French courtesy gratitude was expressed for them. Sometimes, if any one persisted, in spite of discouragement, in making the journey at his own cost, and, being forewarned, also at his own risk of disappointment, Franklin gave him a letter strictly confined to the scope of a civil personal introduction. Possibly, now and again, some useful officer may have been thus deterred from crossing the water; but any such loss was compensated several hundredfold by shutting off the intolerable inundation of useless foreigners. Nor was Franklin wanting in discretion in the matter; for he commended Lafayette and Steuben by letters, which had real value from the fact of the extreme rarity of such a warranty from this source.

Franklin was little given to political prophecy, but it is interesting to read a passage written shortly after his arrival, May 1, 1777:

"All Europe is on our side of the question, as far as applause and good wishes can carry them. Those who live under arbitrary power do nevertheless approve of liberty, and wish for it; they almost despair of recovering it in Europe; they read the translations of our separate colony constitutions with rapture; and there are such numbers everywhere who talk of removing to America, with their families and fortunes, as soon as peace and our independence shall be established, that it is generally believed that we shall have a prodigious addition of strength, wealth, and arts from the emigration of Europe; and it is thought that to lessen or prevent such emigrations, the tyrannies established there must

relax, and allow more liberty to their people. Hence it is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own. It is a glorious task assigned us by Providence, which has, I trust, given us spirit and virtue equal to it, and will at last crown it with success."

The statesmanship of the time-honored European school, ably practiced by de Vergennes, was short-sighted and blundering in comparison with this broad appreciation of the real vastness and farreaching importance of that great struggle betwixt the Old and the New.

CHAPTER X.

MINISTER TO FRANCE: II.

PRISONERS: TROUBLE WITH LEE AND OTHERS.

No sooner had the war taken on an assured character than many quick-eyed and adventurous Americans, and Franklin among the first, saw irresistible temptation and great opportunity in that enormous British commerce which whitened all the seas. The colonists of that day, being a seafaring people with mercantile instincts, were soon industriously engaged in the lucrative field of maritime captures. Franklin recommended the fortifying of three or four harbors into which prizes could be safely carried. Nothing else, he said, would give the new nation "greater weight and importance in the eyes of the commercial states." Privateering is not always described by such complimentary and dignified language, but the practical-minded rebel spoke well of that which it was so greatly to the advantage of his countrymen to do. After arriving in France he found himself in a position to advance this business very greatly. Conyngham, Wickes, with others only less famous, all active and gallant men as ever trod a deck, took the neighboring waters

as their chosen scene of action, and very soon were stirring up a commotion such as Englishmen had never experienced before. They harried the high, and more especially the narrow, seas with a success at least equal to that of the Alabama, while some of them differed from Semmes and his compeers in being as anxious to fight as the Southern captains were to avoid fighting. Prize after prize they took and carried into port, or burned and sank; prisoners they had more than they knew what to do with ; they frightened the underwriters so that in London the insurance against capture ran up to the ruinous premium of sixty per cent. The Lisbon and the Dutch packets fell victims, and insurance of boats plying between Dover and Calais went to ten per cent. Englishmen began to feel that England was blockaded! We are not so familiar as we ought to be with the interesting record of all these audacious and brilliant enterprises, conducted with dare-devil recklessness by men who would not improbably have been hanged both as pirates and as traitors, had fortune led to their capture at this moment of British rage and anxiety.1

All this cruising was conducted under the auspices of Franklin. To him these gallant rovers looked for instructions and suggestions, for money and supplies. He had to issue commissions, to settle personal misunderstandings, to attend to questions of prize money, to soothe unpaid mutineers, to advise as to the purchase of ships, and as to the

1 In fact, Conyngham, being at last captured, narrowly escaped this fate.

enterprises to be undertaken; in a word, he was the only American government which these independent sailors knew. The tax thus laid upon him was severe, for he was absolutely without experience in such matters.

There was one labor, however, in this connection, which properly fell within his department, and in this his privateersmen gave him abundant occupation. It was to stand between them and the just wrath and fatal interference of the French government. Crude as international law was in those days, it was far from being crude enough for the strictly illegitimate purposes of these vikings. What they expected was to buy, equip, man, and supply their vessels in French ports, to sail out on their prize-taking excursions, and, having captured their fill, to return to these same ports, and there to have their prizes condemned, to sell their booty, to refit and re-supply, and then to sally forth again. In short, an Englishman would have been puzzled to distinguish a difference between the warlike ports of America and the neutral ports of France, save as he saw that the latter, being nearer, were much the more injurious. But de Vergennes had no notion of being used for American purposes in this jeopardizing style. He did not mean to have a war with England, if he could avoid it; so he gave to the harbor masters orders which greatly annoyed and surprised the American captains, "extraordinary" orders, as these somewhat uninstructed sea-dogs described them in their complaining letters