further of this incident is related in the following letters from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to M. de Chaumont:

VERSAILLES, 18 December, 1777

I thank you, sir, for communicating to me this letter of M. B. Mayne, and can assure you that your confidence shall not compromise your friend. M. de Sarto you. One might treat them as the scheme of a loyal subject rather than as emanating from the ministry. Now, however, when circumstances extremely critical dispel illusions, it is highly probable that this second approach may have an exalted origin, and on this supposition I think it might be well not to decline it, but to explain that you had never contemplated such a distinguished role; that you had not much heeded his first suggestions, which might have been dictated by his humanity and by his personal confidence in you; but, if he persists in regarding you as a proper instru. ment for so important an enterprise, it would be necessary for you to know the dispositions of those who alone can dictate the conditions, in order that you might have a sure guide for your own language and conduct. You will know how to embroider your canvass so as not to bind yourself farther than you wish. I think also, sir, that it is proper to answer through the channel indicated by M. Fullerton. This precaution may increase confidence. Possibly, too, we shall thus learn of the purposes of the British government. It intrigues in so many ways to penetrate our secrets that we are excusable for trying to penetrate theirs. I have the honor to be perfectly, sir, your very humble and very obedient servant,

tine informed me at the time of the overtures made

DE VERGENNES.

Another letter from the Comte de Vergennes to M. de Chaumont, relating also to the secret service of the Government, shows that, even as early as 1778, it was understood in Paris that the political sympathies of the great Frederick were with the new republic which was germinating on this side of the Atlantic rather than with the government that was trying to crush it out of existence. It further shows that M. de Vergennes made lighter of the commercial rivalry of Prussia than any recent foreign minister of France has done, or any future one is likely to do.

I thank you for the information you give me of the Prussian officer just from America. I do not doubt that he was an emissary from the king, his master, but I am equally persuaded that the latter none the less prays for the independence of America. Be well as sured that all that the English gazettes publish is not gospel. It would be very well to entertain this officer with talk about the ulterior advantages to commerce likely to result from liberty in America. Such a competition, if established, will never be very dangerous to anyone. I have the honor to be, etc.,

VERSAILLES, 18 November, 1778.

DE VERGENNES.

On the 11th of February, 1780, M. de Sartine acknowledges the receipt from M. de Chaumont of a letter dated the 26th of the preceding month, and thanks him for the details and observations he had furnished in relation to a proposition which a M. de Mauleon had made to the minister for the establishment of a line of packets between France and North

America, and which the minister had referred to M. de Chaumont for a report. This was the first project for a transatlantic line of packets of which there is any record. M. de Chaumont discouraged the scheme, because at that time it was necessary to have fast sailers and armed for the proposed service, and he thought the Government could perform the service with its own ships better and with less expense. In consequence of the confusion in the financial relations of Beaumarchais with his government growing out of the very mixed character of his operations and the indefiniteness of the line which separated private from public functions, French from American liabilities, diplomatic from commercial services, public beneficence from personal ambition, it became necessary in 1784 to appoint a commission to examine his claims against the French government. M. de Calonne, the Minister of Finance, selected M. de Chaumont as one of the three commissioners to whom this delicate duty was assigned, as we learn from a commission found among De Chaumont's papers.

from M. de Calonne, that M. de Chaumont It appears, however, by a subsequent letter declined this appointment. The reasons are not assigned, but they are not difficult to conjecture. If there is any truth in the proverb that two of a trade can never agree, it is not surprising that M. de Chaumont should have hesitated from motives of delicacy, if from no other, to accept the responsibility of passing upon the accounts of Beaumarchais.

It is manifest, from the voluminous correspondence that has survived him, that in organizing and conducting all the maritime operations of the French government in support de Chaumont was the active and most effiof the insurgent American colonies M. cient agent. No vessel seems to have been equipped or commissioned for this service except with his knowledge and coöperation. A most flattering and gratifying success rewarded his efforts, and his influence near his government at the close of our war was only less than that of a cabinet minister. Unfortunately for him, in helping to lay the foundations of popular government in America he was unconsciously preparing the way for his own ruin. The French Revolution was among the first fruits of the revolution in America, and made swift havoc of the fortunes of all whose estates were at all dependent upon public and even private credit; of M. de Chaumont's among the rest. His troubles at home were aggravated by troubles of a different character in the United States.

