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Statistics for Industry, Technology, and Engineering
Wojbor A. Woyczyński
A First Course
in Statistics for
Signal Analysis
Third Edition
Statistics for Industry, Technology,
and Engineering
Series Editor
David Steinberg
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Editorial Board
V. Roshan Joseph
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA
Ron Kenett
Neaman Institute, Haifa, Israel
Christine Anderson-Cook
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, USA
Bradley Jones
SAS Institute, JMP Division, Cary, USA
Fugee Tsung
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Mathematics Subject Classification: 62-01, 60G12, 60-01, 60G10, 60G15, 60G35, 62M10,
62M15, 62M20
This book is published under the imprint Birkhäuser, www.birkhauser-science.com by the registered
company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to my children:
Martin Wojbor, Gregory Holbrook, and
Lauren Pike.
They make it all worth it.
Foreword to the Third Edition
The third edition contains two additional chapters. Chapter 3 is devoted to wavelets
and the uncertainty principle, and Chap. 11 discusses the forecasting problems for
stationary time series. In Chap. 3, we discuss the transition from the windowed
Fourier transform to the continuous wavelet transforms and then move on to Haar
wavelets and mutiresolution analysis. In Chap. 11, the forecasting (prediction)
problems are discussed in the context of the Wold decomposition theorem, and a
solution to the optimal predictor problem is found in the context of the spectral
representation of stationary time series.
Both topics are essential for a deeper understanding of statistical analysis of
random signals and make the book more complete. Some misprints in the previous
edition have also been corrected.
vii
Foreword to the Second Edition
The basic structure of the Second Edition remains the same but many changes have
been introduced responding to several years’ worth of comments of students and
other users of the First Edition. Most of the figures have been redrawn to better show
the scale of the quantities represented in them, some notation and terminology has
been adjusted to better reflect the concepts under discussion, and several sections
have been considerably expanded by addition of new examples, illustrations, and
commentary. Thus the original conciseness has been somewhat softened. A typical
example here would be an addition of Remark 4.1.2 which explains how one can see
the Bernoulli white noise in continuous time as a scaling limit of switching signals
with exponential inter-switching times. There are also new, more applied exercises
as well, such as Problem 9.7.9 on simulating signals produced by spectra generated
by incandescent and luminescent lamps.
Still the book remains more mathematical than many other signal processing
books. So, at Case Western Reserve University the course (required, for most
of the Electrical Engineering, and some Biomedical Engineering juniors/seniors)
based on this book runs in parallel with a signal processing course that is entirely
devoted to practical applications and software implementation. This one-two punch
approach has been working well, and the engineers seem to appreciate the fact that
all probability/statistics/Fourier analysis foundations are developed within the book;
adding extra mathematical courses to a tight undergraduate engineering curriculum
is almost impossible. A gaggle of graduate students in applied mathematics,
statistics and assorted engineering areas also regularly enrolls. They are often asked
to make in-class presentations of special topics included in the book but not required
of the general undergraduate audience.
Finally, by popular demand, there is now a large appendix which contains
solutions of selected problems from each of the nine chapters. Here, most of the
credit goes to my former graduate students who served as TAs for my courses:
Aleksandra Piryatinska (now, at San Francisco State University), Sreenivas Konda
(now, at Temple University), Dexter Cahoy (now, at Louisiana Tech), and Peipei Shi
(now, at Eli Lilly, Inc.). In preparing the second edition the author took into account
ix
x Foreword to the Second Edition
useful comments that appeared in several reviews of the original book; the review
published in September 2009 in the Journal of American Statistical Association by
Charles Boncelet was particularly thorough and insightful.
This book was designed as a text for a first, one-semester course in statistical
signal analysis for students in engineering and physical sciences. It has been
developed over the last few years as lecture notes used by the author in classes
mainly populated by electrical, systems, computer, and biomedical engineering
juniors/seniors and graduate students in sciences and engineering who have not
been previously exposed to this material. It was also used for industrial audiences as
educational and training materials and for an introductory time series analysis class.
The only prerequisite for this course is a basic two- to three-semester calculus
sequence; no probability or statistics background is assumed except the usual
high school elementary introduction. The emphasis is on a crisp and concise, but
fairly rigorous presentation of fundamental concepts in the statistical theory of
stationary random signals and relationships between them. The author’s goal was
to write a compact but readable book of less than 200 pages countering the recent
trend toward fatter and fatter textbooks. Since Fourier series and transforms are
of fundamental importance in random signal analysis and processing, this material
is developed from scratch in Chap. 2, emphasizing the time-domain vs. frequency-
domain duality. Our experience showed that although harmonic analysis is normally
included in the calculus syllabi, students’ practical understanding of its concepts is
often hazy. Chapter 3 introduces the alternative harmonic analysis concepts based
on the wavelet transforms, while Chap. 4 explains the basic concepts of probability
theory, the law of large numbers, the stability of fluctuations law, and the statistical
parametric inference procedures based on the latter.
In Chap. 5, the fundamental concept of a stationary random signal and its
autocorrelation structure is introduced. This time-domain analysis is then expanded
to frequency domain by discussion in Chap. 6 of power spectra of stationary signals.
How stationary signals are affected by their transmission through linear systems is
the subject of Chap. 7. This transmission analysis permits a preliminary study of
the issues of designing filters with the optimal signal-to-noise ratio; this is done
in Chap. 8. Chapter 9 concentrates on Gaussian signals where the autocorrelation
structure completely determines all the statistical properties of the signal. The text
concludes, in Chap. 10, with description of algorithms for computer simulations
xi
xii Introduction
of stationary random signals with given power spectrum density. The routines are
based on the general spectral representation theorem for such signals which is
also derived in this chapter. Finally, Chap. 11 discusses the prediction problem for
stationary time series.
The book is essentially self-contained, assuming the indispensable calculus
background mentioned above. A complementary bibliography, for readers who
would like to pursue the study of random signals in greater depth, is described at
the end of this volume.
