Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence Volume II Part 18

The statement was signed by Franklin and received without comment by the United States, but three years later, in 1786, Franklin made the discovery that the king of France stated that three millions had been given to the cause of independence in America before 1778, whereas he, Franklin, had received but two millions.

What had become of the other million?

Inquiry was at once made of the United States banker in France, and an explanation demanded. After much difficulty it was learned that this million was one delivered by the royal treasurer on the 10th of June, 1776.

"It was," says M. de Lomenie, "precisely the million given to Beaumarchais, but the reticence of Vergennes showed that an embarra.s.sing mistake had been made, though unconsciously, by the royal treasurer."

It was impossible in 1786 for the French government to avow the secret aid she had given to the colonies before her open recognition of American Independence. The two millions given to Franklin in 1777 through the banker, Grand, after France had decided upon the policy of open recognition, but before the act, had never been a secret-but the million given to Beaumarchais, while really intended to help the American cause, had been conveyed to him under stress of secrecy at a time when it was unsafe to submit to writing even the most informal engagement in regard to it.

Whatever the stipulations made concerning the use of the money, they were verbal and have never been revealed. Nothing could attest the profound confidence inspired in the magistracy by Beaumarchais more than this absence of doc.u.ments relative to the loan. There can be no doubt that whatever the arrangement made by Vergennes, he was satisfied with the account rendered him by Beaumarchais, for we find him coming repeatedly to the latter's aid when the failure of Congress to return cargoes, placed the house of Hortales and Company in danger of bankruptcy. The confidence of the minister is also further attested by his refusal to deliver the receipt for the million, signed by Beaumarchais, on the 10th of June, 1776, and so become a handle to the calumny which Congress was directing against him.

To summarize the exposition of that conscientious historian, Lomenie: "Why," he asks, "did the government insert this million in the list of those given directly to America? Was it simply a recapitulation of the accounts of the treasury made without thought of the inconvenience that might result for Beaumarchais; or did the government really intend Beaumarchais to render an account of it to the United States?... We have the right to affirm that the government never intended that he should be accountable for it to anyone but to the minister.

"By refusing constantly to name the person to whom the million had been given, the minister said implicitly; 'I cla.s.s this million with those given gratuitously because in effect it was given; but since it was not given to you, and as the man to whom it was given, engaged himself by his receipt to render an account of it to me, and not to you, that man cannot be accountable except to me. If I asked to have the million returned, you would then have the right to demand it of him who received it; but since I ask nothing, I am the one to decide whether that million, gratuitously given by me, shall profit you or the man to whom I gave it. It was given to aid in a secret operation very useful to you, but which, by your refusal to acquit and by losses which he has experienced in his commerce with you, seems to have been more harmful than fruitful to him.'" (See _Lomenie_, Vol. II, p. 190.)

Of all this that was transpiring Beaumarchais knew nothing, nor could he obtain from Congress any explanation of their reason for totally ignoring their debt to him. At last his patience at an end, on the 12th of June, 1787, he wrote to the President of Congress as follows:

"A people become sovereign and powerful may be permitted, perhaps, to consider grat.i.tude as a virtue of individuals which is beneath politics; but nothing can dispense a state from being just, and especially from paying its debts. I dare hope, Monsieur, that touched by the importance of the affair and by the force of my reasons, you will be good enough to honor me with an official report as to the decision of the honorable Congress either to arrange promptly to liquify my accounts, or else to choose arbiters in Europe to decide the points debated, those of insurance and commission as M. Barclay had the honor of proposing to you in 1785; or else write me candidly that the sovereign states of America, forgetting my past services, refuse me all justice: thus I shall adopt the method best suited to my interests which you have despised, to my honor which you have wounded, although without losing the profound respect with which I am of the General Congress and of you, Monsieur le President, the very humble, etc.

"Caron de Beaumarchais."

It was at this juncture that Beaumarchais, stung by the reproaches of his own countrymen, made a ringing vindication of his acts in the cause of American independence, which will be given in the next chapter.

The reply which Congress made to the letter above quoted, was to appoint Arthur Lee to examine the accounts.

"The work was soon done," says Lomenie, "_d'un tour de main_. Arthur Lee pretended to discover that instead of 3,600,000 livres owing Beaumarchais, he not only had nothing to reclaim but on the other hand owed 1,800,000 francs to the United States!" The absurdity of this account could not fail to appear to Congress, and after four years more of protestations, in 1793 it confided a new examination of the debt to "that most distinguished American Statesman, Alexander Hamilton," who established the sum owing Beaumarchais as 2,280,000 francs, but at the same time he proposed to suspend payment until the question of the lost million was settled.

In the meantime the Revolution was advancing upon France with awful strides. Already the royalistic government had fallen, that government whose greatest glory was its n.o.ble service to the cause of American independence.

