** In the summer of 1776, Arthur Lee, agent of the Secret Committee of Congress, made an arrangement by which the French king provided money and arms secretly for the Americans. An agent named Beaumarehais was sent to London to confer with Lee, and it was arranged that two hundred thousand Louis d'ors, in arms, ammunition, and specie, should be sent to the Americans, but in a manner to make it appear as a commercial transaction. Mr. Lee assumed the name of Mary Johnson, and Beaumarchais that of Roderique, Hortales, & Co. Lee, fearing discovery if he should send a written notice to Congress of the arrangement, communicated the fact verbally through Captain Thomas Story, who had been upon the continent in the serviee of the Secret Committee. Yet, after all the arrangements were made, there was hesitation, and it was not until the autumn of 1777 that the articles were sent to the Americans. They were shipped on board Le Henreux, in the fictitious name of Hortales, by the way of Cape François, and arrived at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the 1st of November of that year. The brave and efficient Baron Steuben was a passenger in that ship. Unmasking of thE French King.--Independence of the United States acknowledged by France.--Letter of Louis XVI. 087 This arrangement, under the disguise of a mercantile operation, subsequently produced a great deal of trouble, a more minute account of which is given in the Supplement to this work. Beaumarehais was one of the most active business men of his time, and became quite distinguished in the literary and political world by his "Marriage of Figaro," and his connection with the French Revolution in 1793. Borne, in one of his charming Letters from Paris, after describing his visit to the house where Beaumarchais had lived, where "they now sell kitchen salt," thus speaks of him: "By his bold and fortunate commercial undertakings, he had become one of the richest men in France. In the war of American liberty, he furnished, through an understanding with the Freneh government, supplies of arms to the insurgents. As in all such undertakings, there were captures, shipwrecks, payments deferred or refused, yet Beaumarchais, by his dexterity, succeeded in extricating himself with personal advantage from all these difficulties.