HABITS OF LIFE AND OF BUSINESS: AN ADAMS INCIDENT
John Adams wielded a vivid and vicious pen; he neglected the Scriptural injunction: "Judge not," and he set honesty before charity in speech. His judgments upon his contemporaries were merciless; they had that kind of truthfulness which precluded contradiction, yet which left a sense of injustice; they were at once accurate and unfair. His strictures concerning Franklin are an illustration of these peculiarities. What he said is of importance because he said it, and because members of the Adams family in successive generations, voluminous contributors to the history of the country, have never divested themselves of the inherited enmity toward Franklin. During Adams's first visit to France the relationship between him and Franklin is described as sufficiently friendly rather than as cordial. December 7, 1778, in a letter to his cousin Samuel Adams, John thus described his colleague:—
"The other you know personally, and that he loves his Ease, hates to offend, and seldom gives any opinion till obliged to do it. I know also, and it is necessary that you should be informed, that he is overwhelmed with a correspondence from all quarters, most of them upon trifling subjects and in a more trifling style, with unmeaning visits from Multitudes of People, chiefly from the Vanity of having it to say that they have seen him. There is another thing that I am obliged to mention. There are so many private families, Ladies and gentlemen, that he visits so often,—and they are so fond of him, that he cannot well avoid it,—and so much intercourse with Academicians, that all these things together keep his mind in a constant state of dissipation. If indeed you take out of his hand the Public Treasury and the direction of the Frigates and Continental vessels that are sent here, and all Commercial affairs, and entrust them to Persons to be appointed by Congress, at Nantes and Bordeaux, I should think it would be best to have him here alone, with such a Secretary as you can confide in. But if he is left here alone, even with such a secretary, and all maritime and Commercial as well as political affairs and money matters are left in his Hands, I am persuaded that France and America will both have Reason to repent it. He is not only so indolent that Business will be neglected, but you know that, although he has as determined a soul as any man, yet it is his constant Policy never to say 'yes' or 'no' decidedly but when he cannot avoid it."
This mischievous letter, not actually false, yet misrepresenting and misleading, has unfortunately survived to injure both the man who wrote it and the man about whom it was written. It is quoted in order to show the sort of covert fire in the rear to which Franklin was subjected throughout his term of service. It is astonishing now, when the evidence is all before us and the truth is attainable, to read such a description of such a patriot as Franklin, a man who went through labors and anxieties for the cause probably only surpassed by those of Washington, and whose services did more to promote success than did the services of any other save only Washington. How blind was the personal prejudice of the critic who saw Franklin in Paris and could yet suggest that the charge of the public treasury should be taken from him! To whom else would the Frenchmen have unlocked their coffers as they did to him, whom they so warmly liked and admired? John Adams and Arthur Lee and other Americans who endeavored to deal with the French court got themselves so thoroughly hated there that little aid would have been forthcoming at the request of such representatives. It was to Franklin's personal influence that a large portion of the substantial help in men, ships, and especially in money, accorded by France to the States, was due. He was as much the right man in Europe as was Washington in America.
