The plan which seemed most effective was to send a representative accredited to some foreign government, and instructed to raise money at once. Without wasting time by waiting to see whether he arrived safely, or was received, or was successful in his negotiations, the next ship which followed him brought drafts and bills which he was expected to accept, and at maturity to pay. Having thus skillfully shifted the laboring oar into his hands Congress bestirred itself no further. Poor Jay, in Spain, had a terrible time of it in this way, and if ever a man was placed by his country in a painful and humiliating position, it was he. He faced it gallantly, but had to be carried through by Franklin. From first to last it was upon Franklin that the brunt fell; he had to keep the country from financial failure as Washington had to save it from military failure; he was the real financier of the Revolution; without him Robert Morris would have been helpless. Spain yielded but trifling sums in response to Jay's solicitations; Holland, which was tried by Adams, was even more tardy and unwilling, though towards the end some money was got there. Franklin alone, at Paris, could tap the rock and make the waters flow. So upon him Congress sent in an endless procession of drafts, and compelled him to pay all their foreign bills and indebtedness; he gathered and he disbursed; to him were referred all the drafts upon Jay and others, which they themselves could not pay, and he discharged them one and all. A heavier task never fell upon any man, nor one bringing less recognition; for money matters usually seem so dry and unintelligible that every one shirks informing himself about them. We read about the horrors of the winter camp at Valley Forge, and we shudder at all the details of the vivid picture. The anxiety, the toil, the humiliation, which Franklin endured for many winters and many summers in Paris, in sustaining the national credit, do not make a picture, do not furnish material for a readable chapter in history. Yet many a man would far rather have faced Washington's lot than Franklin's. I do not intend to tell this tale at length or minutely, for I could trust no reader to follow me in so tedious an enterprise; yet I must try to convey some notion of what this financiering really meant for Franklin, of how ably he performed it, of what it cost him in wear and tear of mind, of what toil it put upon him, and of what measure of gratitude was due to him for it. It may be worth mentioning by the way that he not only spent himself in efforts to induce others to lend, but he himself lent. Before he embarked for Philadelphia on his French mission, he gathered together all that he could raise in money, some L3000 to L4000, and paid it over as an unsecured loan for an indefinite period to the Continental Congress.