d by the defense of their liberty," and should
regard "the depreciation of their paper money only as an impost which
ought to fall upon themselves." He added that he had instructed the
Chevalier de la Luzerne, French minister to the States, "to make the
strongest representations on this subject" to Congress.

Adams was alarmed at the anger which he had excited, and besought de
Vergennes to hold his hand until Franklin could "have opportunity to
make his representations to his majesty's ministers." But this gleam of
good sense was transitory, for on the same day, without waiting for
Franklin to intervene, he composed and sent to de Vergennes a long,
elaborate defense of the course of the States. It was such an argument
as a stubborn lawyer might address to a presumably prejudiced court; it
had not a pleasant word of gratitude for past favors, or of regret at
the present necessity; it was as undiplomatic and ill considered as it
certainly was unanswerable. But its impregnability could not offset its
gross imprudence. To exasperate de Vergennes and alienate the French
government at that period, although by a perfectly sound presentation,
was an act of madness as unpardonable as any crime.

Upon the same day on which Adams drew up this able, inexcusable brief
for his unfortunate client, the Congress, he wrote to Franklin begging
him to interfere. On June 29 he followed this request with a humbler
note than John Adams often wrote, acknowledging that he might have made
some errors, and desiring to be set right. On June 30 de Vergennes also
appealed to Franklin, saying, amid much more: "The king is so firmly
persuaded, sir, that your private opinion respecting the effects of that
resolution of Congress, as far as it concerns strangers and especially
Frenchmen, differs from that of Mr. Adams, that he is not apprehensive
of laying you under any embarrassment by requesting you to support the
representations which his minister is ordered to make to Congress."

Franklin, receiving these epistles, was greatly vexed at the jeopardy
into which the rash zeal of Adams had suddenly plunged the American
interests in France. His indignation was not likely to be made less by
the fact that all this letter-writing to de Vergennes was a tacit
reproach upon his own performance of his duties and a gratuitous
intrenchment upon his province. The question which presented itself to
him was not whether the argument of Adams was right or wrong, nor