no present worth, in 1792, our people chose to forget that fifteen years before they had been of vital value. This national feeling found vent in the proclamation of neutrality issued by President Washington in April, 1793. By it he virtually asserted that we should treat France in precisely the same manner that we should Great Britain, with whom, at the time, we had no treaty.

It is not necessary to go into the history of our claims on France for the seizure of American merchant vessels. After protracted negotiations, in 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of France, consented that, if our government would assume this debt to the American merchants, France would absolve it from its troublesome obligations in the treaty of 1778, and this was readily consented to. Between 1793 and 1800, eight hundred and ninety-eight vessels owned or chartered by American merchants, were seized; some were released, but most of them were never accounted for. As soon as the treaty with Bonaparte was ratified by the American Senate, claimants began to file their petitions and they and their heirs have gone on so doing from that time to the present. Forty-three times have the French spoliation claims been considered by Congress; fortyone favorable bills have been reported, but a veto or a failure to pass more than one house has prevented the claimants from receiving their just dues. Twice bills granting relief have passed both Senate and House, and have been vetoed -the first by President Polk, and the second by President Pierce. Of course none of the original claimants are now living.

But to return to the treaty. From the letters which were saved, we learn that the commissioners had great difficulty in transmitting their dispatches to Congress. There were great numbers of English war-vessels in the Bay of Biscay, watching the movements of the French and American ships. All letters and dispatches were in great danger of being intercepted, and nearly all that had been sent home by the commissioners were indeed lost. In some instances where they were intrusted to a special messenger they were abstracted from the packets and blank sheets substituted before he started. Probably English bribes effected this. Commissioner Lee's secretary was suspected, and finally removed, but nothing was substantiated against him.

A letter from the committee of foreign affairs to the commissioners at Paris, dated at York, Pa., where Congress was in session, 24th of March, 1778, says:

Yesterday a private letter from Dr. Franklin, dated October 6, was presented, containing the only political intelligence which Folger brought safe with him, viz.: “Our affairs, so far as relates to this country, are every day more promising." This, with a letter from Mr. Barnabas Deane (brother to Silas, from Connecticut), who tells us that his brother was sending an important packet to Congress, is all the explanation we have of the nature of your dispatches, of which we have been robbed. I inclose a list by which you will see the break in our correspondence. A letter from the committee of foreign affairs, dated York, March 2, 1778, to William Bingham, says, they have received no intelligence from the commissioners since May of last year. They state that their dispatches had been "lost at sea and others tampered with in Europe before the bearer, Captain John Folger, embarked with them for America." The presence of the English ships hovering about the western coast of France, threatened a collision any day, between them and French vessels, thereby precipitating the war that all felt was inevitable. There was also a strong desire to keep the existence of the treaties secret from England to as late a date as possible, in order not to precipitate a war.

The Boston Weekly Advertiser of May 7, 1778, says:

Friday arrived at Portsmouth the Continental frigate "Deane," Samuel Nicholson, Esq., commander, in sixty-three days from France, laden with clothing for the army; two other ships came out with her on the continental service; all under the convoy of three 74's, two 64's, and three frigates, who had orders from the French court to attend them until they were clear of the Bay of Biscay.

A letter from Passy, where Franklin resided, near Paris, dated February 8, 1778, signed by Franklin and Deane, and directed to the "President of Congress," says, "You will soon have the whole treaty with France by a safer conveyance, a frigate being appointed to carry our dispatches."

On February 16, they say, "These treaties continue a secret here, and may do so till the commencement of the war, which is daily expected. Our little fleet formerly mentioned, which has been long watched and detained in Nantes river, by the English cruising off Belleisle, is now on the point of sailing, under the

convoy of a French squadron. As the English are pretty strong in the Bay of Biscay, it is probable that their attack and the French defence of our ships, may be the prelude to a declaration on both sides."

There is a letter from Dr. Franklin to Thomas Cushing, a member of the Continental Congress from Massachusetts, dated at Passy, 21st of February, 1778. He speaks of the two treaties with France, and closes with this announcement. "The treaties are forwarded by this conveyance." "We have now taken from King Louis XVI," says Franklin, "the delivery of the treaties, which make him our ally, and which were our national salvation, but the frigate bearing them must run the gauntlet of the British fleet in the Bay of Biscay. The British admiral does not know of the existence of the treaties if he did it would be impossible for the frigate to pass with them." Their existence was not even known in France.

