cess the people would be honest enough to pay their debts;
and there was much danger that the jealousies between the States as to
their proportionate quotas might stimulate reluctance and furnish
excuses which might easily become serious in so unpleasant a matter as
paying out hard cash. At home Congress could manage to make its paper
money percolate among the people, and could pay a good many American
creditors with it; but there were some who would not be thus satisfied,
and few European creditors, of course, would meddle with such currency.
So to pay these people who would have real money Congress solicited
loans from other nations. It was like the financiering of a schoolboy,
who issues his IOU's among his mates, and refers the exacting and
business-like tradesman to his father. France was cast for the role of
father to the congressional schoolboy for many wearisome years.

The arrangement bore hard upon the American representatives, who, at
European courts and upon European exchanges, had the embarrassing task
of raising money. It was all very well to talk about negotiating a loan;
the phrase had a Micawber-like sound as of real business; but in point
of plain fact the thing to be done was to beg. Congress had a
comparatively easy time of it; such burden and anxiety as lay upon that
body were shared among many; and after all, the whole scope of its duty
was little else than to vote requisitions upon the States, to order the
printing of a fresh batch of bills, and to "resolve that the Treasury
Board be directed to prepare bills of exchange of suitable denominations
upon the Honorable Benjamin Franklin [or sometimes Jay, or Adams, or
another], minister plenipotentiary at the court of Versailles, for----
thousand dollars _in specie_." Having done this, Congress had fulfilled
its simple part, and serenely waited for something to turn up.

The plan which seemed most effective was to send a representative
accredited to some foreign government, and instructed to raise money at
once. Without wasting time by waiting to see whether he arrived safely,
or was received, or was successful in his negotiations, the next ship
which followed him brought drafts and bills which he was expected to
accept, and at maturity to pay. Having thus skillfully shifted the
laboring oar into his hands Congress bestirred itself no further. Poor
Jay, in Spain, had a terrible time of it in this way, and if ever a man
was placed by his country in a p