NOTE 33, p. 132.—Negotiations had been going on between the colonies and France for more than a year, though this fact, of course, was not known in England. Silas Deane had been appointed Commissioner to France even before the Declaration of Independence. In Nov. of 1776, Lee and Franklin were appointed by Congress to negotiate a treaty of friendship and commerce with the French king. But the French were wary of alliance, though they were willing to wink at the secret arrangements by which supplies were furnished by Beaumarchais. These supplies, furnished in the autumn of 1777, were detained, and did not reach America in time to prevent the terrible sufferings at Valley Forge in the following winter. When news of Burgoyne’s surrender reached France, the French Government no longer hesitated, and a final treaty by which France acknowledged the Independence of the United States was signed on the 6th of February, 1778. For most interesting and authentic details, see Parton’s “Life of Franklin,” vol. ii., ch. vii. NOTE 34, p. 140.—The walls of the old room in which the House of Lords assembled were covered with tapestries, one of which represented the English fleet led out to conflict with the Spanish Armada by Lord Effingham Howard, an ancestor of Lord Suffolk. NOTE 35, p. 160.—This argument of Mansfield drawn from the Navigation Acts is fully refuted by Burke in his speech on “American Taxation.” Burke takes the ground that none of these acts were passed for the sake of revenue, but that all of them were designed simply to give direction to trade. He also shows that there is a marked distinction between _external_ and _internal_ taxation. The whole of Burke’s speech may well be read with profit in connection with that of Mansfield.