boundless services they had rendered in the establishment of her independence! What creative ideas they were to carry home! How did they in later wars defy death in all climes, from San Domingo to Moscow and to the Nile, always ready to bleed for their beautiful land, often yielding up their lives for liberty! Rochambeau, who was received with special honor by Louis XVI., through a happy accident escaped the perils of the revolution, and lived to be more than fourscore years of age. Viomenil, his second in command, was mortally wounded while defending his king in the palace of the Tuileries. De Grasse died before a new war broke out. For more than fifty years Lafayette—in the states general, in convention, in legislative assemblies, at the head of armies, in exile, in cruel and illegal imprisonment, in retirement, in his renewed public life, the emancipator of slaves, the apostle of free labor, the dearest guest of America-remained to his latest hour the true and the ever hopeful representative of loyalty to the cause of liberty. The Viscount de Noailles, who so gladly assisted to build in America the home of human freedom for comers from all nations, was destined to make the motion which in one night swept from his own country feudal privilege and personal servitude. The young Count Henri de Saint-Simon, who during his four campaigns in America mused on the neverending succession of sorrows for the many, devoted himself to the reform of society, government, and industry. Dumas survived long enough to take part in the revolution of July 1830. Charles Lameth, in the states general and constituent assembly, proved one of the wisest and ablest of the popular party, truly loving liberty and hating all excesses in its name. Alexander Lameth, acting with the third estate in the states general, proposed the abolition of all privileges, the enfranchisement of every slave, and freedom of the press; he shared the captivity of Lafayette in Olmütz, and to the end of his life was a defender of constitutional rights. Custine of Metz, whose brilliant services in the United States had won for him very high promotion, represented in the states general the nobility of Lorraine, and insisted on a declaration of the rights of man. Of the Marquis de Chastellux Washington said: "Never have I parted with a man to whom my soul clave more sincerely.' His philanthropic zeal for "the greatest good of the greatest number" was interrupted only by an early death. Let it not be forgotten that Sécondat, a grandson of the great Montesquieu, obtained promotion for good service in America. Nor may an Amercan fail to name the young Prince de Broglie, though he arrived too late to take part in any battle. In the midday of life, just before he was wantonly sent to the guillotine, he said to his child, then nine years old, afterward the self-sacrificing minister, who kept faith with the United States at the cost of popularity and place: "My son, they may strive to draw you away from the side of liberty, by saying to you that it took the life of your father; never believe them, and remain true to its noble cause." At the time when the strength which came from the presence of a wealthy and generous ally was departing, the ground was shaking beneath the feet of congress. Pennsylvania, the great central state, in two memorials offered to congress the dilemma, either to satisfy its creditors in that state, or to suffer them to be paid by the state itself out of its contributions to the general revenue. The first was impossible; the second would dissolve the union. Yet it was with extreme difficulty that Rutledge, Madison, and Hamilton, a committee from congress, prevailed upon the assembly of Pennsylvania to desist for the time from appropriating funds raised for the confederation. + The system for revenue by duties on importations seemed now to await only the assent of Rhode Island. That commonwealth in 1781 gave a wavering answer; and then instructed its delegates in congress to uphold state sovereignty and independence. On the first of November 1782 its assembly unanimously rejected the measure for three reasons: the impost would bear hardest on the most commercial states, particularly upon Rhode Island; officers unknown to the constitution would be introduced; a revenue for the expenditure of which congress is not to be accountable to the states would * Sparks, viii., 367. Gilpin, 199, 216, 224, 488; Journals of Congress, 4 December 1782; Minutes of Assembly of Pennsylvania for 1782, pp. 663, 675, 733. render that body independent of its constituents, and would be repugnant to the liberty of the United States. * The necessity of the consent of every one of the thirteen states to any amendment of the confederacy gave to Rhode Island a control over the destinies of America. Against its obstinacy the confederation was helpless. The reply to its communication, drafted by Hamilton, declared, first: that the duty would prove a charge not on the importing state, but on the consumer; next, that no government can exist without a right of appointing officers for those purposes which proceed from and centre in itself, though the power may not be expressly known to the constitution; lastly, the impost is a measure of necessity, "and, if not within the letter, is within the spirit of the confederation." † The growing discontent of the army, the clamor of public creditors, the enormous deficit in the revenue, were invincible arguments for a plan which promised relief. Congress having no resource except persuasion, three of its members would have borne its letter to Rhode Island but for intelligence from Virginia.