Because of the different currencies of the several colonies, and the depreciation of the colo

nial paper, the accounts of M. de Chaumont with our Government could not be, or at least were not, adjusted. To stimulate Congress to a consideration of these claims, M. de Chaumont sent his son Le Ray to the United States, either with or immediately after the return of Dr. Franklin, in 1785, to look after them. Le Ray, as I shall call him by way of distinction from his father, was then only twenty-five years of age. He bore letters from Dr. Franklin, John Jay, Lafayette, Rochambeau, Count de Montmorin, and others. He was specially commissioned to claim from Congress the face of the depreciated paper money held in large quantities by French subjects. Barbé Marbois, the French chargé d'affaires, was instructed to second his efforts. The government of the Confederation, however, was so weak, and its credit so impaired, that it was finally deemed impolitic to press these claims, and they shared the fate of all other claims against the revolutionary government; not, however, until Le Ray had exhausted his influence with others and his personal resources. Among the letters to which these efforts gave rise there are two, though written nearly four years after Le Ray's arrival in the country, which may find a suitable place in this stage of our narrative. They were from Dr. Franklin, one to President Washington and the other to Le Ray himself, who appears to have applied to the doctor for a loan or an indorsement. Meantime, De Chaumont the father, yielding to his embarrassments, had made an assignment to

his son.

FRANKLIN TO WASHINGTON.

PHILADELPHIA, 3 June, 1789. I have made a rule to myself that your Excellency should not be troubled with any solicitations from me for favors to any even of my nearest connections, but here is a matter of justice in which the honor of our country is concerned, and therefore I cannot refuse giving this line for your information. Mr. Le Ray de Chaumont, father of the young gentleman who will have the honor of waiting on you with this, was the first in France who gave us credit, and before the Court showed us any countenance trusted us with 2000 bar rels of gunpowder, and from time to time afterwards exerted himself to furnish the Congress with supplies of various kinds, which, for want of due returns, they being of great amount, has finally much distressed him in circumstances. Young Mr. Chaumont has now been here near four years, soliciting a settlement of the accounts merely, and though the payment of the balance, to be sure, would be acceptable, yet proposing to refer that to the time when it shall better suit the convenience of our Government.

This settlement, if the father had it to show, would tend to quiet his creditors, and might be made use of for that purpose; but his son has not hitherto been able to obtain it, and is detained in this country at an expense that answered no end. He hopes, however, now, that your Excellency may prevail to have some settlement made of those accounts, that he may carry

home to his father the statement of them; and I the rather hope this likewise, that we may thereby be freed from the imputation of adding ingratitude to injustice.

FRANKLIN TO LE RAY.

PHILADELPHIA, October 31, 1789. day to write in answer to your affecting letter, but I DEAR FRIEND: I was too much indisposed yesterhave considered the case very attentively and will now give you the results. In the first place, what you de mand of me is impracticable, the sum I have to draw upon in France being but little more than half of what you require; and upon that small sum, though my late extraordinary expenses have much straitened me in furnishing my ordinary expenses, I dare not draw, under the present circumstances of affairs in that country, lest through the lowness of the funds I should lose perhaps case of public bankruptcy, which I find is apprehended half my property in selling out to pay the bills, or in by many as a possible case, my bill should be returned under a protest, which, besides the damages, would extremely embarrass me. By the last accounts I received, I suffered a loss of fifteen per cent. in the sale of my funds to produce money for the payment of a bill for ten thousand livres which I sold towards the end of the last year; and we now learn from the public prints that the new proposed loan of thirty millions does not fill, and that Mr. Neckar is discouraged and in bad health, which, together, has occasioned the funds to fall much lower. In the next place, it seems to me that in your present circumstances (excuse my freedom in presuming to give you my advice) it would be more advisable for you to remain here a few months longer, in order to finish your affair with the Congress.

They meet again in the beginning of January, and there is no doubt but the officers through whose hands counts having already been examined and passed, I am such affairs must pass will be present, and your acof your opinion, that they will probably be some of the first paid. Money, I think, will not be wanting, as it is thought the immense importation of goods lately made impost expected from the whole of the United States. into this port must produce at least one-fourth of the

If you should be absent at the next meeting of Congress it may occasion a still further delay of payment, for want of somebody present to solicit the business, which would be a further prejudice to the creditors. If you should conclude to stay I would write a letter to your father, which he might show to them, expressing that your stay was by my counsel, with the reasons, and that as soon as the Congress should meet I would support your application for immediate payment with my strongest interest. This delay of two or three months, I should think, cannot make much difference in your father's affairs, the present disorders of that country being considered; or, if you apprehend, as you have mentioned, that the creditors may suspect your having an intention of assuming to your own use the property of your father, you may, to prevent such suspicion, offer the creditors to deliver up to them, or to any person they shall please to appoint, all the papers ascertaining your father's claim upon the Congress; thereby enabling them to solicit for and receive the same. I wish I could give you still better counsel; but this is what occurs (in my present inability of otherwise serving you) to your affectionate friend,

(Signed) B. FRANKLIN.

