Fra: Frances through Fraser

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


FRANCIS, John Morgan (March 6, 1823- June 18, 1897), editor, publicist, diplomat.  He advocated the claims of the Free-Soil party. In 1849 he sold his interests and removed to New York to engage in business. He soon returned to Troy, however, to take charge of the Daily Whig; and in 1851 he founded the Troy Daily Times, with R. D. Thompson as partner. When the latter withdrew in 1853, he became the sole owner. Under his hands the Times was one of the leading papers of the state. Realizing the importance of local news, he stressed it consistently, and by the consequent popularity of the paper he contributed much to the strength of the Republican party, which he joined on its inception.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, pp. 580-581:

FRANCIS, JOHN MORGAN (March 6, 1823- June 18, 1897), editor, publicist, diplomat,  was born at Prattsburg, New York, the son of Richard and Mary (Stewart) Francis. From his father, a midshipman in the British navy who emigrated to America in 1795, married, and settled in Steuben County, New York, he inherited the rugged physique characteristic of the family. Since he was next to the youngest of thirteen children, he received little formal education. His training as a journalist, however, provided him with an excellent background for a successful career. Beginning at fifteen as an apprentice on the Ontario Messenger, at Canandaigua, New York, he served successively in the editorial departments of the Wayne Sentinel and the Rochester Daily Advertiser. On December 8, 1846, he married a woman of considerable literary talent, Harriet Elizabeth Tucker, daughter of Pomeroy Tucker, editor of the Sentinel, and established himself in Troy as editor-in-chief of the Northern Budget. While connected with the Budget, a Democratic paper, of which he eventually became joint proprietor, he advocated the claims of the Free-Soil party. In 1849 he sold his interests and removed to New York to engage in business. He soon returned to Troy, however, to take charge of the Daily Whig; and in 1851 he founded the Troy Daily Times, with R. D. Thompson as partner. When the latter withdrew in 1853, he became the sole owner. Under his hands the Times was one of the leading papers of the state. Realizing the importance of local news, he stressed it consistently, and by the consequent popularity of the paper he contributed much to the strength of the Republican party, which he joined on its inception. In his devotion to the Union he never wavered. As a result the building occupied by the Times was sacked by a mob during the draft riots of 1863. Publication was suspended, however, for only a day; and the paper continued to gain in influence. When Francis died, he was succeeded by his son, Charles Spencer Francis [q.v.].

Although he never swerved from the ideals in which he believed, he was essentially practical in his approach toward public affairs. In New York he was a member of the state constitutional conventions of 1867-68 and 1894, in both of which he played a prominent part. In national politics he was also an influential figure. In 1856 he was a delegate to the first convention of the Republican party, and at the convention of 1880 he was one of the "die-hards" who supported President Grant. In recognition of his Republicanism he had been appointed in 1871 minister to Greece, where he remained for three years. After a tour of the world, he again engaged in politics. In 1881 President Garfield, to whom he had transferred his allegiance, included his name as minister to Belgium in his tentative list of appointments, but did not live to make the nomination. President Arthur, embarrassed by other commitments, named him to the post at Lisbon. In 1884 he was promoted to the mission at Vienna. He resigned the following year.

[C. E. Francis, Francis: Descendants of Robt. Francis of Wethersfield, Connecticut (1906), p. 194; files of the Troy Daily Times, especially the supplement of June 25, 1901, and the anniversary issue of June 25, 1926; a memorial volume published in 1897, containing sketches, appreciations, and reprints of newspaper obituaries; the volumes of reminiscences by his wife, especially By Land and Sea (1891); Rutherford Hayner, Troy and Rensselaer County, New York (3 volumes, 1925); Geo. B. Anderson, Landmarks of Rensselaer County (1897); N. B. Sylvester, History of Rensselaer County, New York (1880); New York Times, June 19, 1897; Northern Budget, June 20, 1897.)

R. P. B-r.


FRANK, Augustus, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


FRANKLIN, Benjamin, 1706-1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, statesman, inventor, diplomat, lawyer, publisher, author, philosopher, opponent of slavery. President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 1787-1790. 

Franklin wrote: “The unhappy man, who has long been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species.  The galling chains that bind his body do also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affectations of his heart.  Accustomed to move like a mere machine, by the will of a master, reflection is suspended; he has not the power of choice; and reason and conscience have but little influence over his conduct, because he is chiefly governed by the passion of fear.  He is poor and friendless; perhaps worn out by extreme labor, age, and disease.

          “Attention to emancipated blacks, it is therefore to be hoped, will become a branch of our national policy; but, as far as we contribute to promote this emancipation, so far that attention is evidently a serious duty incumbent on us, and which we mean to discharge to the best of our judgment and abilities.

          “To instruct, to advise, to qualify those who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty; to promote in them habits of industry; to furnish them with employments suited to their age, sex, talents, and other circumstances; and to procure their children an education calculated for their future situation in life,--these are the great outlines of our annexed plan, which we have adopted, and which we conceive will essentially promote the public good, and the happiness of these our hitherto too much neglected fellow creatures.”

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. v, 5, 76, 80, 82, 85, 92, 101, 128, 133, 217, 219, 239, 247, 322; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, pp. 5, 31, 46, 137, 195, 236, 267, 269, 376, 394, 510; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 39, 43, 46, 69-70, 85, 94, 101, 104; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 126-127; Goodell, 1852, pp. 30, 40, 54, 96, 100; Hammond, 2011, pp. 32, 34-36, 50, 61-65, 170-174, 254, 268; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 25, 48, 50, 57, 58, 93, 98, 114, 136; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 14, 15, 17, 21, 25-26, 27, 94, 97; 103, 456, 547-551; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 164-165, 166; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 523; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 585; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 8, p. 395) 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 585:

FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN (January 17, 1706- April 17, 1790), printer, author, philanthropist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, scientist, was born in Milk Street, Boston. His father, Josiah, came to New England "about 1682" (moving from Banbury to Boston, 1685) from Ecton, Northamptonshire, England, where the parish records of his Protestant ancestors run back to 1555 (Smyth, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, I, 228; III, 453). His mother, second wife of Josiah, was Abiah, the daughter of Peter Folger, a man of liberal views who taught the Indians to read and wrote some doggerel verse (A Looking Glass for the Times). Benjamin was the tenth son of Josiah, and the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations. He learned to read at a very early age, probably taught by his father who destined him for the church as "the tithe of his sons," and sent him at eight years to the Boston Grammar School. The expense proving too great, he was transferred within less than a year to George Brownell's school for writing and arithmetic. At the age of ten he was taken into his father's business (tallow chandler and soap boiler). Disliking this, he was apprenticed at twelve years to his half-brother, James, a printer, who later (1721) started the New England Courant, the fourth newspaper established in the British colonies. In 1722 James was " taken up, censured, and imprisoned for a month." During this time the paper was issued under the management of Benjamin, his status as apprentice being concealed by a "flimsy" (dishonest) device (Writings, I, 248). Repeated quarrels with his brother led Benjamin to leave Boston for Philadelphia, where he arrived in October 1723, at the age of seventeen.

At this early age Benjamin was already an expert printer, and had begun that close application to reading, writing, reflection, and self-improvement which, continued through life, was one secret of his intellectual eminence and of his practical success. Besides a few books in his father's house, he had access to the small library of Matthew Adams. Bunyan, Plutarch, Defoe, and Cotton Mather came his way. Tyron's book on "vegetable diet" interested him. Cocker's arithmetic, Seller's work on navigation, and an English grammar (Greenwood?) were studied. Locke's Essay, some works of Shaftesbury and Collins, Xenophon's Memorabilia, the "Art of Thinking by Messrs. du Port Royal"-all of these were pored over and reflected upon to some purpose. By some happy chance he bought an odd volume of Addison's Spectator, which he read "over and over," the style of which he thought "excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate." Making notes of the ideas in several papers, he laid them by, and after some days "try'd to compleat the papers again. . . . Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them" (Writin g s, I, 241). Thus playing the "sedulous ape," the boy acquired a vocabulary and fashioned his style. One day he compose d a labored "essay," signed it Silence Dogood, and secretly slipped it under the door of his brother's shop. To his great delight it was printed. Others followed, fourteen in all-his earliest publications, crude indeed but characteristic.

Franklin arrived in Philadelphia with one Dutch dollar and a copper shilling. Obtaining employment in the print-shop of Samuel Keimer, he soon demonstrated his ability and made a circle of friends. Through his brother- in-law, Robert Holmes, he fell under the notice of the eccentric Governor Keith, who urged him to set up for himself and sent him off to London to buy equipment, promising him letters of credit for the purpose. In London (1724), no letters of credit being forthcoming, Franklin found employment at Palmer's (later at Watts's) printing-house. At the former he set up William Wollaston's The Religion of Nature Delineated (1725) which inspired him to write and print a refutation-A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (1725), in which he presented, cleverly for a boy, the current theory of necessity. He returned to Philadelphia in October 1726, with Mr. Denham, a Quaker merchant, in whose shop he served as clerk, learning accounts and becoming "expert in selling." Upon the sudden death of Denham, Franklin was once more employed by Keimer, but in 1728 left him to form a partnership with Hugh Meredith. In 1730 he became sole owner of the business, including The Pennsylvania Gazette (founded in 1728 by Keimer) which Franklin and Meredith had purchased in 1729.

Established in business on his own at the age of twenty-four, Franklin settled down. On September 1, 1730, he "took to wife" Deborah Read, the daughter of his first landlady. Since she was already married to a certain Rogers who had deserted her (never afterwards heard of) the marriage was a common-law union. To them two children were born: Francis Folger (1732- 1736), and Sarah (1744-1808), later the wife of Richard Bache. Franklin had besides two illegitimate children: William Franklin, later governor of New Jersey and a Loyalist during the Revolution, and a daughter. Franklin's wife was an illiterate person (Writings, X, 289; S. G. Fisher, True Benjamin Franklin, p. 116), incapable of sharing, or even of understanding, the importance of his intellectual interests. But she was devoted to him, even taking William Franklin to live in the house for a time, and by her industry and thrift contributed to his material comfort and welfare. "She proved a good and faith ful helpmate, assisted me much by attending the shop; we throve together, and have ever mutually endeavor'd to make each other happy" (Writings, I, 3II). Marrying chiefly in order to relieve the strain of youthful passion, Franklin thus makes the best of a bad business.