‡ In the legislature of that state, Richard Henry Lee, waiting till the business of the session was nearly over and the house very thin, # proposed to the assembly to withdraw its assent to the federal impost; and the repeal was carried in the house on the sixth, in the senate on the seventh of December, without a negative. The reasons for the act, as recited in its preamble, were: "The permitting any power other than the general assembly of this commonwealth to levy duties or taxes upon the citizens of this state within the same is injurious to its sovereignty, may prove destructive of the rights and liberty of the people, and, so far as congress may exercise the same, is contravening the spirit of the confederation." A Far-sighted members of congress prognosticated the most pernicious effects on the character, interests, and duration of *Records of Rhode Island, ix., 487, 612, 682, 683, 684. Journals of Congress, iv., 200. Gilpin, 488, 238; Elliot, 17. #Governor B. Harrison to Washington, 31 March 1783. | Papers of Old Congress, vol. lxv. Journals of House of Delegates, 55–58. the confederacy. The broad line of party division was clearly drawn. The contest was between the existing league of states and a republic of united states; between "state sovereignty "* and a "consolidated union;" + between "state politics and continental politics;" + between the fear of "the centripetal" and the fear of "the centrifugal force" in the system.# Virginia made itself the battle-ground on which for the next six years the warring opinions were to meet. During all that time Washington and Madison led the striving for a more perfect union; Richard Henry Lee, at present sustained by the legis lature of Virginia, was the persistent champion of separatism and the sovereignty of each state. How beneficent was the authority of the union appeared at 'this time from a shining example. To quell the wild strife which had grown out of the claim of Connecticut to lands within the charter boundary of Pennsylvania, five commissioners appointed by congress opened their court at Trenton. "The case was well argued by learned counsel on both sides," and, after a session of more than six weeks, the court pronounced || their unanimous opinion, that the jurisdiction and pre-emption of the lands in controversy did of right belong to the state of Pennsylvania. The judgment was approved by congress; and the parties in the litigation gave the example of submission to this first settlement of a controversy between states by the decree of a court established by the United States. * William Gordon to A. Lee. Lee's Life of Arthur Lec, ii., 291. + Lafayette in Diplomatic Correspondence, x., 41. Hamilton, i., 356. Speech of Wilson, 28 January 1783, in Gilpin, 290; Elliot, 34. The same figure was used by Hamilton to Washington, 24 March 1783. Hamilton, i., 348. Journals of Congress, 30 December 1782. CHAPTER III. AMERICA AND GREAT BRITAIN. 1782-1783. THE king of France heard from Vergennes, with surprise and resentment, that the American deputies had signed their treaty of peace; * Marie Antoinette was conciliated by the assurance that " they had obtained for their constituents the most advantageous conditions." "The English buy the peace rather than make it," wrote Vergennes to his subaltern in London; their "concessions as to boundaries, the fisheries, and the loyalists, exceed everything that I had thought possible." + "The treaty with America," answered Rayneval, " appears to me like a dream." Kaunitz # and his emperor | mocked at its articles. King George of England was mastered by a consuming grief for the loss of America, and knew no ease of mind by day or by night. When, on the fifth of December, in his speech at the opening of parliament, he came to read that he had offered to declare the colonies of America free and independent states, his manner was constrained and his voice fell. To wound him least, Shelburne in the house of lords, confining himself to the language of the speech from the throne, *Count Mercy's report from Paris, 6 December 1782. MS. from Vienna archives. Vergennes to Rayneval, 4 December 1782. MS. Rayneval to Vergennes, 12 December 1782. MS. #Kaunitz's note of 22 December 1782, written on the emperor's copy of the speech of the king of England at the opening of parliament. MS. Autograph memorandum of Joseph. MS. Joseph II. und Leopold von Toscana. Ihr Briefwechsel von 1781 bis 1790, i., 146. A Rayneval to Vergennes, 12 December 1782. MS. |