VI. July. any thing from their justice." "The crisis," he said, CHAP. "is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us, till 1774. custom and use shall make us tame and abject slaves." From the first he was convinced that there was not "any thing to be expected from petitioning." "Ought we not, then," he exclaimed," to put our virtue and fortitude to the severest test?" Thus Washington reasoned privately with his friends. In the convention, Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry were heard with such delight that the one was compared to Cicero, the other to Demosthenes. But Washington, who never was able to see distress without a desire to assuage it, made the most effective speech when he uttered the wish to "raise one thousand men, subsist them at his own expense, and march at their head for the relief of Boston." The resolves and instructions of Virginia corresponded to his spirit. They demanded that the restrictions on navigation should themselves be restrained. Especially were they incensed at the threat of Gage to use the deadly weapon of constructive treason against such inhabitants of Massachusetts as should assemble to consider of their grievances, and form associations for their common conduct; and they voted that "the attempt to execute this illegal and odious proclamation, would justify resistance and reprisal." CHAPTER VII. THE CABINET OF LOUIS SIXTEENTH. July. JULY-AUGUST, 1774. CHAP. IN France, Louis the Sixteenth had selected minisVII. ters, of whom a part only were disposed to take 1774. advantage of the perplexities of England; but they were the more likely to prevail from the unsteadiness of the administration, which sprung from his own character and made his life a long equipoise between right intentions and executive feebleness. His countenance, seeming to promise probity, betrayed irresolution. In manner he was awkward and embarrassed, and even at his own court ill at ease. His turn of mind was serious, inclining even to sadness; and his appearance in public did not accord with his station or his youth. He had neither military science, nor martial spirit, nor gallant bearing; and in the eyes of a warlike nation, which interpreted his torpid languor as a want of courage, he was sure to fall into contempt. In the conduct of affairs, his sphere of vision was narrow; and he applied himself chiefly to details VII. July. or matters of little importance. Conforming to the CHAP. public wish, he began by dismissing the ministers of the late king, and then felt the need of a guide. 1774 Marie Antoinette would have recalled Choiseul, the supporter of an intimate friendship between France and Austria, the passionate adversary of England, the prophet and the favorer of American independence. But filial respect restrained the king, for Choiseul had been his father's enemy. He turned to his aunts for advice; and their choice fell on the Count de Maurepas from their regard to his experience, general good character, and independence of the parties at court. Not descended from the old nobility, Maurepas belonged to a family which, within a hundred and fifty years had furnished nine secretaries of state. He had himself held office in the last days of Louis the Fourteenth; and had been sent into retirement by Louis the Fifteenth for writing verses that offended the king's mistress. At the age of seventy-three, and after an exile of twenty-five years, he was still as he had been in youth, polite, selfish, jealous, superficial, and frivolous. Despising gravity of manner and airs of mystery as ridiculous, and incapable of serious passion or profound reflection, he charmed by the courtesy and ease of his conversation. He enjoyed the present moment, and was careless of the future which he was not to share; taking all things so easily, that age did not wear him out. Full of petty artifice in attack, of sly dexterity in defence, he could put aside weighty objections by mirth and laugh even at merit, having no faith in virtues that were difficult, and deriding the love of country as a vain boast or a VII. July. CHAP. stratagem to gain an end. With all the patronage of France in his gift, he took from the treasury only 1774. enough to meet his increased expenses, keeping house with well-ordered simplicity, and at his death leaving neither debts nor savings. Present tranquillity was his object, rather than honor among coming generations. He was naturally liberal, and willing that the public good should prevail; but not at the cost of his repose, above all, not at the risk of his ascendency with the king. A jealousy of superior talents was his only everwakeful passion. He had no malignity, and found no pleasure in revenge; when envy led him to remove a colleague who threatened to become a rival, he never pursued him with bitterness, or dismissed him to exile. To foreign ambassadors he paid the attentions due to their rank; but the professions which he lavished with graceful levity, had such an air of nothingness, that no one ever confided in them enough to gain the right of charging him seriously with duplicity. To men of every condition he never forgot to show due regard, disguising his unfailing deference to rank by freedom of remark and gaiety. He granted a favor without ever showing the despotism of a benefactor; and he softened a refusal by reasons that were soothing to the petitioner's selflove. His administration was sure to be weak, for it was his maxim never to hold out against any one who had power enough to be formidable, and he wished to please alike the courtiers and public opinion; the nobility and the philosophers; those who stickled for the king's absolute sway, and those who clamored for the restoration of parliaments; those who wished VII. a cordial understanding with England and those who CHAP. favored her insurgent colonies. July. Louis the Sixteenth was looking for an expe- 1774. rienced and firm guide to correct his own indecision; and he fell upon a complacent, well-mannered old gentleman, who had the same fault with himself, and was only fit to give lessons in etiquette, or enliven business by pleasantry. Yet the king retained Maurepas as minister more than seven years without a suspicion of his incompetency. No statesman of his century had a more prosperous old age, or such felicity in the circumstances of his death, which happened at the moment of his king's greatest domestic happiness in the birth of a son, and amidst the shouts of France for the most important victory of the century, achieved during his administration. Declining a special department, Maurepas, as the head of the cabinet, selected his own associates, choosing men by whom he feared neither to be superseded nor eclipsed. To the Count de Vergennes was assigned the department of foreign affairs. The veteran statesman, then fifty-seven years old, was of plebeian origin, and married to a plebeian; unsupported by the high nobility and without claims on Austria or Marie Antoinette. His father had been president of the parliament at Dijon. His own diplomatic career began in 1740, and had been marked by moderation, vigilance, and success. He had neither the adventurous daring, nor the levity of Choiseul ; but he had equal acquaintance with courts, equal sensitiveness to the dignity of France, and greater selfcontrol. He was distinguished among ministers as indefatigably laborious, conducting affairs with method, |