Excerpt from Beaumarchais and "the Lost Million" A Chapter of the Secret History of the American Revolution

To this man our forefathers were told in the early days of the Revolution to look for succor and safety. The more they heard about him the more completely did his position seem a mystery and riddle to them. To their sober and practical minds it was hard to conceive of him as a benefi cent fairy who, unsolicited, was willing to send us millions of dollars' worth of the supplies we most needed to carry on the war, and who, as they were told by Arthur Lee, the earliest American commissioner in Europe, never suggested that he was to be paid for them, but merely hinted that it would be well for Congress to make him certain shipments of tobacco to conceal his transactions from the English. The Americans had no experience of merchants who carried on business in this way. It was not their interest, however, to inquire too closely into the source from which these supplies came, and they were inclined to settle down into the belief that Beaumarchais was a convenient frag-mm for the French government, which had so many reasons for encouraging us in our resistance, and so many more to conceal the aid it was giving us in our struggle with Great Britain. Whatever the Secret Committee or the Committee on Commerce of the old Congress may have thought or suspected, they did not, so long as the military supplies were provided in reasonable abundance, inquire with too much curiosity into their source. They accepted them with thankfulness, not doubting that they would discover in due time to whom they were indebted.

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