ealous, intriguing Lee know of these things;
petulant, waspish Izard still less. A mind less sagacious than
Franklin's might have grown suspicious under the influences that were
employed to awaken his distrust of Vergennes. And a character less
firmly established would have lost its hold upon Vergennes amid the
constant efforts that were made to shake his confidence in the gratitude
and good faith of America. But Franklin, who believed that timely faith
was a part of wisdom, went directly to the French Minister with the
propositions of the English emissaries, and frankly telling him all
about them, and taking counsel of him as to the manner of meeting them,
not only stripped them of their power to harm him, but converted the
very measures which his enemies had so insidiously, and, as they deemed,
so skilfully prepared for his ruin, into new sources of strength.

Of the proffers of mediation in which first Spain and then Russia and
the German Emperor were to take so important a part, as they bore no
fruit, it is sufficient to observe, in passing, how little European
statesmen understood the business in which they were so ready to
intermeddle, and what a curious spectacle Catharine and Kaunitz present,
seeking to usher into the congress of kings the first true
representative of that great principle of popular sovereignty which was
to make all their thrones totter and tremble under them. It may be
added, that they furnished that self-dependence of John Adams which too
often degenerated into arrogance an occasion to manifest itself in a
nobler light; for he refused to take part in the discussions in any
other character than as the representative of an independent power.

Meanwhile events were hastening the inevitable termination. In Europe,
England stood alone, without either open or secret sympathy. In June,
1779, a war with Spain had followed the French war of 1778. In July,
1780, the "armed neutrality" had defined the position of the Northern
powers adversely to her maritime pretensions. War was declared with
Holland in December of the same year. In America, the campaign of 1781
had stripped her of her Southern conquests, and effaced the impression
of her early victories. At home her people were daily growing more and
more restless under the pressure of taxation; and even the country
gentlemen, who had stood by the Ministry so long in the hope of
transferring their own burden to the shoulders of their American
brethren,