Some general advice to students using this book: The material is deliberately
written in a compact, economical style. To achieve the understanding needed for
independent solving of the problems listed at the end of each chapter in the Problems
and Exercises sections, it is not sufficient to read through the text in the manner you
would read through a newspaper or a novel. It is necessary to look at every single
statement with a “magnifying glass” and to decode it in your own technical language
so that you can use it operationally and not just be able to talk about it. The only
practical way to accomplish this goal is to go through each section with pencil and
paper, explicitly completing, if necessary, routine analytic intermediate steps that
were omitted in the exposition for the sake of the clarity of the presentation of the
bigger picture. It is the latter that the author wants you to keep at the end of the day;
there is no danger in forgetting all the little details if you know that you can recover
them by yourself when you need them.
Finally, the author would like to thank Professors Mike Branicky and Ken Loparo
of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor Robert
Edwards of the Department of Chemical Engineering of Case Western Reserve
University for their kind interest and help in the development of this course and
comments on the original version of this book. My graduate students Alexey
Usoltsev and Alexandra Piryatinska also contributed to the editing process, and I
appreciate the time they spent on this task. Partial support for this writing project
from the Columbus Instruments International Corporation of Columbus, Ohio, Dr.
Jan Czekajewski, President, is here also gratefully acknowledged.
Four anonymous referees spent considerable time and effort trying to improve
the original manuscript. Their comments are appreciated, and, almost without
exception, their sage advice was incorporated in the final version of the book. I
thank them for their help.
Contents
Part I
1 Description of Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1 Types of Random Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Characteristics of Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3 Time Domain and Frequency Domain Descriptions
of Periodic Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.4 Building a Better Mousetrap: Complex Exponentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.5 Problems and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2 Spectral Representation of Deterministic Signals: Fourier
Series and Transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.1 Complex Fourier Series for Periodic Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.2 Approximation of Periodic Signals by Finite Fourier Sums . . . . . . . 35
2.3 Aperiodic Signals and Fourier Transforms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.4 Basic Properties of Fourier Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.5 Fourier Transforms of Some Non-integrable Signals:
Dirac’s Delta-Impulse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.6 Discrete and Fast Fourier Transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.7 Problems and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3 Uncertainty Principle and Wavelet Transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.1 Time–Frequency Localization and the Uncertainty Principle . . . . . . 57
3.2 Windowed Fourier Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.3 Continuous Wavelet Transforms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.4 Haar Wavelets and Multiresolution Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.5 Continuous Daubechies’ Wavelets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.6 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4 Random Quantities and Random Vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.1 Discrete, Continuous, and Singular Random Quantities . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.2 Expectations and Moments of Random Quantities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
xiii
xiv Contents
Part II
5 Stationary Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5.1 Stationarity and Autocovariance Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5.2 Estimating the Mean and the Autocovariance Function,
Ergodic Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
5.3 Problems and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
6 Power Spectra of Stationary Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
6.1 Mean Power of a Stationary Signal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
6.2 Power Spectrum and Autocovariance Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
6.3 Power Spectra of Interpolated Digital Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
6.4 Problems and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
7 Transmission of Stationary Signals Through Linear Systems . . . . . . . . . 193
7.1 Time Domain Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
7.2 Frequency Domain Analysis and System’s Bandwidth . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
7.3 Digital Signal, Discrete Time Sampling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
7.4 Problems and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Part III
8 Optimization of Signal-to-Noise Ratio in Linear Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
8.1 Parametric Optimization for a Fixed Filter Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
8.2 Filter Structure Matched to Input Signal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
8.3 The Wiener Filter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
8.4 Problems and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
9 Gaussian Signals, Covariance Matrices, and Sample Path
Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
9.1 Linear Transformations of Random Vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
9.2 Gaussian Random Vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
9.3 Gaussian Stationary Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
9.4 Sample Path Properties of General and Gaussian Stationary
Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
9.5 Problems and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Contents xv
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Notation
xvii
xviii Notation
Abstract Signals are everywhere. Literally. The universe is bathed in the back-
ground radiation, the remnant of the original Big Bang and, as your eyes scan
this page, a signal is being transmitted to your brain where different sets of
neurons analyze it and process it. All human activities are based on processing
and analysis of sensory signals but the goal of this book is somewhat narrower.
The signals we will be mainly interested in can be described as data resulting from
quantitative measurements of some physical phenomena and our emphasis will be
on data that display randomness that may be due to different causes, be it errors of
measurements, the algorithmic complexity, or the chaotic behavior of the underlying
physical system itself.
For the purpose of this book, signals will be functions of real variable t interpreted
as time. To describe and analyze signals we will adopt the functional notation: x(t)
will denote the value of a nonrandom signal at time t. The values themselves can
be real or complex numbers, in which case we will symbolically write x(t) ∈ R, or,
respectively, x(t) ∈ C. In certain situations it is necessary to consider vector-valued
signals with x(t) ∈ Rd , where d stands for the dimension of the vector x(t) with d
real components.
Signals can be classified into different categories depending on their features. For
example:
• Analog signals are functions of continuous time and their values form a contin-
uum. Digital signals are functions of discrete time dictated by the computer’s
clock and their values are also discrete and dictated by the resolution of the
system. Of course, one can also encounter mixed type signals which are sampled
at discrete times but whose values are not restricted to any discrete set of
numbers.
• Periodic signals are functions whose values are periodically repeated. In other
words, for a certain number P > 0, we have x(t + P ) = x(t), for any t. Number
P is called the period of the signal. Aperiodic signals are signals that are not
periodic.
• Deterministic signals are signals not affected by random noise; there is no
uncertainty about their values. Random signals, often also called stochastic
processes , include an element of uncertainty; their analysis requires use of
statistical tools and providing such tools is the principal goal of this book.
For example, signal x(t) = sin(t) + 13 cos(3t) [V] shown in Fig. 1.1 is deter-
ministic, analog, and periodic with period P = 2π [s]. The same signal, digitally
sampled during the first 5 s at time intervals equal to 0.5 s, with resolution 0.01 V,
gives tabulated values:
0.5
-0.5
-1
0 2 4 6 8 10
where the, convenient to introduce here, “floor” function a is defined as the largest
integer not exceeding real number a. For example, 5.7 = 5, but 5.0 = 5, as well.
