That three joint commissioners of equal powers should conduct such an enormous business of expenditure and credit for a series of years without becoming entangled in the most terrible suspicions and bitter quarrels was in the nature of things impossible. The result was that the history of their horrible disputes and accusations against one another is more voluminous than the history of their services. Deane, who did more actual work than any one except Beaumarchais, was thoroughly and irretrievably ruined. Arthur Lee, who accomplished very little besides manufacturing suspicions and charges, has left behind him a reputation for malevolence which no one will envy; Beaumarchais suffered tortures which he considered almost equivalent to ruin, and his reputation was not entirely rescued until nearly half a century after his death; and Franklin came nearer than ever before in his life to sinking his great fame in an infamy of corruption, for the attacks made upon him by Arthur Lee were a hundred times worse than those of Wedderburn.
It was a terrible ordeal for the four men,--those two years before France made an open alliance with the colonies,--and I will add a few other circumstances which contributed variety to their situation. Ralph Izard, of South Carolina, a very passionate man, was appointed by the wise Congress an envoy to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He never went to Tuscany for the simple reason that the duke could not receive him without becoming embroiled with Great Britain; so he was obliged to remain in Paris, where he assisted Lee in villifying Deane, Franklin, and Beaumarchais, and his letters home were full of attacks on their characters.
He was not a member of the commission which had charge of French affairs, and yet, in the loose way in which all the foreign business of the colonies was being managed, it was perhaps natural that, as an energetic and able man and an American, he should wish to be consulted occasionally by Franklin and Deane. In a certain way he was directly connected with them, for he had to obtain money from them for some of his expenses incurred in attempting to go to Tuscany, and on this subject he quarrelled with Franklin, who thought that he had used too much. He was also obliged to apply to Franklin for certain papers to enable him to make a commercial treaty with Tuscany, and these, he said, Franklin had delayed supplying. He complained further of Franklin's neglect to answer his letters and obstructing his means of sending information to America.