of the same kind concerning Prince Ferdinand. It would be unsafe to affirm that Deane did more than report the proposals made to him, but his silence concerning this particular charge of his antagonist, while denying every other categorically, is suspicious. At that early period Washington had not loomed up in the eye of the world. The French and Germans appear to have thought of the Americans and their commander as we might think of rebellious red men and their painted chief. There is nothing in Deane's letters from Europe to suggest that he did not share their delusion, or that he appreciated the necessity of independence. Paine, who conducted the foreign correspondence, knew that the secrets of the American office in Paris were open to Lord Stormont, who stopped large supplies prepared for America, and suspected Deane of treachery. It now appears that one of Deane's assistants, George Lupton, was an English "informer." (Stevens' Facsimiles, vii., No. 696.) Deane had midnight meetings in the Place Vendome with an English "Unknown" (now known as the informer Paul Wentworth) to whom he suggested that the troubles might be ended by England's forming a "federal union" with America. All of which shows Deane perilously unfit for his mission, but one is glad to find him appearing no worse in Wentworth's confidental portraiture (January 4, 1778) of the American officials:
"Dr. Franklin is taciturn, deliberate, and cautious; Mr. Deane is vain, desultory, and subtle; Mr. Arthur Lee, suspicious and indolent; Alderman Lee, peevish and ignorant; Mr. Izzard, costive and dogmatical—all of these insidious, and Edwards vibrating between hope and fear, interest and attachment."
The venal character of Deane's subsequent treason clearly appears in the correspondence of George III. with Lord North (Donne, pp. 145, 363, 380, 381, 384) It also appears, by a letter of January 9, 1778, that George III. was aware that the proposal had been sent to his brother-in-law, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, to become commander of the American revolutionists!
1. Error. Paine signed "Common Sense," and in one instance "Thomas Paine."
2. Paine resigned. Several motions for his dismissal were lost.
3. Gouverneur Morris himself.
4. This was the receipt dated June 10, 1776, on which the King had marked "Bon," and was obtained by Morris in 1794.
5. The documents referred to are no doubt among the Lee Papers preserved at the University of Virginia, which I have examined.
6. In one of Deane's intercepted letters (May 20, 1781) there is an indication that he had found more truth in what Paine had said about the gratuitous supplies than Beaumarchais had led him to believe. "The first plan of the French government evidently was to assist us just so far as might be absolutely necessary to prevent an accommodation, and to give this assistance with so much secresy as to avoid any rupture with Great Britain. On this plan succors were first permitted to be sent out to us by private individuals, and only on condition of future payment, but afterward we were thought to be such cheap and effectual instruments of mischief to the British nation that more direct and gratuitous aids were furnished us." But now M. Doniol has brought to light the Reflexions and Considerations of the French Minister, Count de Vergennes, which led to his employment of Beaumarchais, which contain such propositions as these: "It is essential that France shall at present direct its care towards this end: she must nourish the courage and perseverance of the insurgents by flattering their hope of effectual assistance when circumstances permit." "It will be expedient to give the insurgents secret aid in munitions and money; utility suggests this small sacrifice," "Should France and Spain give succors, they should seek compensation only in the political object they have at heart, reserving to themselves subsequent decision, after the events and according to the situations." "It would be neither for the king's dignity or interest to bargain with the insurgents." It is certain that Beaumarchais was required to impress these sentiments on Arthur Lee, who continued to take them seriously, and made Paine take them so, after Beaumarchais was taking only his own interests seriously.
Chapter XI. Cause, Country, Self
Whatever might be thought of Paine's course in the Deane-Beaumarchais affair, there could be no doubt that the country was saved from a questionable payment unjustly pressed at a time when it must have crippled the Revolution, for which the French subsidies were given. Congress was relieved, and he who relieved it was the sufferer. From the most important congressional secretaryship he was reduced to a clerkship in Owen Bid-die's law office.
Paine's patriotic interest in public affairs did not abate. In the summer of 1779 he wrote able articles in favor of maintaining our right to the Newfoundland fisheries in any treaty of peace that might be made with England. Congress was secretly considering what instructions should be sent to its representatives in Europe; in case negotiations should arise, and the subject was discussed by "Americanus" in a letter to the Pennsylvania Gazette, June 23d. This writer argued that the fisheries should not be mentioned in such negotiations; England would stickle at the claim, and our ally, France, should not be called on to guarantee a right which should be left to the determination of natural laws. This position Paine combated; he maintained that independence was not a change of ministry, but a real thing; it should mean prosperity as well as political liberty. Our ally would be aggrieved by a concession to Great Britain of any means of making our alliance useful. "There are but two natural sources of wealth—the Earth and the Ocean,—and to lose the right to either is, in our situation, to put up the other for sale." The fisheries are needed, "first, as an Employment Secondly, as producing national Supply and Commerce, and a means of national wealth. Thirdly, as a Nursery for Seamen." Should Great Britain be in such straits as to ask for peace, that would be the right opportunity to settle the matter. "To leave the Fisheries wholly out, on any pretence whatever, is to sow the seeds of another war." (Pennsylvania Gazette, June 30th, July 14th, 21st.) The prospects of peace seemed now sufficiently fair for Paine to give the attention which nobody else did to his own dismal situation. His scruples about making money out of the national cause were eccentric. The manuscript diary of Rickman, just found by Dr. Clair Grece, contains this note:
"Franklin, on returning to America from France, where he had been conducting great commercial and other concerns of great import and benefit to the States of America, on having his accounts looked over by the Committee appointed to do so, there was a deficit of £100,000. He was asked how this happened. 'I was taught,' said he very gravely, 'when a boy to read the scriptures and to attend to them, and it is there said: muzzle not the ox that treadeth out his master's grain.' No further inquiry was ever made or mention of the deficient £100,000, which, it is presumed, he devoted to some good and great purpose to serve the people,—his own aim through life."
Rickman, who named a son after Franklin, puts a more charitable construction on the irregularities of the Doctor's accounts than Gouverneur Morris (p. 140). The anecdote may not be exact, but it was generally rumored, in congressional circles, that Franklin had by no means been muzzled. Nor does it appear to have been considered a serious matter. The standard of political ethics being thus lowered, it is easy to understand that Paine gave more offence by his Diogenes-lantern than if he had quietly taken his share of the grain he trod out The security of independence and the pressure of poverty rendered it unnecessary to adhere to his quixotic Quaker repugnance to the sale of his inspirations, and he now desired to collect these into marketable shape. His plans are stated in a letter to Henry Laurens.
"Philadelphia, Sepr. 14th, 1779.—Dear Sir,—It was my intention to have communicated to you