From 1730 to 1748 Franklin applied himself to business, won a competence, and laid the foundation of his fame at home and abroad. Industry and thrift contributed to the prosperity of his business. "In order to secure my credit and character as a tradesman, I took care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, but to avoid all appearance to the contrary. I drest plainly; I was seen at no places of idle diversion. I never went out a fishing or shooting; a book, indeed, sometimes debauch'd me from my work, but that was seldom, snug, and gave no scandal; and, to show that I was not above my business, I sometimes brought home the paper I purchas'd at the stores thro' the streets on a wheel-barrow" (Writings, I, 307-08). But the chief reason for his success was his capacity for making friends, influential and otherwise, his uncanny instinct for advertising himself and his paper, and above all the sense, novelty, and charm of the things he wrote for it. Nothing better exhibits the man, or better illustrates his ingenuity as an advertiser, than Poor Richard's Almanack (1732-57). "Richard Saunders," the Philomath of the Almanack, was the Sir Roger de Coverley of the masses, pilfering the world's store of aphorisms, and adapting them to the circumstances and the understanding of the poor. "Necessity never made a good bargain." "It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright." "Many dishes make diseases." "The used key is always bright." The Almanack was immediately successful, and commonly sold about ten thousand copies. "As poor Richard says" became a current phrase, used to give weight to any counsel of thrift. The work made Franklin's name a household word throughout the colonies, and gave a homespun flavor to American humor. The introduction to the last Almanack (Father Abraham's speech at the auction) spread the fame of Poor Richard in Europe. It was printed in broadsides and posted on walls in England, and, in translation, distributed by the French clergy among their parishioners. It has been translated into fifteen languages, and reprinted at least four hundred times.

Although in origin a business venture, Poor Richard was a genuine expression of Franklin's passion for improving himself and others. He was forever laboring consciously to perfect his mind and his character. He taught himself (beginning in 1733) to read French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin. In 1727 he established the "Junta," a debating club devoted to the discussion of morals, politics, and natural philosophy. He was easily the best informed and the most skilled in discussion. At first he was inclined to be argumentative, given to laying traps for his opponents (a trick learned from Socrates), in order to show up their errors or stupidities. Finding this not useful, since it got him disliked and only confirmed his opponents in their opinion s, he deliberately adopted the habit of expressing himself "in terms of modest diffidence; never using ... the words certainly, undoubtedly, ... but rather say, I conceive or apprehend, ... or, it is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions" (Writings, I, 244,338). Thus early in life Franklin train ed himself in the fine art of inducing others to appropriate as their own the ideas or the projects which he wished to have prevail.

In the same pragmatic way Franklin set about devising a religion for the practise of the useful virtues. He regretted his youthful essay on Liberty and Necessity, suspecting, from sad experience, that a materialistic doctrine, "tho' it might be true, was not very useful." It seemed to him far more useful to believe in God and to infer that "though certain actions might not be bad because they were forbidden [by Revelation] ... yet probably these actions might be forbidden because they were bad" (Writings, I, 296). At the age of twenty-two he drafted "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion" (Ibid., II, 91). The substance of the creed which he held throughout his life was that the one God, who made all things and governs the world through his providence, ought to be worshipped by adoration, prayer, and thanksgiving; that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to men; that the soul is immortal, and that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter. Aiming at "moral perfection," he made a list of the useful virtues, which turned out to be thirteen, Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquillity, Chastity, and Humility. To each of these in turn he gave "a week's strict attention, marking down in a book the measure of daily success achieved in the practice of each." Thus he went through "a course compleat in thirteen weeks, and four courses a year." He was surprised to find himself " so much fuller of faults" than he had imagined, but persisting for some years he had the satisfaction of "seeing them diminish." To propagate these simple doctrines and practises, Franklin designed (1732) to write a book on "The Art of Virtue,'' and to unite all men of good will in a society for the practise of it (Writings, I, 326; IV, 12, 121; 377; J. G. von Herder, Sammtliche Werke, 1830, XVII, 10, 16).

His passion for improvement made him the leader in many movements for the benefit of his community. He initiated projects for establishing a city police, and for the paving and the better cleaning and lighting of city streets. He was largely instrumental in establishing a circulating library in Philadelphia, the first in America, 1731; in founding in 1743 the American Philosophical Society, incorporated 1780; a city hospital, 1751; and an Academy for the Education of Youth, opened in 1751, incorporated, 1753 (the origin of the University of Pennsylvania). Franklin rarely solicited public office; but he was too public-spirited to avoid such honors. In 1729 he supported the popular demand for paper money (Writings, I, 306; II, 133). He was clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly (1736-51); member for Philadelphia (1751-64); deputy postmaster at Philadelphia (1737-53), and, jointly with William Hunter, deputy postmaster-general for the colonies (1753-74). This was one of the few offices he ever solicited (Ibid., X, 173-74). In the latter capacity he made visits of inspection to nearly every colony, and not only increased the frequency and efficiency of the mail deliveries, but made the post-office a financial success as well.

In the intervals of his varied activities as printer, philanthropist, and politician, Franklin found time for the study of science. It was probably in England that his attention was first turned to "Natural Philosophy." There he met Mandeville, and Dr. Pemberton., the secretary of the Royal Society, and was "extremely desirous" of seeing Newton, then at the height of his fame. Returning to America he was soon discussing, in the J unto, such questions as: "Is sound an entity or a body?" "How may the phenomena of vapors be explained?" As early as 1737 he was writing, in the Gazette, on earthquakes (Writings, I, 54). In the same year, prevented from observing an eclipse of the moon by a "northeaster,'' he was surprised to learn that the storm struck Philadelphia sooner than it struck Boston; which led him to the discovery that northeast storms on the Atlantic coast move against the wind (Ibid., II, 3u; IV, 16). About 1744 he invented the "Pennsylvania Fireplace," a stove with an open firebox, which heated rooms better with less expense (Ibid., II, 246). He contrived a clock which told the hours, minutes, and seconds with only three wheels and two pinions in the movement (improved by James Ferguson, it was known as Ferguson's clock, Ibid., I, 52). Every sort of natural phenomenon enlisted his interest and called forth some ingenious idea. In one short letter he speaks of linseed oil, hemp land, swamp draining, variations in climate, northeast storms, the cause of springs on mountains, sea-shell rocks, grass seed, taxation, and smuggling (Ibid., II, 310). So fascinating was natural philosophy to Franklin that he determined to make it his vocation. Business was a game which he could play with skill, but he cared little for it, or for the money it brought, except as a guarantee of independence. At the age of forty-two he had won a competence. Besides the income from some real estate, his business was worth perhaps £2,000 a year. In 1748 he therefore entered into a partnership with his foreman, David Hall [q.v.], who was to run the business, relieving Franklin "of all care of the printing office" and paying him £1,000 annually, an arrangement which lasted eighteen years. "I flatter'd myself that, by the sufficient tho' modest fortune I had acquir'd, I had secured leisure during the rest of my life for philosophical studies and amusements" (Ibid., I, 373-74). The leisure acquired lasted without serious interruptions for no more than six years; but it was during these years that he made those electrical experiments on which his fame as a scientist chiefly rests.

Franklin became interested in electricity about 1746 when Peter Collinson sent to the Philadelphia Library an "electric tube." With this fascinating toy he spent all of his spare time. "I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention" (Writings, II, 302). Aft er four months he sent to Collinson an amazingly precise, clear, and intelligible account of his experiments. He noted "the wonderful effect of pointed bodies, both in drawing off and throwing off, the electrical fire. " He noted that a person " standing on wax" was differently affected by the electrical charge than a person standing on the floor; and from this fact, tested in a variety of ways, " there have arisen," he says, "some new terms among us: we say B (and bodies like circumstanced) is electrised positively; A, negatively. Or, rather, B is electrised plus; A, mimes" (Ibid., II, 302-10). He was soon experimenting with " Muschenbroek's wonderful bottle" (Leyden jar), and was confirmed in his "single fluid" theory (Ibid., I, 95; II, 325). "The eleven experiments, to each of which a single brief paragraph is given, cover the essential phenomena of the condenser. As statements of fact they will stand almost without revision or amendment to the present day" (E. L. Nichols, in Record of the Celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Benjamin Franklin, p. iii; Writings, II, 328). Franklin was not the first to suggest the identity of lightning and electricity; but he proposed a method of testing the theory by erecting an iron rod on a high tower or steeple (letter to Collinson, July 29, 1750; Writings, II, 426,437). On May 10, 1752, Mr. Dalibard, who knew of Franklin's proposed method through Collinson's publication of Franklin's letter in 1751, performed the experiment with success at Marley-la-Valle. The experiment was successfully repeated at Paris but failed in England. Franklin, not having the means of testing his own method, devised a simpler one. This was the famous kite experiment, performed by Franklin in the summer of 1752, and described by him in a letter to Collinson, October 19 (Ibid., III, 99). These experiments, together with Collinson's publication of his letters on the subject (Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America, by Mr. Benjamin Franklin, London, 1751, reprinted with additions, 1753, 1760-62. Ibid., I, 15-16), which were immediately translated into French, established Franklin's fame as a scientist. The degree of Master of Arts was conferred on him by Harvard and by Yale (1753), and by William and Mary (1756). His fame pleased as much as it surprised him. More than ever he desired to devote his time to "philosophical studies," which it now seemed might be something more than mere "amusements."

