failed to do the mischief to which their base jealousy of Washington prompted them. The right cause triumphed. In 1781 another British army surrendered, the army of Cornwallis, at Yorktown. Even North was forced to recognize that this crushing disaster to the royal hopes and the royal arms practically ended the war. It was suspended in the following year, and in 1783, after much negotiation, which at times threatened to come to nothing, a treaty of peace was signed in France, and the American Republic took its place among the nations of the earth. It was for these negotiations that Franklin, as we have said, brought out from its obscurity that gala suit which he had worn for the last time when he stood at the bar of the House of Commons and listened to the brutal and foolish assaults of Wedderburn. Many days had passed since that day. So ended one of the most unjust and one of the most foolish wars ever waged by England. It must never be forgotten that the war was in no sense an English war. The English people as a whole had then no voice to express itself one way or the other. Of those Englishmen whose voices had to be heard, the best and the wisest were as angry in their denunciations of the crime of the King and the King's ministers, and as cordial in their {185} admiration of Washington and his companions, as if they had been members of that Continental Congress which first in Philadelphia proclaimed the existence of a new nation. [Sidenote: 1778--Death of the Earl of Chatham]