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26 was of more value to the Americans than all the privateers they had sent out.

All this, of course, was not because he was the idol of the Queen and the coachman, nor even because he was soon established in one of the most exclusive country places in the environs of Paris and treated by Vergennes more like the final authority than as a suppliant from a struggling rebellion. It was because not only a large body of the English public, but by far the most powerful in brains and leadership, regarded him openly as one of the great leaders of the English race. He presented the amazing spectacle of the arch rebel and enemy of the country openly working for the independence of a province, and for the downfall of those in power, in intimate and daily correspondence with leaders of the opposition, the scientists, advanced thinkers, liberal politicians, and cultivated circles in all parts of the British Kingdom.

There was no man so familiar with and observant of English politics as he. This was