s to His Majesty and the country" all who should
advise a further prosecution of the war. North resigned, and Shelburne,
Secretary of State in the new ministry, hastened to open peace
negotiations with Franklin at Paris.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin, now venerable with years, had been doing at the court
of Versailles a work hardly less important than that of Washington on
the battlefields of America. By the simple grace and dignity of his
manners, by his large good sense and freedom of thought, by his fame as
a scientific discoverer, above all by his consummate tact in the
management of men, the whilom printer, king's postmaster-general for
America, discoverer, London colonial agent, delegate in the Continental
Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, had completely
captivated elegant, free-thinking France. Learned and common folk, the
sober and the frivolous alike, swore by Franklin. Snuff-boxes,
furniture, dishes, even stoves, were gotten up a la Franklin. The old
man's portrait was in every house. That the French Government, in spite
of a monarch who was half afraid of the rising nation beyond sea, had
given America her hearty support, was in no small measure due to the
influence of Franklin. And his skill in diplomacy was of the greatest
value in the negotiations now pending.

These were necessarily long and tedious, but Jay, Franklin's colleague,
made them needlessly so by his finical refusal to treat till England had
acknowledged our independence by a separate act. This, indeed,
jeopardized peace itself, since Shelburne's days of ministerial power
were closing, and his successor was sure to be less our friend. Jay at
last receded, a compromise being arrived at by which the treaty was to
open with a virtual recognition of independence in acknowledging Adams,
Franklin, and Jay as "plenipotentiaries," that is, agents of a sovereign
power. Boundaries, fishery rights, and the treatment of loyalists and
their property were the chief bones of contention.

As the negotiations wore on it became apparent that Spain and France,
now that their vengeance was sated against England by our independence,
were more unfriendly to our territorial enlargement than England itself.
There still exists a map on which Spain's minister had indicated what he
wished to make our western bound. The line follows nearly the meridian
of Pittsburgh. This attitude of those powers excused ou