Note the role the resolution R plays in the above formula. Take, for example,
R = 0.01. If the signal x(t) takes all the continuous values between m = mint x(t)
and M = maxt x(t), then x(t)/0.01 takes all the continuous values between 100 · m
and 100 · M, but x(t)/0.01 takes only integer values between 100 · m and 100 · M.
Finally, 0.01x(t)/0.01 takes as its values only all the discrete numbers between
m and M that are 0.01 apart (Fig. 1.2).
Randomness of signals can have different origin, be it quantum uncertainty
principle, computational complexity of algorithms, chaotic behavior in dynami-
cal systems, or random fluctuations and errors in measurement of outcomes of
independently repeated experiments.1 The usual way to study them is via their
aggregated statistical properties. The main purpose of this book is to introduce
some of the basic mathematical and statistical tools useful in analysis of random
signals that are produced under stationary conditions, that is, in situations where the
measured signal may be stochastic and contain random fluctuations, but the basic
underlying random mechanism producing it does not change over time; think here
about outcomes of independently repeated experiments, each consisting of tossing
a single coin (Fig. 1.3).
At this point, to help the reader visualize the great variety of random signals
appearing in the physical sciences and engineering, it is worthwhile to review a
gallery of pictures of random signals, both experimental and simulated, presented
in Figs. 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8. The captions explain the context in each case.
1 See,e.g., M. Denker and W.A. Woyczyński, Introductory Statistics and Random Phenomena:
Uncertainty, Complexity, and Chaotic Behavior in Engineering and Science, Birkhäuser-Boston,
1998.
6 1 Description of Signals
Fig. 1.3 Signal x(t) = sin(t) + 13 cos(3t) [V] in presence of additive random noise with average
amplitude of 0.2 V. The magnified noise component itself is pictured underneath the graph of the
signal
Fig. 1.4 Several, computer-generated trajectories (sample paths) of a random signal called the
Brownian motion stochastic process or the Wiener stochastic process. Its trajectories, although
very rough, are continuous. It is often used as a simple model of diffusion. The random mechanism
that created different trajectories was the same. Its importance for our subject matter will become
clear in Chap. 9
1.1 Types of Random Signals 7
Fig. 1.5 Several, computer-generated trajectories (sample paths) of random signals called Lévy
stochastic processes with parameter α = 1.5, 1, and 0.75, respectively (from top to bottom).
They are often used to model anomalous diffusion processes wherein diffusing particles are also
permitted to change their position by jumping. Parameter α indicates intensity of jumps of different
sizes. Parameter value α = 2 corresponds to the Wiener process (shown in Fig. 1.4) which has
trajectories that have no jumps. In each figure, the random mechanism that created different
trajectories was the same. However, different random mechanisms led to trajectories presented
in different figures
8 1 Description of Signals
Fig. 1.6 Computer simulation of the evolution of passive tracer density in a turbulent velocity
field with random initial distribution and random “shot-noise” initial velocity data. The simulation
was performed for 100,000 particles. The consecutive frames show the location of passive tracer
particles at times t = 0.0, 0.3, 0.6, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 s
1.1 Types of Random Signals 9
Fig. 1.7 Some deterministic signals (in this case, the images) transformed by deterministic
systems can appear random. The above picture shows a series of iterated transformations of the
original image via a fixed linear 2D mapping (matrix). The number of iterations applied is indicated
in the top left corner of each image. The curious behavior of iterations, the original image first
dissolving into seeming randomness only to return later to an almost original condition, is related to
the so-called ergodic behavior. Thus irreverently transformed is Professor Henri Poincaré (1854–
1912) of the University of Paris, the pioneer of ergodic theory of stationary phenomena (From
Scientific American, reproduced with permission. Copyright 1986, James P. Crutchfield)
10 1 Description of Signals
Fig. 1.8 A signal (again, an image) representing the large-scale and apparently random distribu-
tion of mass in the universe. The data come from the APM galaxy survey and shows more than two
million galaxies in a section of sky centered on the South Galactic pole. The so-called adhesion
model of the large scale mass distribution in the Universe uses Burgers equation to model the
relevant velocity fields
The signals shown in Figs. 1.4 and 1.5 are, obviously, not stationary and
have a diffusive character. However, their increments (differentials) are stationary
and, in Chap. 9, they will play an important role in construction of the spectral
representation of stationary signals themselves. The signal shown in Fig. 1.4 can
be interpreted as a trajectory, or sample path, of a random walker moving, in
discrete time steps, up or down a certain distance with equal probabilities 1/2 and
1/2. However, in the picture these trajectories are viewed from far away, and in
accelerated time, so that both time and space appear continuous.
In certain situations the randomness of the signal is due to uncertainty about
initial conditions of the underlying phenomenon which otherwise can be described
by perfectly deterministic models such as partial differential equations. A sequence
of pictures in Fig. 1.6 shows evolution of the system of particles with an initially
random (and homogeneous in space) spatial distribution. The particles are then
driven by the velocity field v(t, x) ∈ R2 governed by the so-called 2D Burgers
equation2
∂ v(t, x) ∂ 2 v(t, x) ∂ 2 v(t, x)
+ ∇ · v(t, x) v(t, x) = D + , (1.1.2)
∂t ∂x12 ∂x22
where x = (x1 , x2 ), the nabla operator ∇ = ∂/∂x1 + ∂/∂x2 , and the positive
constant D is the coefficient of diffusivity. The initial velocity field is also assumed
to be random.
and for digital, discrete-time signals which are defined only for the time instants
t = nT , n = 0, 1, 2, . . . , N − 1, it is defined by the formula
N −1
1
AVx = x(nT ). (1.2.2)
N
n=0
so that, for the signal x(t) = sin t + (1/3) cos(3t) pictured in Fig. 1.1, the time
average is 0 as both sin t and cos(3t) integrate out to zero over the period P = 2π .
