The Reign of George III. (Continued.) page 13

" Our money is now sinking fifty per cent, a day in this city (Philadelphia), and I shall not be surprised if, in the course of a few months, a total stop is put to the currency of it; and yet an assembly, a concert, a dinner, a supper, that will cost three or four hundred pounds, will not only take men off from acting in their business, but even from thinking of it - while a great part of the officers of our army, from absolute necessity, are quitting the service. I have no resentments, nor do I mean to point at particular characters. This I can declare upon my honour, for I have every attention paid me by congress that I can possibly expect. But such is the picture which, from my soul, I believe to be a true one.

To add to these discreditable features, there was nothing but dissension from congress downwards. Often there were not more than twenty members who took any active part in business, and they were in violent dissension. La Fayette, whilst away in France, was thunderstruck by the rumour of division which reached him. u For God's sake," he wrote to Washington in June of this year, " prevent the congress from disputing loudly together!" But whilst they disputed loudly, they professed to be very secret, and therefore recorded very little in their journals; and these journals have therefore been pronounced by their contemporaries " painfully meagre." The same violent squabbles were as conspicuous amongst their delegates in France, with heavy charges of dishonesty against some of them.

When John Adams arrived at Paris, he found a violent quarrel going on between Deane and Franklin on the one part and Arthur Lee on the other part. The congress, to get rid of this dispute, appointed Franklin sole commissioner to the court of France, allowing Lee to retain his commissionership to Spain, though the Spaniards persisted in refusing to admit him to the country. Adams was taken no notice of by congress, and returned home much disgusted. Lee had accused both Franklin and Silas Deane of embezzling the money of congress which passed through their hands. Isnard and Carmichael, the latter now in America, made the same charges, especially against Deane. Deane was called before congress to give an account of himself, and Carmichael was heard against him. There were violent disputes - partisans taking some one side, some another. Deane published an address to the people, not only vindicating himself, but claiming the merit of obtaining a loan from the French government, before the alliance, through the medium of Beaumarchais. Thomas Paine, who was secretary to the committee for foreign affairs, availed himself of the papers in his possession to publish an answer, showing that the arrangement with Beaumarchais had been made, not by Deane, but by Arthur Lee, in London. Upon this Gerard, the French ambassador, complained loudly of Paine's accusing France, at a time that she was at peace with England, of furnishing funds to assist her rebellious subjects.

The fact was notorious enough: congress knew it well enough; and the examination of the French treasury-books subsequent to the French Revolution showed that their loan was a million of livres, and did really pass through Beaumarchais' hands; but Paine was a poor and friendless man, and therefore, though he had rendered signal services to the American cause by his writings, congress was very willing to make a victim of him to appease the sensitive sense of an offended honour which did not exist either in themselves or France. A resolution of congress denied stoutly that any loan had been advanced at that time; and Paine found himself assailed with a torrent of vituperation and contumely which would have been disgusting in the most aristocratic assembly, but which has since been often matched, hut never surpassed, in the republican congress of the United States.

In the speech of governor Morris, one of the members for New York, who hotly defended Deane, he spoke of Paine thus: - " Who is the secretary styling himself the secretary of foreign affairs? And what would be the idea of a gentleman in Europe of this Mr. Paine? Would he not suppose him to be a man of the most affluent fortune, born in this country, of a respectable family, with wide and good connections, and endued with the nicest sense of honour? Certainly he would suppose that all these pledges of fidelity were necessary to a people in such critical circumstances. But, alas! what Would he think should he accidentally be informed that this - our secretary of foreign affairs - is a mete adventurer from England, without fortune, without family or connections, and ignorant even of grammar? "

This certainly was a pretty strong foreshadowing of those strange specimens of slang and abuse which have so often astonished Europe as reported in the speeches of honourable members of congress; but surely Thomas Paine, the author of the " Rights of Man," though the quondam staymaker of Thetford, was fitting society for Samuel Adams, the embezzler of the public money - for Arnold, the horse dealer, though now a general, and for others who by affixing, with much ostentation, the epithet " honourable " to their names, could with little difficulty trace back their origin to the lucky thieves and paupers who had been sold from the gaols of England to serve their time on the plantations of Maryland and Virginia. Paine found it necessary to give way to the storm and resign his office, though in less than two years this very honourable and high-blooded congress were only too glad to avail themselves of his talents again!

