will scarcely ever pursue steadily the same end, and this circumstance may often check and clog the due pace of national affairs. But the diversity of interests is an evil inherent in the great extent of the states. There is not, perhaps, in the world, a single community, of which all the branches reason and act on uniform principles, and in which, particular views are not often found at variance with the general policy. The state lives nevertheless;-it thrives;-and its existence is endangered then only when the adverse interests are so equally poised that the movement of government is altogether suspended.

Hitherto, the Americans have not made great progress in the elegant arts; their public libraries, their museums, would not, in Europe, be thought worthy to decorate the mansion of an opulent amateur. They style the edifices in which their legislators assemble, capitols, and this appellation which is now held ambitious, will, one day, appear quite modest. They have no cirques, amphitheatres, nor mock sea-fights. It will never, perhaps, be necessary for them to construct citadels, or environ their towns with ditches and ramparts. There will not be seen among them either pyramids, or proud mausoleums, or basilicks, or temples like those of Ephesus and Rome. Ages must revolve before they will erect those edifices of which the idle and barren magnificence imposes heavy sacrifices on the present generation; diverts their industry towards objects of mere parade, and entails wretchedness on posterity. The time of the Americans is wisely divided between permanently useful labours, and necessary repose. They employ themselves in preparing their fields. for the production of food; in rendering their dwellings commodious; in opening roads and digging canals. Commerce and navigation already supply them with wealth; the arts of real utility embellish their cities, and Europe, which so long stood single as the country of the sciences and human wisdom, now shares with America this noble distinction.

A traitorous enterprise, which put to hazard such high destinies, has not fallen into oblivion; but all the most memorable circumstances of the affair have not been published, and I have thought that it would be well, in composing the narrative, to overlook no incident fitted to brighten the lustre of virtue, or to inspire a deeper horror for vice.

The war between England and her colonies broke out in 1774. From this period, the Americans were divided into two parties. The one that remained faithful to the mother country, was most powerful in the beginning, but it quickly declined in strength. To the other belonged the personages the most esteemed for their virtues, and, in other respects, the most worthy of public confidence. During the ten years that this great quarrel lasted, Silas Deane and Benedict Arnold were the only men invested with important trusts, who betrayed the cause of independence.

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The first sold the secrets of congress to the English ministry; his perfidy did no harm, and the meanest deserter could not have been more speedily forgotten.

The treachery of Arnold, was attended with more remarkable circumstances.

He concerted a plot, with the enemies of his country, to replace it under their dominion, and to deliver General Washington into their hands. The Republic was saved by the virtue of three young soldiers.

A witness of these events, I avail myself of the leisure which I enjoy, to report them to the world.

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CONSPIRACY OF ARNOLD,

1780.

FOUR years had gone by since the English colonies declared, in a Congress of their Representatives, that they were released from the dependence in which Great Britain had kept them for more than a century and a half. The mother-country had resolved to subdue them, and the quarrel was to be decided by arms. But, though the military successes on both sides were nearly equal, there was an important difference of character already discernible in this war. It was this:-that the Americans without allies or subsidies, finding at home all the resources of a people defending their own soil, baffled the efforts of their former masters; while the latter no longer preserved a foothold on the territory of the revolted colonies, but by the aid of German mercenaries, and at an expense overbalancing, perhaps, the advantages of which the highest fortune in arms could be productive.

The necessity of hiring foreign troops opened the eyes of England more fully, to the magnitude of the loss with which she was threatened. Her statesmen had adopted it as a maxim that the colonies were, at all times, to recruit her fleets, and, during war, to hold in readiness a numerous militia, to be carried whithersoever the exigencies of the mother-country might point. Military levies could never exhaust their population;-it doubled every twenty-two years;-the plenty of all the necessaries of life drew to them continually crowds of emigrants from England and other parts of Europe, which will never see emigrants from America.

The pretension of the British ministry to tax the colonies was the first cause of the revolt. But the war soon proceeded on much higher motives. Independence being once declared, the question was, for the Americans, whether they were to be free, or subjected to the yoke of a people incensed by their rebellion. England, on the other hand, had now at stake, her prosperity, her glory, even her existence as the dominant power in Europe;-at least, those who opposed the recognition of the independence believed, or affected to believe this to be the case.