• Energy of the signal: For an analog signal x(t), the total energy
∞
ENx = |x(t)|2 dt, (1.2.4)
0
Observe that the energy of a periodic signal, such as the one from Fig. 1.1, is
necessarily infinite if considered over the whole positive time line. Also note that,
since in what follows it will be convenient to consider complex-valued signals, the
above formulas include notation for the square of the modulus of a complex number:
|z|2 = (Re z)2 + (Im z)2 = z · z∗ ; more about it in the next section.
• Power of the signal: Again, for an analog signal, the (average) power
T
1
PWx = lim |x(t)|2 dt (1.2.6)
T →∞ T 0
12 1 Description of Signals
1 1 11 5
= 2π + 2π = .
2π 2 92 9
The above routine calculation, deliberately carried out here in detail, was somewhat
tedious because of the need for various trigonometric identities. To simplify such
manipulations and make the whole theory more elegant, we will introduce in the
next section a complex number representation of the trigonometric functions via the
so-called de Moivre formulas.
Remark 1.2.1 (Timeline Infinite in Both Direction) Sometimes it is convenient to
consider signals defined for all time instants t, −∞ < t < +∞, rather than just for
positive t. In such cases all of the above definitions have to be adjusted in obvious
ways, replacing the one-sided integrals and sums by two-sides integrals and sums,
and adjusting the averaging constants correspondingly.
using the trigonometric formulas from Tables 1.1 and 1.2. The phase shifts,
obviously do not change the power of the above harmonic signals.
α+β α−β
sin α + sin β = 2 sin cos ;
2 2
α+β α−β
sin α − sin β = 2 cos sin ;
2 2
α+β α−β
cos α + cos β = 2 cos cos ;
2 2
α+β α−β
cos α − cos β = −2 sin sin ;
2 2
1
sin α cos β = sin(α + β) + sin(α − β) ;
2
1
cos α cos β = cos(α + β) + cos(α − β) ;
2
1
sin α sin β = cos(α − β) − cos(α + β) ;
2
14 1 Description of Signals
(i) By definition,
√
j= −1.
z = a + j b, a = Re z, b = Im z,
where both a and b are real numbers and are called, respectively, the real and imaginary
components of z. The complex number,
z∗ = a − j b,
(iv) The polar representation of the complex number (it is a good idea to think about complex
numbers as representing points, or vectors, in the two-dimensional plane spanned by the
two basic unit vectors, 1 and j ):
and
where
√ Imz
|z| = a 2 + b 2 = z · z∗ , and θ = Arg z = arctan ,
Rez
z + z∗ z − z∗
Re z = = |z| cos θ, Im z = = |z| sin θ.
2 2j
IV
This was due in some measure to the distance between reality and the
dream world in which he lived. As he grew older, he became more and more
impressed with the pomp of power. The son of a Yankee shoemaker was
covetous of the ribbons of distinction. The masses receded to a respectful
distance. In the forefront were the gods, and he among them; and among
these he claimed a right to the front rank. Ceremony became important.
Titles were safeguards of organized society. An order of nobility sprang up
in his imagination. ‘You and I,’ he wrote Sam Adams, ‘have seen four noble
families rise up in Boston—the Crafts, Gores, Dawes, and Austins. These
are really a nobility in our town, as the Howards, Somersets, Berties in
England.’ His feet lost contact with the earth—he soared. ‘Let us do justice
to the people and to the nobles; for nobles there are, as I have proved, in
Boston as well as in Madrid.’[1223] Many things, he thought, can make for
nobility—even matrimony. ‘Would Washington have been Commander of
the Revolutionary army or President ... if he had not married the rich widow
of Mr. Custis? Would Jefferson have been President ... if he had not married
the daughter of Mr. Wales?’ Thus he challenged John Taylor of Caroline.
[1224]
Infatuated with such views, he was naturally in harmony with his party in
its contempt for democracy.[1225] ‘If our government does well I shall be
more surprised than I ever was in my life,’ he said one day, standing by the
stove in the Senate Chamber before the gavel had fallen. Carroll ventured
the opinion that it was strong enough. ‘If it is, I know not whence it is to
arise,’ Adams replied. ‘It cannot have energy. It has neither rewards nor
punishments.’[1226] This distrust of democracy was ingrained. We find it
outcropping in his early life, as toward the end. When he was summoned to
go over the reply of the Massachusetts Legislature to the pretensions of
Hutchinson, the royal Governor, in 1773, he found ‘the draught of a
report[1227] was full of very popular talk and of those democratical
principles that have done so much mischief to this country.’[1228] Even
Paine’s ‘Common Sense,’ which was tonic to the Revolution, was spoiled
for him because ‘his plan was so democratical.’[1229] Haunting the
bookstalls in London he thought ‘the newspapers, the magazines, the
reviews, the daily pamphlets were all in the hands of hirelings,’ and was
convinced that the men who ‘preached about ... liberty, equality, fraternity,
and the rights of man’ could be hired ‘for a guinea a day.’[1230] It was after
this that he wrote the ‘Discourses of Davilla’—an onslaught on democracy.
And fourteen years after his retirement he wrote from his library at Quincy
to John Taylor: ‘Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes,
exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not
commit suicide.’[1231] This distrust and distaste for the masses weakened
him as much with the people as his temperamental defects with his party
associates. I have dwelt on these weaknesses because they explain the
tragedy of his failure. There were other qualities that entitled him to a
happier fate.
