nations should maintain honorably
with each other, tho' engaged in war."

November 19, 1778, nothing has been achieved, and he gets impatient: "I
have heard nothing from you lately concerning the exchange of the
prisoners. Is that affair dropt? Winter is coming on apace." January 25,
1779: "I a long time believed that your government were in earnest in
agreeing to an exchange of prisoners. I begin now to think I was
mistaken. It seems they cannot give up the pleasing idea of having at
the end of the war 1000 Americans to hang for high treason." Poor
Hartley had been working with all the energy of a good man in a good
cause; but he was in the painful position of having no excuse to offer
for the backwardness of his government.

February 22, 1779, brought more reproaches from Franklin. Months had
elapsed since he had heard that the cartel ship was prepared to cross
the Channel, but she had never come. He feared that he had been
"deceived or trifled with," and proposed sending Edward Bancroft on a
special mission to England, if a safe conduct could be procured. At
last, on March 30, Hartley had the pleasure of announcing that the
exchange ship had "sailed the 25th instant from Plymouth." Franklin
soon replied that the transaction was completed, and gave well-earned
thanks to Hartley for his "unwearied pains in that affair."

Thus after infinite difficulty the English government had been pushed
into conformity with the ordinary customs of war among civilized
nations. Yet subsequent exchanges seem to have been effected only after
every possible obstacle had been contumaciously thrown in the way by the
English and patiently removed by Franklin. The Americans were driven to
various devices. The captains sometimes released their prisoners at sea
upon the written parole of each either to secure the return of an
American, or to surrender himself to Franklin in France. In November,
1781, Franklin had about five hundred of these documents, "not one of
which," he says, "has been regarded, so little faith and honor remain in
that corrupted nation." At last, after France and Spain had joined in
the war, Franklin arranged that the American captors might lodge their
prisoners in French and Spanish prisons.

Under flags of truce two cargoes of English sailors were dispatched from
Boston to England; but the English refused to reciprocate. "There is no
getting anything from these barbarians," said Franklin, "by advances of
civility or