Let us now look at the situation of the struggling Colonists on this side of the water. General Washington, in July, 1777, had received a powerful recruit, in the person of the Marquis Lafayette, who had been commissioned a Major General by the Congress. Within forty days he was wounded while fighting at the head of his corps on the bank of the Brandywine. A bullet passed through his leg, and he was conveyed to Bethlehem, Pa., where he was nursed by the Moravian sisters. Washington lost the battle of Brandywine and twelve hundred men, on the 11th of September, 1777. Congress withdrew from Philadelphia to Lancaster, and then to York, Pa., where it continued in session until the following summer. The Americans lost the two forts, "Mifflin" and "Mercer," a few miles below Philadelphia, and the British army sat down in Philadelphia for the winter. They also lost a fight at Hubbardston, Vt., and their stores at Shenesborough. Disaster followed disaster in quick succession. Within a week, the Americans had lost almost two hundred pieces of cannon, and a large amount of military stores.

On the 17th of October, 1777, Burgoyne surrendered to the patriots at Saratoga. Glorious indeed was this victory. We have seen that the news of it confirmed the French king in his desire to assist the Colonies, but neither Congress nor General Washington knew of its good influence at Versailles when he

was compelled by the snows of early winter, to lead his scantily fed and more scantily clothed army into rude huts at Valley Forge. After the close of the war, General Washington testified that bloody foot-prints were everywhere visible in the track of their march of nineteen miles, from Whitemarsh to Valley Forge. There they starved and shivered, while the British army were comfortably quartered and well fed in Philadelphia. I have myself, in my boyhood, listened to the sal story of the sufferings at Valley Forge, from men from my native town, who participated in them; one of whom said that he had the only pair of shoes in his company. This was the situation of Washington and his army while the frigate bearing the treaties was crossing the Atlantic. It had been nearly a year since any intelligence had been received from the commissioners in France.

Mr. Joseph Gilman was chairman of the New Hampshire committee of safety, a body which had charge of the supplies for the state troops. Samuel Adams, afterward governor of Massachusetts, went to Exeter to visit Mr. Gilman, to consult as to ways and means to raise supplies for the naked and starving soldiers. Mr. Gilman happened to be away from home, and his wife attempted to engage Mr. Adams in conversation, but his downcast looks and abstracted manner caused her to desist. The visitor, too uneasy to sit quietly in his chair, walked rapidly up and down the room, and uttering a deep groan, while wringing his hands, and with tears rolling down his cheeks, he exclaimed almost in agony, "O my God, must we give it up!"

This was the feeling of the men whose business it was to furnish food and clothing for the army, when the good news arrived from France that our independence was acknowledged, and that men, money and supplies were on the way.

Years ago Robert Browning wrote the poem "How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix." The first reading of the poem causes the illusion that the reader is in the saddle, upon a foaming horse at full gallop. The literary world wondered what was the good news which alone could save Aix from her fate. The annals of the French department of the lower Alps, in which is situated the ancient city which was the objective point of the three horsemen of the poem, were searched. The effort was fruitless, and Browning was appealed to, when he

stated that the poem had no ground either in fact or tradition, but was inspired while he was lying in the shadow of a sail, on board a yacht in the Mediterranean, by an intense yearning for a horseback gallop at home in England.

There was good news and a treaty brought from Ghent to the United States in 1778, which was no myth. It was from France that the good news came to the struggling Colonies, in these darkest days of the Revolution, that their independence had been acknowledged by the king of France, and that he had engaged his government to send men and money which would enable them to drive back the invader, and to take a place among the nations of the earth- and how bravely did they do it.

From the Boston Gazette and Continental Journal of April 20, 1778, I take the following:

Soon after the court of France dispatched Mr. Simeon Deane in the frigate "Bellepoule," of thirty-six guns, in the most private manner, with the preliminaries of a treaty with the United States, but the frigate meeting with violent contrary winds, and springing her foremast, was obliged, after being out six weeks, to put back to Brest, from whence Mr. Deane immediately repaired to the court of Versailles, and received orders for another frigate, which left Brest March 8.

On the morning of Monday, the thirteenth of April, 1778, what were left of the people of the fire-scathed town of Falmouth saw off Cape Elizabeth a large ship approaching the harbor, under a press of sail. As she came nearer she was made out to be a ship of war. Fears of the dreaded Mowatt came over them; but she was seen with a glass to be a frigate with a white flag the flag of France under the Bourbons, - flying from her mizzen peak. When the ship's nationality was made out all fears subsided, and strong arms rowed a pilot off to the ship, and brought her in amid salutes from the forts.

This arrival is thus explained in the private journal of William Moody of Falmouth, who was then doing duty as a private soldier at one of the forts:

April 13, 1778. About twelve o'clock a French frigate arrived from France with dispatches for the Congress, bringing the news that France had acknowledged American independence. 14th, the forts saluted the French frigate, and she returned it; also three other armed vessels.