The Paine-Deane incident had a number of curious sequels, some of which
are related in a characteristic letter of Gouverneur Morris to John
Randolph, which has not, I believe, hitherto been printed. Gouverneur
Morris had much to do with the whole affair; he was a member of Congress
during the controversy, and he was the Minister in France who, fifteen
years later, brought to light the receipt for the King's million livres
charged by Beaumarchais against this country.
"Washington, Jany. 20, 1812
"It would give me pleasure to communicate the information you ask, but
I can only speak from memory respecting matters, some of which were
transacted long ago and did not command my special attention. But it is
probable that the material facts can be established by documents in the
Secretary of State's office.
"It will, I believe, appear from the correspondence between Mr. Arthur
Lee and the Secret and Commercial Committee, that early in our dispute
with Great Britain the French Court made through him a tender of
military supplies, and employed as their agent for that purpose M.
Beaumarchais, who, having little property and but slender standing in
society, might (if needful) be disavowed, imprisoned, and punished for
presuming to use the King's name on such an occasion. In the course of
our Revolutionary War, large supplies were sent by M. Beaumarchais under
the name of Roderique Hortalez and Co., a supposed mercantile name. But
the operations were impeded by complaints of the British Ambassador,
Lord Stormont, which obliged the French Court to make frequent denials,
protestations, seizure of goods and detention of ships. Every step of
this kind bound them more strongly to prevent a disclosure of facts.
"After the Congress returned to Philadelphia, M. de Francy, agent of
M. Beaumarchais, applied to Congress for payment. This application was
supported on the ground of justice by many who were not in the secret,
for the Congress had then so much good sense as not to trust itself with
its own secrets. There happened unluckily at that time a feud between
Mr. Lee and Mr. Deane. The latter favored (in appearance at least) M.
Beaumarchais' claim. Paine, who was clerk to the Secret and Commercial
Committee, took part in the dispute, wrote pieces for the Gazettes, and
at length, to overwhelm Deane and those who defended him with confusion,
published a declaration of the facts confidentially communicated to the
Committee by Mr. Lee, and signed this declaration as American Secretary
for Foreign Affairs.* The French Minister, M. Gerard, immediately made
a formal complaint of that publication, and an equally formal denial of
what it contained. The Congress was therefore obliged to believe, or
at least to act as if they believed, that Paine had told a scandalous
falsehood. He was in consequence dismissed, which indeed he deserved for
his impudence if for nothing else.**
* Error. Paine signed "Common Sense," and in one instance
"Thomas Paine."
** Paine resigned. Several motions for his dismissal were
lost.
"Beaumarchais and his agent had already received from the Committee
tobacco and perhaps other articles of produce on account of his demand;
what and how much will of course be found from investigating the files
of the Treasury. But he wanted and finally obtained a larger and more
effectual payment Bills were drawn in his favor on Dr. Franklin, our
Minister in France, at long sight, for about one hundred thousand pounds
sterling. This was done in the persuasion that the Doctor would, when
they were presented, communicate the fact to Comte de Vergennes, from
whom he would afterwards be obliged to solicit the means of payment. It
was hoped that the French Court would then interfere and either lay hold
of the bills or compel M. Beaumarchais to refund the money, so that no
real deduction would on that account be afterwards made from the loans
or subsidies to us. The death of all who were privy to it has spread
an impenetrable veil over what passed on this occasion between M.
Beaumarchais and his employer, but the bills were regularly paid, and
we were thereby deprived in a critical moment of the resources which so
large a sum would have supplied. When this happened, M. de la Luzerne,
then Minister of France at Philadelphia, expressed himself with so
much freedom and so much indignation respecting M. Beaumarchais and his
claim, that there was reason to believe nothing more would have been
heard of it. In that persuasion, perhaps, Dr. Franklin, when he came to
settle our national accounts with M. de Vergennes, was less solicitous
about a considerable item than he otherwise might have been. He
acknowledged as a free gift to the United States the receipt on a
certain day of one million livres, for which no evidence was produced.
He asked indeed for a voucher to establish the payment, but the Count
replied that it was immaterial whether we had received the money or not,
seeing that we were not called on for repayment. With this reassuring
the old gentleman seems to have been satisfied, and the account was
settled accordingly. Perhaps the facts may have been communicated to him
under the seal of secrecy, and if so he showed firmness in that he had
shared in the plunder with Deane and Beaumarchais.
* Gouverneur Morris himself.
** This was the receipt dated June 10, 1776, on which the
King had marked "Bon," and was obtained by Morris in 1794.
"Things remained in that state till after the late king of France was
dethroned. The Minister of the United States at Paris' was then directed
to enquire what had become of the million livres. The correspondence
will of course be found in the office of the Secretary of State. It
seems that he had the good fortune to obtain copies of M. Beaumarchais'
receipt for a million, bearing date on the day when the gift was said
to have been made, so that no reasonable doubt could exist as to the
identity of the sum.'
"So much, my dear Sir, for what memory can command. You will, I think,
find papers containing a more accurate statement in the New York
'Evening Post,' about the time when Mr. Rodney's opinion was made
public. At least I recollect having seen in that gazette some facts with
which I had not been previously acquainted, or which I had forgotten.
A gentleman from Connecticut, who was on the Committee of Claims last
year, can I believe give you the papers. I remember also to have been
told by a respectable young gentleman, son of the late Mr. Richard Henry
Lee, that important evidence on this subject, secured from his uncle
Arthur, was in his possession, and I believe it may be obtained from Mr.
Carroll of Annapolis, or his son-in-law Mr. Harper of Baltimore."
