plained to the Federal Legislature, but in vain, that they were left without pay, without clothing, and without food. In these respects they were doubtless not worse off than their comrades; but they also alleged that they were detained after their term of service had ended. They had been rather ambiguously engaged "for three years, or during the war." When the three years expired, the men contended that their term was over; but their officers replied that they were bound to serve until the restoration of peace. The first open act of mutiny was on the morning of New Year's Day, when, on a given signal, the greater part of the non-commissioned officers and privates paraded under arms, and declared that they would march to the seat of Congress, and either obtain a redress of grievances, or abandon the service. Their officers interposed, and in a scuffle which ensued a captain was killed, and several other persons were wounded. General Wayne then endeavoured to over-awe the malcontents; but, on presenting his pistols at some of them, several bayonets, were immediately levelled at his breast, and he was told that, although his men respected and loved him, they would slay him on. the spot if he dared to fire. They were not, they said, going over to the enemy; on the contrary, they would fight him, if he appeared, as resolutely as they had done before; but they were determined that the consideration of their wrongs should be no longer evaded. The mutineers afterwards elected officers of their own, and, to the number of thirteen hundred, with six field-pieces, marched from Morristown towards Philadelphia. So serious a rising created great anxiety in the mind of Washington, and filled Congress with alarm. A committee of that body, together with the Governor of Pennsylvania, and some members of the Executive Council of the State, set out from the seat of the Federal Government, to meet the insurgents on the road.

That the rioters were really inspired by nothing more than a determination to obtain what they conceived to be justice, and were not at all disposed to enter into treasonable terms with the enemy, is proved by their conduct towards certain spies who had been sent out by Sir Henry Clinton, in the hope of turning the movement to his own advantage, and who were seized by the Pennsylvanian troops, and delivered up to General Wayne for execution. At Trenton, which they reached on the 9th of January, they met the committee of Congress, and, by the 15th, terms of accommodation had been agreed upon, with which the committee returned to Philadelphia. Subject to the approval of the full body, it was promised that all who had enlisted

"for three years, or during the war," should be discharged; that, in cases where the terms of enlistment could not be produced, the soldier's oath should be taken as evidence; that the men were to receive immediate certificates for the depreciation of their pay; and that their arrears were to be settled as soon as circumstances should permit. Congress ratified these concessions, and about half the Pennsylvanian troops obtained their discharge. It was afterwards discovered that many of them had made false declarations concerning the terms of their enlistment. Their success, however, encouraged a proportion of the Jersey brigade, quartered at Pompton, to complain of grievances similar to those of the Pennsylvanian force, and also to threaten violence if they were not at once remedied. But their numbers were so few that it was no difficult matter to act peremptorily. Washington accordingly sent General Howe against them, and, two of the ringleaders having been executed, the others. were reduced to unconditional submission.

But, although the danger had for the moment been overcome, it was evident to Congress that the spirit of insubordination would spread, if something were not done to satisfy the just demands of the men. Accordingly, about three months' pay in specie was raised, and presented to the troops, whose sullenness was greatly mitigated by this treatment. Unfortunately, what pleased the army displeased the people. Complaints were made as to the heavy contributions levied on the public for the support of the troops. The enthusiastic feeling with which the several States had entered on the war, was by this time almost entirely exhausted. Peace at nearly any price was desired by many. A sense of despondency spread over the land, and it was with the utmost difficulty that the Federal authorities could obtain sufficient means to carry on the struggle. Had there been a more complete union of the States, the power of the whole would have been much better developed; but any movement to this effect was defeated by the jealous distrust of local patriotism. The want of money was a trouble of the most portentous kind, and, to meet it, Congress was obliged to go about begging for loans in the chief European States, with all the fervour of genuine distress. In the final days of 1780, Lieutenant-Colonel John Laurens, son of Henry Laurens, the former President of Congress, was appointed Special Minister at the Court of Versailles, with a view to raising funds. The elder Laurens having been captured by the English at sea, while on his way to Holland, and committel to the Tower, John Adams was commissioned, va the 1st of January, 1781, to be Minister Plenio