The colonies were established, said they, not to become, as those of the ancients, the equals of the mother-country, but to be subservient to her will. In losing them, England lost the most prolific nursery of her seamen;-her army suffered in like manner. It was to her colonial troops that she was principally indebted for the conquest of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, Canada, Labrador, and Northern Louisiana, all acquired in the course of the century. The kings of England, and the English people, in stripping France of these vast and useful domains, had degraded her from the first rank, and taken her place. They engrossed, with few exceptions, the commerce of the whole world; their preponderance in the affairs of Europe was no longer disputed; and these advantages resulted from the supremacy they had established at sea. They thought themselves sure of never losing it, if the colonies could be reclaimed and held to the yoke. But, if England were to be deprived of the aid of her American subjects, and of the naval munitions which they could furnish in such abundance;-if she must renounce her sovereignty of the seas that wash the shores of their continent, and the monopoly of their ports and harbours for her armed fleets;-if, in fine, she were exposed to have them as enemies, the British power might be thenceforth regarded as a Colossus wanting a proportionate base. The mighty superstructure, raised with so much industry and perseverance, but not with a due foresight, must, sooner or later, be shaken to its foundations, and the damage might be irreparable. An agricultural state, with economy as the rule of the whole system, could easily apply to navigation and commerce. But there was no such facility in the transition from commerce to agriculture; in the relinquishment of habits of luxury and the gratifications of wealth.

A preponderating power rarely fails to incur, by its arrogance and injustice, the hatred of the other nations. To the hatred imbibed against England, was added the favour which the cause of liberty usually conciliates from mankind, whatever may be the governments under which they live. No state, no potentate had an interest adverse to the independence of the colonies. Thus, Europe could calculate without alarm, to what a height of prosperity these new communities might attain. England alone had reason to be jealous.

Spain, indeed, mindful that the conquest of the Havanna had been the work of troops levied in the British provinces, should have startled at the prospect of their future greatness, and at an example that might be imitated throughout her vast colonies; but, swept along by the current of events, she yielded to necessity, and trusted to fortune for the preservation of her transatlantic empire.

France retained but a faint recollection of those violations of public law, by which, at the commencement of the last war, so many French vessels and sailors fell a prey to England; and it was at the same time forgotten that in this unlucky contest, the militia of the British colonies had mainly contributed to conquer Canada and Upper Louisiana for Great Britain. English America was little known in France, and yet the insurgents had no where else a more numerous or unreserved body of friends. That hate between the two nations;-that jealousy which would seem destined to endure as long as the coasts of France and England lie opposite, raged anew with the utmost intensity; and the disgrace of the treaty of Fontainbleau kindled, after a lapse of fifteen years, fiercer indignation, than when it was signed. It was thus that grievances were resuscitated, which will be eternal, if, at some future period, the party last discomfited, have not the wisdom to silence its resentments.

It has been since questioned, whether France, in assisting the revolted colonies with all her strength, followed the dictates of sound policy. Some have thought that it would have been preferable to allow England to exhaust herself by a war, which we could have fed secretly but sparingly, and have thus made interminable. Others, considering rebellion as contagious, have ascribed the disasters of our Revolution, to our connexion with the United States. Without sifting these points-at the best problematical-it would suffice, perhaps, in order to justify the conduct of the French government, to reflect what would have been the consequence of an alliance formed between England and her colonies on conditions perfectly equal, such as they were actually submitted for adoption, by several statesmen on both sides. It is probable that the ruin of the French marine would have resulted from this league. But the experience of ages has demonstrated, that great states cannot prosper when they are deprived of the benefits of navigation.

Navies are hardly less important than armies, for the defence of coasts and maritime cities; and colonies beyond sea, cannot be preserved without a respectable naval force. It equally behoves a great nation to keep her foreign trade independent of other powers. The nation that neglects this duty, is punished sooner or later. It surrenders to strangers, the profits of freight and commission. It is at their mercy in respect to its exports and imports, and even as to articles of first necessity. The ship is to commerce, what the plough is to agriculture.

Let us not revert to the American Revolution for the primary cause of the excesses which marred that of France, nor imitate those judges whose skill consists in awaiting the event. The cabinet of Versailles, far from being condemned, at the time, for this alliance, was blamed for extreme circumspection;--an unjust reproach, because deliberation and ripeness of knowVOL. II.

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