XXXIII July. CHAP. the weak but amiable duke of Gloucester. In July he crossed the channel, with the view to inspect the 1775. citadels along the eastern frontier of France. When he left Dover, nothing had been heard from America later than the retreat of the British from Concord, and the surprise of Ticonderoga. Metz, the strongest place on the east of France, was a particular object of his journey; and as his tour was made with the sanction of Louis the Sixteenth, he was received there by the Count de Broglie as the guest of the king. Among the visitors on the occasion, came a young man not yet eighteen, whom de Broglie loved with parental tenderness, Gilbert Motier de la Fayette. His father had fallen in his twenty-fifth year, in the battle of Minden, leaving his only child less than two years old. The boyish dreams of the orphan had been of glory and of liberty; at the college in Paris, at the academy of Versailles, no studies charmed him like tales of republics; rich by vast inheritances, and married at sixteen, he was haunted by a passion to rove the world as an adventurer in quest of fame, and the opportunity to strike a blow for freedom. A guest at the banquet in honor of the duke of Gloucester, he listened with avidity to an authentic version of the uprising of the New England husbandmen. The reality of life had now brought before him something more wonderful than the brightest of his visions; the youthful nation insurgent against oppression and fighting for the right to govern themselves, took possession of his imagination. He inquired; he grew warm with enthusiasm; and before he left the table, the men of Lexington and Concord had won for America a volunteer in Lafayette. XXXIII July. In Paris, wits, philosophers, and coffee-house poli- CHAP. ticians, were all to a man warm Americans, considering them as a brave people, struggling for natural 1775. rights, and endeavoring to rescue those rights from wanton violence. Their favorite mode of reasoning was, that as the Americans had no representatives in parliament, they could owe no obedience to British laws. This argument they turned in all its different shapes, and fashioned into general theories. The field of Lexington, followed by the taking of Ticonderoga, fixed the attention of the government of France. From the busy correspondence between Vergennes and the French embassy at London, it appeared, that the British ministry were under a delusion in persuading themselves that the Americans would soon tire; that the system of an exclusively maritime war was illusory, since America could so well provide for her wants within herself. Franklin was known to be more zealous than ever, and perfectly acquainted with the resources of Great Britain and at Versailles he enjoyed the reputation of being endowed by Heaven with qualities that made him the most fit to create a free nation, and to become the most celebrated among men. The sagacity of Vergennes traced the relation of the American revolution to the history of the world. "The spirit of revolt," said he, "wherever it breaks out, is always a troublesome example. Moral maladies, as well as those of the physical system, can become contagious. We must be on our guard, that the independence which produces so terrible an explosion in North America, may not communicate itself to points that interest us in the hemispheres. XXXIII CHAP. We long ago made up our own mind to the results which are now observed; we saw with regret that 1775. the crisis was drawing near; we have a presentiment that it may be followed by more extensive consequences. We do not disguise from ourselves the aberrations which enthusiasm can encourage, and which fanaticism can effectuate." The subject, therefore, grew in magnitude and interest for the king and his cabinet. The contingent danger of a sudden attack on the French possessions in the West Indies, required precaution; and Louis the Sixteenth thought it advisable at once to send an emissary to America, to watch the progress of the revolution. This could best be done from England; and the embassy at London, as early as the tenth of July, began the necessary preliminary in10. quiries. "All England," such was the substance of its numerous reports to Vergennes, "is in a position, from which she never can extricate herself. Either all rules are false, or the Americans will never again consent to become her subjects." July. So judged the statesmen of France, on hearing of the retreat from Concord, and the seizure of Ticonderoga. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. MAY, 1775. XXXIV May 10. A FEW hours after the surrender of Ticonderoga, CHAP the second continental congress met at Philadelphia. 1775. There among the delegates, appeared Franklin and Samuel Adams; John Adams, and Washington, and Richard Henry Lee; soon joined by Patrick Henry, and by George Clinton, Jay, and Jay's college friend, the younger Robert R. Livingston, of New York. Whom did they represent? and what were their functions? They were committees from twelve colonies, deputed to consult on measures of conciliation, with no means of resistance to oppression beyond a voluntary agreement for the suspension of importations from Great Britain. They formed no confederacy; they were not an executive government; they were not even a legislative body. They owed the use of a hall for their sessions to the courtesy of the carpenters of the city; there was not a foot of land on which they had the right to execute their decisions; and they had not one civil officer to carry out CHAP. their commands, nor the power to appoint one. Nor XXXIV. was one soldier enlisted, nor one officer commissioned 1775. in their name. They had no treasury; and neither 10. authority to lay a tax, nor to borrow money. They May. had been elected, in part at least, by tumultuary assemblies, or bodies which had no recognised legal existence; they were intrusted with no powers but those of counsel; most of them were held back by explicit or implied instructions; and they represented nothing more solid than the unformed opinion of an unformed people. Yet they were encountered by the king's refusal to act as a mediator, the decision of parliament to enforce its authority, and the actual outbreak of civil war. The waters had risen; the old roads were obliterated; and they must strike out a new path for themselves and for the continent. The exigency demanded the instant formation of one great commonwealth and the declaration of independence. "They are in rebellion," said Edmund Burke; "and have done so much as to necessitate them to do a great deal more." Independence had long been the desire of Samuel Adams, and was already the reluctant choice of Franklin, and of John Adams, from a conviction that it could not ultimately be avoided. But its immediate declaration was not pos sible. American law was the growth of necessity, not of the wisdom of individuals. It was not an acquisition from abroad; it was begotten from the American mind, of which it was a natural and inevitable, but also a slow and gradual development. It is truly the child of the people, an emanation from its will. The sublime thought that there existed a united nation, was yet to spring into being, to liberate the public |