and Velasquez, devout even to bigotry in its land of churches, the most imaginative and poetic among the nations—was seen to be entering on a career of improvement. Rousseau contemplated its promise with extravagant hope; Alembert predicted its recovery of a high position among the powers of the world; Frederic of Prussia envied its sovereign, for the delights of its climate, and the opportunity offered to its ruler to renew its greatness.

The grandson of Louis XIV. of France, Charles III., who in 1777 held the sceptre in Spain, was the best of the Spanish Bourbons. The degeneracy of his immediate successors led Spanish historians to dwell on his memory with affection. He was of a merciful disposition, and meant well for the land he ruled; he asserted the principle of the absolute and inviolable right of a king against the pope; and in its defence he had exiled the Jesuits and demanded of the pope the abolition of their order. Yet, under the influence of his confessor, a monk of the worst type, he restored vitality to the inquisition, suffered it to publish the papal bull which granted it unlimited jurisdiction, and declared that "he would have delivered up to its tribunal his own son." He stood in need of a powerful ally; between the peoples of France and Spain there was no affection; so, in August 1761, a family compact was established between their kings. In forming this alliance, the agents of the Spanish branch were Wall, an Irish adventurer, and Grimaldi from Italy.

It seemed the dawn of better days for Spain when, in February 1777, the universal popular hatred, quickened by the shameful failure of the expedition against Algiers, drove Grimaldi from the ministry and from the country. On the eighteenth he was succeeded by Don Jose Moniño, Count de Florida Blanca. For the first time for more than twenty years Spain obtained a ministry composed wholly of Spaniards; and, for the first time since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, a Spanish policy began to be formed.

The new minister, son of a provincial notary, had been carefully educated; following his father's profession, he became one of the ablest advocates of his day and attained administrative distinction. In March 1772, he went as am

bassador to Rome, where by his influence Cardinal Ganganelli was elected pope, and the order of the Jesuits was abolished. He, too, controlled the choice of Ganganelli's successor. Now forty-six years old, esteemed for strong good sense and extensive information, for prudence, personal probity, and honest intentions, he was bent upon enlarging the commerce of Spain and making the kingdom respected. A devoted Catholic, he was equally "a good defender of regality;" he restrained the exorbitant claims of the church, and was no friend to the inquisition. Given to reflection, and naturally slow of decision, he was cold and excessively reserved; a man of few words, but those words were to the purpose. Feebleness of health unfitted him for indefatigable labor, and was perhaps one of the causes why he could not bear contradiction, nor even hear a discussion without fretting himself into a passion. To his intercourse with foreign powers he brought duplicity and cunning; he professed the greatest regard for the interests and welfare of France; but his heart was the heart of a Spaniard. In his manners he was awkward and ill at ease. He spoke French with difficulty. With the vanity of a man of considerable powers, who from a humble station had reached the highest under the king, he clung to office with tenacity; and, from his character and unfailing subservience, his supremacy continued to the end of the reign of Charles III.

His ablest colleague was Galvez, the minister for the Indies -that is, for the colonies. Like Florida Blanca, he had been taken from the class of advocates. A mission to Mexico had made him familiar with the business of his department, to which he brought honesty and laborious habits, a lingering prejudice in favor of commercial monopoly, and the purpose to make the Spanish colonies self-supporting both for production and defence.

Florida Blanca was met by the question of the aspect of the American revolution on the interests of Spain; and, as Arthur Lee was on his way to Madrid, as envoy of the United States, it seemed to demand an immediate solution. The king would not sanction a rebellion of subjects against their sovereign, nor, with his vast dominions in America, could he concede the right of colonies to claim independence.

Add to this, that an American alliance involved a war with England, and that Spain was unprepared for war. Equal to Great Britain in the number of her inhabitants, greatly surpassing that island in the extent of her home territory and of her colonies, she did not love to confess even to herself her inferiority in wealth and power. Her colonies brought her no opulence; the annual exports to Spanish America had thus far fallen short of four millions of dollars in value, and the imports were less than the exports. Campomanes was urging through the press the abolition of restrictions on trade; but for the time the delusion of mercantile monopoly held the ministers fast bound. As a necessary consequence, the king, for want of seamen, could have no efficient navy. The war department was in the hands of an indolent chief, so that its business devolved on O'Reilly, whose character is known to us from his career in Louisiana, and whose arrogance and harshness were revolting to the Spanish nation. The revenue of the kingdom fell short of twenty-one millions of dollars, and there was a notorious want of probity in the management of the finances. The existing strife with Portugal was very serious, for it had for its purpose the possession of both banks of the river La Plata, with the right to close that mighty stream against all the world but Spain. In such a state of its navy, army, treasury, and foreign relations, how could it make war on England?

