That the acknowledgment of the Independence of the United States by, and the treaty of alliance with, France, accelerated the acknowledgment on the part of Great Britain, is a point admitted on all hands. Those arrangements with France probably saved the country the horrors of two or three years additional warfare—and this at a time when its resources were nearly exhausted, and a fearful gloom had for a long time pervaded the horizon. It is equally true, that the battle of Saratoga and the capture of a powerful, well-disciplined army, commanded by an enterprising general, decided the hitherto wavering councils of Louis XVI. to admit the United States into the fellowship of nations. Should there be any doubts on the subject, they will be removed by an attention to the chronology of that period. Dr. Franklin arrived in Paris, in December, 1776, and used his utmost endeavors to obtain an acknowledgment of American Independence from month to month, in vain. He was fed with those vague promises, of which courtiers can be so lavish, but which, however specious, mean little or nothing. At length was fought the important battle of Saratoga, on the 17th of October, 1777. The news probably reached the Court of Versailles early in December. The treaties of alliance and acknowledgment of independence were signed on the 7th of February, 1778, after a lapse of only eight or nine weeks from the arrival of that intelligence. This time was probably employed in concocting the terms and was by no means too much for such a mighty business.[2] Could the Jew Apella, for a moment, doubt the cause that led that court to the recognition of American Independence? [Footnote 2: “In the midst of this supposed gloomy state of affairs in America, the news of the surrender of the British army commanded by General Burgoyne, to that of the Americans under General Gates, at Saratoga, on the 17th October, 1777, arrived in France; and at the very moment when the French cabinet was as yet undecided in regard to the steps to be adopted relative to the United States. This memorable event immediately turned the scale, and fixed the French nation in their attachment to the infant republic.”—_Memoirs of Franklin_, p. 382.] This preface appeared necessary to shed a proper blaze of light on the glorious battle of Bennington, the turning point of the war to the northward, which directly led to the triumph at Saratoga, and to the capture of the bombastic British commander. National gratitude could, at its utmost stretch, scarcely overpay an achievement pregnant with such all-important consequences.