Chapter IX: The Embassy to France and Its Scandals (2)

The signing of the treaty of course rendered Beaumarchais's secret work through Hortalez & Co. of less importance. France was now the open ally of the United States; the French government need no longer smuggle arms and clothing into America, but was preparing to send a fleet and an army to assist the insurgents, as they were still called in Paris. All this rendered the labors of the embassy lighter and less complicated.

In April, 1778, a few months after the signing of the treaty, John Adams, after a most dangerous and adventurous voyage across the Atlantic, arrived to take the place of Silas Deane. He has left us a very full account of the condition of affairs and his efforts at reform. Franklin's biographers have been sorely puzzled to know what to do with these criticisms; but any one who will take the trouble to read impartially all that Adams has said, and not merely extracts from it, will easily be convinced of his fairness. He makes no mistake about Lee; speaks of him as a man very difficult to get on with, and describes Izard in the same way. There is not the slightest evidence that these two men poisoned his mind against Franklin. He does not side with them entirely; but, on the contrary, in the changes he undertook to make was sometimes on their side and sometimes against them. He held the scales very evenly.

Lee wanted all the papers of the embassy brought to his own house, and Adams wrote him a letter which certainly shows that Adams had not gone over to the Lee party, and is also an example of the efforts he was making to improve the situation.

"I have not asked Dr. Franklin's opinion concerning your
proposal of a room in your house for the papers, and an hour to
meet there, because I know it would be in vain; for I think it
must appear to him more unequal still. It cannot be expected,
that two should go to one, when it is as easy again for one to
go to two; not to mention Dr. Franklin's age, his rank in the
country, or his character in the world; nor that nine-tenths of
the public letters are constantly brought to this house, and
will ever be carried where Dr. Franklin is. I will venture to
make a proposition in my turn, in which I am very sincere; it is
that you would join families with us. There is room enough in
this house to accommodate us all. You shall take the apartments
which belong to me at present, and I will content myself with
the library room and the next to it. Appoint a room for
business, any that you please, mine or another, a person to keep
the papers, and certain hours to do business. This arrangement
will save a large sum of money to the public, and, as it would
give us a thousand opportunities of conversing together, which
now we have not, and, by having but one place for our countrymen
and others to go to, who have occasion to visit us, would
greatly facilitate the public business. It would remove the
reproach we lie under, of which I confess myself very much
ashamed, of not being able to agree together, and would make the
commission more respectable, if not in itself, yet in the
estimation of the English, the French, and the American nations;
and, I am sure, if we judge by the letters we receive, it wants
to be made more respectable, at least in the eyes of many
persons of this country." (Bigelow's Franklin from His Own
Writings, vol. ii. p. 424.)

Adams had none of the rancor of Lee and Izard, but he tells us candidly that he found the public business in great confusion. It had never been methodically conducted. "There never was before I came a minute book, a letter book, or an account book; and it is not possible to obtain a clear idea of our affairs." Of Deane he says that he "lived expensively, and seems not to have had much order in his business, public or private; but he was active, diligent, subtle, and successful, having accomplished the great purpose of his mission to advantage."

Adams procured blank books and devoted himself to assorting the papers of the office at Passy, where Franklin had allowed everything to lie about in the greatest confusion. He found that too many people had been making money out of the embassy, and of these Jonathan Williams appears to have been one. He united with Lee in demanding Williams's accounts, and compelled Franklin to join in dismissing him. A man named Ross was another delinquent who was preying on the embassy, and the arrangement by which he was allowed to do it is described by Adams as "more irregular, more inconsistent with the arrangement of Congress and every way more unjustifiable than even the case of Mr. Williams."

He gives us many glimpses of Franklin's life,--his gayety, the bright stories he told, and his wonderful reputation among the French. An interesting young lady, Mademoiselle de Passy, was a great favorite with Franklin, who used to call her his flame and his love. She married a man whose name translated into English would be "Marquis of Thunder." The next time Madame de Chaumont met Franklin, she cried out, "Alas! all the conductors of Mr. Franklin could not prevent the thunder from falling on Mademoiselle de Passy."

Adams was at the Academy of Sciences when Franklin and Voltaire were present, and a general cry arose among the sensation-loving people that these two wonderful men should be introduced to each other. They accordingly bowed and spoke. But this was not enough, and the two philosophers could not understand what more was wanted. They took each other by the hand; but still the clamor continued. Finally it was explained to them that "they must embrace in French fashion." The two old men immediately began hugging and kissing each other, which satisfied the company, and the cry spread through the whole country, "How beautiful it was to see Solon and Sophocles embrace!"

Some of Adams's criticisms and estimates of Franklin, though not satisfactory to his eulogists, are, on the whole, exceedingly just.