tentiary to the States General; and some months before he had been empowered to negotiate a loan. Adams had arrived in Paris, in pursuance of his commission to open negotiations with Great Britain, on the 5th of February, 1780. He soon found himself at issue with the Count de Vergennes, the French Foreign Minister, on the claims of French creditors against the Government of the United States. Vergennes conceived that those creditors should be specially protected against the depreciation of the paper money; Adams, on the contrary, argued that the native and the foreign creditor should be treated alike, all contracts having been to some extent graduated to the current value. Such was the policy which Congress had adopted; such was the policy which Adams supported, in opposition to the Ministry of Louis XVI. Franklin favoured the views of Vergennes, and believed, or professed to believe, that Congress would act towards French creditors as the French Minister desired. As Adams had no representative position at Paris, but was there only in furtherance of his contemplated proposals to the English Government, he was not strictly called on to give utterance to his views on the question, and appears to have done so simply in prosecution of a correspondence with Vergennes which that statesman had himself solicited. The plan of opening negotiations with England came to nothing, owing to the opposition of the Count, who, in the development of a selfish national policy, was not desirous of re-establishing friendly relations between America and Great Britain, unless as forming part of a general pacification, contrived with a special view to French interests. Finding himself thus unable to carry out his original mission, Adams, on the 27th of July, 1780, quitted Paris for Amsterdam. It was while at the latter city, and after he had himself taken some unauthorised steps on the subject, that he was directed by Congress to endeavour to obtain a loan. The attempt, however, ended in failure. The English Government had discovered, from the papers seized with Henry Laurens, that certain irregular approaches towards a treaty between the United States and Holland were being made by persons of position in Amsterdam; and it had in consequence assumed so high and threatening a tone as to create the utmost alarm in the Dutch Government, which disavowed all complicity in the movement, and engaged to prosecute the persons concerned

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"according to the laws of the country." This put a stop to all monetary transactions between the Dutch and the Americans, though it did not long delay the breaking out of war between England and Holland. On receiving, in the early part of 1781, his powers as Minister Plenipotentiary to the United Provinces, Adams presented a memorial announcing that he was authorised by the United States to give in their accession to the Armed Neutrality. Not until the following year, however, could he obtain a recognition of his official character, and the signature of a treaty between the two Powers.

In July, 1781, Adams was recalled to Paris by the Count de Vergennes, that he might be consulted with regard to certain proposals for the holding of a Congress and the conclusion of a peace, which had been made by Austria and Russia. France had for a long time been getting impatient of the war. The French people grumbled at the heavy burdens that it entailed; and French diplomatists, thinking that the power of England was by this time sufficiently broken, were not disposed to continue the struggle simply for the sake of obtaining for the United States particular advantages, such as a share in the fisheries, or other matters which Americans supposed to be necessary to their well-being. Even a year earlier, France had made pacific overtures to the English Cabinet; and she now favoured the suggestions of the two Imperial Courts. But Adams was quick in discovering that Vergennes was not dealing frankly with him; that he was opposed to his assuming at the Congress a place as Minister Plenipotentiary of an independent sovereignty; that he desired to retain too much power in his own hands; and that it was part of his policy to put the United States in the position of a suppliant, endeavouring to make terms with a superior. For these reasons, Adams disapproved of the proposed negotiations, with their concomitant of an armed truce; though there can be no doubt that Vergennes would in any case have insisted upon the independence of the United States, as a necessary feature of his antiAnglican policy. Congress was to some extent inclined to defer to Vergennes, for fear of risking the French Alliance; but the questions at issue were settled by the refusal of Great Britain to allow of any mediation between herself and her revolted colonies.*

*Life of John Adams, by his Grandson, chap. 6.

UNTIL the latter end of the year, when Greene had succeeded in rescuing nearly the whole of South Carolina and Georgia from the English, American affairs in 1781 were not looking prosperous. The power of the enemy was being vigorously displayed in many directions; the number of loyalists was increasing; and many, even of those who still adhered to the popular side, were getting out of heart, languid, and indifferent. To this feeling of apathy, nothing contributed so much as the maladministration of political affairs. Congress was discredited, and not without cause. Its best men had departed, either that they might serve in the local Legislatures of their particular States, or that the general cause of the Union might be advanced at foreign Courts. A petty spirit, parsimonious, intriguing, and sometimes factious, took the place of that devotion to great principles of statesmanship which had marked the earlier days of the struggle. An idle jealousy of the army, by which alone the independence of the country could be secured, fettered the hands of Washington, marred his best designs, and not seldom irritated even his serene spirit into moods of anger or impatience. The Republic, in short, was badly governed, and the fortunes of the rising nation were compromised by its rulers. necessary.

A change at length became absolutely It was tardily discovered that affairs could not be properly administered by Committees of Congress, and in the course of 1781 four of these bodies were superseded by a Minister for Foreign Affairs, a Superintendent of Finance, a Secretary of War, and a Secretary of Marine. The change effected a concentration of power, and facilitated the working of the several departments. It had also the advantage of a more definite fixing of responsibility.

