xchange. This anticipation turned out to
be correct, and so far justified their refusal; for soon some five
hundred English sailors got their freedom as a necessity, without any
compensatory freeing of Americans. Each of them gave a solemn promise in
writing to obtain the release of an American prisoner in return; but he
had as much authority to hand over the Tower of London, and the British
government was not so romantically chivalrous as to recognize pledges
entered into by foremast hands.

All sorts of stories continued to reach Franklin's ears as to the
cruelty which his imprisoned countrymen had to endure. He heard that
they were penniless and could get no petty comforts; that they suffered
from cold and hunger, and were subjected to personal indignities; that
they were not allowed to read a newspaper or to write a letter; that
they were all committed by a magistrate on a charge of high treason, and
were never allowed to forget their probable fate on the gibbet; that
some of them, as has been said, were deported to distant and unwholesome
English possessions. For the truth of these accounts it is not necessary
to believe that the English government was intentionally brutal; but it
was neglectful and indifferent, and those who had prisoners in charge
felt assured that no sympathy for rebels would induce an investigation
into peculations or unfeeling behavior. Moreover there was a deliberate
design, by terror and discouragement, to break the spirit of the
so-called traitors and persuade them to become real traitors by entering
the English service.

By all these tales Franklin's zeal in the matter of exchange was greatly
stimulated. His humane soul revolted at keeping men who were not
criminals locked up in wasting misery, when they might be set free upon
terms of perfect equality between the contending parties. Throughout his
correspondence on this subject there is a magnanimity, a humanity, a
spirit of honesty and even of honor so extraordinary, or actually
unique, in dealings between diplomats and nations, that the temptation
is irresistible to give a fuller narrative than the intrinsic importance
of the subject would warrant. For after all there were never many
English prisoners in France to be exchanged; after a while they might be
counted by hundreds, but perhaps they never rose to a total of one
thousand.

There was at this time in England a man to whose memory Americans ought
to erect statues. This was Davi