Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/242

 210 Negotiations with France. [1775 a system fatal to continuity of policy and to administrative experience. Yet, from a military point of view, this had its good side. If State independence crippled the American cause when it needed central and collective action, it enhanced the difficulties of piecemeal conquest and occupation. Over and over again it fell out that, as soon as the British army had left a conquered district where all resistance seemed to have been stamped out, the national party reasserted themselves in full vigour. But the greatest immediate advantage secured by the Declaration of Independence was that it put the United States in a position to negotiate openly for foreign alliances. The foreign affairs of France were now in the hands of the Comte de Vergennes, a clear-sighted, ambitious, and energetic politician. It was certain that he would lose no chance of wiping out the disgrace and redeeming the losses of the Seven Years' War. So early as 1775 it was known that French emissaries, not formally authorised, were in America sounding public opinion. For some time there had been private negotiations, in which the actors were, on the French side, Beaumarchais, best known to posterity as the author of the Marmge de Figaro, and on the American side, Arthur Lee. At a later stage of affairs Lee's factious egotism was a serious hindrance to the diplomatists with whom he had to work ; but he had been educated at an English public school, and thus enjoyed special facilities for studying English opinion and carrying on intrigues in England. In 1775 Congress appointed a Committee of Secret Correspondence. Early in 1776 that committee authorised a commission to go to France to purchase arms, ammunition, and clothes. The commission was vested in Silas Deane of Connecticut, a shrewd man of business. The trans- actions were necessarily secret, and it is therefore hardly possible to ascertain the extent of the help given by the French government ; but it seems certain that Vergennes connived at the purchase of supplies and arms, and that the King advanced money for that purpose. After independence had been declared, Congress was able to approach the French government more openly; and Lee and Franklin were associated with Deane. Lee's vanity and irritable jealousy made him a most embarrassing colleague. The selection of Franklin, on the other hand, was a most fortunate one. He was a thorough man of the world, who could yet pass himself off as a model of that republican simplicity which it was the fashion in France to admire, while his eminence in natural science fell in with what was then a popular taste in Parisian society. It was unlucky for the Americans that they could not rid themselves of a superstitious reverence for the military experience of the Old World. Deane had not sufficient knowledge of men or of French life to exercise any discretion in his choice of French officers who volunteered for