well seconded by Captain Landais, he could have brought into port the greater part of the fleet of merchantmen that were convoyed by the Serapis and Scarborough. Determined to have no more to do with mixed expeditions, of which he could not be the sole and absolute commander, he prepared to return to America, and seek future employment from Congress alone.

Both Dr. Franklin and the French ministry shared the resentment of Captain Jones against the insubordinate and bungling Landais. At the request of M. de Sartines, Franklin ordered Landais to come to Paris and explain his conduct. Upon receiving this order he threw up his command, and said to officers on board the Alliance, and to Franklin at Paris, that he should return no more to that ship.. After investigating his conduct and receiving the written testimony of all the leading officers of the Bon Homme Richard, Franklin transmitted the whole of the evidence to Congress; himself pronouncing no judgment, not conceiving that he was authorized to cashier or otherwise punish an officer holding a commission from Congress itself. Landais was dissatisfied with his silence, and desiring to be restored to the command of the Alliance, asked Franklin his opinion of him, and made known his wish for a command. Dr. Franklin gave him a most candid and forcible reply: "I think you,” he wrote, "so imprudent, so litigious, and quarrelsome a man, even with your best friends, that peace and good order, and consequently the quiet and regular subordination so necessary to success, are, where you preside, impossible; these are within my observation and apprehension; your military operations I leave to more capable judges. If, therefore, I had twenty ships of war in my disposition, I should not give one of them to Captain Landais."

In Arthur Lee, who took naturally to every man who did his country harm, and who inevitably quarreled with all who had served his country well, Captain Landais found a patron and a friend-as shall be shown in a moment.

Besides the exploits of Commodore Jones, some privateers commissioned by the American envoys did great execution upon British commerce. In the summer of 1779, for example, a little schooner called the Black Prince, with a motley crew of all nations, and a sprinkling of Americans among them, sailed round the British Islands, and, in the course of a three months' cruise, took thirtyseven prizes.

CHAPTER IX.

THE FATE OF SILAS DEANE.

UNHAPPY Deane! Upon arriving at Philadelphia he discovered, to his sorrow, that Arthur Lee, insignificant as he might be in Europe, was far from being powerless in America. Virginia ruled the country then, and in Virginia the Lee families were ancient, numerous, wealthy, and influential. As for poor Deane, he had, it is true, the portrait of the king set in diamonds, and other proofs that he stood very high in the esteem of the French ministry, and of Dr. Franklin, but he had no family influence, little wealth, small tact, and no great general ability. Besides the black and constantly repeated insinuations of Lee and Izard, he had to contend with the odium excited by Du Coudray and his followers, as well as the inexplicable mystery of Beaumarchais and Hortalez, whose agent, De Francy, was then at Philadelphia asking Congress to pay him sundry millions for goods which Arthur Lee kept telling them were the free gifts of a gracious monarch.

A circumstance occurred between the recall of Deane and his arrival in America, which served to increase the growing distrust in the mind of Congress respecting their servants in Europe. In January, 1778, when nine months had elapsed since a letter had been received from the envoys at Paris, arrived Captain John Folger, with a large packet of dispatches from them. With his own hands, as he had promised, the captain conveyed the precious packet to the door of Congress, which was then sitting at York. How this packet had been longed for, how eagerly it was opened, every one can imagine. But who can portray the astonishment and mortification of the Foreign Committee when they discovered that the dispatches had been stolen, and blank paper put in their stead? Externally, the packet was regular and perfect, directed in Franklin's own hand, and sealed with the seal of Arthur Lee; within, it was mere sheets of white paper folded in the proper form. Honest Captain Folger was instantly arraigned, and subjected to the severest cross-questioning, but he told a straightforward story, which only showed that he knew nothing whatever of the matter. His reputation was high, both as a citizen and as a sailor.

He was thrown into prison, however, and held for several weeks. His passengers were examined without result; and, in short, the affair was investigated on both sides of the ocean without eliciting any single fact implicating an individual. In this total absence of evidence, every one interested in the affair indulged in conjectures that accorded with his disposition. Dr. Franklin, Mr. Adams, and all other rational beings who had attended to the case, concluded that the theft had been accomplished, before the ship left France, by some light-fingered agent of the British ministry. But Arthur Lee's evil mind led him to the conviction that the thief was an emissary of Silas Deane, who, he thought, wished to destroy the letters of the Lee party, because they contained accusations against him. No charge more destitute of evidence or probability was ever made: nevertheless, the insinuation, doubtless, had its effect upon some minds, and the loss of the dispatches gave ground for the general feeling, that there was villany somewhere among the agents of Congress in Europe. In private letters, Lee did not scruple to hint a belief that Dr. Franklin himself, whose superscription the packet bore, was privy to the abstraction of the dispatches.

