will be respectful and submissive subjects. The waves only
rise when the wind blows."

In England, many distinguished minds doubted whether the government of
the mother-country would manage to preserve the discretion and moderation
claimed by Franklin. "Notwithstanding all you say of your loyalty, you
Americans," observed Lord Camden to Franklin himself, "I know that some
day you will shake off the ties which unite you to us, and you will raise
the standard of independence." "No such idea exists or will enter into
the heads of the Americans," answered Franklin, "unless you maltreat them
quite scandalously." "That is true," rejoined the other, "and it is
exactly one of the causes which I foresee, and which will bring on the
event."

The Seven Years' War was ended, shamefully and sadly for France; M. de
Choiseul, who had concluded peace with regret and a bitter pang, was
ardently pursuing every means of taking his revenge. To foment
disturbances between England and her colonies appeared to him an
efficacious and a natural way of gratifying his feelings. "There is
great difficulty in governing States in the days in which we live," he
wrote to M. Durand, at that time French minister in London; "still
greater difficulty in governing those of America; and the difficulty
approaches impossibility as regards those of Asia. I am very much
astonished that England, which is but a very small spot in Europe, should
hold dominion over more than a third of America, and that her dominion
should have no other object but that of trade. . . . As long as the
vast American possessions contribute no subsidies for the support of the
mother-country, private persons in England will still grow rich for some
time on the trade with America, but the State will be undone for want of
means to keep together a too extended power; if, on the contrary, England
proposes to establish imposts in her American domains, when they are more
extensive and perhaps more populous than the mother-country, when they
have fishing, woods, navigation, corn, iron, they will easily part
asunder from her, without any fear of chastisement, for England could not
undertake a war against them to chastise them." He encouraged his agents
to keep him informed as to the state of feeling in America, welcoming and
studying all projects, even the most fantastic, that might be hostile to
England.

When M. de Choiseul was thus writing to M. Durand, the English government
h