Nevertheless this attribution of traits, so maliciously penned, has passed into history, and though the world does not see that either France or the States had cause "to repent" keeping Franklin in Paris in general charge of affairs, and unwatched by a vigilant secretary, yet all the world believes that in the gay metropolis Franklin was indolent and given over to social pleasures, which flattered his vanity. Undoubtedly there is foundation in fact for the belief. But to arrive at a just conclusion one must consider many things. The character of the chief witness is as important as that of the accused. Adams, besides being a severe critic, was filled to the brim with an irrepressible activity, an insatiate industry, a restlessness and energy, all which were at this period stimulated by the excitement of the times to an intensity excessive and abnormal even for him. To him, in this condition of chronic agitation, the serenity of Franklin's broad intellect and tranquil nature seemed inexplicable and culpable. But Franklin had what Adams lacked, a vast experience in men and affairs. Adams knew the provinces and the provincials; Franklin knew the provinces and England and France, the provincials, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and all ranks and conditions of men,—journeymen, merchants, philosophers, men of letters, diplomatists, courtiers, noblemen, and statesmen. The one was an able colonist, the other was a man of the world, of exceptionally wide personal experience even as such. Moreover Franklin's undertakings were generally crowned with a success which justifies us in saying that, however much or little exertion he visibly put forth, at least he put forth enough. Adams sometimes was for putting forth too much. Franklin, when he arrived in France, was in his seventy-first year; his health was in the main good, yet his strength had been severely tried by his journey to Canada and by the voyage. He was troubled with a cutaneous complaint, of which he makes light, but which was abundant evidence that his physical condition was far from perfect; he was a victim of the gout, which attacked him frequently and with great severity, so that he was often obliged to keep his bed for days and weeks; when he was appointed sole minister of the States to France he remarked that there was "some incongruity in a plenipotentiary who could neither stand nor go;" later on he suffered extremely from stone and gravel; with all these diseases, and with the remorseless disease of old age gaining ground every day, it is hardly surprising that Franklin seemed to the hale and vigorous Adams not to be making that show of activity which would have been becoming in the chief representative of the United States during these critical years. Yet except that he was careless about his papers and remiss in his correspondence, no definite allegations are made against him prior to the treating for peace; no business of importance was ever said to have failed in his hands, which should be a sufficient vindication of his general efficiency. The amount of labor which was laid upon him was enormous: he did as much business as the managing head of a great banking-house and a great mercantile firm combined; he did all the diplomacy of the United States; he was also their consul-general, and though he had agents in some ports, yet they more often gave trouble than assistance; after the commercial treaty with France he had to investigate French laws and tariffs and give constant advice to American merchants upon all sorts of questions as to statutes, trade, customs, dues, and duties. What he did concerning the warships, the privateers, and the prizes has been hinted at rather than stated; what he did in the way of financiering has been imperfectly shown; he was often engaged in planning naval operations either for Paul Jones and others in European waters or for the French fleet in American waters. He had for a perpetual annoyance all the captiousness and the quarrels of the two Lees, Izard, and Thomas Morris. When business had to be transacted, as often occurred, with states at whose courts the United States had no representative, Franklin had to manage it;[71] especially he was concerned with the business in Spain, whither he would have journeyed in person had his health and other engagements permitted. Moreover he was adviser-general to all American officials of any and every grade and function in Europe; and much as some of these gentlemen contemned him, they each and all instinctively demanded his guidance in every matter of importance. Even Arthur Lee deferred to him rather than decide for himself; Dana sought his instructions for the mission to Russia; men of the calibre of Jay and independent John Adams sought and respected his views and his aid, perhaps more than they themselves appreciated. Surely here was labor enough, and even more responsibility than labor; but Franklin's great, well-trained mind worked with the ease and force of a perfectly regulated machine whose smoothness of action almost conceals its power, and all the higher parts of his labor were achieved with little perceptible effort. For the matters of account-keeping and letter-writing, he neglected these things; and one is almost provoked into respecting him for so doing when it is remembered that during all the time of his stay in France Congress never allowed to this aged and overtasked man a secretary of legation, or even an amanuensis or a copyist. He had with him his grandson, Temple Franklin, a lad of sixteen years at the time of his arrival in France, and whom it had been intended to place at school. But Franklin could not dispense with his services, and kept this youngster as his sole clerk and assistant. It should be mentioned also in this connection that it was not only necessary to prepare the customary duplicates of every document of importance, but every paper which was to be sent across the Atlantic had to be copied half a dozen extra times, in order to be dispatched in as many different ships, so great were the dangers of capture. It was hardly fair to expect a minister plenipotentiary to display unwearied zeal in this sort of work. Adams himself would have done it, and grumbled; Franklin did not do it, and preserved his good temper. In conclusion it may be said that, if Franklin was indolent, as in some ways he probably was, he had at least much excuse for indolence, and the trait showed itself only on what may be called the physical side of his duties; upon the intellectual side, it cannot be denied that during the period thus far traversed he did more thinking and to better purpose than any other American of the day.