Chief among these were the fervor and the disinterestedness of his love
of country. Had he died the day after the signing of the Declaration, he
would have been assured a permanent place in history. No man played a
more heroic part in the fight for independence. The struggling young lawyer
who refused a position under the Crown that he might not be embarrassed in
supporting his countrymen in their inevitable struggle;[1232] who, awakened
by the sinister drum-beats of the red coats every morning, ‘solemnly
determined at all events to adhere to [his] principles in favor of [his]
country’;[1233] who defended Hancock in the courts on the charge of
smuggling with stubborn tenacity until the case ‘was suspended at last only
by the battle of Lexington’;[1234] who, when the crisis came, prepared to
immolate himself and family upon the altar of liberty;[1235] and who had the
audacity to base an argument against the Stamp Act on the principles of the
Revolution itself, and, standing four square against more petitions to the
King, won the lasting gratitude and admiration of Jefferson when, as ‘the
Colossus of the Debate,’[1236] he bore the brunt of the battle for the
Declaration—that man could well hold his head high in the presence of
Washington himself. ‘Politics,’ he wrote Warren, ‘are an ordeal path among
red-hot plough shares. Who then would be a politician for the pleasure of
running about barefooted among them. Yet some one must.’[1237] And
again: ‘At such times as this there are many dangerous things to be done
which nobody else will do, and therefore I cannot help attempting
them.’[1238] Nor was he blind to his fate in the event of the failure of his
cause. ‘I go mourning in my heart all day long,’ he wrote his wife in dark
days, ‘though I say nothing. I am melancholy for the public and anxious for
my family.... For God’s sake make your children hardy, active and
industrious.’[1239] This intense Americanism did not moderate with time.
As a politician he was all too often open to censure; as a patriot he was
above reproach. Jefferson never doubted his absorption in his country; and
Hamilton, temperamentally unable to get along with him, wrote him down
as ‘honest, firm, faithful, and independent—a sincere lover of his
country.’[1240] Because he had more enemies than friends, and more
detractors than admirers, one might conclude from the opinions of his
contemporaries that he had but mediocre ability. There is no question as to
the fallibility of his judgment where his prejudices were enlisted and the
characters of men were involved. Again we find Jefferson more friendly
than the Federalists. ‘A bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the
motives which govern men,’ he wrote; and then added, ‘This is all the ill
that can possibly be said of him; he is profound in his views and accurate in
his judgment except where knowledge of the world is necessary to form a
judgment.’[1241] Hamilton thought him ‘a man of an imagination sublimated
and eccentric,’ and was not impressed with his intellectual endowments.
[1242] The father of Wolcott thought him ‘of a very moderate share of
prudence, and of far less real abilities than he believes he possesses.’[1243]
And McHenry, having been expelled from the Cabinet for his disloyalty,
declared ‘the mind of Mr. Adams like the last glimmerings of a lamp,
feeble, wavering and unsteady, with occasionally a strong flash of light, his
genius little, and that too insufficient to irradiate his judgment.’[1244] The
Adams who emerges from these opinions is a man of ability often reduced
to impotency by the lack of judgment. This is, no doubt, the whole truth
about his intellect. The sneers from men who could not forgive him for the
wrong they had done him, and from others who could not control him,
cannot stand in the light of what he did, and said, and wrote.
As a writer, he suffers in comparison with Hamilton and Madison, and
his more ambitious productions, like the ‘Discourses of Davilla,’ while
showing much erudition and some ingenuity, are heavy and pompous. But in
the earlier days when he was writing shorter papers for the press, he did
better. Whether he could write or not, he loved to do it. The author of the
earlier period was more interesting and attractive than that of later times.
However much the critics may quarrel over his capacity to write, the
evidence is conclusive as to his ability to speak. As an orator he was the
Patrick Henry of New England. His argument against the Writs of
Assistance in 1761 fired the heart of Otis and swept him into the ranks of
the active patriots. Jefferson bears testimony to the power of his eloquence
in the fight for the Declaration. Given a cause that appealed to his heart and
imagination, he never failed to find himself by losing himself in the fervor
of the fight.
Nor can there be any question of his courage. It required temerity to step
forth from the patriots’ ranks to face the representative of the Crown with
the most audacious denials of his pretensions; courage, too, to lead the fight
against further attempts at conciliation with the King. But the most
courageous act of his career was his defense in court of Captain Preston, the
British officer charged with murder in the Boston massacre. Not only
physical courage was here demanded, for he invited personal attack, but
moral courage at its highest. He was dependent for clientage on the Boston
public and the victims of the massacre were Bostonians. He was an
American, and he was standing between a hated redcoat and an American
revenge. He gambled with his career, for he armed his enemies with
ammunition, and he was charged with selling his country for an enormous
fee. The fact that he received but eighteen guineas would have been the
answer, but he maintained a dignified silence. There is nothing finer or more
courageous in the records of a public man.[1245] This courage was to stand
him in good stead when he defied his party for his country in the French
negotiations, and played for the verdict of history.
This courage could only have sprung from the consciousness of an
honest intent—and his honesty, personal or political, has never been
questioned. Sedgwick recommended him to Hamilton for the Vice-
Presidency as ‘a man of unconquerable intrepidity and of incorruptible
integrity,’ and Hamilton was to find to his chagrin that the compliment was
not given in a Pickwickian sense.[1246] And yet he was not a Puritan of the
intolerant sort. In early life he was given to the reading of sermons and at
one time confessed to an inclination to the ministry—but it did not last long.
In early manhood, we find him moralizing in his diary against card-playing,
but not on moral grounds. ‘It gratifies none of the senses ...; it can entertain
the mind only by hushing its clamors.’[1247] Even the scurrility of his times
spared him the charge of immorality. ‘No virgin or matron ever had cause to
blush at sight of me,’ he wrote in his ‘Autobiography.’[1248] And while
Franklin and Morris appear to have taken advantage of the moral laxity of
Paris, we are quite sure that Adams, packed in tight among fashionable
ladies watching the Queen eat soup, never gave a flirtatious glance, and are
more than half persuaded that his declination to join Madame du Barry in
her garden was due to her none too spotless reputation. But if he was not
given to women or to song, it appears that he consumed his full share of
wine. We have his own story of the fashionable dinners in the Philadelphia
of the Continental Congress, when he would sit at the table from three until
nine ‘drinking Madeira, claret and burgundy.’[1249] We get a glimpse of him
in a New York Club before the Revolution with ‘punch, wine, pipes and
tobacco.’[1250] And on another occasion he records with boastful pride that
he ‘drank Madeira at a great rate and found no inconvenience in it.’[1251]
Even so, we may be sure that he seldom drank to excess.