"That he was a great genius, a great wit, a great humorist, a
great satirist, and a great politician is certain. That he was a
great philosopher, a great moralist, and a great statesman is
more questionable." (Adams's Works, vol. iii. p. 139.)

This brief statement will bear the test of very close investigation. Full credit, it will be observed, is given to his qualities as a humorous and satirical writer, and even as a politician. The word politician is used very advisedly, for up to that time Franklin had done nothing that would raise him beyond that class into statesmanship.

He had had a long career in Pennsylvania politics, where his abilities were confined to one province, and in the attempt to change the colony into a royal government he had been decidedly in the wrong. While representing Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Georgia in England from the time of the Stamp Act until the outbreak of the Revolution, he had accomplished nothing, except that his examination before Parliament had encouraged the colonists to persist in their opposition; he had got himself into a very bad scrape about the Hutchinson letters; and his plan of reconciliation with the mother country had broken down. In France, the government being already very favorable to the colonies, there was but little for the embassy to do except to conduct the business of sending supplies and selling prizes, and in this Deane and Beaumarchais did most of the work, while Franklin had kept no accounts, had allowed his papers to get into confusion, was utterly unable to keep the envoys in harmony, and had not made any effective appeal to Congress to change the absurd system which permitted the sending to a foreign country of three commissioners with equal powers. In the last years of his mission in France he did work which was more valuable; but it was not until some years afterwards, when he was past eighty and on the verge of the grave, that he accomplished in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 the one act of his life which may be called a brilliant stroke of statesmanship.

His qualities as a moralist have been discussed in a previous chapter which fully justifies Adams's assertion. As a philosopher, by which Adams meant what we now call a man of science, Franklin was distinguished, but not great. It could not be said that he deserved to be ranked with Kepler or Newton. His discovery of the nature of lightning was picturesque and striking, and had given him popular renown, but it could not put him in the front rank of discoverers.

In a later passage in his Diary Adams attempts to combat the French idea that Franklin was the American legislator.

"'Yes,' said M. Marbois, 'he is celebrated as the great
philosopher and the great legislator of America.' 'He is,' said
I, 'a great philosopher, but as a legislator of America he has
done very little. It is universally believed in France, England,
and all Europe, that his electric wand has accomplished all this
revolution. But nothing is more groundless. He has done very
little. It is believed that he made all the American
constitutions and their confederation; but he made neither. He
did not even make the constitution of Pennsylvania, bad as it
is.'...

(From a French engraving)]

"I said that Mr. Franklin had great merit as a philosopher. His
discoveries in electricity were very grand, and he certainly was
a great genius, and had great merit in our American affairs.
But he had no title to the 'legislator of America.' M. Marbois
said he had wit and irony; but these were not the faculties of
statesmen. His Essay upon the true means of bringing a great
Empire to be a small one was very pretty. I said he had wrote
many things which had great merit, and infinite wit and
ingenuity. His Bonhomme Richard was a very ingenious thing,
which had been so much celebrated in France, gone through so
many editions, and been recommended by curates and bishops to so
many parishes and dioceses.

"M. Marbois asked, 'Are natural children admitted in America to
all privileges like children born in wedlock?'... M. Marbois
said this, no doubt, in allusion to Mr. F.'s natural son, and
natural son of a natural son. I let myself thus freely into this
conversation, being led on naturally by the Chevalier and M.
Marbois on purpose, because I am sure it cannot be my duty, nor
the interest of my country, that I should conceal any of my
sentiments of this man, at the same time that I do justice to
his merits. It would be worse than folly to conceal my opinion
of his great faults." (Adams's Works, vol. iii. p. 220.)

The French always believed that Franklin was the originator of the Revolution, and that he was a sort of Solon who had prepared laws for all the revolted colonies, directed their movements, and revised all their state papers and public documents. It was under the influence of this notion that they worshipped him as the personification of liberty. It must have been extremely irritating to Adams and others to find the French people assuming that the old patriarch in his fur cap had emancipated in the American woods a rude and strange people who without him could not have taken care of themselves. But, protest as they might, they never could persuade the French to give up their ideal, and this was undoubtedly the foundation of a great deal of the hostility to Franklin which showed itself in Congress.

In 1811, long after Franklin's death, Adams wrote a newspaper article defending himself against some complaints that Franklin had made, of which I shall have more to say hereafter. It is a most vigorous piece of writing, and, in spite of some unfounded suspicions which it contains and the bluster and egotism so characteristic of its author, is by far the most searching and fairest criticism of Franklin that was ever written:

"His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or
Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and his character more beloved
and esteemed than any or all of them.... His name was familiar
to government and people, to kings and courtiers, nobility,
clergy and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to such a degree
that there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a _valet de
chambre_, coachman or footman, a lady's chambermaid or a
scullion in a kitchen who was not familiar with it, and who did
not consider him as a friend to human kind." (Adams's Works,
vol. i. p. 660.)

