yS Choate: Franklin 



fast to the electric cable, he receives his instructions daily 

 and even hourly, and has but to repeat them by rote to 

 the foreign office of the government, to which he is 

 accredited, with no discretion to withhold or to modify. 

 He is seldom consulted as to the formation of the policy 

 of his government which he is to enforce and maintain 

 abroad, and until the wise reform recently inaugurated 

 by Secretary Root, he has seldom been kept constantly 

 informed of what was passing at home between his own 

 chief and the ambassador here of the nation at whose 

 Court he resides — even upon matters with which he him- 

 self had to do — so potent is the cable as the medium and 

 instrument of complete control the world over. 



But it was not so in Franklin's time, and the difficulties 

 and perils that beset his path at every step were without 

 number. There was no Secretary of State until October, 

 1 78 1, nearly three years after the Treaty of Alliance 

 with France had been signed, when Robert R. Livings- 

 ton, who had been elected to the office, was able to enter 

 upon its duties. But under the Confederation even the 

 Secretary of State was not his own master. So jealous 

 was the Congress of any executive power that he was 

 obliged, as a practice, to send out no papers of impor- 

 tance without first submitting them to Congress and also 

 to submit to Congress all despatches and communications 

 from abroad with his drafts of replies. " Singularly 

 able and accomplished as Livingston was," says Whar- 