Such the man who sat facing the Cabinet he did not choose—stubborn,
suspicious, vain, jealous, courageous, honest, irascible, tempestuous,
patriotic, and rising above its members in ability and public service as a
mountain above the pebbles at its base.
VI
The same was true of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, albeit
these two men were, in most respects, the antitheses of each other. There
was nothing of saturnity and brooding silence in Wolcott—he smiled. Both
wore masks—one that of a stoic, the other that of a smiling epicurean. They
resembled in a common capacity for uncommon treachery. In this, they both
excelled. Both were professional feeders at the public crib and passionate
panters after office.
The handsome Wolcott had infinitely more finesse in the art of double-
dealing. He had read his Machiavelli to better advantage. If he was to
conspire with the enemies of the chief, he was to present an ever-smiling
face to Adams in the conference room. He was too exquisite a conspirator to
seem one. He had early learned the advantage of smiling through; and
leaving Adams, with his face wreathed in friendly smiles, he could sit down
to the writing of a letter to Hamilton with the same smile still on his face.
Life was altogether lovely and interesting to this happy warrior who
delivered his sword thrusts through curtains.
The son of an idol of Connecticut Federalists who was repeatedly elected
to the governorship, Wolcott passed his boyhood in and near Litchfield,
ministering to a frail constitution by tending cattle and working on the farm.
He did not permit the war to interfere with his career at Yale, felt no
sentimental call to Valley Forge, and found that the rattle of musketry need
not interfere with his preparations for the Bar. Almost immediately on the
conclusion of these preparations, he found a job as a clerk in the office of
the Committee of Pay Table, and such was his industry and methodical
efficiency that he rose in that line of the civil service to be Comptroller of
Public Accounts before the formation of the National Government.
This opened a new and fairer vista for an efficient bureaucrat, and the
moment the department of the Treasury was established he was ‘induced by
his friends’ to offer himself for a position.[1278] Even then, professional
office-seekers merely yielded to the importunities of admirers. The
congressional delegation for Connecticut pressed hard for an appointment,
and he was offered the post of Auditor of the Treasury at fifteen hundred
dollars a year. We can scarcely conceive that he hesitated, though it is of
record that his sponsors urged him to accept, and that Hamilton expressed
the hope that he would not refuse. He had hoped for the Comptrollership—
but that might follow. The fact that Hamilton had favored him for the better
place was promising.[1279] Meanwhile, on the salary, he could ‘live cheap
and snug as you please.’[1280] Thus he went upon the Federal payroll. Thus
he came under the observation and supervision of the genius at the head of
the Treasury,
then the most powerful dispenser of patronage. Thus he was able to practice
his ingratiating arts on one worth while. In little more than a year he was
made Comptroller on the recommendation of Hamilton, and when that
statesman retired to private life, it was he who lifted the faithful servitor into
the Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. There Adams found him; there,
unhappily for him, he let him remain.
It would be unjust to leave the impression that Wolcott was without
merit. He was not brilliant, but he possessed an infinite capacity for taking
pains. Even in college, where he failed to sparkle, he was a hard student
with ‘the strong reasoning faculties of the Wolcott family’ a little
neutralized by ‘some eccentricities in reasoning.’[1281] In the Treasury, in
subordinate positions, he had shown good judgment, much practical sense, a
comprehensive acquaintance with business and business needs, exceptional
power of sustained application, no imagination, and a dog-like devotion to
Hamilton. The latter found this combination of virtues had not only made
his conduct good, ‘but distinguished.’ More, he had ‘all the requisites which
can be desired,’ and these were ‘moderation with firmness; liberality with
exactness, indefatigable industry with an accurate and sound discernment, a
thorough knowledge of business, and a remarkable spirit of order and
arrangement.’[1282] In brief, he was the perfect bureaucrat, the indispensable
man Friday. If he brought no political strength to the Administration, he
could, with dependability, do the drudgery and register the will of others
who could.
If he was not a friend of the people, nor the electorate of him, he was the
courtier and friend of the powerful, and thus his was one of the first careers
created by the social lobby. If he did not cultivate the voters, he selected his
friends with fine discrimination with the view of his own advancement. At
Yale he cultivated Noah Webster and Uriah Tracy, a potent writer and a
powerful politician; he early profited by the popularity and prestige of his
father, and through his father’s and his family’s influential friends; and
socially, he made himself the ‘bonny boy’ of the Hamiltonian circle, and
smiled and joked himself into the affections of the Bingham set. A beautiful
and brilliant sister brought him the championship of the clever Chauncey
Goodrich and his associates. A charming wife threw wide all the doors of
the capital. While he was earning the grateful appreciation of Hamilton and
the Essex Junto, this attractive wife was winning and deserving the tender
affection of Mrs. Washington, with whom she was on terms of intimacy, and
she was corresponding regularly with Nellie Custis.[1283] When Washington
left public life, his wife gave the wife of Wolcott a lock of the General’s hair
and one of her own. The social lobby looked after its own—and Wolcott
was its very own.
For this cultivation of the social lobby, he was well adapted, for he had a
genius for society, with his cheerful disposition, his playful manner, his
conversation, which, while sometimes sober, was usually gay. The ‘small
talk’ that Adams lacked, Wolcott had in full measure running over. A master
of the art of banter, no one with entrée to Mrs. Bingham’s could tell a joke
better or more noisily enjoy one. His laugh was hearty, frequent, and
infectious. Living in a world of statistics, he at least affected a love of
literature, was fond of quoting poetry, and interested in the personalities of
distinguished writers. His conversation after office hours could be light and
graceful. Gracious, smiling, ingratiating, this bureaucrat—one of the first—
created and sustained by the social lobby as one of its first exhibits. He
differed from Pickering as day from night, but like his sphinx-like colleague
of Salem, he owed everything to Hamilton, nothing to Adams; and as he sat,
suave and smiling, at the Cabinet table, it was to Hamilton, not to Adams,
that he looked as chief.