Arthur Lee was made to wait at Burgos for Grimaldi, who was on his way to Italy. They met on the fourth of March, and conversed through an interpreter, for Lee could speak nothing but English. Grimaldi, who describes him as an obstinate man, amused him with desultory remarks and professions: the relation between France and Spain was intimate; the Americans would find at New Orleans three thousand barrels of powder and some store of clothing, which they might take on credit; Spain would perhaps send them a wellfreighted ship from Bilbao; but the substance of the interview was, that Lee must return straight to Paris. "All attempts of the like kind from agents of the rebellious colonies will be equally fruitless;" so spoke Florida Blanca again and again to the British minister at Madrid: "His Catholic majesty is resolved not to interfere in any manner in the dispute concerning

the colonies;" "it is, and has been, my constant opinion that the independence of America would be the worst example to other colonies, and would make the Americans in every respect the worst neighbors that the Spanish colonies could have." The report of the French ambassador at Aranjuez is explicit: "It is the dominant wish of the Catholic king to avoid war; he longs above all things to end his days in peace."

Yet Spain was irresistibly drawn toward the alliance with France, though the conflict of motives gave to its policy an air of uncertainty and dissimulation. The boundless colonial claims of Spain had led to disputes with England for one hundred and seventy years; that is, from the time when Englishmen planted a colony in the Chesapeake bay, which Spain had discovered, and named, and marked as its own bay of St. Mary's. It was perpetually agitated by a jealousy of the good faith of British ministries; and it lived in constant dread of sudden aggression from a power with which it knew itself unable to cope alone. This instinctive fear and this mortified pride gave a value to the protecting friendship of France, and excused the wish to see the pillars of England's greatness thrown down. Besides, the occupation of Gibraltar by England made every Spaniard her enemy. To this were added the obligations of the family compact between the two crowns, of which Charles III., even while eager for a continuance of peace, respected the conditions and cherished the spirit.

Hence the Spanish court had given money to the insurgents, but only on the condition that France should be its almoner and shroud its gifts in impenetrable secrecy. It reproved the hot zeal with which Aranda counselled war; it suffered American ships, and even privateers with their prizes, to enter Spanish harbors, but assured England that everything which could justly be complained of was done in contravention of orders. Fertile in subterfuges, Florida Blanca evaded an agreement with France for an eventual war with Great Britain. His first escape from the importunity of Vergennes was by a counter proposition for the two powers to ship large reinforcements to their colonies-a proposition which Vergennes rejected, because sending an army to the murderous climate of St. Domingo would involve all the mortality and

cost of a war, with none of its benefits. Florida Blanca next advised to let Britain and America continue their struggle till both parties should be exhausted, and so should invite the interposition of France and Spain as mediators, who would then be able in the final adjustment to take good care of their respective interests. To this Vergennes replied that he knew not how the acceptance of such a mediation could be brought about; and in July he unreservedly fixed upon January or February, 1778, as the epoch when the two crowns must engage in the war, or forever after mourn for the opportunity lost by their neglect.

To enlist captive American sailors in the British navy, threats were used. "Hang me, if you will, to the yard-arm of your ship, but do not ask me to become a traitor to my country," was the answer of Nathan Coffin; and it expressed the spirit of them all. In February, Franklin and Deane proposed to Stormont, at Paris, to exchange a hundred British seamen, taken by an American privateer, for an equal number of American prisoners in England. To this application Stormont was silent; to a more earnest remonstrance, in April, he answered: "The king's ambassador receives no applications from rebels unless they come to implore his majesty's mercy."

For land forces, the princeling of Waldeck collected for the British service twenty men from his own territory and its neighborhood, twenty-three from Suabia, near fifty elsewhere, in all eighty-nine; and, to prevent their desertion, locked them up in the Hanoverian fortress of Hameln. The hereditary prince of Cassel had a troublesome competitor in his own father, whose agents were busy in the environs of Hanau; nevertheless, he furnished ninety-one recruits, and four hundred and sixty-eight additional yagers, which was fifty-six more than he had bargained for.

In the course of the year, by impressment at home and theft of foreigners, the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel furnished fourteen hundred and forty-nine more. This number barely made good the losses in the campaign and at Trenton; a putrid epidemic, which at the end of the winter broke out among the Hessian grenadiers at Brunswick, in eight weeks swept away