It would serve no useful purpose to devote valuable space to narrating at length all the slander and malice of these restless men, all the correspondence, the quarrels, the explanations, and general trouble to which they gave rise. But the reader must exercise his imagination liberally in fancying these things, in order to appreciate to what incessant annoyance Franklin was subjected at a time when the inevitable anxieties and severe labors of his position were far beyond the strength of a man of his years. He showed wonderful patience and dignity, and though he sometimes let some asperity find expression in his replies, he never let them degenerate into retorts. Moreover, he replied as little as possible, for he truly said that he hated altercation; whereas Lee, who reveled in it, took as an aggravation of all his other injuries that his opponent was inclined to curtail the full luxury to be expected from a quarrel. Franklin also magnanimously refrained from arraigning Lee and Izard to Congress, either publicly or privately, a forbearance which these chivalrous gentlemen did not emulate. The memorial[62] of Arthur Lee, of May, 1779, addressed to Congress, contains criminations enough to furnish forth many impeachments. But Franklin would not condescend to allow his serenity to be disturbed by the news of these assaults. He felt "very easy," he said, about these efforts to injure him, trusting in the justice of the Congress to listen to no accusations without giving him an opportunity to reply.[63] Yet his position was not so absolutely secure and exalted but that he suffered some little injury at home.
[Note 63: To Richard Bache, Franklin's _Works_, vi. 414.]
John Adams, going out to replace Silas Deane, crossed him on the passage, arriving at Bordeaux on March 31, 1778. This ardent New Englander, orderly, business-like, endowed with an insatiate industry, plunged headlong into the midst of affairs. With that happy self-confidence characteristic of our people, which leads every American to believe that he can at once and without training do anything whatsoever better than it can be done by any other living man no matter how well trained, Adams began immediately to act and to criticise. In a few hours he knew all about the discussions between the various envoys, quasi envoys, and agents, who were squabbling with each other to the scandal of Paris; in a few days he was ready to turn out Jonathan Williams, unseen and unheard. He was shocked at the confusion in which he saw all the papers of the embassy, and set vigorously about the task of sorting, labeling, docketing, and tying up letters and accounts; it was a task which Franklin unquestionably had neglected, and which required to be done. He was appalled at the "prodigious sums of money" which had been expended, at the further great sums which were still to be paid, and at the lack of any proper books of accounts, so that he could not learn "what the United States have received as an equivalent." He did not in direct words charge the other commissioners with culpable negligence; but it was an unavoidable inference from what he did say. Undoubtedly the fact was that the accounts were disgracefully muddled and insufficient; but the fault really lay with Congress, which had never permitted proper clerical assistance to be employed. Adams soon found this out, and appreciated that besides all the diplomatic affairs, which were their only proper concern, the commissioners were also transacting an enormous business, financial and commercial, involving innumerable payments great and small, loans, purchases, and correspondence, and that all was being conducted with scarcely any aid of clerks or accountants; whereas a mercantile firm engaged in affairs of like extent and moment would have had an extensive establishment with a numerous force of skilled employees. When Adams had been a little longer in Paris, he also began to see where and how "the prodigious sums" went,[64] and just what was the full scope of the functions of the commissioners; then the censoriousness evaporated out of his language. He admitted that the neglects of subordinate agents were such that it was impossible for the commissioners to learn the true state of their finances; and he joined in the demand, so often reiterated by Franklin, for the establishment of the usual and proper commercial agencies. The business of accepting and keeping the run of the bills drawn by Congress, and of teasing the French government for money to meet them at maturity, would still remain to be attended to by the ministers in person; but these things long experience might enable them to manage.