But the retirement of Paine did not end the affray. It grew hotter and hotter; Isnard and William Lee were recalled; nothing could be made out sufficiently against Deane, who defended himself by bringing such charges of villany and corruption against members of congress and other public men that they were glad to be rid of him, and dismissed him, allowing him a paltry sum in recompense for his lost time, which he refused to accept. Innocent or guilty, he was only in the predicament of Wadworth, Morris, Greene, and even Franklin, against whom similar charges were freely advanced, and which congress would afford no means of probing by appointing any committee to examine the accounts of their agents abroad. Deane afterwards appears to have wheeled round to the cause of that England which he had used every means, through John the Painter and similar agents, to destroy, and his letters being intercepted, his name became an abomination to the patriots of the states.

In the ideal of a people contending for their liberty there mingles involuntarily the sublimest conceptions of the noblest virtues, the most exalted sentiments. We see before us a national presentiment of great men, great deeds, great thoughts and principles; hearts warmed by the spirit of the heavens; souls brilliant with a divine inspiration. With the exception of a Washington, at once grave, simple, and heroic, and perhaps a Schuyler or a Laurens, we seek in vain for the trace of these noble men and things in the revolutionary strife of America, and decline in melancholy wonder to the contemplation of courage indeed, but attended by the strange concomitants of public and private fraud, chicanery, and the entire absence of every feature of an elevated mind. No man felt this more, and lamented it more, than the one great man, Washington. He declared that friends as well as foes were combining to pull down that fabric of freedom which they had been raising at the expense of so much blood and treasure. We have already quoted his own words; we may quote those of Henry Laurens, who had now retired from the presidency of congress in disgust, his place being re-filled by John Jay. To the astonishment and indignation of the Americans, a private letter of his to governor Huiston, of Georgia, was seized by the English on their invading that province, and published in Rivington's " Royal Gazette:" - " Were I to unfold to you," wrote the late president, "the scenes of venality, peculation, and fraud, which I have discovered, the disclosure would astonish you; nor would you, sir, be less astonished were I by a detail to prove to you that he must be a pitiful rogue who, when detected or suspected, meets not with powerful advocates among those who, in the present corrupt time, ought to exert all their powers in defence and support of these friend-plundered, much-injured, and, I was almost going to say, sinking states. Don't apprehend, sir, that I colour too high, or that any part of these intimations are the effect of rash judgment or despondency. I am warranted to say they are not; my opinions, my sentiments are supported every day by the declaration of individuals; the difficulty lies in bringing men collectively to attack with proper vigour a proper object." Low as was the tone, despotic as was the temper of England at that time, it had still a far higher sense of what was honourable and true; but the conflict might in one sentence be expressed as a conflict betwixt honest imbecility on the one side, and a sharping meanness on the other. These characteristics in each party, from first to last, are too prominently projected on the scene to be mistaken or denied.

The adhesion of Spain to the French and American alliance greatly elated the congress, and had the effect of relaxing their own efforts for defence. They thought now that all was certain, and that France and Spain together would be more than a match for England. And, indeed, on the American coast, southward, Spain commenced operations that for awhile appeared likely to cause England some trouble. No sooner had Spain formally recognised the independence of the United States, than Don Bernardo Galvez, governor of Louisiana, burst into West Florida with two thousand men. We had then but one thousand six hundred men to defend the colony, and that scattered into different and distant parts of it. Galvez ascended the Mississippi, and, after a siege of nine days, reduced a garrison of five hundred men at Ibbeville. He then proceeded to the Natchez province, occupied all the forts and settlements along its western frontier, and overran a vast extent of nearly unoccupied country. He did not, however, approach the eastern parts of the province, defended by the strong fort of Mobile.

