The True Benjamin Franklin

by Sydney George Fisher

It was in June, 1776, that Beaumarchais started his extraordinary enterprise in the Rue Vieille du Temple, in a large building called the Hôtel de Hollande, which had formerly been used as the residence of the Dutch ambassador. The million francs was paid to him by the French government, another million by Spain in September, and still another million by France in the following year. So with the greatest hopefulness and delight he began shipping uniforms, arms, ammunition, and all sorts of supplies to America. He had at times great difficulty in getting his laden ships out of port. The French government was perfectly willing that they should go, and always affected to know nothing about them. But Lord Stormont, the British ambassador, would often discover their destination and protest in most vigorous and threatening language. Then the French ministry would appear greatly surprised and stop the ships. This process was repeated during two years,—a curious triangular, half-masked contest between Beaumarchais, Lord Stormont, and the ministry.

“If government caused my vessels to be unloaded in one port, I sent them secretly to reload at a distance in the roads. Were they stopped under their proper names, I changed them immediately, or made pretended sales, and put them anew under fictitious commissions. Were obligations in writing exacted from my captains to go nowhere but to the West India Islands, powerful gratifications on my part made them yield again to my wishes. Were they sent to prison on their return for disobedience, I then doubled their gratifications to keep their zeal from cooling, and consoled them with gold for the rigor of our government.”

In this way he sent to the colonies within a year eight vessels with supplies worth six million francs. Sometimes, in spite of all efforts, one of his vessels with a valuable cargo was obliged to sail direct to the West Indies, and could go nowhere else. In one instance of this sort he wrote to his agent Francy, in America, to have several American privateers sent to the West Indies to seize the vessel.

“My captain will protest violently, and will draw up a written statement threatening to make his complaint to the Congress. The vessel will be taken where you are. The Congress will loudly disavow the action of the brutal privateer, and will set the vessel at liberty with polite apologies to the French flag; during this time you will land the cargo, fill the ship with tobacco, and send it back to me as quickly as possible, with all you may happen to have ready to accompany it.”

Imagination is sometimes a very valuable quality in practical affairs, and this neat description by the man of letters was actually carried out in every detail and with complete success by his agent in America. He was certainly a valuable ambassador of the colonies, this wonderful Beaumarchais; but he suffered severely for his devotion. Under his agreement with his government, the government’s outlay was to be paid back gradually by American produce; but Congress would not send the produce, or sent it so slowly that Beaumarchais was threatened with ruin, and suffered the torturing anxiety which comes with the conviction that those for whom you are making the greatest sacrifices are indifferent and incapable of gratitude.

It was in vain that he appealed to Congress; for Arthur Lee was continually informing that body that he was a fraud and his claims groundless, because the French government intended that all the supplies sent through Hortalez & Co. should be a free gift to the revolted colonies. Lee may have sincerely believed this; but it was very unfortunate, because more than two years elapsed before Congress became convinced that the supplies were not entirely a present, and voted Beaumarchais its thanks and some of the money he claimed. A large part of his claims were never paid. For fifty years there was a controversy about “the lost million,” and for its romantic history the reader is referred to De Loménie, Durand’s “New Material for the History of the American Revolution,” and Dr. Stillé’s “Beaumarchais and the Lost Million.”

But he was not the only person who suffered. The truth is that the whole arrangement made by Congress for conducting the business in France was ridiculously inefficient, not to say cruel and inhuman. That we got most important aid from France was due to the eagerness and efforts of the French themselves, and not to anything done by Congress.

Franklin and his two fellow-commissioners, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, had equal powers. They had to conduct a large and complicated business involving the expenditure of millions of dollars without knowing exactly where the millions were to come from, and with no regular system of accounts or means of auditing and investigating; their arrangements had to be largely kept secret; they expended money in lump sums without always knowing what use was made of it; they were obliged to rely on the assistance of all sorts of people,—naval agents, commercial agents, and others for whose occupation there was no exact name; and they had no previous experience or precedents to guide them. On their arrival at Paris, the three commissioners found a fourth person, Beaumarchais, well advanced in his work, and accomplishing in a practical way rather more than any of them could hope to do. Moreover, Beaumarchais’s arrangement was necessarily so secret that though they knew in a general way, as did Lord Stormont and all Paris, what he was doing, yet only one of them, Deane, was ever fully admitted into the secret, and it is probable that the other two died without having fully grasped the real nature and conditions of his service.

That three joint commissioners of equal powers should conduct such an enormous business of expenditure and credit for a series of years without becoming entangled in the most terrible suspicions and bitter quarrels was in the nature of things impossible. The result was that the history of their horrible disputes and accusations against one another is more voluminous than the history of their services. Deane, who did more actual work than any one except Beaumarchais, was thoroughly and irretrievably ruined. Arthur Lee, who accomplished very little besides manufacturing suspicions and charges, has left behind him a reputation for malevolence which no one will envy; Beaumarchais suffered tortures which he considered almost equivalent to ruin, and his reputation was not entirely rescued until nearly half a century after his death; and Franklin came nearer than ever before in his life to sinking his great fame in an infamy of corruption, for the attacks made upon him by Arthur Lee were a hundred times worse than those of Wedderburn.

It was a terrible ordeal for the four men,—those two years before France made an open alliance with the colonies,—and I will add a few other circumstances which contributed variety to their situation. Ralph Izard, of South Carolina, a very passionate man, was appointed by the wise Congress an envoy to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He never went to Tuscany for the simple reason that the duke could not receive him without becoming embroiled with Great Britain; so he was obliged to remain in Paris, where he assisted Lee in villifying Deane, Franklin, and Beaumarchais, and his letters home were full of attacks on their characters.