the difficulty of maintaining communication with Congress and the agents of their government in other parts of Europe. We have seen that Deane brought over with him a supply of invisible ink. He was accustomed to write his dispatches to Congress between the lines of illusory business letters which the home committee on correspondence was enabled to bring out by the aid of an acid. (1 Jay's Correspondence and Papers, 84.) The following was one of the instructions as to correspondence: "When you write to me, please to write upon common post paper, to fold your letters as nearly the size and after the manner of this as may be to seal them with wafers instead of wax, and to send them by way of Holland to the care of Mr. Adams, or to Messrs. De Neufville & Sons, or Messrs. Ingraham & Bromfield, of Amsterdam, and to be careful not to swell them unnecessarily above the size of common mercantile letters. If these particulars are not attended to, all the precautions I can take will not keep them out of the hands of the ministry." This injunction arose out of the fact that when letters from America, suspected of being official, reached a European postoffice they were opened, and, if judged politic to do so, they were detained. Mr. Jay states that during his residence in Madrid he received no letters that did not bear the marks of having been opened, and that those he received he supposed to form but a fraction of those kept back.
Added to the espionage of the mails was the hazard of capture by the British cruisers and blockading ves- sels. It was the practice of the committees of Con- gress and the diplomatic agents abroad to prepare at least four copies, and sometimes seven, of every com- munication, and dispatch them by successive vessels or by vessels from different ports, and the envelopes con- taining them bore the indorsement, " To be sunk in case of danger from enemy." And yet with all these precautions often not a single copy reached its desti- nation. When Congress had as many as twelve agents in Europe, there was once a period of eleven months during which Congress did not receive a line from any one of them. The papers taken when Mr. Laurens, minister to Holland, was captured were the cause or pretext on which England declared war against that country. The British had a clue to the cipher used by Congress and its correspondents, and captured dis- patches were often distorted and dishonestly deciphered and then used to the injury of the writers and their governments. This we shall see is believed to have been the case with an important dispatch of the French representative in America, M. Marbois, which played such a conspicuous part in the peace negotiations of 1782. 1
The American envoys had also to contend with the
1 1 Dip. Cor. Rev. 461–463.
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British system of bribery, corruption, and a large corps of spies which watched their every movement in Paris and elsewhere in Europe. Deane in his first interview with Vergennes was warned by him to be on his guard against Lord Stormont, the British ambassador, whose spies would be aware of his conduct. 1 Walpole's sys- tem of politics, to which is attributed the aphorism, " Every man has his price," had permeated the British diplomatic service, and bribery was a common method of attaining the ends of the representatives. One of the most noted British diplomatists of that period, the Earl of Malmesbury, then ambassador at St. Peters- burg, was not only lavish in the corrupt use of money to reach the interior secrets of that court, but unblush- ingly records them. The abundant use of money for such purposes is often the subject of comment by Brit- ish historians of the time, and by none was it more freely used than by the ambassador in Paris. It is now known that more than one secretary of the American envoys was in the pay of the British government. 2 A deliberate attempt to allure Dr. Franklin from the cause, by tempting offers of pecuniary reward and titles of nobility, was made during his residence in the French capital, and his reply to these offers was one of the most notable productions of his pen; in Adams's homely style it is described as " a dose which will make them sick." 3
Soon after Franklin's arrival in Paris the American commissioners were received in private audience by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. de Vergennes.
1 2 Dip. Cor. Rev. 115. * 1 Ib. 264, 539, 54L 8 2 Ib. 633.
THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 29
They reported to Congress : " It was evident that this court, while it treated us privately with all civility, was cautious of giving umbrage to England, and was, therefore, desirous of avoiding open reception and ac- knowledgment of us, or entering into any formal nego- tiations with us, as ministers from the Congress." 1 The treaty which Congress had drawn up they soon found was an impossibility. As a purely commercial treaty it was, in great part, unobjectionable, but if France was thereby to recognize the independence of the United States, it would by that act incur the hostil- ity of England, and, hence, would require the United States to enter into an offensive and defensive alliance. Besides, matters in America were going badly for the Colonies. Diplomacy can do little in the face of mili- tary reverses. The winter of 1776–77 was a gloomy one for the cause of the Revolution. The authority of Congress was not respected, the forces were depleted by desertions, the officers dissatisfied, and new levies came slowly. The spring of 1777 opened with the British arms everywhere triumphant; Howe in Phila- delphia, Clinton in New York, and Burgoyne moving down from the north with an apparently irresistible army. In France the tone of the government was changed, supplies did not come with freedom, privateers were seized in its ports, and even Beaumarchais became alarmed for his safety. " My government," he said to Franklin, " will cut my throat as if I was a sheep."
The year wore on towards its close with nothing but gloom and discouragement for the American envoys;
1 2 Ib. 283.
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but one night early in December a dinner party in Franklin's home at Passy was interrupted by the arrival of a courier with important news. Bourgoyne and his entire army had surrendered to the Continental forces. Beaumarchais, one of the dinner party, rushed off with such precipitation to carry the news to the court at Versailles that he upset his coach and dislocated his arm. As the news spread throughout Europe, a great change came over political circles, especially in France. Within a few days the king's minister, M. Gerard, waited on the American envoys, and informed them that his Majesty had resolved to make the treaties which had been discussed, and their terms were easily agreed upon, but from military considerations they were not signed till February 6, 1778. The one was a commercial treaty, following largely the draft pre- pared by Congress, but the other was in direct antago- nism to the views of Adams already quoted, and not authorized by the instructions of Congress both a military and political alliance with France. It recog- nized the independence of the United States, and de- clared the object of the alliance to be the achievement of that independence; provided for combined military movements; made the negotiations for peace con- ditional on joint consultation and approval; stipulated for the division of probable conquests; and mutually guaranteed the possessions in America of the respec- tive parties.
This treaty has importance and interest in that it was the first celebrated by the new nation; but it has the added importance and interest that it was both the first
THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 31
and the only treaty of alliance ever negotiated by this country. It is an interesting speculation whether with- out it the independence of the United States could have been achieved. Assuredly it shortened the contest, and saved much bloodshed and treasure; and, under the circumstances, its wisdom cannot be questioned. But its subsequent history and early abrogation or repudia- tion have made of it a red beacon of warning against similar conventions in the future. We shall see that in the peace negotiations with England its spirit had to be violated, and that in the administrations of Washington and the elder Adams it brought us to the verge of another war with Great Britain, which we only escaped by denying its binding obligations in a manner little creditable to our international reputation. It would be hazardous to say that its lesson is that no future treaties of alliance should be made, but it does teach that such compacts bring future embarrassments, and that they should be entered upon only in times of extreme neces- sity.
At the ceremony