It appears by a letter from M. Luzerne, the French ambassador at London, that M. le Ray had aspirations for the place occupied by M. Marbois as the diplomatic representative of the French government in the United States. He was promised the cordial coöpera

tion of M. Luzerne, but if there was at any time a chance of his aspirations being crowned with success, it was swept away by the revolutionary whirlwind which was already threatening France.

Pending these operations Louis Chassanis, a brother-in-law of Le Ray, acting for an association of gentlemen in Europe, purchased several large tracts of land in the northern part of the State of New York. The purchasers formed themselves into a land company with a view of disposing of these lands to refugees. The scheme of colonization was perfected and put forth only a few days before Louis XVI. was guillotined.* Five commissioners were charged with the management of this property, two to reside on it and three in Paris. The two commissioners sent here, Simon Desjardiniers and Peter Pharoux, arrived in New York in September, 1793. At Albany they fell in accidentally with a young exiled countryman whose address and accomplishments impressed them so favorably that they invited him to join them, and made him their captain. He became a shareholder in the company and ultimately the proprietor of five hundred acres of land. Later, he and Pharoux were employed to survey a canal that should connect the waters of the Hudson and of Lake Champlain,-- the first canal ever surveyed in this country. This young man, then only twentyfour years of age, who laid the foundations of his fame as an engineer in the wilds of northern New York, was Mark Isambard Brunel, since famous as the founder of the machine shops of the Royal Navy Yard at Portsmouth in England, the builder of some of the most magnificent railway structures in the world, the engineer of the Thames tunnel, and the father of Mr. I. K. Brunel, the builder of the steamer Great Eastern.

The venture not proving as successful as was expected, the stock of the company was divided into 680 shares, and Gouverneur Morris, on his return from the French mission, was appointed the agent of the company on the 2d of January, 1800. A deed for half the tract, or 220,000 acres, was then executed to him, and the following day a deed was given for the other half to Le Ray. In 1809 Morris retired from the agency, taking with him a title to 26,840 acres to cover his expenses and commissions.

Le Ray, who had become proprietor of 126 shares of the stock in his own right, bought the company out on the 17th of September, 1810, opened an office for the sale of lands, built roads, mills, docks, ship-yards, and managed to effect large sales of land, but, unfortunately, not to the class of emigrants who build up a new country. He sold 4480 acres VOL. XXXV.— 103.

to Lord Augustin de Caulaincourt, who afterward sold them to Count Réal, Chief of Police under Napoleon. He also sold to Count de Grouchy, to General Dufernaux, and, as appears by the following note from Gouverneur Morris, to Madame de Staël:

GOUVERNEUR MORKIS TO MADAME DE STAËL.
MORRISANIA, August 23, 1807.

I flatter myself then, Madame, that next spring you will sail for America. For this purpose, about the middle of April you can embark for New York. As soon as you arrive, you will come to Morrisania, partake what ning of July you shall set out to visit your lands and our dairy affords, and refresh yourself. In the beginthe interior country, and return by the middle to repose after your fatigues, to gather peaches, take walks, make verses, romances—in a word, to do whatever you please.

Necker, the father of Madame de Staël, also became one of Le Ray's clients and a New York land-holder.†

But the most distinguished party to this speculation was Joseph Bonaparte (Count Survilliers), who seems to have fallen a victim to his good nature rather than to any desire of gain. How it was brought about is thus related by Hough in his "History of Lewis County":