VIII
If Pickering was a conspirator against Adams and did not care who knew
it, and Wolcott a conspirator trying to conceal it, James McHenry, the
Secretary of War, was a conspirator and scarcely knew it. The simplicity of
this Irish immigrant is most disarming. Left alone, he would have been
harmless. His was only another instance of loving, not wisely, and too well.
Born in comfortable circumstances in Ireland, the impairment of his health
through intensive application to his studies in an academy in Dublin brought
him to America on a recuperative voyage. So favorably was he impressed
that his family soon followed and his father opened a general store in
Baltimore. A year later, we find him in an academy in Newark, Delaware,
and then in Philadelphia studying medicine under the celebrated Dr. Rush.
But he took as little to his profession as to the prosaic duties of the
counting-room, and, thanks to inherited property, lived through the greater
portion of his life as a gentleman of leisure. In nothing that he ever
undertook did he attain distinction. The practice of his profession was
limited to a brief period as surgeon in the army; his career in commerce was
almost as much curtailed; and he employed his leisure as a dilettante in
politics and literature.
Had McHenry remained in Ireland, it is easy to imagine him as a young
blade about Dublin, affecting the fashions, a bit dandified in dress, over-
fond of society, given to verse. A searcher of souls might have discovered in
him an ambition—to write poetry. Even in his academy days at Newark he
was an inveterate verse-maker, and he thought enough of his effusions to
send them to the papers. It was a weakness he never overcame, and at his
death they found a great portfolio full of rhymes. It is possible—and it is
this pathetic touch that makes one almost love him—that he hoped for a
posthumous volume as a memorial and monument.[1284] Some of these
lyrics are clever, light and graceful, reminders of the sort that even Curran
liked to make for the amusement of his friends—thoroughly Irish. He could
never have become a poet, but there is evidence in his letters that had he
turned his attention to the humorous essay, he might have produced things
worth while. These epistles are charming in their playfulness, sprightly,
witty, glowing with humor. No one among the public men of the period
could have made posterity so much their debtor with letters on men, women,
and events—not even Morris, Ames, or Goodrich. He was really made for
an observer, rather than participant, in the harsh conflicts of life—more of a
Horace than a Robert Walpole, more of a Boswell than a Johnson. Dinners,
dances, routs, these, and the writing of light verses, were enough to make
him happy.
And yet he was not effeminate. If he did not play his part in the affairs of
men with brilliancy or even efficiency, he did with courage and to the best
of his ability. We have few references to his services as surgeon in the army.
It was when he became one of Washington’s secretaries that he fell
completely under the fascination of Hamilton. Even before his resignation
from the army, he had entered politics as a member of the State Senate in
Maryland, a rather important body consisting then of but fifteen members.
Here he was the representative of the commercial class. In the
Constitutional Convention he was obscure, and strangely enough his views
were the very opposite of Hamilton’s. Speaking seldom, his voice was
raised in warning against too much centralization.[1285] He was even
favorable to a mere amendment to the Articles of Confederation,[1286] and
his chief interest was in the provisions for the regulation of commerce.[1287]
When the work was over, he signed with avowed reluctance, and solely on
the ground—which was characteristic—that he distrusted his own judgment,
that amendments might be made, and he was willing to take a chance.[1288]
In the bitter fight over ratification in the Maryland Convention, he took but
little part.
Even so, the confidence and friendship of Washington and Hamilton
were not weakened. To him they looked from the beginning for advice on
Maryland patronage, and Washington found it convenient to use him as an
agent in matters of this sort.[1289] Hamilton thus employed him frequently.
[1290] Taking seriously his rôle as the Federalist boss and distributer of the
loaves and fishes, he resented the disregarding of one of his
recommendations, and even the long explanatory letter of Hamilton failed to
smooth his ruffled feathers.[1291] More than two years were to elapse before
his woman-like affection for his idol gained the ascendancy over his
resentment. ‘I have not ceased to love you nor for a moment felt an
abatement of my friendship,’ he wrote impulsively after the long silence.
[1292]
Like Pickering and Wolcott, McHenry was persistent in his hints for
place. Six years before the Constitution went into effect, we find him
soliciting the influence of Washington to get him a diplomatic post in
Europe, and the great man tried and failed.[1293] Among the first letters
Hamilton received on entering the Cabinet was one from McHenry. ‘I am
not wholly lost to ambition,’ he wrote, ‘and would have no objection to a
situation where I might indulge and improve at the same time my literary
propensities, with, perhaps, some advantage to the public. Would you,
therefore, be good enough to feel ... whether the President has thought of
me, or would, in such a case, nominate me. I wish you would do this for me
as a thing springing entirely from yourself.’[1294] Nothing came of it, and
the faithful party hack continued to run the errands of the Administration in
Maryland. Three years later, he took his courage in both hands and wrote
directly to Washington asking to be sent to Paris and Vienna to attempt to
secure the release of Lafayette. He wanted a change of air. It would be no
use, the President replied.[1295] It was not until near the close of
Washington’s eight years in office—and only then because many others had
declined—that he was finally summoned to Philadelphia to become
Secretary of War. Would he have felt so much elated had he read Hamilton’s
comment on his capacity? ‘McHenry, you know,’ wrote the leader. ‘He
would give no strength to the Administration but he would not disgrace the
office. His views are good.’[1296] But happily he did not know, and
jubilantly he gave up all private enterprises as incompatible with public
office—for in such matters he was meticulously proper—and, mounting his
horse, he rode to Philadelphia. He carried the conviction with him that he
owed his honor to the earnest persistency of his idol. To the extent indicated,
this was true. The great genius of Federalism, now planning to continue his
domination of the Government from his law office in New York, had
reasons to believe that whoever might be President, McHenry would be his
own faithful servitor. When Hamilton had married Betty Schuyler, his friend
had journeyed to Albany with some verses for the event. Was it with an
indulgent smile that the bridegroom acknowledged the poem? ‘You know I
often told you you wrote prose well, but had no genius for poetry. I
retract.’[1297] Six years before the first inauguration of Washington, this
ardent friend had written Hamilton: ‘Were you ten years older and twenty
thousand pounds richer, there is no doubt but that you might obtain the
suffrages of Congress for the highest office in their gift.’[1298] Verily it was
not without an eye to the future that Hamilton found a place for such an
idolater and political valet in the Cabinet.