Another attempt of the Spaniards was to drive our logwood cutters out of the Bay of Honduras. The governor of Yucatan led on this expedition, but here he found a more determined resistance than Galvez had done in Florida. The wood-cutters were a daring race, consisting in a great degree of seamen, and they retreated on the approach of the Spaniards into an inaccessible place, and sent off for aid to Dalling, the governor of Jamaica. Dalling dispatched, in the Porcupine sloop of war, a small party of Irish volunteers under captain Dalrymple to the assistance of the woodcutters. They were soon joined by captain John Luttrel, with a small squadron which had been in chase of some rich Spanish register ships, which had now taken refuge under the guns of the fortress of St. Fernando de Omoa. The Spaniards were speedily driven from St. George's Bay, and all parts of the coast. The bold wood-cutters thus liberated, united with Dalrymple and Luttrel to make an assault on the fortress of St. Fernando de Omoa. The garrison at St. Fernando amounted to six hundred men; all the forces, of soldiers, sailors, wood-cutters, &c., which the English could muster were only five hundred, and they had no artillery that they could land and plant before the fort, but they determined to dare

an assault notwithstanding. It was intended to steal on the fortress by surprise, but they were discovered. This, however, did not prevent their rushing on the place under a hot fire, throwing ropes upon the walls, and climbing up them like cats. The Spaniards, astonished, fled from their guns, and the governor, on being told that the English had scaled the ramparts, would not at first believe it. The garrison surrendered at discretion, and the medley troop of woodcutters, soldiers, and sailors, thence descended to the harbour, where they soon made themselves masters of the ships. A great deal of the treasure, however, had been removed, but they obtained altogether three millions of piastres. The Spaniards consented to exchange prisoners and evacuate the coast, and a small garrison was left in St. Fernando de Omoa, but it was found too sickly to remain long there. On the heels of the report of this transaction 5 came the news to the States of the miserable failure of the grand armada of France and Spain, and of their return to their own ports. Meantime, the depreciation of the United States paper had advanced to thirty to one. The effects of a naval warfare on the part of the Americans were by this time fully experienced. Several of the continental vessels had been captured or lost; others, for want of funds, remained on the stocks uncompleted. The vigilance of the British squadron had much reduced the privateers. Several armed vessels, however, both public and private, still kept the seas, and part of the money received from France was expended in fitting out cruisers in the French ports.

At the head of a squadron of these figured the most daring privateer of the time, Paul Jones. John Paul, or Paul Jones, was born at Selkirk, in 1736. His father is said to have been a gardener of Galloway, and to have been in the employ of the earl of Selkirk. Jones early took to the sea, and one of his first voyages was to America. He settled in Virginia in 1773, and acquired j some property. On the breaking out of the quarrel betwixt Great Britain and her colonies, Jones, like numbers of other J Englishmen, took up arms for his adopted, against his native, country. He soon distinguished himself by a dogged 1 courage, and was appointed by congress the first of the first lieutenants. In 1775 he was appointed to the command of a ship under commodore Hopkins, and so distinguished himself | in several engagements, that he received his commission as captain of marines. In May, 1777, he was sent to France, 1 and was appointed by Franklin, the other commissioner 1 there, captain of a French ship, under American colours. In the course of the following year he kept the Irish coast and the northern coasts of England in continual terror. He is described as a short, thick, little fellow, about five feet eight in height, and of a dark, swarthy complexion. Romancers j have adorned him with many of the features of a hero; but he had nothing of the hero about him but a savage physical courage. He was a coarse, uneducated man - said to have fled from his own country to escape the gallows, and to the gallows he would have been led as a ruthless pirate had he ' been taken at sea by the English.