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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 submit 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 millions.

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 American 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.

In part this is owing to the importance which all Europeans attach to the French alliance as one of the chief causes of our success. For then, as now, 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

upon life with the feeling that he had a part to perform, and the conviction that his happiness would depend upon his performing it well. What that part was to be was his earliest study; and a social temperament, combining with a sound judgment, quickly taught him that the happiness of the individual is inseparably connected with the happiness of the species. Thus life became his study as a condition of happiness; man and nature, as the means of obtaining it. He sought to control his passions as he sought to control the lightning, that he might strip them of their power to harm. Sagacious in the study of causes, he was still more sagacious in tracing their connection with effects; and his speculations often lose somewhat of their grandeur by the simple and unpretending directness with which he adapts them to the common understanding and makes them minister to the common wants of life. The ambition which quickened his early exertions met an early reward. He was ambitious to write well, and he became one of the best writers in our language. He was ambitious of knowledge, and he laid it up in such stores that men sought his conversation in order to learn from him. He was ambitious of pecuniary independence, and he accumulated a fortune that made him master of his time and actions. He was ambitious of influence, and he obtained a rare control over the thoughts and the passions of men. He was ambitious of fame, and he connected his name

with the boldest and grandest discovery of this

age.

Living thus in harmony with himself, he enjoyed the rare privilege of living in equal harmony with the common mind and the advanced mind of his contemporaries. He entered into every-day wants and feelings as if he had never looked beyond them, and thus made himself the counsellor of the people. He appreciated the higher wants and nobler aspirations of our nature, and thus became the companion and friend of the philosopher. His interest in the present, and it was a deep and active interest, did not prevent him from looking forward with kindling sympathies to the future. Like the diligent husbandman of whom Cicero tells us, he could plant trees without expecting to see their fruit. If he detected folly with a keen eye, he did not revile it with a bitter heart. Human weakness, in his estimate of life, formed an inseparable part of human nature, the extremes of virtue often becoming the starting-points of vice; better treated, all of them, by playful ridicule than by stern reproof. He might never have gone with Howard in search of abuses; but he would have drawn such pictures of those near home, as would have made some laugh and some blush and all unite heartily in doing away with them. With nothing of the ascetic, he could impose self-denial and bear it. Like Erasmus, he may not have aspired to become a martyr; but in

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