raine in 1815, when he heard of Joseph Bonaparte's arrival at Blois. He had known this prince before his great elevation and was his guest at Mortefontaine when the treaty of September 30, 1800, between the United States and France was signed there, but he that misfortune had assailed the prince, he remembered had ceased meeting him afterwards. Seeing, however, the man and hastened to Blois. The prince, having invited Mr. Chaumont to dinner, said suddenly to him: "Well, I remember you spoke to me formerly of your them still, I should like very much to have some in exgreat possessions in the United States. If you have change for a part of that silver I have there in those wagons, and which may be pillaged any moment. Take four or five hundred thousand francs and give the equiv alent in land." Mr. Le Ray objected that it was impossible to make a bargain where one party alone knew what he was about. "Oh," said the prince, "I know you well, and I rely more on your word than my own judgment." Still Mr. Le Ray would not be satisfied by his flattering assurances, and a long discussion followed, which was terminated by the following propositions, immediately assented to by the prince: Mr. Le Ray Chaumont would receive four hundred thousand francs, and would give the prince a letter for Mr. Le Ray's son, then on the lands, instructing him to convey a certain designated tract, if, after having visited the country (whither he was then going), the prince confirmed the transaction; otherwise, the money to be refunded.

Mr. Le Ray de Chaumont was at his estate in Tou

As Count Survilliers was an alien, and therefore could not hold a title to real estate

in New York, a deed for 150,260 acres of land was made out to the learned Peter Duponceau of Philadelphia, in trust, to secure the

*The original of this scheme is to be seen now in the State Library at Albany.

+ See "Life of Gouverneur Morris."

repayment of the $120,000 which Le Ray had taken.

It can hardly be necessary to say that the count was obliged to accept lands instead of money when the loan came due.

Le Ray had only postponed the disaster which was inevitable. He became land poor. The abundance of better land in less rigorous climates, and the completion of the Erie Canal, which opened the States on the Ohio River to emigration, operated disastrously upon all the large land proprietors in the East -providentially, no doubt, for the country. He was unable to make head against the sea of trouble on which he found himself embarked, and at last was compelled to apply for the benefit of the insolvent laws, and, like his father before him, surrender his estates in turn to his own son for the benefit of his creditors.*

His landed property in the State of New York at the time of making the assignment consisted of

30,759 acres in Franklin Co., valued at .$ 22,500 73,947 in St. Lawrence Co., valued at.. 106,000 143,500 in Jefferson Co., valued at 574,000 in Lewis Co., valued at. 133,000

100,000

The winding up of his affairs was so managed as to satisfy in full all the claims of his American creditors; but Count Survilliers (Joseph Bonaparte), as early as 1820, had consented to accept 26,840 acres of land, valued at that time at $40,260, in discharge of his claims. To hold this land, the New York legislature passed an enabling act in March, 1825. In June, 1835, the count sold his land to John La Farge of New York City for $80,000, and thus dropped the curtain upon the last act of this disastrous enterprise. It gave a chill to the spirit of emigration from France, from which it never recovered. Had Le Ray invested in lands on or near any of our great water-ways, or even in a more congenial climate, it might now be the descendants of the French, rather than of the English, who would be making the laws of the United States.

Le Ray seems to have been an amiable man, and a liberal and popular landlord. The towns of Raysville and Chaumont perpetuate the remembrance of his name, his rashness, and his misfortunes. He founded the Jefferson

As a justification of his course, Le Ray published a statement entitled "Acte de transmission par M. Le Ray de Chaumont à son fils de ses propriétés, 4to,

County Agricultural Society, and was its first president. He was also one of the earliest presidents of the New York State Agricultural Society. He returned to France in 1832, and died at Paris on December 31, 1840, in the eightieth year of his age.

Le Ray's son, Vincent Le Ray de Chaumont, to whom in his troubles he assigned his property, and who at the age of eighty and upwards frequented the American colony in Paris as late as 1866, lost no time in winding up the estate, all of which has long since passed entirely out of the De Chaumont family. Charles Le Ray de Chaumont de St. Paul, great-grandson of Le Ray, and of course great-great-grandson of Franklin's host, if still alive is now the only representative of the family. As he has been many years married and is childless, with his death the name will probably become extinct.

If the De Chaumonts did not secure the Golden Fleece in America, they secured in the United States what was of far greater value American wives. Le Ray married a Miss Coxe, and their son married a Miss Jahel, both of New York.

