aid to the full extent of its ability without impair ing its strength.

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Henceforth the financial history of the Revolu tion, although it loses none of its importance, loses much of its narrative-interest. No longer a handto-hand conflict between coin and paper, longer the melancholy spectacle of wise men doing unwise things, and honorable men doing things which, in any other form, they would have been the first to condemn as dishonorable, it still continues a long, a wearisome, and often a mortifying struggle; still presents the sad spectacle of men knowing their duty and refusing to do it; knowing consequences, and yet blindly shutting their eyes to them. I will give but one example.

After a careful estimate for the operations of 1782, Congress had called upon the States for eight millions of dollars. Up to January, 1783, only four hundred and twenty thousand had come into the Treasury. Four hundred thousand Treasury-notes were almost due; the funds in Europe were overdrawn to the amount of five hundred thousand by the sale of drafts. But Morris, waiting only to cover himself by a special authorization of Congress, made fresh sales upon the hopes of the Dutch loan and the possibility of a new French loan, and still held on as cautiously as he could, but ever boldly and skilfully-his anxious way through the rocks and shoals that menaced him on every side. He was rewarded, as faithful servants too

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often are, by calumny and suspicion. But when men came to look closely at his acts, comparing his means with his wants, and the expenditure of the Treasury Board with the expenditure of the Finance Office, it was seen and acknowledged that he had saved the country thirteen millions a year in hard money.

And now, from our stand-point of the Peace of 1783, let us give a parting glance at the ground over which we have passed. We see thirteen Colonies, united by interest, divided by habits, association, and tradition, engaging in a doubtful contest with one of the most powerful and energetic nations that ever existed; we see them begin, as men always do, with very imperfect conceptions of the time it would last, the length to which it would carry them, or the sacrifices it would impose; we see them boldly adopting some measures, timidly shrinking from others,

reasoning justly about some things, reasoning falsely about things equally important, — endowed at times with singular foresight, visited at times with incomprehensible blindness; boatmen on a mighty river, strong themselves and resolute and skilful, plying their oars manfully from first to last, but borne onward by a current which no human science could measure, no human strength could resist.

They knew that the resources of the country were exhaustless; and they threw themselves

upon those resources in the only way by which they could reach them. Their bills of credit were the offspring of enthusiasm and faith. The enthusiasm grew chill, the faith failed. With a little more enthusiasm, the people would cheerfully have submitted to taxation; with a little more faith, the Congress would have taxed them. In the end, the people paid for the shortcomings of their enthusiasm by seventy millions of indirect taxation, — taxation through depreciation; the Congress paid for the shortcomings of its faith by the loss of confidence and respect. The war left the country with a Federal debt of seventy million dollars, and State debts of nearly twenty-six mil lions.

Could this have been avoided? Could they have done otherwise? It is easy, when the battle is won, to tell how victory might have been bought cheaper, — when the campaign is ended, to show what might perhaps have brought it to an earlier and more glorious close. It is easy for us, with the whole field before us, to see that from the beginning, from the very first start, although the formula was Taxation, the principle was Independence; but before we venture to pass sentence upon the shortcomings of our fathers, ought we not to pause and dwell awhile upon our own, who, in the fiercer contest through which we are passing, have so long failed to see, that, while the formula is Secession, the principle is Slavery?

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LECTURE VI.

THE DIPLOMACY OF THE REVOLUTION.

W

HEN a European speaks about the Ameri

can Revolution, he speaks of it as the work of Washington and Franklin. These two names embody for his mind all the phases of the contest and explain its result. The military genius of Washington, going hand in hand with the civil genius of Franklin, fill the foreground of his picture. He has heard of other names and may remember some of them: but these are the only two which have taken their place in his memory, at the side of the great names of European history.

alliance as one of

For then, as now,

In part this is owing to the importance which all Europeans attach to the French the chief causes of our success. France held a place among the great powers of the world which gave importance to all her movements. With direct access to two of the principal theatres of European strife and easy access to the third, she never raised her arm without drawing immediate attention. If less powerful than England on the ocean, she was more powerful there

than any other nation; and even England's superiority was often and sometimes successfully contested. The adoption by such a power of the cause of a people so obscure as the people of the "Thirteen Colonies" then were, was, in the opinion of European statesmen, decisive of its success. The

fact of our actual poverty was known to all; few, if any, knew that we possessed exhaustless sources of wealth. Our weakness was on the surface; palpable, manifest, forcing itself upon attention; our strength lay out of sight, in rich veins, which none but eyes familiar with their secret windings could trace. Thus the French alliance, as the European interpreted it, was the alliance of wealth with poverty, of strength with weakness; a magnanimous recognition of efforts which, without that recognition, would have been vain. What, then, must have been the persuasive powers, the commanding genius of the man who procured that recognition?

Partly, also, this opinion is owing to the personal character and personal position of Franklin. Franklin was pre-eminently a wise man, wise in the speculative science and wise in the practical art of life. Something of the maturity of age seems to have tempered the liveliest sallies of his youth; and much of the vivacity of youth mingles with the sober wisdom of his age. Thoughtful and self-controlling at twenty, at seventy his ripe experience was warmed by a genial glow. He entered