London to represent the Assembly of Pennsylvania before the British government, and later was also made the agent for Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia. He was then fifty-one years of age and already a fully developed man. He had flown his kite and made himself famous in the wondrous field of electricity. He had also attained such celebrity as an essayist that a volume of his treatises had been translated into French, German, Italian, and Latin. At that time he was the most widely known American. His residence in England, extending over more than fifteen years, brought him in personal and intimate contact with the most distinguished men in government, literature, and science.

It will not be possible for me to give even the briefest epitome of his public service in England, but two events may be mentioned as illustrative of his diplomatic conduct. One of the important measures he had in hand for the colony was what is known as "The Affair of the Grant " the placing upon the market of an immense tract of public lands in Pennsylvania. The minister of the cabinet, by whom it had to be acted upon, a personal enemy of Franklin, decided against it, and it was appealed to the privy council. To aid in overcoming the opposition, Franklin induced three members of the council to take a personal pecuniary interest in the enterprise. He supplemented the pecuniary interest he had awakened in that body by an able argument before the privy council, won his appeal, and brought about the resignation of the defeated minister. Lobbying was not unknown in the early days of our history.

Some years later Franklin was again before the privy council, but under adverse circumstances. The Colonies were on the eve of their revolt and excitement and prejudice ran high against them in London. Franklin was arraigned for the surreptitious publication of "The Hutchinson Letters," the details of which need not here be given. It was a trying ordeal through which he had to pass, standing in the full view of the council, listening to the abuse of the solicitor-general and the vote of censure of the council. Lord Shelburne, in a letter to the Earl of Chatham, referred to " the indecency of the behavior" of the judges of the council, and characterized the solicitor-general's speech as the "most scurrilous invective." Lord Campbell, in his " Lives of the Lord Chancellors," says of this affront, "It mainly conduced to the civil war which soon followed, and to the dismemberment of the empire, by exciting overweening arrogance on the one side, and rankling revenge on the other." Franklin records: "I made no justification of myself from the charges brought against me... but held a cool, sullen silence, reserving myself to some future opportunity."

From that day British official circles regarded Franklin as a traitor, and his usefulness in London was ended. The treatment he received greatly embittered his sentiments towards England, and for the moment he lost his better judgment, as evinced by the preparation of an indiscreet official document, which, however, through the advice of friends, was never delivered. On the occasion of his arraignment before the council it was noticed that he appeared in "a full-dress suit of spotted

Manchester velvet." It will be seen hereafter how important a part this velvet suit played in his later diplomatic career.

He returned to America in May, 1775, but, as already stated, before the end of the next year he was in Paris, sent by Congress as a member of a commission to represent the cause of American independence before the governments of Europe, and to this work for the next nine years he devoted himself with unflagging loyalty to his country. He had quitted England with angry farewells, but the French received him in a furor of welcome. His writings, his scientific research, his philosophic turn of mind, his republican simplicity, and his peculiar dress contributed to make him the most noted man of the gay and learned French capital. The shop windows were full of his venerable portraits, the people made way for him in the streets, and he was always sure of a demonstration in public assemblies. He lived in comfortable style, with house, carriage, and retinue of servants, such as became his office and the times. John Adams, who was for a while his colleague, characterized his method of living as luxurious and extravagant, but the latter's ideas of life were severe if not parsimonious. His statement of Franklin's reputation in Europe is both curious and interesting. He wrote, “His name was familiar to government and people, to kings, courtiers, nobility, clergy, and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to such a degree that there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a valet de chambre, coachman, or footman, a lady's chambermaid, or a scullion in a kitchen, who was not familiar with it, and

who did not consider him a friend to the human kind.

When they spoke of him they seemed to think he was to restore the golden age.'

Franklin and his colleagues did not find the work before them an easy task. They were confronted with many embarrassments. Not the least of these was the difficulty of maintaining communication with Congress and the agents of their government in other parts of Europe. We have seen that Deane brought over with him a supply of invisible ink. He was accustomed to write his dispatches to Congress between the lines of illusory business letters which the home committee on correspondence was enabled to bring out by the aid of an acid. The following was one of the instructions as to correspondence: "When you write to me, please to write upon common post paper, to fold your letters as nearly the size and after the manner of this as may be -to seal them with wafers instead of wax, and to send them by way of Holland to the care of Mr. Adams, or to Messrs. De Neufville & Sons, or Messrs. Ingraham & Bromfield, of Amsterdam, and to be careful not to swell them unnecessarily above the size of common mercantile letters. If these particulars are not attended to, all the precautions I can take will not keep them out of the hands of the ministry." This injunction arose out of the fact that when letters from America, suspected of being official, reached a European postoffice they were opened, and, if judged politic to do so, they were detained. Mr. Jay states that during his

11 John Adams's Works, 660.

21 Jay's Correspondence and Papers, 84.

residence in Madrid he received no letters that did not bear the marks of having been opened, and that those he received he supposed to form but a fraction of those kept back.

Added to the espionage of the mails was the hazard of capture by the British cruisers and blockading vessels. It was the practice of the committees of Congress and the diplomatic agents abroad to prepare at least four copies, and sometimes seven, of every communication, and dispatch them by successive vessels or by vessels from different ports, and the envelopes containing them bore the indorsement, "To be sunk in case of danger from enemy." And yet with all these precautions often not a single copy reached its destination. When Congress had as many as twelve agents in Europe, there was once a period of eleven months during which Congress did not receive a line from any one of them. The papers taken when Mr. Laurens, minister to Holland, was captured were the cause or pretext on which England declared war against that country. The British had a clue to the cipher used by Congress and its correspondents, and captured dispatches were often distorted and dishonestly deciphered and then used to the injury of the writers and their governments. This we shall see is believed to have been the case with an important dispatch of the French representative in America, M. Marbois, which played such a conspicuous part in the peace negotiations of 1782.1

The American envoys had also to contend with the 11 Dip. Cor. Rev. 461-463.