All unconscious of impending evil, Silas Deane, after a three months' voyage, arrived in Delaware Bay, passenger on board the ship of Admiral D'Estaing, accompanied by M. Gerard. How natural that he should expect a distinguished welcome-he, who had stolen across the sea, two years before, in a hired sloop, the secret emissary of revolted colonies, and now returned, the acknowledged minister of a victorious nation, the honored guest of a French admiral, bringing back a powerful fleet (twelve line-of-battle ships and four frigates), to aid his country, and accompanied by an embassador of the King of France! Accordingly, when the fleet dropped anchor in Delaware Bay, on the tenth of July, Mr. Deane wrote an exulting letter to the president of Congress, which he sent express to Philadelphia, by the hands of Captain Nicholson. "I shall embark this afternoon," he concluded, "in company with his excellency, Monsieur Gerard, for Philadelphia, and hope soon to have the honor of paying my respects to your excellency and the honorable Congress in person, and to congratulate you on the late glorious events." And then, in the style of a victorious general, recommending his favorite aid-de-camp for promotion, he besought

for his messenger, Captain Nicholson, the favorable consideration of Congress.

He reached Philadelphia. He was not received as a conquering hero of diplomacy. Congress did not hasten to throw open its doors for his reception, and showed no desire to receive from him the "information," which in their resolution of recall they said they were in want of. Seven weeks passed away without his having been summoned. He had brought with him from France only a hundred pounds, not expecting to be detained in America many weeks: his private estate in Connecticut was not large; and, thus it happened, that the man whom Arthur Lee charged with having gained a fortune of three hundred thousand dollars by trading in France with the public money, was beginning to be embarrassed for the means of subsistence. He ventured, at length, to remind Congress of his presence, and to solicit an "early audience." An audience was then granted him, and he told his story. But he told it not to admiring and grateful countrymen, but to distrustful and estranged employers. All the friends and relations of Arthur Lee, all of Franklin's ancient foes, and a large proportion of the faction who desired to put Horatio Gates into the place filled by George Washington, were disposed to believe the foul calumnies sent over by every ship from Paris. Arthur Lee had redoubled his malign activity after Deane's departure; averring, even in his public letters, that Deane had assumed to himself the entire management of business, and had refused to explain any thing to his virtuous colleague; that he had left his accounts in Paris in "studied confusion," and spent nearly twice as much money on his private account as either of the other envoys. "All that we can find," wrote Lee, "is, that millions have been expended, and that almost every thing remains to be paid for." Millions of francs had been expended, and almost every thing did remain to be paid for; but what had that to do with the charges against Silas Deane? Deane had drawn more money on his private account than either Lee or Franklin; because upon him had fallen the chief burden of business, the minor expenses of the embassy, and the charges of an establishment in Paris.

Against these vague, vile, groundless insinuations, the luckless Deane could do little more than reply, that he had left all his papers and accounts in Paris; that those accounts were regular and.

correct; and that Arthur Lee was a suspicious, quarrelsome, falsehearted knave, whose word was totally unworthy of consideration.* Congress evidently did not believe him. Nor can we wonder that they did not; for, even if the Lee insinuations were set aside, there remained the Beaumarchais mystery, which no man ever penetrated or could penetrate, until M. de Loménie brought to light the masses of Beaumarchais' papers, which he found, only seven years ago, in a Paris garret. Take out of Deane's case the Beaumarchais papers, and poor Deane cannot be cleared of conniving at fraud; since, without the testimony of those papers, Beaumarchais' entire claim wears the appearance of being an impudent attempt to cheat Congress of six millions of francs. This claim Deane constantly supported. It was his name which the Hortalez contracts bore, and which gave them authority and importance. I presume that no one ever looked into this complicated affair, previous to the publication of M. de Loménie's work, without deriving an impression, that there must have been a corrupt understanding be

* Mr. Deane afterwards defended himself very happily against the assertions and insinuations of Lee's public letters of the summer of 1778. Take one brief passage, which sums up a long and thorough examination of one of Lee's letters:

"Mr. Lee asserts:

"1. That he cannot find any satisfaction as to the expenditures of public money, and says all we can find is, that millions have been expended, and almost every thing remains to be paid for.

"It has been proved that Mr. Lee had, when he wrote this letter, an account in his hands of all the expenditures of public money until I left Paris, of the sums paid, and to whom.

"2. That one hundred thousand livres had been advanced to Mr. Hodge for the purchase of a vessel which cost but three thousand pounds sterling, or seventy-two thousand livres, &e. "The truth is, Mr. Hodge did not in the whole receive that sum, and he purchased and fitted out two vessels instead of one.

"3. Speaking of the contracts, he says: You will see that my name is not to the contracts." "The fact is, he was not in France when the principal part of them were made.

"4. He says there was the greatest profusion and dissipation in the purchases. "The clothes are now in use in the army, and a suit complete delivered on board cost but thirty-two or thirty-three shillings sterling, and better clothes no army was ever furnished

with.

"5. He says that Mr. Williams had received near a million of livres without accounting. "The truth is, Mr. Lee was privy to the contracts made with Mr. Williams, and signed the orders for the principal part of the money put into his hands by the Commissioners; and when he wrote this letter, he could not be ignorant that Mr. Williams was then adjusting his accounts for a settlement, which was actually made, to the satisfaction of Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, but a few weeks after.

"6. Mr. Lee says, 'that the contracts were industriously concealed from him.' "His dispute with Mr. Holker, the principal contractor, now the honorable agent of France in America, about the lapels and buttons, and his assisting personally to settle those accounts and afterwards his signing the bills for the payment thereof himself (for the truth of which I freely appeal to Mr. Holker and to M. Grand's account delivered), is a sufficient answer.”— Deane Papers, p. 63.