Much had been done, and something had been sacrificed, to obtain the friendship of France; and that friendship, after all, did not yield very valuable fruits. The policy of France was entirely and grossly selfish-selfish without the slightest mitiga

tion of a regard for general principles of right. America was to be used as a means of ruining England. The great humiliation inflicted on the Bourbon Monarchy by the war of 1756–63 was to be revenged by the destruction of English dominion in the New World; for it was assumed with con fidence that Great Britain, as a first-class Power. could not survive the loss of her colonies. Whatever diplomatic pretences may have been made to the Americans themselves, the French Ministers, in dealing with one another, never affected the slightest interest in the United States, or in the cause of freedom. How could they possibly feel any such interest, when their whole natures were bound up in the maintenance of a despotic and feudal sovereignty, totally opposed to the political ideas which AngloAmericans were undisguisedly working out? It was only when the American Congress, in 1777, directed their Commissioners at Paris to say that without an explicit declaration of France in their favour they could not answer for it that some reunion with the mother country would not be unavoidable in the future,—it was only then, fortified by the success of Gates over Burgoyne, and quickened by the fear of Lord Chatham's return to power with ample concessions to the rebels, that Louis XVI. and hi Ministers resolved to give an open, as they had already given a secret, support to the new Federation in America. The paper in which, some months before the resolve was actually taken, the Count de Vergennes recommended the King to recognise the Government of the United States, shows with per fect clearness how treacherous was the pretended friendship of France-how completely that coul try was using America as a convenient tool for the accomplishment of her own purposes, with the deliberate intention of breaking, or at least of in juring, the tool, when it had done its work, lest it should becore dangerous. The Count, desiring to

* Turgot was an exception; but Turgot was dismissed from office in May, 1776.

combat the objection that France was creating a Power which might in the end be formidable to herself, suggested to his Royal master that the clashing of interests, incidental to such a combination of distinct communities as that of the American States, would always be an obstacle to their rapid growth. A still more effective influence, operating to their disadvantage, would result from the introduction of European vices. If both these should fail, France, in the opinion of M. de Vergennes, could always check the growth and prosperity of the United States by favouring the retention of Canada and the adjacent provinces in the hands of Great Britain.* Thus, America was to be played off against England, and England against America. Hence the instructions to M. Gérard, when he was sent out to Philadelphia, to defeat all projects against Canada. Hence the refusals to aid any expedition having for its object the conquest of that province. Hence the earnest support of Spain in making her own support of the insurgents conditional upon their renunciation of the western territories, and of their claim to navigate the Mississippi. Hence the intrigues of M. Gérard to limit the success of the United States to the mere achieving of independence, exclusive of any particular advantages which they might have obtained of England by conceding to her a treaty of commerce with special privileges, leading, perhaps, to the formation of a kind of alliance between the mother country and her enfranchised, but no longer antagonistic, colonies. Hence the opposition of France to John Adams, when that eminent man, in 1779, was commissioned to open negotiations with Great Britain, with a view to the conclusion of peace and the establishment of a commercial league. And hence the determination to prevent, if possible, the assumption by Adams of any Ministerial character, in the event of those negotiations being really brought to pass.

Adams quickly saw through the motives and the designs of France. He was not liked, either by the French agent at Philadelphia, or by the French Ministers at Paris. As long as M. Gérard continued to represent his Government in America (which was until the second half of 1779), he regarded both the Adamses, and all who thought with them, as Tories in disguise-secret adherents of Great Britain, ready to countenance anything which would thwart the policy of the Tuileries. No view could be more absurd or baseless. It is doubtless perfectly true that John Adams would far rather have seen his country in alliance with

* Life of John Adams, by his Grandson, chap. 6.

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England than in intimate association with France. He desired to base the institutions of the United States on those of England, consistently with the omission of the monarchical and aristocratic elements. But no man was more passionately in earnest in requiring the absolute independence of the American colonies; nor did one of the Revolutionary leaders do more towards effecting that result, hardly any so much. The enmity of France, however, increased his difficulties when in Europe. Franklin, with all the shrewdness of his penetrating intellect, seems to have been blinded to the real character of French civilities, and to have fallen too much under the influence of the Count de Vergennes. The personal altercations into which he had been drawn while in London, and which were sometimes such as he might have avoided, had embittered his heart against his father's native land, and inclined him to an excess of cordiality with her ancient foe. It is to be feared that he now hated, not merely the injustice of England, but England herself. His devotion to France was carried to an extent that is not morally defensible. When (to anticipate a little) Thomas Grenville was in Paris, in 1782, to confer with the French Government regarding a peace, Vergennes solemnly declared that France had never given the least encouragement to America until long after the Declaration of Independence, and appealed to Franklin to contradict him if he did not speak the truth. did not speak the truth. It would, perhaps, be expecting too much, under all the circumstances, that Franklin should have compromised his country's ally by publicly stating the fact; but it is rather disconcerting to find that he records the circumstance in his journal without a word of comment.t

There can be no doubt that with many classes of the American people the alliance with France was not popular, however much it was submitted to as a necessity. It awakened painful memories of the time when French soldiers and French priests, in alliance with intoxicated or fanatical Indians, ravaged the eastern colonies, murdered women and children, and threatened the existence of whole communities. It aroused the sense of religious antagonism and sectarian apprehension, It furnished an excuse, and perhaps in reality an additional motive, for the treason of Arnold. Up to the early part of 1781, it had resulted in very little good to set against its numerous disadvantages. The French fleet, ever since its arrival in the previous summer, had been blockaded by the

+ Life of John Adams, by his Grandson, chap. 6.