His dream of leisure for philosophical studies was never to be realized. Six years after retiring from private business, public affairs began to claim him in earnest, and during the rest of his life he was chiefly engaged in politics and diplomacy. In 1754 he was sent to represent Pennsylvania at the Albany Congress, called to unite the colonies in the war against the French and Indians. His "Plan of Union" was adopted by the Congress in preference to others; but "its fate was singular: the assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much prerogative in it, and in England it was judged to have too much of the democratic" (Writings, I, 388; III, 197). Meantime the war had intensified the old dispute between the Assembly and the proprietors (descendants of William Penn, who lived in England and by the charter were privileged to appoint and instruct the governors of Pennsylvania). The chief grievance was that the proprietors forbade the governor to pass money bills for defense unless the vast proprietary estates were exempt from taxation (report of the Assembly committee, drafted by Franklin, 1757. Ibid., III, 370). The proprietors proving obdurate, the Assembly decided to appeal directly to the British government, and in 1757 Franklin was sent to England to present its case.

The business of his first mission was not settled for nearly three years. In 1760, after two hearings before the Privy Council, a bill of the Assembly taxing the proprietary estates, except unsurveyed waste lands, was allowed by the King. In spite of the long delay, perhaps because of it, Franklin remained in England until 1762. These five years were perhaps the happiest of his life. He resided with Mrs. Margaret Stevenson, at 7 Craven St., where he became at once the beloved and well-cared-for foster father of the family. With Mrs. Stevenson, and especially with her daughter Mary, he formed an enduring friendship. In the Craven Street house he set up an "electrical machine" and carried on experiments. He indulged his humor by composing "The Craven Street Gazette" in which the doings of Her Majesty's Court were related with becoming solemnity. He made journeys-to Holland, to Cambridge, to the ancestral home at Ecton. He became intimate with Collinson, Fothergill, Priestley, Strahan; and corresponded with Lord Karnes, David Hume, and Dr. Johnson. He visited the University of Edinburgh, received the degree of LL.D. from St. Andrews (1759), and of D.C.L. from Oxford (1762). He followed the war with interest, opposed the clamor for peace in 1760 by publishing in the London Chronicle a satire "On the Meanes of Disposing the Enemie to Peace" (Writings, IV, 90); and argued at length the advantages of taking Canada rather than Guadaloupe from France ("The Interest of Great Britain Considered," Ibid., IV, 35). To this pamphlet, which tradition supposes to have had some influence with the government, there was appended a brief paper written in 1751 and first published in 1755 which in some points anticipates the Malthusian theory of population ("Observations on the Increase of Mankind, the peopling of Countries," etc., Ibid., III, 63. See T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principles of Population, ed., 1803, pp. iv, 2). In these papers he argued: (1) that in America, where land is easily obtained, population doubled every twenty years; (2) that where land is easily obtained manufactures will not develop; (3) that Canada (including the Mississippi Valley) was accordingly more valuable than Guadaloupe since (a) becoming populous it will furnish rich markets for British goods, but (b) remaining indefinitely agricultural it will not compete with British' industry.

In 1762 Franklin returned reluctantly to Philadelphia, envying the "petty island" its "sensible, virtuous and elegant Minds" (Writings, IV, 194), and flirting with the idea of settling his affairs so that "in two years at farthest ... I may then remove to England-provided we can persuade the good Woman to cross the seas" (Ibid., IV, 182). Pressure of affairs, or perhaps the "good Woman," persuaded him to conclude that" old Trees cannot safely be transplanted" (Ibid., IV, 217); but, new disputes arising with the proprietors, the Assembly once more sent him to England to obtain a recall of the Charter. This object was not attained, was indeed submerged in the greater issue raised by Grenville's proposal to levy a stamp tax in the colonies. In the second interview between Grenville and the colonial agents Franklin was present and protested against the measure, suggesting instead the "usual constitutional method" of raising a revenue. Perceiving that the bill would be enacted, he advised his friends to make the best of it. "We might as well have hindered the sun's setting .... But since 'tis down ... let us make as good a night of it as we can. We may still light candles" (Ibid., IV, 390). When Grenville applied to the colonial agents to recommend Americans for the new office of stamp distributor, Franklin named his friend John Hughes for Philadelphia; and failing to foresee opposition to the act he sent over some stamped papers to be sold by his partner. These acts laid him open to the charge of having urged the law in order to profit by it; his house was menaced, and his wife advised to seek safety (Writings, X, 226-27; Bigelow, Life of Franklin, I, 460, 467); but his prestige was soon restored by his famous "examination" before the House of Commons. In February 1766, during the debates on the repeal of the Stamp Act, he was called before the House (committee of the whole) and questioned on the subject .. Of the 174 questions asked, some were put by opponents, some by friends, of the act (Bigelow, I, 507, note). The replies, brief, lucid, and to the point, aimed to show that the tax was contrary to custom, and administratively impracticable both on account of the circumstances of the country and the settled opposition of the people (Writings, IV, 412). Published immediately (Ford, Franklin Bibliography, 127) and widely read, the performance greatly increased Franklin's influence in America and his reputation abroad. "The questions ... am answered with such deep and familiar knowledge of the subject, such precision and perspicuity, such temper and yet such spirit, as do the greatest honor to Dr. Franklin, and justify the general opinion of his character and abilities" (Gentleman's Magazine, July 1767, p. 368).

In 1766, after the repeal of the Stamp Act, Franklin requested permission to return to Philadelphia, but the Assembly reappointed him its agent (Bigelow, I, 513, note). He was also named colonial agent of Georgia (1768), New Jersey (1769), and Massachusetts (1770). These appointments, together with his outstanding reputation, made Franklin a kind of ambassador extraordinary from the colonies to Great Britain. During those years he worked persistently for reconciliation: urging his American friends to avoid indiscreet conduct (Writings, V, 42, 197, 204, 222); in England defending the colonies in private conversation and by published articles (Ibid., V, 78, 127, 206, 236). Until the passing of the coercive acts (1774) he never quite despaired; but as the years passed he became less hopeful. A more serious note creeps into his correspondence; his sympathies become more American, less British. As early as 1768 he complained that all his efforts were without avail except to make him suspect: "In England, of being too much of an American, and in America, of being too much of an Englishman" (Ibid., V, 182). His close observation of British politics abated both his admiration for the English government and his expectation that conciliatory measures would prevail. In 1768 he wrote, no doubt in an unusually depressed mood: "Some punishment seems preparing for a people, who are ungratefully abusing the best constitution and the best King . . . any nation was ever blessed with, intent on nothing but luxury, licentiousness, power, places, pensions, and plunder" (Ibid., V, 133). He welcomed every prospect of returning to America. He had indeed friends enough in England to live there comfortably the rest of his days, "if it were not for my American connections, & the indelible Affection I retain for tha1 dear Country" (Ibid., V, 382).

As his admiration for" England abated and his love of America deepened, his ideas on American rights became more precise and more advanced. In 1765 he did not doubt the right of Parliament to levy the Stamp Act. In 1766 he defended the distinction between internal and external taxes, contenting himself with an ironical and prophetic comment: "Many arguments have lately been made here to shew them [Americans] ... that if you have no right to tax them internally you have none to tax them externally, or make any other Jaw to bind them. At present they do not reason so; but in time they may possibly be convinced by these arguments" (Writings, IV, 446). By 1768 Franklin was himself convinced. In order to resist the Townshend duties (1767), Dickinson and Samuel Adams had devised ingenious arguments designed to admit the right of Parliament to legislate for the colonies while denying the right to tax them (Ibid., I, 97). Franklin caused Dickinson's letters to be published in England, but writing to William Franklin March 13, 1768, he brushed aside these too subtle distinctions. "The more I have thought and read on the subject, the more I find myself confirmed in opinion, that no middle doctrine can be well maintained, I mean not clearly with inte1ligible arguments. Something might be made of either of the extremes; that Parliament has a power to make all laws for us, or that it has a power to make no laws for us; and I think the arguments for the latter more numerous and weighty, than those for the former" (Ibid., V, IIS)- Two years later he deprecated the use of such phrases as "supreme authority of Parliament," and urged Americans to base their rights on the theory that the colonies and England were united only, "as England and Scotland were before the Union, by having one common Sovereign, the King" (Ibid., V, 260). Thus early did Franklin accept the doctrine later formulated in the Declaration of Independence.

