At the same time he wrote to Adams that he had "long been humiliated with the idea of our running about from court to court begging for money and friendship, which are the more withheld the more eagerly they are solicited, and would perhaps have been offered if they had not been asked. The proverb says, God helps them that help themselves; and the world too, in this sense, is very godly." This was an idea to which he more than once recurred. In March, 1782, in the course of a long letter to Livingston, he said: "A small increase of industry in every American, male and female, with a small diminution of luxury, would produce a sum far superior to all we can hope to beg or borrow from all our friends in Europe." He reiterated the same views again in March, and again in December, and doubtless much oftener.[70] No man was more earnest in the doctrine that every individual American owed his strenuous and unremitting personal assistance to the cause. It was a practical as well as a noble patriotism which he felt, preached, and exemplified; and it was thoroughly characteristic of the man.
What was then the real financial capacity of the people, and whether they did their utmost in the way of raising money to support the Revolution, is a question about which it is easy to express an opinion, but difficult to prove its accuracy by convincing evidence. On the one hand, it is true that the strain was extreme and that much was done to meet it; on the other hand, it is no less true that even beneath this stress the national prosperity actually made a considerable advance during the war. The people as a whole gathered money rather than impoverished themselves. In the country at large the commercial instinct fully held its own in competition with the spirit of independence. There was not much forswearing of little luxuries. Franklin said that he learned by inquiry that of the interest money which was disbursed in Paris most was laid out for "superfluities, and more than half of it for tea." He computed that £500,000 were annually expended in the States for tea alone. This sum, "annually laid out in defending ourselves or annoying our enemies, would have great effect. With what face can we ask aids and subsidies from our friends, while we are wasting our own wealth in such prodigality?"
Henry Laurens, dispatched as minister to the Hague in 1780, was captured on the voyage and carried into England. But this little incident mattered not at all to the Congress, which for a long while cheerfully drew a great number of bills upon the poor gentleman, who, held in the Tower of London as a traitor, was hardly in a position to negotiate large loans for his fellow "rebels." In October, 1780, these bills began to flutter down upon Franklin's desk, drawn by a sort of natural gravitation. He felt "obliged to accept them," and said that he should "with some difficulty be able to pay them, though these extra demands often embarrass me exceedingly."
November 19, 1780, he wrote to de Vergennes announcing that Congress had notified him of drafts to the amount of about 1,400,000 livres (about $280,000). The reply was: "You can easily imagine my astonishment at your request of the necessary funds to meet these drafts, since you perfectly well know the extraordinary efforts which I have made thus far to assist you and support your credit, and especially since you cannot have forgotten the demands you lately made upon me. Nevertheless, sir, I am very desirous of assisting you out of the embarrassed situation in which these repeated drafts of Congress have placed you; and for this purpose I shall endeavor to procure for you, for the next year, the same aid that I have been able to furnish in the course of the present. I cannot but believe, sir, that Congress will faithfully abide by what it now promises you, that in future no drafts shall be made upon you unless the necessary funds are sent to meet them."
Such a letter, though only gratitude could be felt for it, must have stung the sensitiveness of Franklin, who had already a great national pride. Nor was the pain likely to be assuaged by the conduct of Congress; for that body had not the slightest idea of keeping the promises upon which de Vergennes expressed a reliance perhaps greater than he really felt. It is not without annoyance, even now, that one reads that only two days after the French minister wrote this letter, Congress instructed Franklin to do some more begging for clothes, and for the aid of a fleet, and said: "With respect to the loan, we foresee that the sum which we ask will be greatly inadequate to our wants."
December 2, 1780, Franklin acknowledges "favors," a conventional phrase which seems sarcastic. These tell him that Congress has resolved to draw on him "bills extraordinary, to the amount of near $300,000." These were doubtless what led to the foregoing correspondence with de Vergennes. In reply he says that he has already engaged himself for the bills drawn on Mr. Laurens, and adds: "You cannot conceive how much these things perplex and distress me; for the practice of this government being yearly to apportion the revenue to the several expected services, any after demands made, which the treasury is not furnished to supply, meet with great difficulty, and are very disagreeable to the ministers."
A short fragment of a diary kept in 1781 gives a painful vision of the swarm of bills:—
"Jan. 6. Accepted a number of loan office bills this day, and every day of the past week.
"Sunday, Jan. 7. Accepted a vast number of loan office bills. Some of the new drafts begin to appear.