n the ground that a foreigner ought not to be taxed like a
citizen; but the insuperable difficulty of making the distinction
practicable remained undisposed of.

[Note 76: See also Franklin's _Works_, vii. 343.]

CHAPTER XIV

PEACE NEGOTIATIONS: LAST YEARS IN FRANCE

The war had not been long waging before overtures and soundings
concerning an accommodation, abetted and sometimes instigated by the
cabinet, began to come from England. Nearly all these were addressed to
Franklin, because all Europe persisted in regarding him as the one
authentic representative of America, and because Englishmen of all
parties had long known and respected him far beyond any other American.
In March, 1778, William Pulteney, a member of Parliament, came under an
assumed name to Paris and had an interview with him. But it seemed that
England would not renounce the theory of the power of Parliament over
the colonies, though willing by way of favor to forego its exercise.
Franklin declared an arrangement on such a basis to be impossible.

A few months later there occurred the singular and mysterious episode of
Charles de Weissenstein. Such was the signature to a letter dated at
Brussels, June 16, 1778. The writer said that independence was an
impossibility, and that the English title to the colonies, being
indisputable, would be enforced by coming generations even if the
present generation should have to "stop awhile in the pursuit to recover
breath;" he then sketched a plan of reconciliation, which included
offices or life pensions for Franklin, Washington, and other prominent
rebels. He requested a personal interview with Franklin, and, failing
that, he appointed to be in a certain spot in Notre Dame at a certain
hour, wearing a rose in his hat, to receive a written reply. The French
police reported the presence at the time and place of a man obviously
bent upon this errand, who was traced to his hotel and found, says John
Adams, to be "Colonel Fitz-something, an Irish name, that I have
forgotten." He got no answer, because at a consultation between the
American commissioners and de Vergennes it was so decided. But one had
been written by Franklin, and though de Weissenstein and Colonel
Fitz-something never saw it, at least it has afforded pleasure to
thousands of readers since that time. For by sundry evidence Franklin
became convinced, even to the point of alleging that he "knew," that the
incognito correspondent was the Englis