Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/116

96 printer saving one copy for Grégoire. A Unitarian should have escaped the prophecy interpretation mania, but the Revolution upheaval turned merchants into fanatics and rationalists into mystics. Stone's acquittal ought to have rendered Vaughan's return to England perfectly safe, and his brother-in-law, William Manning, M.P. for Plymton and a staunch Tory, was assured by Pitt that he might resume his parliamentary duties; but Vaughan suspected a snare. This was of course absurd, but it shows the atmosphere of distrust which then prevailed. After living a year with Skipwith, the American consul in Paris, he joined his family and his brother Charles at Hallowell, where his descendants still live. He had two other brothers at Philadelphia. One of these, John, a friend of Washington and Humboldt, and secretary to the American Philosophical Society, was a bit of an oddity. Generous in other matters, he had a dislike to the non-return of borrowed umbrellas, and he printed in large letters on his own, "This umbrella was stolen from John Vaughan." A friend once took this, all unconscious of the inscription, until Vaughan's Portuguese errand-boy perceived it and claimed the article. A fourth brother William was a merchant in London, where Benjamin's third