada in 1776. The legate passed on Franklin’s recommendation to Rome, and the long arm of coincidence soon reached across the ocean, making the ex-Jesuit the first American bishop.
Meanwhile, Franklin was enjoying himself hugely with a new scientific interest, balloons. The French had begun filling silk bags, first with heated air, then with hydrogen, which Franklin called “inflamable air,” and Franklin was privileged to witness the beginning of the great adventure which may yet carry men to the distant stars. He sent to fellow scientists in England and America exquisitely detailed reports on these first balloon flights. As with the American trip to the moon, there were numerous croakers who decried the expense and labor (it took two days and nights to fill a balloon) and demanded to know what was the point of ballooning, what good did it do the average man? Franklin gave them a classic reply. “What good is a newborn baby?” he asked.
To Franklin’s delight, Congress had finally sent to Europe a politician with whom he was completely compatible. Thomas Jefferson had arrived in Paris on August 6, 1784, and Franklin immediately introduced him into French society, as he had John Adams. But there was never a hint of self-righteous recrimination about high living from the easy-going intellectual giant from Virginia. His already profound admiration for Franklin only grew deeper as he watched him in this twilight of his diplomatic career. Later Jefferson would contemptuously dismiss the charge that Franklin had been under undue French influence. If anything, he said, the French “were more under his influence than he under theirs.”
Jefferson especially enjoyed Franklin’s triumph over the French scientist, Abbe Guillaume Raynal, who was a supporter of the then popular theory that animals and even men degenerated in the New World, were smaller in stature, and by implication weaker in intellect. One day at the Passy dinner table, Franklin was entertaining the Abbe and several of his French friends, along with three or four Americans. The Abbe began holding forth in favor of the degeneracy theory with unparalleled eloquence and presumption. Franklin let him talk for a while. Then he said, “Come, Monsieur l’Abbe, we are here one-half American and one-half French, and it happens that the Americans have placed themselves on one side of the table and our French friends on the other. Let both parties rise and we will see on which side nature has degenerated.” Up rose Franklin, in all his imposing bulk, beside him were William Carmichael and David Humphreys, Washington’s ex-aide, both burly six-footers. The French, on the other hand, Jefferson said gleefully, “were remarkably diminutive, and the Abbe himself particularly was a mere shrimp.”
Another subject on which Jefferson and Franklin agreed was the Society of the Cincinnati. Created by Washington’s officers, it announced itself as a hereditary organization. Both Franklin and Jefferson denounced the idea as a dangerous tendency toward aristocracy.
Franklin’s comments were by far the more devastating. He showed how absurd it was to imagine one could pass along qualities of mind or spirit to descendants. In nine generations, the blood of the original “Knight” of the Cincinnati would have passed through 1021 other men and women. To get 1,000 of these Knights, would require, in round numbers 5 million Americans, and Franklin wondered how with “a reasonable estimation of the number of rogues, and fools, and royalists, and scoundrels, and prostitutes, that are mix’d with, and help to make up necessarily their millions of predecessors, posterity will have much reason to boast of the noble blood of the then existing set of Chevaliers de Cincinnati’s.” Franklin grew so warm on the subject that he even wrote a pamphlet attacking the whole idea of aristocracy. His French friends persuaded him not to publish it, lest it should get him into serious trouble with Versailles.
But Franklin was not in the least inhibited in stating his anti-blue blood opinions to French aristocrats. One day he took on a whole roomful of them. Their spokesman insisted that the majority could not possibly rule in a state because they were uneducated and ill-informed. Only the educated and well-informed minority should govern. Finally the nobleman attempted to trump Franklin by appealing to the others in the room. He asked all those who agreed with him to rise. Everyone stood up, leaving Franklin alone in his chair. Totally unabashed, he declared himself the winner. “According to your own principles,” he said, “you represent the ignorant majority, and I the wise minority, decide that you are wrong and must yield.”
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