Appointed agent by the Massachusetts House of Representatives, October 24, 1770, Franklin's American sympathies were intensified by the truculent unfriendliness of Hillsborough, who refused to recognize the appointment until approved by Governor Hutchinson. Too long absent from America to form an independent judgment of the situation in Massachusetts, he was further prejudiced by the colored accounts of it transmitted by Samuel Cooper and Thomas Cushing. Although deprecating violence, and advising the Boston leaders that the government contemplated no new taxes, he agreed with Samuel Adams that good relations could not be established until the British government had repealed the tea duty. He welcomed the establishment of correspondence committees, and suggested, as a means of bringing "the Dispute to a Crisis," that the colonies should "engage ... with e ach other ... never [to] grant Aids to the Crown in any General War, till ... [their Rights are recogniz'd by the King and both Houses of Parliament" (1773. Writings, VI, 77). He was convinced of Hutchinson's "duplicity," and thought his controversy with the House of Representatives would discredit him in England. While encouraging the anti-British party in Boston, Franklin contrived to exasperate the anti-American party in London. He published two pointed satires, "Edict by the King of Prussia," and "Rules by which a Great Empire may be reduced to a Small one" (Ibid., VI, 118, 127), which did more to aggravate than to compose the quarrel (see Ma ns field's opinion, Ibid., VI, 145); and, wittingly or unwittingly, he contributed much to the final breach by his part in the famous affair of the "Hutchinson Letters." In 1772 an unknown member of Parliament showed Franklin certain letters, six of which were written by Governor Hutchinson in 1768-69, said to have been addressed (the name had been erased) to William Whately, former secretary of Grenville, urging drastic measures on the ground that "there must be an abridgment of what are called English Liberties" (the letters are in J. K. Hosmer, Life of Hutchinson, 1896, p. 429). By permission of the possessor, Franklin sent the letters to Thomas Cushing, with the stipulation that they should be returned to him without being either copied or printed (Writings, V, 448; VI, 265; X, 260). The letters were shortly printed in Boston and circulated in London, the immediate result of which was a duel between Thomas Whately, executor of the estate of William Whately, and John Temple, whom Whately accused of stealing the letters. To exonerate Temple, Franklin declared that he alone had procured and transmitted the letters, and that neither Thomas Whately nor Temple had ever had possession of them (Ibid., VI, 284). In conservative circles Franklin was at once denounced as an incendiary and a thief; the government dismissed him
from his office as deputy postmaster-general (Ibid., VI, 191); and on January 29, 1774, at a hearing before the Privy Council in the Cockpit on a petition of the Massachusetts House to remove Hutchinson, Solicitor General Wedderburn, on the assumption that Franklin had purloined the letters, denounced him in unmeasured terms as a man without honor who would "henceforth esteem it a libel to be called a man of letters: homo TRIUM literarum" -a man of three letters, i.e. FUR, the Latin word for thief (Ibid., X, 269; Bigelow, II, 201. For full account of the episode, see Writings, VI, 258-89; X, 258-72; Bigelow, II, 200-38; R. H. Lee, Life of Arthur Lee, 1829, I, 266; P. 0. Hutchinson, Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, 1883, I, 81; J. K. Hosmer, Hutchinson, ch. XII). Supported by his friends, and convinced that the sending of the letters was "one of the best actions of his life" (Writings, X, 270), Franklin remained in England, aiding Pitt in his fruitless efforts at conciliation (Ibid., VI, 318-98; X, 272 ff.; Bigelow, II, ch. VII), until March 20, 1775, when he sailed for America,

On May 6, 1775, the day following his return to Philadelphia, Franklin was chosen a member of the second Continental Congress. Conciliation seemed to him now no more than a vain hope. To satisfy the moderates he supported the Petition to the King, giving "Britain ... one opportunity more of recovering the friendship of the colonies," but "I think she has not sense enough to embrace [it], and so I conclude she has lost them forever" (Writings, VI, 408). He sketched a Plan of Union for the colonies; organized the Post-Office, of which he was the first postmaster general; served on the commissions sent to induce the Canadians to join the colonies, to advise Washington on defense, and to listen to Howe's peace proposals (Ibid., VI, 457 ff.; F. Wharton, Diplomatic Correspondence of the U. S., 1889, II, 139; Bigelow, II, ch. XII); and on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence (C. L. Becker, Declaration of Independence, 1922, ch. IV). As a member of the committee appointed November 29, 1775, to correspond "with friends in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of the world" (Journals of the Continental Congress, November 29, 1775), he prepared the instructions (Wharton, II, 78) for Silas Deane whom the committee sent to France in 1776, and through Barbeu Dubourg, the translator of his works, did much to facilitate Deane's reception by Vergennes. Encouraged by letters from Deane, Congress decided, September 26, 1776, to send a commission of three to negotiate a treaty with France. Franklin, Deane, and Jefferson were first chosen (Journals of the Continental Congress, September 26, 1776). Upon Jefferson's declination, Arthur Lee was appointed in his place. Franklin was then almost seventy years old: "I am but a fag end, and you may have me for what you please" (Writings, X, 301). His last act before leaving Philadelphia (October 26) was to lend Congress some three or four thousand pounds. He arrived in France December 4, 1776.

Unwilling as yet to recognize the rebellious colonies, the French government could not openly receive Franklin; but the French people gave him a welcome rarely if ever accorded to any foreigner. He was already well known in France through two previous visits in 1767 and 1769 (E. E. Hale, Franklin in France, 1887, I, 2-19), and through the translations of his scientific works, parts of Poor Richard, and the examination in Parliament. To the readers of Plutarch and Rousseau nothing could be more appropriate than that this backwoods sage and philosopher should now come to plead the cause of a young nation claiming its "natural right" to freedom from oppression. And Franklin had only to be himself to play the part allotted to him. His fur cap (very rarely worn indeed), covering unpowdered gray locks; his simple dress and unpretentious manners; his countenance, shrewd, placid, benignant; his wit and wisdom, homely indeed but somehow lifted above the provincial; the flexibility of his unwarped and emancipated intelligence, and the natural courtesy with which the sage from Arcady demeaned himself, without arrogance and without servility, in the most sophisticated society in the world-all this made Franklin more than an ambassador: it made him a symbol, the personification of all the ideas dear to the Age of Enlightment.' To the French people Franklin was Socrates born again in the imagined state of nature. At Passy, where M. Ray de Chaumont placed at his disposal part of the Hotel de Valentinois, he lived for nine years, in complaintive seclusion, and yet the object of unmeasured adulation. His sayings were treasured and repeated as bon mots. His portrait was to be seen everywhere in shop windows and in many private houses. His image was stamped on innumerable medals, medallions, rings, watches, snuff-boxes, and bracelets. John Adams, who later replaced Silas Deane, contrived, in spite of characteristic exaggeration and a certain irascible jealousy, to describe exactly the impression which Franklin made in France. "His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them. . . . His name was familiar to government and people . . . to such a degree that there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a valet de chambre, coachman or footman, a lady's chambermaid or a scullion in a kitchen who was not familiar with it, and who did not consider him as a friend to human kind. When they spoke of him, they seemed to think he was to restore the Golden Age" (Works of John Adams, 1856, I, 660)] [ Franklin's popularity contributed much to the success of his diplomatic mission. On December 28, 1776, the Commissioners, secretly received by Vergennes, presented their instructions and requested a treaty of commerce (Wharton, II, 248): and on February 2, they went so far as to promise that if France became involved in war with Great Britain on account of such a treaty, the United States would not "separately conclude a peace, nor aid Great Britain against France or Spain" (Ibid., 260). Vergennes was more than willing to aid in disrupting the British Empire in order to redress the European balance in favor of France; but he could not take the decisive step until the King consented, and wished not to do so without the cooperation of Spain or until it was clear that the colonies would be content with nothing less than independence (E. S. Corwin, French Policy and the American Alliance of 1778, 1916, chs. I-VI). Meantime, Franklin had been in communication with British agents through unofficial messengers; and in April 1778 he negotiated directly with Hartley, a member of Parliament, who came over to Paris. These overtures came to nothing, however, because of the British refusal to grant independence to the American colonies as a condition of peace (B. Fay, post, pp. 431 ff.). Franklin's contribution to the success of Vergennes's policy was indirect, but not unimportant. His mere presence in France, intensifying popular enthusiasm for the Americans and encouraging American privateers to operate from French ports, made it increasingly difficult for the French government to avoid a rupture with Great Britain in any case; while his relations with persons in England gave life to the rumor that the colonies, failing the aid of France, would as a price of independence join Great Britain in the conquest of the French and Spanish West Indies, a rumor which Vergennes, without crediting, made use of to persuade the King (Corwin, ch. VI). In the actual negotiations for an alliance (December 1777- February 1778), which the King authorized after the Battle of Saratoga, Franklin seems to have desired the French government to guarantee the conquest of the Mississippi Valley (where he was personally interested in certain land grants) as a condition of peace, a point which Vergennes, not wishing to alienate Spain, was unwilling to concede (Corwin, 153, referring to B. F. Stevens's Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives, Volume XXI, no. 1831). The final treaties (a treaty of commerce, and a treaty of "defensive alliance to maintain effectively the independence absolute and unlimited of the United States") were signed February 6, 1778.

