What was then the real financial capacity of the people, and whether
they did their utmost in the way of raising money to support the
Revolution, is a question about which it is easy to express an opinion,
but difficult to prove its accuracy by convincing evidence. On the one
hand, it is true that the strain was extreme and that much was done to
meet it; on the other hand, it is no less true that even beneath this
stress the national prosperity actually made a considerable advance
during the war. The people as a whole gathered money rather than
impoverished themselves. In the country at large the commercial instinct
fully held its own in competition with the spirit of independence. There
was not much forswearing of little luxuries. Franklin said that he
learned by inquiry that of the interest money which was disbursed in
Paris most was laid out for "superfluities, and more than half of it for
tea." He computed that L500,000 were annually expended in the States for
tea alone. This sum, "annually laid out in defending ourselves or
annoying our enemies, would have great effect. With what face can we ask
aids and subsidies from our friends, while we are wasting our own wealth
in such prodigality?"

Henry Laurens, dispatched as minister to the Hague in 1780, was captured
on the voyage and carried into England. But this little incident
mattered not at all to the Congress, which for a long while cheerfully
drew a great number of bills upon the poor gentleman, who, held in the
Tower of London as a traitor, was hardly in a position to negotiate
large loans for his fellow "rebels." In October, 1780, these bills
began to flutter down upon Franklin's desk, drawn by a sort of natural
gravitation. He felt "obliged to accept them," and said that he should
"with some difficulty be able to pay them, though these extra demands
often embarrass me exceedingly."

November 19, 1780, he wrote to de Vergennes announcing that Congress had
notified him of drafts to the amount of about 1,400,000 livres (about
$280,000). The reply was: "You can easily imagine my astonishment at
your request of the necessary funds to meet these drafts, since you
perfectly well know the extraordinary efforts which I have made thus far
to assist you and support your credit, and especially since you cannot
have forgotten the demands you lately made upon me. Nevertheless, sir, I
am very desirous of assisting you out of the embarrassed situation in
which these repea