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"Things remained in that state till after the late king of France was dethroned. The Minister of the United States at Paris' was then directed to enquire what had become of the million livres. The correspondence will of course be found in the office of the Secretary of State. It seems that he had the good fortune to obtain copies of M. Beaumarchais' receipt for a million, bearing date on the day when the gift was said to have been made, so that no reasonable doubt could exist as to the identity of the sum.'
"So much, my dear Sir, for what memory can command. You will, I think, find papers containing a more accurate statement in the New York 'Evening Post,' about the time when Mr. Rodney's opinion was made public. At least I recollect having seen in that gazette some facts with which I had not been previously acquainted, or which I had forgotten. A gentleman from Connecticut, who was on the Committee of Claims last year, can I believe give you the papers. I remember also to have been told by a respectable young gentleman, son of the late Mr. Richard Henry Lee, that important evidence on this subject, secured from his uncle Arthur, was in his possession, and I believe it may be obtained from Mr. Carroll of Annapolis, or his son-in-law Mr. Harper of Baltimore."
"The Hon'le Mr. John Randolph, of Roanoke."
Beaumarchais, barely escaping the guillotine, died in poverty in Holland. He bequeathed his claim to his daughter who (1835) was Paid 800,000 francs, but the million which he had received from the King and then charged on the United States, was never paid. Silas Deane suffered a worse fate. His claims for commissions and services in France remained unpaid, and after his return to France he occupied himself with writing to his brother Simeon the letters meant to be intercepted, printed by Rivington in 1782. In these letters he urges submission to England. Franklin took the charitable view that his head had been turned by his misfortunes. He went over to England, where he became the friend of Benedict Arnold, and died in poverty in 1789. In recent years his heirs were paid $35,000 by Congress. But had his treachery, as now revealed in the letters of George III., been known, there had been no such payment.5
The determination with which Paine, to his cost, withstood Deane, may seem at first glance quixotic His attack was animated by a belief that the supplies sent from France were a covert gift, and at any rate, that the demand for instant payment to agents was fraudulent. Evidence having been supplied, by the publication of Beaumarchais notes to Arthur Lee, under pseudonym of "Mary Johnston," that returns in tobacco were expected, this, if not a mercantile mask, was still a matter of credit, and very different from payments demanded by Beaumarchais and Deane from the scanty treasury of the struggling colonies.6 But there was something more behind the vehemence of Paine's letters.
This he intimated, but his revelation seems to have received no attention at the time. He says (January 5th): "In speaking of Mr. Deane's contracts with foreign officers, I concealed, out of pity to him, a circumstance that must have sufficiently shown the necessity of recalling him, and either his want of judgment or the danger of trusting him with discretionary power. It is no less than that of his throwing out a proposal, in one of his foreign letters, for contracting with a German prince to command the American army." This personage, who was "to supersede General Washington," he afterwards declares to be Prince Ferdinand. It is known that Count de Broglie had engaged Kalb and Deane to propose him as generalissimo of America, but the evidence of this other proposal has disappeared with other papers missing from Deane's diplomatic correspondence. I find, however, that ex-provost Stille who has studied the proceedings of Beaumarchais thoroughly, has derived from another source an impression that he (Beaumarchais) made an earlier proposition of the same kind concerning Prince Ferdinand. It would be unsafe to affirm that Deane did more than report the proposals made to him, but his silence concerning this particular charge of his antagonist, while denying every other categorically, is suspicious. At that early period Washington had not loomed up in the eye of the world. The French and Germans appear to have thought of the Americans and their commander as we might think of rebellious red men and their painted chief. There is nothing in Deane's letters from Europe to suggest that he did not share their delusion, or that he appreciated the necessity of independence. Paine, who conducted the foreign correspondence, knew that the secrets of the American office in Paris were open to Lord Stormont, who stopped large supplies prepared for America, and suspected Deane of treachery. It now appears that one of Deane's assistants, George Lupton, was an English "informer." (Stevens' Facsimiles, vii., No. 696.) Deane had midnight meetings in the Place Vendome with an English "Unknown" (now known as the informer Paul Wentworth) to whom he suggested that the troubles might be ended by England's forming a "federal union" with America. All of which shows Deane perilously unfit for his mission, but one is glad to find him appearing no worse in Wentworth's confidental portraiture (January 4, 1778) of the American officials:
"Dr. Franklin is taciturn, deliberate, and cautious; Mr. Deane is vain, desultory, and subtle; Mr. Arthur Lee, suspicious and indolent; Alderman Lee, peevish and ignorant; Mr. Izzard, costive and dogmatical—all of these insidious, and Edwards vibrating between hope and fear, interest and attachment."
The venal character of Deane's subsequent treason clearly appears in the correspondence of George III. with Lord North (Donne, pp. 145, 363, 380, 381, 384) It also appears, by a letter of January 9, 1778, that George III. was aware that the proposal had been sent to his brother-in-law, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, to become commander of the American revolutionists!
1. Error. Paine signed "Common Sense," and in one instance "Thomas Paine."
2. Paine resigned. Several motions for his dismissal were lost.
3. Gouverneur Morris himself.
4. This was the receipt dated June 10, 1776, on which the King had marked "Bon," and was obtained by Morris in 1794.
5. The documents referred to are no doubt among the Lee Papers preserved at the University of Virginia, which I have examined.
6. In one of Deane's intercepted letters (May 20, 1781) there is an indication that he had found more truth in what Paine had said about the gratuitous supplies than Beaumarchais had led him to believe. "The first plan of the French government evidently was to assist us just so far as might be absolutely necessary to prevent an accommodation, and to give this assistance with so much secresy as to avoid any rupture with Great Britain. On this plan succors were first permitted to be sent out to us by private individuals, and only on condition of future payment, but afterward we were thought to be such cheap and effectual instruments of mischief to the British nation that more direct and gratuitous aids were furnished us." But now M. Doniol has brought to light the Reflexions and Considerations of the French Minister, Count de Vergennes, which led to his employment of Beaumarchais, which contain such propositions as these: "It is essential that France shall at present direct its care towards this end: she must nourish the courage and perseverance