ms on the continent to effect the great objects of the
alliance, in the ensuing campaign.

Next to a supply of money, he considered a naval superiority in the
American seas, as an object of the deepest interest.

To the United States, it would be of decisive importance, and France
also might derive great advantages from transferring the maritime war
to the coast of her ally.

The future ability of the United States to repay any loan which might
now be obtained was displayed; and he concluded with assurances that
there was still a fund of inclination and resource in the country,
equal to great and continued exertions, provided the means were
afforded of stopping the progress of disgust, by changing the present
system, and adopting another more consonant with the spirit of the
nation, and more capable of infusing activity and energy into public
measures; of which a powerful succour in money must be the basis.
"The people were discontented, but it was with the feeble and
oppressive mode of conducting the war, not with the war itself."

With reason did the Commander-in-chief thus urge on the cabinet of
Versailles, the policy of advancing a sum of money to the United
States which might be adequate to the exigency. Deep was the gloom
with which their political horizon was overcast. The British, in
possession of South Carolina and of Georgia, had overrun the greater
part of North Carolina also; and it was with equal hazard and address
that Greene maintained himself in the northern frontier of that state.

A second detachment from New York was making a deep impression on
Virginia, where the resistance had been neither so prompt nor so
vigorous[68] as the strength of that state and the unanimity of its
citizens had given reason to expect.

[Footnote 68: A slave population must be unfavourable to great and
sudden exertions by militia.]

The perplexities and difficulties in which the affairs of America were
involved, were estimated by the British government even above their
real value. Intercepted letters of this date from the minister,
expressed the most sanguine hopes that the great superiority of force
at the disposal of Sir Henry Clinton, would compel Washington with his
feeble army to take refuge on the eastern side of the Hudson.

[Sidenote: Propositions to Spain.]

Even congress relaxed for an instant from its habitual firmness; and,
receding from the decisive manner in which that body had insisted on
the territo