Meantime the relations between the commissioners were anything but cordial. Arthur Lee, an incurably vain, suspicious, and wrong-headed person, charged Beaumarchais and Deane, and by implication Franklin, with incompetence and venality, especially in connection with the supplies furnished the colonies through the dummy company of Beaumarchais, Hortalez et cie (R. H. Lee, Life of Arthur Lee, II, 27, 50, 52, 125; Fisher, True Benjamin Franklin, pp. 279 ff.). The arrangements between Beaumarchais and Vergennes (L. L. de Lomenie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 1856, III, 124-30) were made before Franklin arrived in France, and Deane was the American agent in whom Beaumarchais confided. Franklin, leaving the business to Deane whom he trusted, seems not to have informed himself of the exact nature of the understanding (Hale, I, 52-55). The most that can rightly be charged against Franklin is that he appointed as his secretary his grandson, Temple Franklin, an incompetent boy; that his account s were accordingly in confusion; and that he appointed as naval agent at Nantes his nephew, Jonathan Williams, who proved incompetent if not venal (Fisher, pp. 293 ff.). Franklin made it a rule never to engage in personal controversies; he had learned early in life that "spots of dirt" thrown on one's character were best left alone since "they would all rub off when they were dry." He suffered Lee's "magisterial snubbings and rebukes" with a serene patience that rarely failed (see, however, Writings, VII, 129-38); but he had more important tasks than the hopeless one of setting Arthur Lee right. Being the only American with whom Vergennes cared to deal, the chief burden of the negotiations with the French government fell to him. He also served virtually as consul, judge of admiralty, and director of naval affairs. He negotiated for the exchange of prisoners in England (Hale, I, chs. XI, XVIII). He was burdened with innumerable applications, from Americans desiring recommendation in France, from Frenchmen desiring recommendation in America (Writings, VII, 30, 36, 38, 43, 58, 77, 80). In addition he found time to publish articles designed to strengthen American credit abroad (Ibid., I, 82, 86). In April 1778, John Adams, replacing Deane, came to Paris, offended de Chaumont by offering to pay rent for Franklin' s house at Passy (Bigelow, II, 429-30), helped Franklin to straighten out his account (Ibid., 447), was made "sick to death" by the Lee-Deane controversy, and recommended that the commission be replaced by a single agent. Lee was of the same opinion, suggesting himself as the proper person (R. H. Lee, Life of Arthur Lee, II, 127). On September 14, 1778, Congress appointed Franklin sole plenipotentiary (Journals of the Continental Congress, September 14, 1778). With his status made definite his life became pleasanter. He found some time to write on scientific subjects (Writings, VII, 209; VIII, 9, II5, 189, 244, 246, 285, 309); to carry on a gay and frivolous correspondence with Madame Helvetius and Madame Brillon; and to amuse himself and his friends with satires and bagatelles printed on his excellent Passy press (Ibid., X, ch. XI; Bigelow, II, ch. XVII; J. C. Oswald, Benjamin Franklin, Printer, 1917, chs. XIV-XV; L. S. Livingston, Franklin and his Press at Passy, 1914). But if his life was pleasanter, his responsibilities were if anything heavier. For three years his chief service was to obtain money; his chief task to persuade Vergennes to overlook irregular methods and to honor debts for which the French government was in no way obligated. Aside from negotiating loans, Franklin was expected to meet the innumerable bills of exchange which were drawn on him, by Congress, by John Adams in Holland, by John Jay in Spain, by ship captains fitting out in any port that was handiest, even by his villifiers, Arthur Lee and Ralph Izard (Writings, VII, 382, 405; VIII, 14, 59, 139, 142, 174, 200, 208, 2rr, 217; X, 337 ff., 374 ff.; Hale, I, ch. XXI; W. C. Bruce, Benjamin Franklin, 1917, II, 281 ff.). On March 12, 1781, on the ground that excessive duties were impairing his health, Franklin tendered his resignation to Congress (Writings, VIII, 221). He was well aware that the friends of Lee, Izard, and Adams were about to move for his recall (Ibid., VIII, 236, 250; X, 342), and his resignation was probably no more than a shrewd political move designed to defeat the motion. At all events, when Congress voted to continue him, he slyly remarked: "I must ... buckle again to Business, and thank God my Health & Spirits are of late improved ... I call this Continuance an Honour . . . greater than my first Appointment, when I consider that all the Interest of my Enemies, united with my own Request, were not sufficient to prevent it" (Ibid., V,III, 294).  

On June 8, 1781, Franklin was named one of the commissioners to negotiate peace with Great Britain (Journals of the Continental Congress, June 8, 1781). While awaiting the arrival of Jay and Adams he assumed responsibility for the preliminary conversations, of which he wrote a detailed account (Writings, VIII, 459 ff.; Wharton, V, 535 ff.). Resisting every suggestion that the colonies should make a separate peace, and keeping Vergennes informed of every step, he proposed as a basis of negotiation: (1) independence; (2) the cession of the Mississippi Valley; (3) fishing rights "on the banks of Newfoundland, and elsewhere." He objected to the British claim for the recovery of debts (later he conceded that just debts should be paid). He took the ground that, Congress could not compensate the Loyalists, since the confiscation acts were state laws; but he suggested that Britain might contribute much to real conciliation by voluntarily ceding Canada, in which case the Loyalists might possibly be compensated by grants of wild lands in that country (E. Channing, History of the United States, 1912, III, 352 ff.). Uncertain of the outcome of the naval war, the British government was apparently ready early in June to make peace on Franklin's terms (Wharton, V, 572; Writings, VII, 572). But at this point two circumstances contributed to give a new direction to the negotiations. Jay, arriving June 23, and suspecting the sincerity of the British, delayed matters by insisting that the British commissioners be authorized to treat with the United States as an independent state. Meantime British naval successes, culminating in the relief of Gibraltar, October 10, strengthened the hands of the British commissioners, who now renewed the demand for compensation to the Loyalists, and objected to the American claim (injected into the negotiations by Adams) of a right to dry fish on British coasts. When the conference reached a n impasse on these points, Franklin came forward with a proposal which seems to have turned the scale in favor of the Americans. On November 29, according to Adams, Franklin "produced a paper from his pocket, in which he had drawn up a claim, and he said the first principle of the treaty was equality and reciprocity. Now, they demanded of us payment of debts, and . . . compensation to the refugees . . . . Then he stated the carrying off of goods from Boston, Philadelphia, and the Carolinas, ... and the burning of towns, etc., and demanded that this might be sent with the rest." After further discussion of Franklin's counter demand for compensation, the British commissioners accepted the American "ultimatum respecting the fishery and the loyalists" (Wharton, VI, 87); and on the following day the preliminaries were signed (Ibid., 96).

In negotiating and signing the preliminaries without keeping the French government informed, the commissioners violated not only the instructions of Congress, but Franklin's earlier agreement with Vergennes. The responsibility for this step rests with Jay and Adams, who were convinced: (I) that Franklin was too subservient to French influence; and especially, (2) that France and Spain were secretly working to restrict the boundaries of the United States to the Alleghanies (for the views of Adams and Jay, see Wharton, V, 703, 740, 750, 864; VI, II-51). The latter was true of Spain; true of France only so far as Vergennes was bound to consider the interest of Spain (Corwin, pp. 331 ff.). Franklin's "subserviency" was only a superior diplomacy; but he yielded to his colleagues in order to maintain harmony. when Adams, shortly after his arrival (October 26), gave Franklin his and Jay's reasons for ignoring Vergennes, "the Doctor," Adams reports, "heard me patiently, but said nothing; but at the next conference with Oswald, he turned to Jay and said: 'I am of your opinion, and will go on with these gentlemen in the business without consulting this court.' He accordingly met with us in most of our conferences, and has gone with us in entire harmony and unanimity throughout" (Wharton, VI, 91). Upon receiving the preliminaries, Vergennes wrote Franklin a sharp formal protest (Ibid., 140). It is possible that Vergennes, hampered by his obligations to Spain, was really pleased with the outcome, and that his protest was merely formal, and so understood by Franklin. It is difficult to suppose that Vergennes was unaware of the separate negotiations. Earlier he had himself said that each country "will make its own Treaty. All that is necessary .. . is, that the Treaties go hand in hand, and are sign'd all on the same day" (Writings, VIII, 512). Although the negotiations had not gone "hand in hand," it was stipulated in the preliminaries that the final treaty "is not to be concluded until terms of peace shall be agreed upon between Great Britain and France" (Wharton, VI, 96). There was therefore some basis for Franklin's reply to Vergennes's protest, in which he admitted that the commissioners had been "guilty of neglecting a point of bienseance," but contended that in substance there had been no breach of agreement since "no peace is to take place between us and England till you have concluded yours" (Ibid., 144). He added: "The English, I just now learn, flatter themselves they have already divided us." Few diplomats, taking Vergennes's protest at its face value, would have ventured to unite with this bland apology a request for twenty million livres, or have contrived so to word it as to have obtained from the irritated minister a grant of six millons. The final peace was signed September 3, 1783. The story that for this occasion (or for the signing of the treaty with France in 1778) Franklin donned the suit of Manchester velvet last worn when Wedderburn denounced him in The Cockpit (Writings, X, 271; Bigelow, II, 204) seems to be without adequate evidence to support it (J. B. Moore, Digest of International Law, 1906, V, 659-61).

On December 26, 1783, Franklin reminded Congress of its promise to recall him after the peace was made (Writings, IX, 141). Not until May 2, 1785, did he receive notice of the desired release. He left Passy, July 12, in one of "the King's Litters, carried by mules" (Ibid., 363), to embark from Havre de Grace. He arrived in Philadelphia September 14, having profitably employed his time on the long voyage in making "Maritime Observations" and writing a detailed account of "The Causes and Cure of Smoky Chimneys" (Ibid., IX, 372-462). He was shortly chosen president of the executive council of Pennsylvania. After serving in this capacity for three years, he was chosen a member of the Constitutional Convention which met in May 1787. Although suffering from the stone he attended the sessions regularly for over four months. Like Jefferson, this master of discussion was no speechmaker; and his few formal discourses were written out and read. The text 6f the la st speech as printed by Smyth, p. 607, is incomplete and incorrect (see the text in Elliot's Debates, 1845, V, 554, which follows more nearly the Franklin autograph original in the Cornell University Library). None of his cardinal ideas was adopted. He favored a single chamber, an executive board, and opposed the payment of salaries to executive officials. Yet Franklin contributed not a little to the final result. His immense prestige, and the persuasive effect of his kindly personality and genial humor, were of great value in calming passions and compromising disputes. When the convention was at a dead-lock over the question of representation, Franklin said: "If a property representation takes place, the small states contend that their liberties will be in danger. If an equality of votes is to be put in its place, the large states say their money will be in danger. When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of the planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint" (Elliot's Debates, V, 266). Franklin's first proposal for a compromise was not adopted; but he was a member of the committee appointed to adjust the matter, and largely responsible for the compromise actually incorporated in the Constitution (Ibid., 273-74, 487). Although the Constitution was not to his liking, he urged in his inimitable manner that it be unanimously adopted. "I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them .... The older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment . . . . Though many ... persons think ... highly of their own infallibility ... few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who ... said: 'I don't know how it happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself who is always in the right'--il n'y a que moi qui a toujours raison . . . . On the whole, sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention ... would with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to the instrument" (Ibid., 554-55).

During the last five years of his life Franklin lived in a commodious house near Market Street with his daughter (his wife died in 1774) and his grandchildren. He invented a device for lifting books from high shelves (Writings, IX, 483), wrote to his humorous friends at home and abroad, entertained his neighbors and the many strangers come to do him homage, enjoying to the last that ceaseless flow of "agreeable and instructive conversation" of which he was the master and the devotee (see Cutler's description, Ibid., X, 478). His last public act was to sign a memorial to Congress for the abolition of slavery. He died April 17, 1790, at the age of eighty-four years. At his funeral twenty thousand people assembled to do him honor. He was buried in Christ Church Burial Ground under a stone bearing a simple inscription of his own devising: Benjamin and Deborah Franklin (Ibid., 489, 508).

