Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/105

Rh British funds and making a fortune by privateering, while the public accounts were kept in the laxest manner. All sorts of agents were drawing bills upon the United States, and commanders of war vessels were setting up their claims for expenses and supplies that had never been ordered. Mr. Adams, whose habits of business were extremely strict and methodical, was shocked at this confusion, and he took hold of the matter with such vigor as to put an end to it. He also recommended that the representation of the United States at the French court should be intrusted to a single minister instead of three commissioners. As a result of this advice, Franklin was retained at Paris, Arthur Lee was sent to Madrid, and Adams, being left without any instructions, returned to America, reaching Boston August 2, 1779. He came home with a curious theory of the decadence of Great Britain, which he had learned in France, and which serves well to illustrate the mood in which France had undertaken to assist the United States. England, he said, “loses every day her consideration, and runs toward her ruin. Her riches, in which her power consisted, she has lost with us and never can regain. She resembles the melancholy spectacle of a great, wide-spreading tree that has been girdled at the root.” Such absurd notions were quite commonly entertained at that time on the continent of Europe, and such