DEANE, SILAS American diplomat, was born in Groton, Conn., on Dec. 24, 1737. He graduated at Yale in 1758 and in 1761 was admitted to the bar. From 1774 to 1776 he was a delegate from Connecticut to the continental congress. Early in 1776 he was sent to France by Congress, as a secret agent to induce the French Government to lend its financial aid to the colonies. Subsequently he became, with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, one of the regularly accredited commissioners to France from Congress. On arriving in Paris, Deane secured the shipment of many vessel loads of arms and munitions of war to America. He also enlisted the services of a number of Continental soldiers of fortune, among whom were Lafayette, Baron Johann De Kalb and Thomas Conway. His carelessness in keeping ac count of his receipts and expenditures led, in 1777, to his recall to face charges. Before returning to America, however, he signed on Feb. 6, 1778, the treaties of amity and commerce and of alliance which he and the other commissioners had successfully negotiated. In America he was defended by John Jay and John Adams, and after stating his case to Congress was allowed to return to Paris to settle his affairs. The publication of some "intercepted" letters in Rivington's Royal Gazette in New York (1781), in which Deane declared his belief that the struggle for independence was hopeless and counselled a return to British allegiance, aroused such animosity against him in America that for some years he remained in England. He died on shipboard in Deal harbour, England, on Sept. 23, 1789 after having em barked for America on a Boston packet. No evidence of his dishonesty was ever discovered, and Congress recognized the validity of his claims by voting $37,000 to his heirs in 5842. He published his defence in An Address to the Free and Independent Citizens of the United States of North America (Hartford, Conn., and London, See The Correspondence of Silas Deane published in the Connecticut Historical Society's Collections, vol. ii. ; and The Deane Papers, in the New York Historical Society's Collections (1887-9o) . See also Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, vol. vii. chap. i. ; Wharton's Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States 0889); and G. L. Clark, Silas Deane: A Connecticut Leader in the American Revolution (1913).