In saying that Franklin was fond of society and pleased with the admiration expressed for him by the ardent and courteous Frenchmen and by other continental Europeans, Adams spoke correctly. Franklin was always social and always a little vain. But much less would have been heard of these traits if the distinction made between him and his colleagues had been less conspicuous and less constant. That men of the size of the Lees and Izard should inflate themselves to the measure of harboring a jealousy of Franklin's preëminence was only ridiculous; but Adams should have had, as Jay had, too much self-respect to cherish such a feeling. It was the weak point in his character that he could never acknowledge a superior, and the fact that the world at large estimated Washington, Franklin, and Hamilton as men of larger calibre than his own kept him in a state of exasperation all his life. Now the simple truth, forced in a thousand unintended ways upon the knowledge of all American envoys during the Revolution, was, that in Europe Franklin was a distinguished man, while no other American was known or cared for at all. Franklin received deference, where others received civility; Franklin was selected for attentions, for flattery, for official consultations and communications, while his colleagues were "forgotten entirely by the French people." Jay, Dana, and Carmichael accepted this situation in the spirit of sensible gentlemen, but Adams, the Lees, and Izard were incensed and sought an offset in defamation. Compare Carmichael's language with what has been quoted from Adams: he says: "The age of Dr. Franklin in some measure hinders him from taking so active a part in the drudgery of business as his great zeal and abilities would otherwise enable him to execute. He is the Master, to whom we children in politics look up for counsel, and whose name is everywhere a passport to be well received." Still it must have been provoking to be customarily spoken of as "Dr. Franklin's associates." When Franklin was appointed minister plenipotentiary he was obliged to explain that he was not the "sole representative of America in Europe." De Vergennes always wished to deal only with him, and occasionally said things to him in secrecy so close as to be exclusive even of his "associates." Adams honestly admitted that "this court have confidence in him alone." When a favor was to be asked, it was Franklin who could best seek it; and when it was granted it seemed to be vouchsafed to Franklin. In a word, Franklin had the monopoly of the confidence, the respect, and the personal regard of the French ministry. It was the same way also with the English; when they made advances for conciliation or peace, they too selected Franklin for their communications.
Adams was not sufficiently familiar with the modes of political life in Europe to appreciate what a substantial value Franklin's social and scientific prestige among the "ladies and gentlemen" and the "academicians" had there. All those tributes which the great "philosopher" was constantly receiving may have been, as Adams said, pleasant food for his vanity, but they were also of practical worth and service, signifying that he was a man of real note and importance in what European statesmen regarded as "the world." If Franklin relished the repast, who among mortals would not? And was his accuser a man to have turned his back on such viands, had he also been bidden to the feast of flattery? Franklin's vanity was a simple, amiable, and harmless source of pleasure to himself; it was not of the greedy or envious type, nor did its gratification do any injury to any person or any interest. Jay, a man of generous temper, understood the advantage reaped by the States from being represented at the French court by a man whose greatness all Europe recognized. More than once he bore this testimony, honorable alike to the giver and to him for whom it was given.[72]
Pleasant as were many of the features of Franklin's residence in France, and skillfully as he may have evaded some of the more irksome labors imposed upon him, the attraction was not always sufficient to make him reluctant to have done with the place. Its vexations and anxieties wore upon him grievously. He knew that unfriendly representations concerning him were often made in America, and that these induced some men to distrust him, and caused others to feel anxious about him. He heard stories that he was to be recalled, other stories that there was a cabal to vent a petty ill will by putting an end to the clerkship of his grandson. This cut him to the quick. "I should not part with the child," he said, "but with the employment;" and so the ignoble scheme miscarried; for Congress was not ready to lose Franklin, and did not really feel any extreme dread of harm from a lad who, though the son of a loyalist, had grown up under Franklin's personal influence. At times homesickness attacked him. When he heard of the death of an old friend at home he wrote sadly: "A few more such deaths will make me a stranger in my own country." He was not one of those patriots who like to live abroad and protest love for their own country. Generally he preserved the delightful evenness of his temper with a success quite wonderful in a man troubled with complaints which preëminently make the sufferer impatient and irascible. Only once he said, when he was being very unreasonably annoyed about some shipping business: "I will absolutely have nothing to do with any new squadron project. I have been too long in hot water, plagued almost to death with the passions, vagaries, and ill humors and madnesses of other people. I must have a little repose." A very mild outbreak this, under all his provocations, but it is the only one of which any record remains. His tranquil self-control was a very remarkable trait; he was never made so angry by all the calumny and assaults of enemies peculiarly apt in the art of irritation as to use any immoderate or undignified language. He never retaliated, though he had the fighting capacity in him. Before the tribunal of posterity his patient endurance has counted greatly in his favor.
