[c.February - March 1779]
The Committee appointed to consider &c beg leave to make the following report.
It appears to your Committee that Mr. Deane did engage in private Commerce at the time that he was employed in the public business and having the direction of public monies.
That altho it does not appear in proof that public funds were applied to private purposes as yet a variety of circumstances support the conjecture.
That Mr. Deanes accounts for the expenditure of 37 Livres2have not yet been settled.
That in the opinion of your Committee it is proper that Mr. Deane should be called upon to make such settlement before the Continental Commissioners of accounts.
That as Mr. Deane proposes to embark for a foreign Country, it is proper that he should, previous to his departure, give bond with sufficient security to repay the public whatever ballance may hereafter appear to be due to the United States.
That it appears by letters of the Secret Committee to Mr. Hodge dated3that he was directed to purchase, fit out, and send to America, two well Armed Cutters loaded with Stores for the public use, and he was to lay his instructions before Silas Deane Esqr. and follow his advice in the execution. That these Cutters were not sent to America with Stores as directed but being purchased & fitted out in public and private partnership of which Partners Mr. Deane was one, they were sent to cruise for Prizes on the Coasts of England and Spain contrary to the sence of Congress and the desires of the Court of France. That these Cruises produced disagreable consequences both in France & Spain.
That there appears a contrariety in Mr. Deanes conduct concerning the affairs of Mr. Beaumerchain when he gives information to Congress in his single capacity and when he writes conjunctly with his Colleagues. Representin[g] in the one case the Stores sent by Mr. Beauhmerchais as private, and in the other informing Congress that this Gentlemans demand had better be settled in France as it was mixed public and private supply.
Manuscript, owned by Capt. J. G. M. Stone (1974), Annapolis, Md. In the hand of Richard Henry Lee.
1 This draft report was probably written after 20 February 1779, when Lee returned to Congress, and before 24 March when the Foreign Affairs Inquiry Committee submitted its final report to Congress. Because the Virginia delegate on this committee of 13, which had been created on 20 January before Richard Henry returned to Congress, was Meriwether Smith, a political opponent, Lee could not directly advocate the interests of his brothers, Arthur and William, within the committee. And he could only express his views on Silas Deane to the committee indirectly through close political allies such as Henry Laurens and William Whipple. As this draft report is located in a collection of Whipple’s papers, which also contains a booklet of minutes of the Foreign Affairs Inquiry Committee in Whipple’s hand, it is evidence of the collaboration of Deane’s opponents in Congress, who were equally concerned in supporting the charges of Arthur Lee against him. The nature of the relationship between Richard Henry and Whipple is evident in the letters they exchanged after Lee returned to Virginia in May, for which see Lee to Whipple, 13 and 26 June, 8 August, and 4 September 1779, in James Curtis Ballagh, The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, Volume 2, 1779 - 1794, 2:69 - 70, 80 - 82, 106 - 7, 144 - 46; and Whipple’s letters to Lee of 23 August and 18 September 1779, in these Letters.
Notwithstanding Lee’s association with Whipple and Laurens, his draft report concerning Deane appears to have had little effect on the report of the committee, written by William Paca, which was submitted to Congress on 24 March. Although the latter contained considerable criticism of Deane, it also listed a number of charges against each of the American commissioners abroad and singled out no one diplomat for particular censure. See JCC, 13:363 - 68; and Foreign Affairs Inquiry Committee Minutes, 21 January and 12 February 1779.
2 Lee’s meaning can only be conjectured, but there is a brief mention in the Foreign Affairs Inquiry Committee Minutes for 8 February of confusion in Silas Deane’s accounts concerning "37 livres given for cloaths that might have been had for 32."
3 For this letter of 30 May 1776, from the Secret Committee to William Hodge, see these Letters,4:103 - 5.