"The Hon'le Mr. John Randolph, of Roanoke."
Beaumarchais, barely escaping the guillotine, died in poverty in
Holland. He bequeathed his claim to his daughter who (1835) was Paid
800,000 francs, but the million which he had received from the King and
then charged on the United States, was never paid. Silas Deane suffered
a worse fate. His claims for commissions and services in France remained
unpaid, and after his return to France he occupied himself with writing
to his brother Simeon the letters meant to be intercepted, printed by
Rivington in 1782. In these letters he urges submission to England.
Franklin took the charitable view that his head had been turned by his
misfortunes. He went over to England, where he became the friend of
Benedict Arnold, and died in poverty in 1789. In recent years his heirs
were paid $35,000 by Congress. But had his treachery, as now revealed in
the letters of George III., been known, there had been no such payment.
* The documents referred to are no doubt among the Lee
Papers preserved at the University of Virginia, which I have
examined.
The determination with which Paine, to his cost, withstood Deane, may
seem at first glance quixotic His attack was animated by a belief that
the supplies sent from France were a covert gift, and at any rate, that
the demand for instant payment to agents was fraudulent. Evidence having
been supplied, by the publication of Beaumarchais notes to Arthur
Lee, under pseudonym of "Mary Johnston," that returns in tobacco were
expected, this, if not a mercantile mask, was still a matter of credit,
and very different from payments demanded by Beaumarchais and Deane from
the scanty treasury of the struggling colonies.* But there was something
more behind the vehemence of Paine's letters.
* In one of Deane's intercepted letters (May 20, 1781) there
is an indication that he had found more truth in what Paine
had said about the gratuitous supplies than Beaumarchais had
led him to believe. "The first plan of the French government
evidently was to assist us just so far as might be
absolutely necessary to prevent an accommodation, and to
give this assistance with so much secresy as to avoid any
rupture with Great Britain. On this plan succors were first
permitted to be sent out to us by private individuals, and
only on condition of future payment, but afterward we were
thought to be such cheap and effectual instruments of
mischief to the British nation that more direct and
gratuitous aids were furnished us." But now M. Doniol has
brought to light the Reflexions and Considerations of the
French Minister, Count de Vergennes, which led to his
employment of Beaumarchais, which contain such propositions
as these: "It is essential that France shall at present
direct its care towards this end: she must nourish the
courage and perseverance of the insurgents by flattering
their hope of effectual assistance when circumstances
permit." "It will be expedient to give the insurgents secret
aid in munitions and money; utility suggests this small
sacrifice," "Should France and Spain give succors, they
should seek compensation only in the political object they
have at heart, reserving to themselves subsequent decision,
after the events and according to the situations." "It would
be neither for the king's dignity or interest to bargain
with the insurgents." It is certain that Beaumarchais was
required to impress these sentiments on Arthur Lee, who
continued to take them seriously, and made Paine take them
so, after Beaumarchais was taking only his own interests
seriously.
This he intimated, but his revelation seems to have received no
attention at the time. He says (January 5th): "In speaking of Mr.
Deane's contracts with foreign officers, I concealed, out of pity to
him, a circumstance that must have sufficiently shown the necessity of
recalling him, and either his want of judgment or the danger of trusting
him with discretionary power. It is no less than that of his throwing
out a proposal, in one of his foreign letters, for contracting with a
German prince to command the American army." This personage, who was
"to supersede General Washington," he afterwards declares to be Prince
Ferdinand. It is known that Count de Broglie had engaged Kalb and Deane
to propose him as generalissimo of America, but the evidence of this
other proposal has disappeared with other papers missing from Deane's
diplomatic correspondence. I find, however, that ex-provost Stille who
has studied the proceedings of Beaumarchais thoroughly, has derived
from another source an impression that he (Beaumarchais) made an earlier
proposition of the same kind concerning Prince Ferdinand. It would be
unsafe to affirm that Deane did more than report the proposals made
to him, but his silence concerning this particular charge of his
antagonist, while denying every other categorically, is suspicious. At
that early period Washington had not loomed up in the eye of the world.
The French and Germans appear to have thought of the Americans and their
commander as we might think of rebellious red men and their painted
chief. There is nothing in Deane's letters from Europe to suggest that
he did not share their delusion, or that he appreciated the necessity of
independence. Paine, who conducted the foreign correspondence, knew that
the secrets of the American office in Paris were open to Lord Stormont,
who stopped large supplies prepared for America, and suspected Deane of
treachery. It now appears that one of Deane's assistants, George Lupton,
was an English "informer." (Stevens' Facsimiles, vii., No. 696.) Deane
had midnight meetings in the Place Vendome with an English "Unknown"
(now known as the informer Paul Wentworth) to whom he suggested that
the troubles might be ended by England's forming a "federal union" with
America. All of which shows Deane perilously unfit for his mission, but
one is glad to find him appearing no worse in Wentworth's confidental
portraiture (January 4, 1778) of the American officials:
"Dr. Franklin is taciturn, deliberate, and cautious; Mr. Deane is vain,
desultory, and subtle; Mr. Arthur Lee, suspicious and indolent; Alderman
Lee, peevish and ignorant; Mr. Izzard, costive and dogmatical--all of
these insidious, and Edwards vibrating between hope and fear, interest
and attachment."
The venal character of Deane's subsequent treason clearly appears in the
correspondence of George III. with Lord North (Donne, pp. 145, 363, 380,
381, 384) It also appears, by a letter of January 9, 1778, that George
III. was aware that the proposal had been sent to his brother-in-law,
Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, to become commander of the American
revolutionists!