By March, 1781, he had definitively made up his mind to resign, and wrote to the president of Congress a letter which was unmistakably earnest and in parts even touching.[73] When this alarming communication was received all the depreciation of the Lees, Izard, and the rest went for nothing. Without hesitation Congress ignored the request, with far better reason than it could show for the utter indifference with which it was wont to regard pretty much all the other requests which Franklin ever made. Its behavior in this respect was indeed very singular. He recommended his grandson to it, and it paid absolutely no attention to the petition. He repeatedly asked the appointment of consuls at some of the French ports; it created all sorts of other officials, keeping Paris full of useless and costly "ministers" accredited to courts which would not receive them, but appointed no consul. He urged hard, as a trifling personal favor, that an accountant might be appointed to audit his nephew Williams's accounts, but Congress would not attend to a matter which could have been disposed of in five minutes. He never could get a secretary or a clerk, nor even any proper appointment of, or salary for, his grandson. He seldom got an expression of thanks or approbation for anything that he did, though he did many things wholly outside of his regular functions and involving great personal risk and responsibility. Yet when he really wanted to resign he was not allowed to do so; and thus at last he was left to learn by inference that he had given satisfaction.[74]
No sooner had Adams got comfortably settled at home than he was obliged to return again to Europe. Franklin, Jay, Laurens, Jefferson, and he were appointed by Congress commissioners to treat for peace, whenever the fitting time should come; and so in February, 1780, he was back in Paris. But peace was still far away in the future, and Adams, meanwhile, finding the intolerable incumbrance of leisure upon his hands, exorcised the demon by writing long letters to de Vergennes upon sundry matters of interest in American affairs. It was an unfortunate scheme. If Nature had maliciously sought to create a man for the express purpose of aggravating de Vergennes, she could not have made one better adapted for that service than was Adams. Very soon there was a terrible explosion, and Franklin, invoked by both parties, had to hasten to the rescue, to his own serious injury.
On May 31, 1780, in a letter to the president of Congress, Franklin said: "A great clamor has lately been made by some merchants, who say they have large sums on their hands of paper money in America, and that they are ruined by some resolution of Congress, which reduces its value to one part in forty. As I have had no letter explaining this matter I have only been able to say that it is probably misunderstood, and that I am confident the Congress have not done, nor will do, anything unjust towards strangers who have given us credit." Soon afterward Adams got private information of the passage of an act for the redemption of the paper money at the rate of forty dollars for one in silver. At once he sent the news to de Vergennes. That statesman took fire at the tidings, and promptly responded that foreigners ought to be indemnified for any losses they might suffer, and that Americans alone should "support the expense which is occasioned by the defense of their liberty," and should regard "the depreciation of their paper money only as an impost which ought to fall upon themselves." He added that he had instructed the Chevalier de la Luzerne, French minister to the States, "to make the strongest representations on this subject" to Congress.
Adams was alarmed at the anger which he had excited, and besought de Vergennes to hold his hand until Franklin could "have opportunity to make his representations to his majesty's ministers." But this gleam of good sense was transitory, for on the same day, without waiting for Franklin to intervene, he composed and sent to de Vergennes a long, elaborate defense of the course of the States. It was such an argument as a stubborn lawyer might address to a presumably prejudiced court; it had not a pleasant word of gratitude for past favors, or of regret at the present necessity; it was as undiplomatic and ill considered as it certainly was unanswerable. But its impregnability could not offset its gross imprudence. To exasperate de Vergennes and alienate the French government at that period, although by a perfectly sound presentation, was an act of madness as unpardonable as any crime.
Upon the same day on which Adams drew up this able, inexcusable brief for his unfortunate client, the Congress, he wrote to Franklin begging him to interfere. On June 29 he followed this request with a humbler note than John Adams often wrote, acknowledging that he might have made some errors, and desiring to be set right. On June 30 de Vergennes also appealed to Franklin, saying, amid much more: "The king is so firmly persuaded, sir, that your private opinion respecting the effects of that resolution of Congress, as far as it concerns strangers and especially Frenchmen, differs from that of Mr. Adams, that he is not apprehensive of laying you under any embarrassment by requesting you to support the representations which his minister is ordered to make to Congress."
