it was his office to guide. If he had not
possessed a pure and genuine sympathy with human nature, he would not
have been able, at the age of seventy, to enter into the feelings of a
people so different from those among whom he had always lived. And if he
had not been stimulated by earnest convictions, and governed by high
principles, he would not have been able to withstand the frequent and
insidious attempts that were made to shake his fortitude and undermine
his fidelity. But in him, as in Washington, there was a rare
predominance of that sound common-sense which is man's surest guide in
his relations with events, and that firm belief in the progress of
humanity which is his best reliance in his relations with men.

Congress had given him two associates in his commission to
France,--Silas Deane of Connecticut, and Arthur Lee of Virginia. Deane
had been a member of Congress, was active, enterprising, and
industrious; but his judgment was not sound, his knowledge of men not
extensive, his acquaintance with great interests and his experience of
great affairs insufficient for the important position in which he was
placed. Lee had lived long in England, was an accomplished scholar, a
good writer, familiar with the character of European statesmen and the
politics of European courts,--but vain, jealous, irritable, suspicious,
ambitious of the first honors, and disposed to look upon every one who
attracted more attention than himself as his natural enemy. Deane,
deeply impressed with the importance of Franklin's social position for
the fulfilment of their common duties, although energetic and active,
cheerfully yielded the precedence to his more experienced colleague.
Lee, conscious of his own accomplishments, regarded the deference paid
to Franklin as an insult to himself, and promptly resumed in Paris the
war of petty intrigue and secret accusation which a few years before he
had waged against him in England. In this vile course Congress soon
unwittingly gave him a worthy coadjutor, by appointing, as Commissioner
to Tuscany, Ralph Izard of South Carolina, who, without rendering a
single service, without even going near the court to which he was
accredited, continued for two years to draw his salary and abuse Dr.
Franklin.

When Franklin reached Paris, he found that Deane had already made
himself a respectable position, and that, through Caron de Beaumarchais,
the brilliant author of "Figaro," the French Government had beg