Great men are often hampered by some inner discord or want of harmony with the world in which they live.  It was Franklin's good fortune to have been endowed with a rare combination of rare qualities, and to have lived at a time when circumstances favored the development of all his powers to their fullest extent. He was a true child of the Enlightenment, not indeed of the school of Rousseau, but of Defoe and Pope and Swift, of Fontenelle and Montesquieu and Voltaire. He spoke their language, although with a homely accent, a tang of the soil, that bears witness to his lowly and provincial origin. His wit and humor, lacking indeed the cool, quivering brilliance of Voltaire or the corrosive bitterness of Pope and Swift, were all the more effective and humane for their dash of genial and kindly cynicism. He accepted without question and expressed without effort all the characteristic ideas and prepossessions of the century-its aversion to "superstition" and "enthusiasms" and mystery; its contempt for hocus-pocus and its dislike of dim perspectives; its healthy, clarifying scepticism; its passion for freedom and its humane sympathies; its preoccupation with the world that is evident to the sense s; its profound faith in common sense, in the efficacy of Reason for the solution of human problems and the advancement of human welfare.

For impressing his age with the validity of these ideas, both by precept and example, Franklin's native qualities were admirably suited. His mind, essentially pragmatic and realistic, by preference occupied itself with what was before it, with the present rather than with the past or the future, with the best of possible rather than with the best of conceivable worlds. He accepted men and things, including himself, as they were, with a grain of salt indeed but with insatiable curiosity, with irrepressible zest and good humor. He took life as it came, with the full-blooded heartiness of a man unacquainted with inhibitions and repressions and spiritual malaise, as a game to be played, with honesty and sincerity, but with shrewdness and an eye to the main chance, above all without pontifical solemnity, without self-pity, eschewing vain regrets for lost illusions and vain striving for the light that never was. Both his achievements and his limitations spring from this: that he accepted the world as given with imperturbable serenity; without repining identified himself with it; and brought to the understanding and the mastery of it rare common sense, genuine disinterestedness, a fertile and imaginative curiosity, and a cool, flexible intelligence fortified by exact knowledge and chastened: and humanized by practical activities.

Not only was Franklin by temperament disposed to take life as it came and to make the most of it; in addition fate provided him with a rich diversity of experience such as has rarely fallen to the lot of any man. Rising fr01v poverty to affluence, from obscurity to fame, he lived on every social level in turn, was equally at ease with rich and poor, the cultivated and the untutored, and spoke with equal facility the language of vagabonds and kings, politicians and philosophers, men of letters, kitchen girls, and femmes savantes. Reared in Boston, a citizen of Philadelphia, residing for sixteen years in London and for nine in Paris, he was equally at home in three countries, knew Europe better than any other American, America better than any European, England better than most Frenchmen, France better than most Englishmen, and was acquainted personally or through correspondence with more men of eminence in letters, science, and politics than any other man of his time. Such a variety of experience would have confused and disoriented any man Jess happily endowed with a capacity for assimilating it. Franklin took it all easily, relishing it, savoring it, without rest and without haste adding to his knowledge, fortifying and tempering his intelligence, broadening his point of view, humanizing and mellowing his tolerant acceptance of men and things-in short chastening and perfecting the qualities that were natively his; so that in the end he emerges the most universal and cosmopolitan spirit of his age. Far more a "good European," a citizen of the world, than Adams or Jefferson, Washington or Hutchinson, he remained to the end more pungently American than any of them. Jefferson said that Franklin was the one exception to the rule that seven years of diplomatic service abroad spoiled an American. Twenty-five years of almost continuous residence abroad did not spoil Franklin. Acclaimed and decorated as no American had ever been, he returned to Philadelphia and was immediately at home again, easily recognizable by his neighbors as the man they had always known-Ben Franklin, printer.

The secret of Franklin's amazing capacity for assimilating experience without being warped or discolored by it is perhaps to be found in his disposition to take life with infinite zest and yet with humorous detachment. Always immersed in affairs, he seems never completely absorbed by them; mastering easily whatever comes his way, there remain powers in reserve never wholly engaged. It is significant that his activities, with the exception of his researches in science, seem to have been the result, not of any compelling inner impulse or settled purpose, but rather of the pressure of external need or circumstance. He was a business man, and a good one; but having won a competence he retired. He was an inventor and a philanthropist, but not by profession; perceiving the need, he invented a stove or founded a hospital. He was a politician and a: diplomat, and none more skilled; but not from choice; for the most part he accepted as a duty the offices that were thrust upon him. He was a writer, a prolific one; yet his writings were nearly all occasional, prompted by the need of the moment. His one book, the Autobiography, was begun as something that might be useful to his son; that purpose served, it was never finished. He was a literary artist of rare merit, the master of a style which for clarity, precision, and pliable adhesion to the form and pressure of the idea to be conveyed has rarely been equaled. Yet once having learned the trade he was little preoccupied with the art of writing, content to throw off in passing an acute pragmatic definition: Good writing "ought to have a tendency to benefit the reader . . . . But taking the question otherwise, an ill man may write an ill thing well .... In this sense, that is well wrote, which is best adapted for obtaining the end of the writer" (Writings, I, 37). It has been said that Franklin was not entrusted with the task of writing the Declaration of Independence for fear he might conceal a joke in the middle of it. The myth holds a profound symbolic truth. In all of Franklin's dealings with men and affairs, genuine, sincere, loyal as he surely was, one feels that he is nevertheless not wholly committed; some thought remains uncommunicated; some penetrating observation is held in reserve. In spite of his ready attention to the business in hand, there is something casual about his efficient dispatch of it; he manages somehow to remain aloof, a spectator still, with amiable curiosity watching himself functioning effectively in the world. After all men were but children needing to be cajoled; affairs a game not to be played without finesse. Was there not then, on that placid countenance, even at the signing of the great Declaration, the bland smile which seems to say: This is an interesting, alas even a necessary, game; and we are playing it well, according to all the rules; but men being what they are it is perhaps best not to inquire too curiously what its ultimate significance may be.

One exception there was-science: one activity which Franklin pursued without outward prompting, from some compelling inner impulse; one activity from which he never wished to retire, to which he would willingly have devoted his life, to which he always gladly turned in every odd day or hour of leisure, even in the midst of the exacting duties -and heavy responsibilities of his public career. Science was after all the one mistress to whom he gave himself without reserve and served neither from a sense of duty nor for any practical purpose. Nature alone met him on equal terms, with a disinterestedness watching his own; needing not to be cajoled or managed with finesse, she enlisted in the solution of her problems the full power of his mind. In dealing with nature he could be, as he could not be in dealing with men and affairs, entirely sincere, pacific, objective, rational, could speak his whole thought without reservation, with no suggestion of a stupendous cosmic joke concealed in the premises. Franklin was indeed "many sided." From the varied facets of his powerful mind he threw a brilliant light on all aspects of human life; it is only in his character of natural philosopher that he emits a light quite unclouded. It is in this character therefore that the essential quality of the man appears to best advantage. Sir Humphry Davy has happily noted it for us. "The experiments adduced by Dr. Franklin ... were most ingeniously contrived and happily executed. A singular felicity of induction guided all his researches, and by very small means he established very grand truths. The style and manner of his publication [on electricity] are almost as worthy of admiration as the doctrine it contains. He has endeavoured to remove all mystery and obscurity from the subject; he has written equally for the uninitiated and for the philosopher; and he has rendered his details amusing as well as perspicuous, elegant as well as simple. Science appears in his language in a dress wonderfully decorous, the best adapted to display her native loveliness. He has in no case exhibited that false dignity, by which philosophy is kept aloof from common applications, and he has sought rather to make her a useful inmate and servant in the common habitations of man, than to preserve her merely as an object of admiration in temples and palaces" (Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, 1840, VIII, 264- 65).

[The Franklin Manuscripts are chiefly in four depositories: the Library of the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia (76 volumes, 13,000 documents in nine languages; see I. M. Hays, Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in the Library of the American Phil. Society, 1908); the Library of Congress (Stevens Collection, 14 volumes, nearly 3,000 documents; see W. C. Ford, List of the Benjamin Franklin Papers in the Library of Congress, 1905); the Library of the University of Pennsylvania (800 documents; see "Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in the Library of the University of Pennsylvania," published as an appendix of the work of I. M. Hays cited above); the Library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (660 documents). The original MS. of the Autobiography is in the Huntington Library at San Marino, Cal. For an account of the Franklin MSS., see A. H. Smyth, Writings of Benjamin Franklin, I, 1-12; and Bernard Fay, post.

Of the many collected editions of Franklin's works the chief are: Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin . .. (6 volumes, 1818), by his grandson, Temple Frankl in; The Works of Benjamin Franklin (10 volumes, 1836-40), by Jared Sparks, who "corrected" the text where he thought Franklin guilty of bad taste or vulgarity; The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin (10 volumes, 1887-88), by John Bigelow; The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Collected and edited with a Life and Introduction (10 volumes, 1905-07), by Albert Henry Smyth. The last-named edition has been used for the present article. The famous Autobiography has been issued in innumerable editions and under various titles. For the curious history of the manuscript and the various editions, see P. L. Ford, Franklin Bibliography, pp. 179 ff. The best edition is The Life of  Benjamin Franklin Written by Himself (3 volumes, 1874), ed. by John Bigelow, who supplemented the Autobiography (which recounted Franklin's life only to 1757) by a judicious selection from his correspondence. The chief secondary works are: Jas. Parton, Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2 volumes, 1864), anecdotal, interesting, not too critical; J. B. McMaster, Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters (1887); Edward E. Hale and Edward E. Hale, Jr., Franklin in France ... (2 vol s., 188;-88), chiefly valuable for documents printed; J. T. Morse, Benjamin Franklin (1889); A. W. Wetzel, "Benjamin Franklin as an Economist," in Johns Hopkins University Studies, Volume XIII (1895); Sidney George Fisher, The Trite Benjamin Franklin (1899); Paul Leicester Ford, The Many Sided Franklin (1899); Luther S. Livingston, Franklin and his Press at Passy (1914); J. C. Oswald, Benjamin Franklin, Printer (1917); William Cabell Bruce, Benjamin Franklin Self-Revealed (2 volumes, 1917); J.M. Stifler, The Religion of Benjamin Franklin (1925); Malcom R. Eiselen, Franklin's Politic al Theories (1928); Bernard Fay, Franklin, the Apostle of Modern Times (1929); J. Henry Smythe, Jr., The Amazing Benjamin Franklin (1929). For Franklin bibliography before 1889, see P. L. Ford, Franklin Bibliography: A List of Books Written by, or Relating to Benjamin Franklin (1889).]