When in 1794 Gouverneur Morris applied to Buchot, then minister of Foreign affairs for the new French government, there was no one left who knew or cared for the details that had prevented Vergennes from producing that famous receipt. At the demand of Congress, therefore, it was given to Morris.

Armed now with what it chose to consider as proof that Beaumarchais wilfully had appropriated to himself a million livres intended by the French Government for it, Congress refused all settlement.

They not only repudiated the payment of the 2,600,000 livres surplus of the debt honorably acknowledged by Deane, who alone knew the immense advances that had been made by Beaumarchais to cover the expenses of the commissioner as well as of the officers whom he had commissioned, but that august body considered that it might even dispense with paying the 1,800,000 livres surplus over and above the million, out of the sum accorded by Alexander Hamilton in which he ignored those advances, together with a part of the commission and interest freely granted by Congress in the contract already quoted in this volume, and arranged by the agent of Beaumarchais, Theveneau de Francy, in 1778.

Congress refused all this, arguing that, as M. de Lomenie says: "Since the interest of the million given in 1776 will absorb the difference, therefore we owe nothing, and will pay nothing."

The interest on the surplus, as it would have much more than absorbed the million in question, they, of course, conveniently ignored.

This turn in his affairs with Congress was a crus.h.i.+ng blow to Beaumarchais, but it did not prevent him, during the entire remainder of his life, pleading with the representatives of the American people to pay their debt to him.

But at the moment when Congress held triumphantly aloft the receipt for the 1,000,000 livres, and flaunted it in his face, Beaumarchais was in no position to defend himself, for the Revolution which had overwhelmed France had so shattered and ruined his fortune that he was obliged to take refuge in a garret in Hamburg. Here, devoured by anguish,-unable to obtain news from home, knowing only that his goods had been confiscated, that his wife, his daughter, and his sisters had been thrown into prison, his thoughts turned to the people for whom he had performed such herculean labors and to them he addressed one last appeal. This was in April, 1795.

"Congress," says Lomenie, "remained deaf to all his reclamations; not only it allowed him to die without liquidating the debt, but during the thirty-six years following his death, all the governments which succeeded one another in France, and all the amba.s.sadors of those governments, vainly supported the demand of the heirs of Beaumarchais."

During the years which follow his death, from 1799 to 1835, "The claims of the heirs of Beaumarchais" occupy congress after congress of the United States. In the progress of the suit all the French governments, from the Empire under Napoleon down to the reign of the "bourgeois King," Louis Phillippe, always take the stand of Vergennes. The following letter from the Duc de Richelieu, dated the 20th of May, 1816, may be said to express the att.i.tude of the French Government in the whole matter. He wrote:

"The notes successively presented by the ministers of France are so particular and positive, that they seem to remove all doubt on the facts of the subject in dispute, and consequently all hesitation as to the decision to be given. It was in fact stated that the French Government had no concern in the commercial transactions of M. de Beaumarchais with the United States.

"By this declaration it was not only intended to convey the idea that the government was in no ways interested in the operations or in his chances of loss or gain, but a positive a.s.surance was also given that it was wholly unconnected with them; whence it results that in relation to them France is to be considered neither as a lender, a surety nor as an intermediate agent. The whole of these transactions were spontaneous on the part of M. de Beaumarchais and the right and agency derived from them appertain exclusively to him....

"The million delivered on the 10th of June immediately reached its intended destination and a simple authorization of the King, but a few months subsequent to the payment of the sum, was the only doc.u.ment which finally placed the expenditure in the regular train of fiscal settlement.

"I am therefore warranted, Sir, after a fresh examination of the facts, in presenting the declaration of the above as stated, and in considering it a matter of certainty that the million paid on the 10th of June was not applied to the purchase of s.h.i.+pments made to the United States at that period by M. de Beaumarchais....

"There is no member of the Government who can be ignorant of the services rendered by the head of that family to your cause and the influence produced on its early successes by his ardent zeal, extensive connections and liberal employment of his whole fortune.

"Be pleased, Sir, to receive, etc., etc.

Signed "Richelieu."

This claim, so repeatedly stated before Congress, was taken up and examined by a succession of committees which seem each to have adopted the views of the French Government. To the honor of the United States let it be stated that such men as John Jay and Thomas Jefferson, had from the first recognized the debt due to Beaumarchais and had urged the payment of the debt. Later it was James Madison, Caesar Rodney, William Pinkney and others, who similarly urged Congress to appropriate the money to liquidate the claim.

