not yet know us, and that you fancy we do not know you; but it is not merely this flimsy faith that we are to act upon; you offer us hope, the hope of PLACES, PENSIONS, and peerages. These, judging from yourselves, you think are motives irresistible. This offer to corrupt us, sir, is with me your credential, and convinces me that you are not a private volunteer in your application. It bears the stamp of British court character. It is even the signature of your king. But think, for a moment, in what light it must be viewed in America. By PLACES, you mean places among us, for you take care, by a special article, to secure your own to yourselves. We must then pay the salaries, in order to enrich ourselves with these places. But you will give us PENSIONS, probably to be paid, too, out of your expected American revenue, and which none of us can accept without deserving, and perhaps obtaining, a suspen sion. PEERAGES! alas! sir, our long observation of the vast servile majority of your peers, voting constantly for every measure proposed by a minister, however weak or wicked, leaves us small respect for that title. We consider it as a sort of tar-and-feather honor, or a mixture of foulness and folly, which every man among us, who should accept it from your king, would be obligel to renounce, or exchange for that conferred by the mobs of their own country, or wear it with everlasting infamy."*

The French government decided that the answer should not be sent. On the day named for the rendezvous at Notre Dame, an agent of the French police was on the watch, who reported, that at noon, a gentleman appeared at the place appointed, and, finding no one, wandered about the church, looking at the altars and pictures, but never losing sight of the spot, and often returning to it, gazing anxiously about, as if he expected some one. After waiting for two hours he left the church, and went to his hotel, where his name was ascertained to be "Colonel Fitz-something," says John Adams, "an Irish name, that I have forgotten."+

Mr. Adams mentions in his diary, that the reasons for believing the letter of Weissenstein to have been written with the consent of the king, were such as completely convinced Dr. Franklin, "who affirmed to me that he knew it came from the king, and that

This letter was copied from the original, in the Office of Foreign Affairs, at Paris, by Dr. Jared Sparks.-See Sparks's Franklin, viii., 278.

+ Life and Works of John Adams, iii., 179.

*

it could not have come from any other without the king's knowledge." Mr. Adams was puzzled to account for Franklin's extreme aversion to his majesty. "He often, and, indeed, always, appeared to me to have a personal animosity and very severe resentment against the king. In all his conversations, * he mentioned the king with great asperity, and even upon the margin of a book he introduced his habitual acrimony against his majesty." Puzzling, indeed, to a man constitutionally disposed to venerate a monarch, and who was not acquainted with the secret of the British court! Franklin himself was long in finding out George III.; but, at this time, he knew him well, and spoke of him according to his knowledge.

George III., as his letters show, reciprocated Franklin's antip athy. "That insidious man," the king calls him, in a note to Lord North of March, 1778. And again: "The many instances of the inimical conduct of Franklin makes me aware that hatred to this country is the constant object of his mind."*

A few months after the abortive mission of Colonel Fitz-something, there came to Paris an amiable young barrister, who was afterwards an eminent judge and renowned Indian scholar, Sir William Jones. Dr. Franklin had frequently met this gentleman at the house of his friend, the Bishop of St. Asaphs, to whose daughter the still briefless barrister was already engaged. It was the lot of Mr. William Jones to make another, and the last attempt, to ascertain from Dr. Franklin whether England could prevail upon America to accept any thing less than complete and final independence. He acted, however, not as the agent of king or ministry, but as the representative of that noble few of Englishmen who had championed the cause of America, from the days of the Repeal of the Stamp Act, of whom the good Bishop of St. Asaphs was among the worthiest. Modestly clothing his ideas in the garb of antiquity, he presented to Dr. Franklin, in May, 1779, a paper, entitled, "A Fragment of Polybius," in which the political situation was depicted under ancient names; England figuring as Athens, France as Caria, the United States as the Islands, Franklin as Eleutherion, and himself as an Athenian lawyer sojourning at the capital of Caria. The proposals of the Athenian

* Lord Brougham's Statesmen of George III, i., 112.

Jones were founded upon the conviction that England could never be brought to give up America. "This I know," he observed, "and positively pronounce, that, while Athens is Athens, her proud but brave citizens will never expressly recognize the independence of the Islands; their resources are, no doubt, exhaustible, but will not be exhausted in the lives of us and of our children. In this resolution all parties agree."