C.L.B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 526-533:

FRANKLIN, Benjamin, statesman and philosopher, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 17 January, 1706; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 17 April, 1790. (See representation of birthplace on page 531.) His family had lived for at least three centuries in the parish of Ecton, Northamptonshire, England, on a free-hold of about thirty acres. For several generations the head of the family seems to have been the village blacksmith, the eldest son being always bred to that business. Benjamin's grandfather, Thomas, born in 1598, removed late in life to Banbury, in Oxfordshire, while his eldest son, Thomas, remained on the estate at Ecton. This Thomas received a good education, and became a scrivener. He came to be one of the most prominent men in his county, and formed a friendship with the Earl of Halifax. In mental characteristics he is said to have borne a strong likeness to his immortal nephew. The second son, John, was a dyer of woollens, and lived in Banbury. The third son, Benjamin for some time a silk-dyer in London, emigrated to Boston at an advanced age, and left descendants there. He took a great interest in politics, was fond of writing verses, and invented a system of short-hand. The fourth son, Josiah, born in 1655, served an apprenticeship with his brother John, at Banbury, but removed to New England in 1682. From the beginning of the Reformation the family had been zealous Protestants, and in Mary's reign had incurred considerable danger on that account. Their inclination seems to have been toward Puritanism, but they remained in the Church of England until late in the reign of Charles II., when so many clergymen were dispossessed of their holdings for non-conformity, and proceeded to carry on religious services in conventicles forbidden by law. Among these dispossessed clergymen in Northamptonshire were friends of Benjamin and Josiah, who became their warm adherents and attended their conventicles. The persecution of these non-conformists led to a small Puritan migration to New England, in which Josiah took part. He settled in Boston, where he followed the business of soap-boiler and tallow-chandler. He was twice married, the second time to the daughter of Peter Folger, one of the earliest settlers of New England, a man of some learning, a writer of political verses, and a zealous opponent of the persecution of the Quakers. By his first wife Josiah Franklin had seven children; by his second, ten, of whom the illustrious Benjamin was the youngest son. For five generations his direct ancestors had been youngest sons of youngest sons. As a child he showed such precocity that his father at first thought of sending him to Harvard and educating him for the ministry; but the wants of his large family were so numerous that presently he felt that he could not afford the expense of this. At the age of ten, after little more than a year at the grammar-school, Benjamin was set to work in his father's shop, cutting wicks and filling moulds for candles. This was so irksome to him that he began to show symptoms of a desire to run away and go to sea. To turn his mind from this, his father at length decided to make him a printer. He was an insatiable reader, and the few shillings that found their way into his hands were all laid out in books. His elder brother, James, had learned the printer's trade, and in 1717 returned from England with a press, and established himself in business in Boston. In the following year Benjamin was apprenticed to his elder brother, and, becoming interested and proficient in the work, soon made himself very useful. He indulged his taste for reading, which often kept him up late into the night. Like so many other youthful readers, he counted Defoe and Bunyan among his favorites, but presently we find him studying Locke's “Essay on the Human Understanding,” and the Port Royal logic. While practising himself in arithmetic and the elements of geometry, he was also striving to acquire a prose style like that of Addison. He wrote little ballads and songs of the chap-book sort, and hawked them about the streets, sometimes with profit to his pocket. At the same time an inborn tendency toward free-thinking was strengthened by reading Shaftesbury and Collins, until some worthy people began to look askance at him and call him an infidel. In 1721 James Franklin began printing and publishing the “New England Courant,” the third newspaper that appeared in Boston, and the fourth in America. For this paper Benjamin wrote anonymous articles, and contrived to smuggle them into its columns without his brother's knowledge of their authorship; some of them attracted attention, and were attributed to various men of eminence in the colony. The newspaper was quite independent in its tone, and for a political article that gave offence to the colonial legislature James Franklin was put into jail for a month, while Benjamin was duly admonished and threatened. Finding himself somewhat unpopular in Boston, and being harshly treated by his brother, whose violent temper he confesses to have sometimes provoked by his sauciness, Benjamin at length made up his mind to run away from home and seek his fortune. He raised a little money by selling some of his books, and in October, 1723, set sail in a sloop for New York. Unable to find employment there as a printer, he set out for Philadelphia, crossing to Amboy in a small vessel, which was driven upon the coast of Long Island in a heavy gale. Narrowly escaping shipwreck, he at length reached Amboy in the crazy little craft, after thirty hours without food or drink, except a drop from a flask of what he called “filthy rum.” From Amboy he made his way on foot across New Jersey to Burlington, whence he was taken in a row-boat to Philadelphia, landing there on a Sunday morning, cold, bedraggled, and friendless, with one Dutch dollar in his pocket. But he soon found employment in a printing-office, earned a little money, made a few friends, and took comfortable lodgings in the house of a Mr. Read, with whose daughter Deborah he proceeded to fall in love. It was not long before his excellent training and rare good sense attracted the favorable notice of Sir William Keith, governor of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia printers being ignorant and unskilful, Keith wished to secure Franklin's services, and offered to help set him up in business for himself and give him the government printing, such as it was. Franklin had now been seven months in Philadelphia, and, his family having at length heard news of him, it was thought best that he should return to Boston and solicit aid from his father in setting up a press in Philadelphia. On reaching Boston he found his brother sullen and resentful, but his father received him kindly. He refused the desired assistance, on the ground that a boy of eighteen was not fit to manage a business, but he commended his industry and perseverance, and made no objection to his returning to Philadelphia, warning him to restrain his inclination to write lampoons and satires, and holding out hopes of aid in case he should behave industriously and frugally until twenty-one years of age.

On Franklin's return to Philadelphia, the governor promised to furnish the money needful for establishing him in business, and encouraged him to go over to London, in order to buy a press and type and gather useful information. But Sir William was one of those social nuisances that are lavish in promises but scanty in performance. It was with the assurance that the ship's mail-bag carried letters of introduction and the necessary letter of credit that young Franklin crossed the ocean. On reaching England, he found that Keith had deceived him. Having neither money nor credit wherewith to accomplish the purpose of his journey or return to America, he sought and soon found a place as journeyman in a London printing-house. Before leaving home he had been betrothed to Miss Read. He now wrote to her that it would be long before he should return to America. His ability and diligence enabled him to earn money quickly, but for a while he was carried away by the fascinations of a great city, and spent his money as fast as he earned it. In the course of his eighteen months in London he gained much knowledge of the world, and became acquainted with some distinguished persons, among others Dr. Mandeville and Sir Hans Sloane; and he speaks of his “extreme desire” to meet Sir Isaac Newton, in which he was not gratified. In the autumn of 1726 he made his way back to Philadelphia, and after some further vicissitudes was at length (in 1729) established in business as a printer. He now became editor and proprietor of the “Pennsylvania Gazette,” and soon made it so popular by his ably-written articles that it yielded him a comfortable income. During his absence in England, Miss Read, hearing nothing from him after his first letter, had supposed that he had grown tired of her. In her chagrin she married a worthless knave, who treated her cruelly, and soon ran away to the West Indies, where he died. Franklin found her overwhelmed with distress and mortification, for which he felt himself to be partly responsible. Their old affection speedily revived, and on 1 September, 1730, they were married. They lived most happily together until her death, 19 December, 1774.

As Franklin grew to maturity he became noted for his public spirit and an interest at once wide and keen in human affairs. Soon after his return from England he established a debating society, called the “Junto,” for the discussion of questions in morals, politics, and natural philosophy. Among the earliest members may be observed the name of the eminent mathematician, Thomas Godfrey, who soon afterward invented a quadrant similar to Hadley's. For many years Franklin was the life of this club, which in 1743 was developed into the American philosophical society. In 1732 he began publishing an almanac for the diffusion of useful information among the people. Published under the pen-name of “Richard Saunders,” this entertaining collection of wit and wisdom, couched in quaint and pithy language, had an immense sale, and became famous throughout the world as “Poor Richard's Almanac.” In 1731 Franklin founded the Philadelphia library. In 1743 he projected the university that a few years later was developed into the University of Pennsylvania, and was for a long time considered one of the foremost institutions of learning in this country.

From early youth Franklin was interested in scientific studies, and his name by and by became associated with a very useful domestic invention, and also with one of the most remarkable scientific discoveries of the 18th century. In 1742 he invented the “open stove, for the better warming of rooms,” an invention that has not yet entirely fallen into disuse. Ten years later, by wonderfully simple experiments with a kite, he showed that lightning is a discharge of electricity; and in 1753 he received the Copley medal from the Royal society for this most brilliant and pregnant discovery.