To close this long debate we have selected a few paragraphs taken here and there from reports of committees, terminating with an extract from a speech delivered by Mr. Tucker of Virginia, in order to demonstrate clearly that the enlightened opinion of the most representative Americans always has stood for the recognition of this claim.... "Only two points," the report says, "are to be decided: Did Mr. Beaumarchais receive from the French Government 1,000,000 livres in behalf of or on account of the United States? If so, has he, or his representative at any time accounted with the United States for their expenditure?... On the face of the instrument itself it appears that Beaumarchais was to account to Vergennes and not to the United States, for the expenditure of the money.... This contradicts the idea that he was accountable to us for its application.... The engagement of Beaumarchais was positive, express and unqualified to account to Vergennes and to him only for the money received. The United States are no parties to the instrument; there is no stipulation to render them any account of the expenditure.... It is not easy to conceive on what principle he ought twice to account for the same money.... The French government have uniformly declared that they furnished no supply of arms or military stores. Vergennes is full and explicit; he states that all the articles furnished by Beaumarchais are on his private account, who had settled with the artillery department for them by giving orders or bills for their value. This expressly excludes the idea that the million livres in question were intended to be applied to the payment in advance of the account of Beaumarchais.... This construction was acquiesced in by our government in the contract of 1783, when we knew neither the date nor the person to whom the money was paid....

" ... The United States allege that the French Government paid this debt for them. The Government through their ministers declare officially that they did not. There seems therefore no room for dispute. Considering that the sum of which the million livres in question made a part, was a gratuitous grant from the French Government to the United States, and considering that the declaration of that Government clearly states that that part of the grant was put into the hands of M. de Beaumarchais as its agent, not as the agent of the United States, and that it was duly accounted for by him, to the French Government; considering also the concurring opinion of two attorneys-general of the United States that the said debt was not legally sustainable in behalf of the United States; I recommend the case to the favorable attention of the legislature whose authority alone can finally decide on it. Signed

"James Madison, "C. A. Rodney, "Wm. Pinkney.

"January 31, 1817."

From the speech of Mr. Tucker of Virginia, 1824:

"Mr. Chairman: It is well known to most of the a.s.sembly that in the first years of the Revolution, M. de Beaumarchais furnished military supplies and clothing to the amount of several million livres....

"The merits of this claim have hitherto hinged upon the fact whether the million in question was received by Beaumarchais for the purpose of supplies or not; ...

"In regard to this there is the solemn declaration of M. de Vergennes that the king had furnished nothing. Again there can be no doubt that M.

de Beaumarchais must have been held accountable to his government for the million, for whatever purpose it was put into his hands.... If it was intended for such services as those for which secret service money is employed, it is said, and it seems not improbable, that the vouchers in such cases are destroyed.... But there could be no reason to destroy them if they related merely to the purchase of supplies....

"On weighing all the considerations there is some preponderance of testimony that M. de Beaumarchais received the million in dispute for the purpose of supplies, and if France had been pa.s.sive on this occasion or if we had paid any valuable consideration to her for this million I should think that we were justified in charging M. de Beaumarchais with that amount. But when it is recollected that we received these supplies directly from him, having arranged the settlement of the account on our own terms; that the million that we claim as a credit was paid not by us, but by France, and that, as an act of bounty; and when France insists that it was for another purpose; ... it seems to me that we cannot, consistently with our honor or self respect, pay off an undisputed debt with a doubtful or disputed gift....

"As an individual, I could never seek to give the bounty of a benefactor a direction which he objected to, for the purpose of making a discount from the acknowledged debt of a third person.

"Sirs:-in this matter France is right or she is wrong.... Then the error consists in claiming our grat.i.tude for 9,000,000 livres instead of 8,000,000 ... which can in no way affect the claim of M. de Beaumarchais.... The whole present difficulty comes from the mistake of Dr. Franklin in the treaty of 1783....

"a.s.suredly if our agent had signed a treaty under a mistake as he himself states, that mistake should be rectified with the French Government which should give us a satisfactory explanation or hold us bound in grat.i.tude for only 8,000,000 livres, neither of which can affect the claims of M. de Beaumarchais....

"Mr. Chairman: We ought to be consistent with ourselves with regard to the declaration of the French Government. When M. de Vergennes declared to our commissioners in September 1778, that the military supplies were furnished by M. de Beaumarchais, we acquiesced in that a.s.surance and required no further proof....

"On every ground then, Mr. Chairman, I am free to say, I would vote at once for the appropriation to the whole amount of this claim ... and I hope the committee will adopt the resolution for that purpose offered by the Committee."

But the government of the United States still refused to listen to reason. However, in 1835, under pressure of necessity, the United States having a claim against France which it wished to bring forward, offered the heirs of Beaumarchais the choice of taking 800,000 francs and considering the affair closed, or nothing. The heirs chose the former and so at last ended the long drawn out debate regarding "the lost million."

CHAPTER XXIII