Franklin, receiving these epistles, was greatly vexed at the jeopardy into which the rash zeal of Adams had suddenly plunged the American interests in France. His indignation was not likely to be made less by the fact that all this letter-writing to de Vergennes was a tacit reproach upon his own performance of his duties and a gratuitous intrenchment upon his province. The question which presented itself to him was not whether the argument of Adams was right or wrong, nor whether the distinction which de Vergennes sought to establish between American citizens and foreigners was practicable or not. This was fortunate, because, while Adams in the States had been forced to ponder carefully all the problems of a depreciating paper currency, Franklin in France had neither necessity, nor opportunity, nor leisure for studying either the ethics or the solution of so perplexing a problem. He now hastily made such inquiries as he could among the Americans lately arrived in Paris, but did not pretend "perfectly to understand" the subject. To master its difficulties, however, did not seem essential, because he recognized that the obvious duty of the moment was to say something which might at least mitigate the present wrath of the French ministry, and so gain time for explanation and adjustment in a better state of feeling. He had once laid down to Arthur Lee the principle: "While we are asking aid it is necessary to gratify the desires and in some sort comply with the humors of those we apply to. Our business now is to carry our point." Acting upon this rule of conciliation, he wrote, on July 10, to de Vergennes:—
"In this I am clear, that if the operation directed by Congress in their resolution of March the 18th occasions, from the necessity of the case, some inequality of justice, that inconvenience ought to fall wholly upon the inhabitants of the States, who reap with it the advantages obtained by the measure; and that the greatest care should be taken that foreign merchants, particularly the French, who are our creditors, do not suffer by it. This I am so confident the Congress will do that I do not think any representations of mine necessary to persuade them to it. I shall not fail, however, to lay the whole before them."
In pursuance of this promise Franklin wrote on August 9 a full narrative of the entire matter; it was a fair and temperate statement of facts which it was his duty to lay before Congress.[75] Before sending it he wrote to Adams that de Vergennes, "having taken much amiss some passages in your letter to him, sent the whole correspondence to me, requesting that I would transmit it to Congress. I was myself sorry to see those passages. If they were the effects merely of inadvertence, and you do not, on reflection, approve of them, perhaps you may think it proper to write something for effacing the impressions made by them. I do not presume to advise you; but mention it only for your consideration." But Adams had already taken his own measures for presenting the case before Congress.
Such is the full story of Franklin's doings in this affair. His connection with it was limited to an effort to counteract the mischief which another had done. Whether he thought that the "inconvenience" which "ought to fall" only on Americans could be arranged to do so, does not appear; probably he never concerned himself to work out a problem entirely outside his own department. As a diplomatist, who had to gain time for angry people to cool down for amicable discussion, he was content to throw out this general remark, and to express confidence that his countrymen would do liberal justice. So far as he was concerned, this should have been the end of the matter, and Adams should have been grateful to a man whose tranquil wisdom and skillful tact had saved him from the self-reproach which he would ever have felt had his well-intentioned, ill-timed act borne its full possible fruit of injury to the cause of the States. But Adams, who knew that his views were intrinsically correct, emerged from the imbroglio with an extreme resentment against his rescuer, nor was he ever able to see that Franklin did right in not reiterating the same views. He wished not to be saved but to be vindicated. The consequence has been unfortunate for Franklin, because the affair has furnished material for one of the counts in the indictment which the Adamses have filed against him before the bar of posterity.
It may be remarked here that the few words which Franklin ever let drop concerning paper money indicate that he had given it little thought. He said that in Europe it seemed "a mystery," "a wonderful machine;" and there is no reason why he should have understood it better than other people in Europe. He also said that the general effect of the depreciation had operated as a gradual tax on the citizens, and "perhaps the most equal of all taxes, since it depreciated in the hands of the holders of money, and thereby taxed them in proportion to the sums they held and the time they held it, which is generally in proportion to men's wealth."[76] The remark could not keep a place in any very profound discussion of the subject; but it should be noted that in this point of view the contention of de Vergennes might be logically defended, on the ground that a foreigner ought not to be taxed like a citizen; but the insuperable difficulty of making the distinction practicable remained undisposed of.