There is something a bit wistful and pathetic about McHenry that
persuades forgiveness for even his treachery to Adams. His were the sins of
a lover, and love covers a multitude of sins. Nature intended him for a snug
harbor, and fate pushed him out upon tempestuous seas. His own best
epitaph has been written by himself: ‘I have built houses. I have cultivated
fields. I have planned gardens. I have planted trees. I have written little
essays. I have made poetry once a year to please my wife; at times got
children, and at all times thought myself happy.’[1299] Like Pickering and
Wolcott, he owed everything to Hamilton—nothing to Adams; and as he
faced Adams in the Cabinet room, it was to Hamilton—not to Adams—that
he looked as chief.
The other member of the Cabinet, the Attorney-General, was a political
cipher. Knowing what we now know of the characters and factional
affiliations of the President and his advisers, it will not be difficult to follow
the serpentine trail of the next four years, nor to understand one of the forces
that worked with Jefferson for the utter destruction of the Federalist Party.
CHAPTER XV
S CARCELY had Adams entered upon his office when he found himself
confronted with the possibility of a war with France. Some time before,
Gouverneur Morris, the American Genêt in Paris, had been recalled,
none too soon, and James Monroe had been sent to smooth the ruffled
feathers of the French. Because he had followed his instructions too
enthusiastically and failed to understand that ‘a diplomat is a person sent
abroad to lie for his country,’ he had been recalled in disgrace, as Jefferson
had foreseen, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a Charleston Federalist,
had been sent as Minister. Not only had the French Government refused to
receive him, but he had been ordered from the soil of France. All this seems
wicked perversity on the part of France without a hasty glance at the
antecedents of the story.
Primarily nothing could have been more unfortunate than the
appointment of Morris. No more charming or clever diplomat than this
bosom friend of Hamilton has served America abroad. Born to the purple,
he was an aristocrat by nature, with a blatantly cynical and contemptuous
conception of the masses of mankind. His was the shimmer due to
generations of polishing. As a young man in the society of New York and
Philadelphia, he was enormously popular because he was handsome,
dashing, witty, eloquent, a bit risqué and in consequence of his fashionable
and gilded background. In the Constitutional Convention no one spoke with
greater fluency or frequency—or with less effect. He sought the
establishment of an aristocratic state, and made no secret of his hostility to
democracy. To an even greater degree than Hamilton he foreshadowed the
extreme policies of the Federalist Party. He was, in truth, its personification,
able, brilliant, rich; socially delightful, cynical, aristocratic, masterful, and
disdainful of the frontier.[1300] Like Hamilton, he failed in the Convention,
but his was the hand that fashioned the phrasing of the fundamental law.
There was more than a hint of the fashionable roué in this handsome
fellow when he went to Paris. Women and their pursuit was ever an
engrossing game with him. Even his graduation essay was on ‘Wit and
Beauty,’ and for his Master’s Degree he wrote on ‘Love.’ He was the sort of
beau that Congreve would have cherished, elegant in dress and manner,
given to levity and light banter, eagerly sought. The loss of a leg through an
accident in 1780 did not sour him nor diminish his appeal to women. On ‘a
rough oak stick with a knob at the end,’[1301] he hobbled on to his triumphs.
Such was the man sent to succeed Jefferson, the philosopher of
democracy, at the moment the Revolution was breaking on the boulevards—
a bitter, outspoken partisan of the old régime, a sarcastic enemy of the
Revolution, a champion of privilege less compromising than the nobility
itself. While Genêt was intriguing against the Government in America,
Morris was intriguing against the Government in France. But his love
flowers were still thrown over the garden wall of politics. Jefferson had
been shocked at his reactionary opinions in Paris. Madame Lafayette had
chided him on being an aristocrat.[1302] Quite early he began his affair with
Madame de Flahaut, the novelist, a pretty, winsome woman who effectively
used her marriage to an old man as a lure for lovers, and his diary teems
with references to the frail beauty. There were evenings at her home,
sneering at liberty and democracy; teas in her salon; drives and dinners,
when he was entranced by the ‘spirituel and delicate repartee’ of his friend.
[1303] Then walks in the Gardens of the Tuileries and about the Champs
Élysées, afternoons at Madame’s house reading ‘La Pucelle,’ while she rode
about Paris in the well-known carriage of the American Minister,[1304] and
finally, when danger came, he took her into his house. The Minister aimed
high, and even the Duchess of Orleans was not above his amorous
expectations, thinking her beautiful enough ‘to punish the duke for his
irregularities,’ and we find him writing poems to her, and buying her a
Newfoundland dog in London.[1305] No young blade ever found Paris more
seductive.
On swept the Revolution, on came the Terror, with Morris openly and
defiantly sneering at the former and its principles. The coldness of the
crowds in the streets when the Queen rode by enraged him.[1306] In the
terrible August days of 1792 he drove the reactionary Madame de Flahaut
through the Bois de Boulogne,[1307] and when the nation imprisoned the
King he was soon neck-deep in intrigues to effect his rescue.[1308] Messages
were exchanged with Louis, plans perfected, and only the King’s courage
failed. Later Louis made him the custodian of 750,000 livres to be used in
bribing those who stood in the way of his escape. America’s Minister was
paymaster of the King seeking to join the allied monarchs in the crushing of
the Revolution.[1309] Much of this was known in Paris, and much of it
known and approved by Federalist leaders in America, Ames objecting to
the publication of certain papers because they would disclose Morris’s
intolerable activities.[1310]
II