The leading suggestions of this worthy peace-maker were these: That there should be "a perfect co-ordination between Athens and the Thirteen United Islands, they considering her not as a parent, whom they must obey, but as an elder sister, whom they cannot help loving, and to whom they shall give pre-eminence of honor and coequality of power;" that the new Constitutions of the Islands should remain; that " on every occasion requiring acts for the general good, there shall be an assembly of deputies from the Senate of Athens, and the Congress of the Islands, who shall fairly adjust the whole business, and settle the ratio of the contributions on both sides; and this committee shall consist of fifty Islanders and fifty Athenians, or of a smaller number chosen by them;" and that "if it be thought necessary, and found convenient, a proportionable number of Athenian citizens shall have seats, and power of debating and voting on questions of common concern, in the great assembly of the Islands, and a proportionable number of Islanders shall sit with the like power in the Assembly at Athens."

This amiable dream of an impossible re-union had as much effect upon the course of events as a school-girl's composition on the Horrors of War may be supposed to have in hastening the return of peace. Nevertheless, the mission of Mr. Jones does credit to his heart. It had, also, the effect of giving him sundry opportunities of conveying letters, messages, and gifts, from Dr. Franklin to the beloved family of his betrothed, and from them to Dr. Franklin; reward enough for the lover of Georgiana Shipley.

CHAPTER VIII.

PAUL JONES.

Ir was in the spring of 1778 that the name of John Paul Jones became so terrible along the western coasts of Britain—his native coasts, as familiar to him as to a Solway fisherman. This man was so intimately connected and associated with Dr. Franklin, and held him in such affectionate veneration, that I cannot but give a slight sketch of his brilliant career in the service of Congress.

And what a tough, valiant, indomitable, audacious hero he was, with his foppish ways and costume, his romantic, fantastic courtesy and enthusiasm! He had been a Nelson, if he had had Nelson's opportunities; for he was just such another soft-hearted, lady-loving, impetuous, imaginative Knight of the Quarter Deck. He was a little man, too, like Nelson, though compactly knit, and his voice was "soft and still, and small, and his eye had keenness, and wildness, and softness in it ;"* and full as he was of the spirit of mastery, he was all gentleness, consideration, generosity to men who obeyed him. Mr. Adams mentions, also, that he was a sea-dandy, who would have his full share of gold lace and epaulette, and liked to see his officers, marines, men, boat, and ship all handsomely attired. Like all the greatest fighters, he performed his immortal exploits while he was young; he was but thirty-two when he did his greatest day's work.

On the southwestern coast of Scotland he was born; a natural son of a Mr. Craig, but brought up in the family of Mr. Craig's gardener, from whom he was named John Paul. Nothing could keep him from the sea. At twelve, therefore, he was apprenticed to a merchant in the American trade, in whose ships he served seven years, as cabin boy, boy, and sailor before the mast. At the age of twenty-four we find him settled at Tobago, engaged in commerce, and possessing considerable property. In 1774, for a reason unknown, but which he himself styles an "accident," and "a very great misfortune," he was obliged suddenly to leave Tobago, and abandon all his property there, except fifty pounds. He came to

* John Adams, iii., 202.

+ Encyclopedia Britannien, xiii., 2.

the colonies, where he lived twenty months in great poverty, through the neglect or dishonesty of his agent at Tobago. The revolution breaking out, and his fifty pounds being exhausted, he made known his situation and his qualifications to persons of influence, through whom he obtained a lieutenant's commission in the forming navy of the United States. He acquired sudden and very great distinction. In one short cruise he took sixteen prizes, of which he burnt eight, and sent in eight. He had some sharp actions with king's ships, and captured one which had on board a company of British troops, and ten thousand suits of clothes-a most precious acquisition in 1776. In a few months he made a fortune in prize money, and swept the northern seas of America clear of unconvoyed British vessels.

It was Paul Jones who first hoisted the Stars and Stripes upon a national vessel. On the very day (June 14th, 1777) on which Congress resolved "that the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, and that the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation," they also resolved "that Captain John Paul Jones be appointed to command the ship Ranger." In the Ranger he was to go to France, and there take command of that fine frigate which the envoys had been building in Holland. As he had been the first to hoist the flag of the United States on a ship-of-war, so, on entering the harbor of Brest in February, 1778, seven days after the signing of the treaty of alliance, he was the first naval officer who had the pleasure of ackowledging a salute to that flag from a foreign power.*

Disappointment! The envoys had been obliged, as we have seen, to sell the fine Dutch frigate; it was then the property of the French Government. Dr. Franklin explained and consoled, as best he could. After two months of delay, caused by the discontent of his first lieutenant, who had expected to command the Ranger in Europe, Captain Jones sailed in the Ranger for the Scottish coast, on his first cruise in British waters.

With ports closed, and all other signs of armament carefully removed, the Ranger could have sent in a daily prize, but Captain Jones had other designs which obliged him to husband his men, and keep his ship clear of prisoners. One brigantine and one ship,

*Sherburne's Life and Character of John Paul Jones, p. 48.