From a letter which appeared in the "New York Evening Post" on the 19th of November, 1885, dated from Royat, Puy de Dôme, and devoted to an account of "The Treasures of French Country Houses," I make the following extract, which fitly concludes this account of a family whom the people of the United States can do no less than hold in grateful and honored remembrance:

It was in Blois that I first rummaged among these shops, whose attractions are almost a rival to those of the castle, though this is certainly one of the most interesting in France. The traveler will remember the in the center of the town. Near the foot of this hill long flight of stone steps which climbs the steep hill there is a well-furnished book-shop; its windows display old editions and rich bindings, and tempt one to enter and inquire for antiquities. Here I found a quantity of old notarial documents and diplomas of college or university, all more or less recently cleared out from some town hall, or unearthed from neighboring castles, and sold by a careless owner, as no longer valuable to him. This was the case with most of the parchments I found at Blois; they had been acquired within a few years from the castle of Madon, and from a former proprietor of the neighboring castle of Chaumont (the calvus mons of medieval time), and most of them pertained to the affairs of the seigneurie de Chaumont. legal decisions, actes de vente, loans on mortgage, the Contracts, executions, sales of vineyards and houses, marriage contract of a M. Lubin-these were the chief documents that I found and purchased.

pp. 70, Paris," in which, says Hough, he vindicated himself satisfactorily. See "History of Jefferson Co." by Franklin B. Hough. John Bigelow.

N considering the life of political prisoners in the fortress of Petropavlovsk, the reader must bear steadily in mind the fact that the men and women who thus languish for months or years in the silent bombproof casemates of the Trubetskoi bastion are all persons who have not had a trial. Their case is by no means that of condemned criminals undergoing just punishment for offenses of which they have been duly convicted in a court of justice. It is rather that of presumably innocent persons, deprived for an unreasonable length of time of the right to be heard in self-defense, and treated meanwhile as if their guilt were unquestionable. That a very large proportion of the men and women thrown into prison in Russia upon political charges are in fact innocent is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of official record. I have shown in a previous paper that out of more than a thousand persons arrested for alleged participation in the so-called "revolutionary propaganda" of 1872-75 only 193 were ever brought to trial, and even of this relatively small number 90 were acquitted by a court of judges of the Government's own selection. Nine-tenths, therefore, of these prisoners were entirely innocent, not only of real crime but even of the vague and shadowy offenses set forth in Section 250 of the Russian Penal Code; and yet all of them were subjected before their release to from six months to three years of rigorous solitary confinement in the House of Preliminary Detention, or in the damp prison sepulchers of the Trubetskoi bastion. That a system which brings about such results is in the highest degree arbitrary and unjust, and that the subjection of presumably innocent persons to two or three years of such treatment pending trial is cruel in the extreme, are propositions that hardly admit of argument. Whether such wrongs and cruelties are adequate to excuse the violent measures of retaliation adopted by the terrorists is a question to which different answers may be given by different people; but it will, I think, be generally admitted that the confinement of an

*Official Stenographic Report of the Trial of the Regicides, p. 217. St. Petersburg, 1881.

+ Sentence of the Court in the case of the 193, p. 8.

innocent man for three years in a casemate of the Trubetskoi bastion under the conditions that I have described, and the final release of such a man without reparation or apology, and perhaps without even the formality of a judicial hearing, constitute extreme provocation. Such was the view taken by the eminent Russian advocate Gerard when, in the trial of the regicides at St. Petersburg in 1881, he endeavored to show that his client Kibalchich had been changed from a law-abiding citizen to a revolutionist by unjust treatment of precisely this character; and such was evidently the view also of the Court, which refused to allow Mr. Gerard to finish his statement, and which, when he persisted, informed him sharply that the Government's treatment of its subjects was "not a matter for his judgment."*

That undeserved imprisonment and cruel treatment before trial were important factors in the development of the Russian revolutionary movement clearly appears from the later history of the 90 prisoners who were acquitted at the end of the trial of the 193 in January, 1878. According to the judgment of a court not at all likely to err on the side of clemency, these 90 young people were wholly guiltless of any offense against the laws. They had not even rendered themselves amenable to the 250th section of the Russian Penal Code by manifesting "an intention to bring about a change of government. . . at a more or less remote time in the future," and yet they all had been punished with three years of the strictest solitary confinement in the House of Detention or the Petropavlovsk fortress, and had finally been denied even the poor boon of a public trial in an open court, where they might at least have made apparent to the world the injustice from which they had suffered. The result was that which might have been anticipated. Almost every one of the persons thus punished and then found not guilty ultimately became a revolutionist, and before 1885 more than a third of them were in Siberia, and two of them - Andre Zheliaboff and Sophia Perofskaya- had perished on the scaffold with the blood of Alexander II. upon their hands. †

I do not know a more significant illustration Manuscript list of names of political exiles in Siberia, now in my possession. Official Stenographic Report of the Trial of the Regicides, p. 260. St. Petersburg, 1881.