A large part of this reputation rested, Adams thought, on great talents and qualities, but the rest was artificial, the result of peculiar circumstances which had exaggerated the importance of Franklin's opinions and actions. The whole tribe of printers and newspaper editors in Europe and America had become enamoured and proud of him as a member of their body. Every day in the year they filled the magazines, journals, pamphlets, and all the gazettes of Europe "with incessant praise of Monsieur Franklin." From these gazettes could be collected "a greater number of panegyrical paragraphs upon '_le grand_ Franklin' than upon any other man that ever lived." He had become a member of two of the most powerful democratic and liberal bodies in Europe, the Encyclopedists and the Society of Economists, and thus effectually secured their devotion and praise. All the people of that time who were rousing discontent in Europe and preparing the way for the French Revolution counted Franklin as one of themselves. When he took part in the American Revolution their admiration knew no bounds. He was "the magician who had excited the ignorant Americans to resistance," and he would soon "abolish monarchy, aristocracy, and hierarchy throughout the world." But most important of all in building up his reputation was the lightning-rod.

"Nothing," says Adams, "perhaps, that ever occurred upon the
earth was so well calculated to give any man an extensive and
universal a celebrity as the discovery of the efficacy of iron
points and the invention of lightning-rods. The idea was one of
the most sublime that ever entered a human imagination, that a
mortal should disarm the clouds of heaven, and almost 'snatch
from his hand the sceptre and the rod.' The ancients would have
enrolled him with Bacchus and Ceres, Hercules and Minerva. His
paratonnerres erected their heads in all parts of the world, on
temples and palaces no less than on cottages of peasants and the
habitations of ordinary citizens. These visible objects reminded
all men of the name and character of their inventor; and in the
course of time have not only tranquillized the minds and
dissipated the fears of the tender sex and their timorous
children, but have almost annihilated that panic, terror, and
superstitious horror which was once almost universal in violent
storms of thunder and lightning." (Adams's Works, vol. 1. p.
661.)

The Latin motto universally applied to Franklin at this time, _Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis_, has usually been attributed to Turgot, the French Minister of Finance; but Adams believed that Sir William Jones was the author of it. Turgot made an alteration in it. As usually understood, the last half referred to the American colonies delivered from the oppression of Great Britain; but as Franklin grew to be more and more the favorite of that large class of people in Europe who were opposed to monarchy, and who believed that he would soon be instrumental in destroying or dethroning all kings and abolishing all monarchical government, Turgot suggested that the motto should read, _Eripuit coelo fulmen; mox septra tyrannis_, which may be freely translated, "He has torn the lightning from the sky; soon he will tear their sceptres from the kings."

At first Adams took the quarrelling lightly, trying to ignore and keep clear of it; but in a little while he confesses that "the uncandor, the prejudices, the rage among several persons here make me sick as death." After about a month he was so disgusted with the service, so fully convinced that the public business was being delayed and neglected on account of the disputes, that he determined to try to effect a change. He therefore wrote to Samuel Adams, then in Congress, declaring that the affairs of the embassy were in confusion, prodigious sums of money expended, large sums yet due, but no account-books or documents; the commissioners lived expensively, each one at the rate of from three to six thousand pounds a year; this would necessarily continue as long as their salaries were not definitely fixed, and it would be impossible to get an account of the expenditure of the public money. Equally ridiculous was the arrangement which made the envoys half ambassadors and half commercial agents. Instead of all this he suggested that Congress separate the offices of public ministers from those of commercial agents, recall all the envoys except one, define with precision the salary he should receive, and see that he got no more.

(From a French engraving)]

This is what Lee should have done long before. Franklin had indeed recommended a change in one of his letters, but not with such force as to cause its adoption. Now that Adams had set the example, they all wrote letters in the succeeding months begging for reform. The wisdom of Adams's plan was so apparent that when the facts were laid before Congress it was quickly adopted and Franklin made sole plenipotentiary.

But Lee and Izard retained their missions to other countries and remained in Paris, renewing their discussions and attacks on Franklin until the subject was again brought before Congress, and it was proposed to order all of them back to America and send others in their stead. Franklin had a narrow escape. The large committee which had the question before it was at one time within a couple of votes of recalling him and sending Arthur Lee in his place, which, whatever were the failings of Franklin, would have been a terrible misfortune. The French minister to the United States, M. Gérard, came to the rescue. He disclosed the extreme favor with which the French government regarded Franklin and its detestation of Lee. Franklin's wonderful reputation in Europe saved him, for it would have been folly to recall under a cloud the one man whom our allies took such delight in honoring.