A man so public-spirited as Franklin, and editor of a prominent newspaper besides, could not long remain outside of active political life. In 1736 he was made clerk of the assembly of Pennsylvania, and in 1737 postmaster of Philadelphia. Under his skilful management this town became the center of the whole postal system of the colonies, and in 1753 he was made deputy postmaster-general for the continent. Besides vastly increasing the efficiency of the postal service, he succeeded at the same time in making it profitable. In 1754 Franklin becomes a conspicuous figure in Continental politics. In that year the prospect of war with the French led several of the royal governors to call for a congress of all the colonies, to be held at Albany. The primary purpose of the meeting was to make sure of the friendship of the Six Nations, and to organize a general scheme of operations against the French. The secondary purpose was to prepare some plan of confederation which all the colonies might be persuaded to adopt. Only the four New England colonies, with New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, sent commissioners to this congress. The people seem to have felt very little interest in the movement. Among the newspapers none seem to have favored it warmly except the “Pennsylvania Gazette,” which appeared with a union device and the motto “Unite or Die!” At the Albany congress Franklin brought forward the first coherent scheme ever propounded for securing a permanent Federal union of the thirteen colonies. The plan contemplated the union of all the colonies under a single central government, under which each colony might preserve its local independence. The legislative assembly of each colony was to choose, once in three years, representatives to attend a Federal grand council, which was to meet every year at Philadelphia, as the city most convenient of access from north and south alike. This grand council was to choose its own speaker, and could neither be dissolved nor prorogued except by its own consent, or by especial order of the crown. The grand council was to make treaties with the Indians, and regulate trade with them; and it was to have sole power of legislation on all matters concerning the colonies as a whole. To these ends it could lay taxes, enlist soldiers, build forts, and nominate civil officers. Its laws were to be submitted to the king for approval; and the royal veto, in order to be effective, must be exercised within three years. To this grand council each colony was to send a number of representatives, proportioned to its contributions to the continental military service, the minimum number being two, the maximum seven. With the exception of such matters of general concern as were to be managed by the grand council, each colony was to retain its powers of legislation intact. In an emergency any colony might singly defend itself against foreign attack, and the Federal government was prohibited from impressing soldiers or seamen without the consent of the local legislature. The supreme executive power was to be vested in a president or governor-general, appointed and paid by the crown. He was to have a veto on all the acts of the grand council, and was to nominate all military officers, subject to its approval. No money could be issued save by joint order of the governor-general and council. “This plan,” said Franklin, “is not altogether to my mind; but it is as I could get it.” To the credit of its great author, it should be observed that this scheme—long afterward known as the “Albany plan”—contemplated the formation of a self-sustaining Federal government, and not of a mere league. It aimed at creating “a public authority as obligatory in its sphere as the local governments were in their spheres”; and in this respect it was much more complete than the articles of confederation under which the thirteen states contrived to live from 1781 till 1789. But public opinion was not yet ripe for the adoption of such bold and comprehensive ideas. After long debate, the Albany congress decided to adopt Franklin's plan, and copies of it were sent to all the colonies for their consideration; but nowhere did it meet with popular approval. A town-meeting in Boston denounced it as subversive of liberty; Pennsylvania rejected it without a word of discussion; not one of the assemblies voted to adopt it. When sent over to England, to be inspected by the ministers of the crown, it only irritated and alarmed them. In England it was thought to give too much independence of action to the colonies; in America it was thought to give too little. The scheme was, moreover, impracticable, because the desire for union on the part of the several colonies was still extremely feeble; but it shows on the part of Franklin wonderful foresightedness. If the Revolution had not occurred, we should probably have sooner or later come to live under a constitution resembling the Albany plan. On the other hand, if the Albany plan had been put into operation, it might perhaps have so adjusted the relations of the colonies to the British government that the Revolution would not have occurred.

The only persons that favored Franklin's scheme were the royal governors, and this was because they hoped it might be of service in raising money with which to fight the French. In such matters the local assemblies were extremely niggardly. At the beginning of the war in 1755, Franklin had been for some years the leading spirit in the assembly of Pennsylvania, which was engaged in a fierce dispute with the governor concerning the taxation of the proprietary estates. The governor contended that these should be exempt from taxation; the assembly insisted rightly that these estates should bear their due share of the public burdens. On another hotly disputed question the assembly was clearly in the wrong; it insisted upon issuing paper money, and against this pernicious folly governor after governor fought with obstinate bravery. In 1755 the result of these furious contentions was that Braddock's army was unable to get any support except from the steadfast personal exertions of Franklin, who used his great influence with the farmers to obtain horses, wagons, and provisions, pledging his own property for their payment. Until the question of the proprietary estates should be settled, the operations of the war seemed likely to be paralyzed. In 1757 Franklin was sent over to England to plead the cause of the assembly before the privy council. This business kept him in England five years, in the course of which he became acquainted with the most eminent people in the country. His discoveries and writings had won him a European reputation. Before he left England, in 1762, he received the degree of LL. D. from the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh. His arguments before the privy council were successful; the sorely vexed question was decided against the proprietary governors; and on his return to Pennsylvania in 1762 he received the formal thanks of the assembly. It was not long before his services were again required in England. In 1764 Grenville gave notice of his proposed stamp-act for defraying part of the expenses of the late war, and Franklin was sent to England as agent for Pennsylvania, and instructed to make every effort to prevent the passage of the stamp-act. He carried out his instructions ably and faithfully; but when the obnoxious law was passed in 1765, he counselled submission. In this case, however, the wisdom of this wisest of Americans proved inferior to the “collective wisdom” of his fellow-countrymen. Warned by the fierce resistance of the Americans, the new ministry of Lord Rockingham decided to reconsider the act. In an examination before the house of commons, Franklin's strong sense and varied knowledge won general admiration, and contributed powerfully toward the repeal of the stamp-act. The danger was warded off but for a time, however. Next year Charles Townshend carried his measures for taxing American imports and applying the proceeds to the maintenance of a civil list in each of the colonies, to be responsible only to the British government. The need for Franklin's services as mediator was now so great that he was kept in England, and presently the colonies of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia chose him as their agent. During these years he made many warm friendships with eminent men in England, as with Burke, Lord Shelburne, Lord Howe, David Hartley, and Dr. Priestley. His great powers were earnestly devoted to preventing a separation between England and America. His methods were eminently conciliatory; but the independence of character with which he told unwelcome truths made him an object of intense dislike to the king and his friends, who regarded him as aiming to undermine the royal authority in America. George III. is said to have warned his ministers against “that crafty American, who is more than a match for you all.” In 1774 this dread and dislike found vent in an explosion, the echoes of which have hardly yet died away. This was the celebrated affair of the “Hutchinson letters.”

For several years a private and unofficial correspondence had been kept up between Hutchinson, Oliver, and other high officials in Massachusetts, on the one hand, and Thomas Whately, who had formerly been private secretary to George Grenville, on the other. The choice of Whately for correspondent was due to the fact that he was supposed to be very familiar at once with colonial affairs and with the views and purposes of the king's friends. In these letters Hutchinson had a great deal to say about the weakness of the royal government in Massachusetts, and the need for a strong military force to support it; he condemned the conduct of Samuel Adams and the other popular leaders as seditious, and enlarged upon the turbulence of the people of Boston; he doubted if it were practicable for a colony removed by 3,000 miles of ocean to enjoy all the liberties of the mother country without severing its connection with her; and he had therefore reluctantly come to the conclusion that Massachusetts must submit to “an abridgment of what are called English liberties.” Oliver, in addition to such general views, maintained that judges and other crown officers should have fixed salaries assigned by the crown, so as to become independent of popular favor. There can be no doubt that such suggestions were made in perfect good faith, or that Hutchinson and Oliver had the true interests of Massachusetts at heart, according to their lamentably inadequate understanding of the matter. But to the people of Massachusetts, at that time, such suggestions could but seem little short of treasonable. Thomas Whately died in June, 1772, and all his papers passed into the custody of William, his brother and executor. In the following December, before William Whately had opened or looked over the packet of letters from Hutchinson and his friends, it was found that they had been purloined by some person unknown. It is not certain that the letters had ever really passed into William Whately's hands. They may have been left lying in some place where they might have attracted the notice of some curious busybody, who forthwith laid hands upon them. This point has never been satisfactorily cleared up. At all events, they were brought to Franklin as containing political intelligence that might prove important. At this time Massachusetts was furiously excited over the attempt of Lord North's government to have the salaries of the judges fixed and paid by the crown instead of the colonial assembly. The judges had been threatened with impeachment should they dare to receive a penny from the royal treasury, and at the head of the threatened judges was Oliver's younger brother, the chief justice of Massachusetts. As agent for the colony, Franklin felt it to be his duty to give information of the dangerous contents of the letters now laid before him. Although they purported to be merely a private and confidential correspondence, they were not really “of the nature of private letters between friends.” As Franklin said, “they were written by public officers to persons in public station, on public affairs, and intended to procure public measures”; they were therefore handed to other public persons, who might be influenced by them to produce those measures; their tendency was to incense the mother country against her colonies, and, by the steps recommended, to widen the breach, which they effected. The chief caution “from the writers to Thomas Whately” with respect to privacy was, to keep their contents from “the knowledge of the colonial agents in London,” who, the writers apprehended, “might return them, or copies of them, to America.” Franklin felt as Walsingham might have felt on suddenly discovering, in private and confidential papers, the incontrovertible proof of some popish plot against the life of Queen Elizabeth. From the person that brought him the letters he got permission to send them to Massachusetts, on condition that they should be shown only to a few people in authority, that they should not be copied or printed, that they should presently be returned, and that the name of the person from whom they were obtained should never be disclosed. This last condition was most thoroughly fulfilled. The others must have been felt to be mainly a matter of form; it was obvious that, though they might be literally complied with, their spirit would inevitably be violated. As Orlando Hutchinson writes, “we all know what this sort of secrecy means, and what will be the end of it”; and, as Franklin himself observed, “there was no restraint proposed to talking of them, but only to copying.” The letters were sent to the proper person, Thomas Cushing, speaker of the Massachusetts assembly, and he showed them to Hancock, Hawley, and the two Adamses. To these gentlemen it could have been no new discovery that Hutchinson and Oliver held such opinions as were expressed in the letters; but the documents seemed to furnish tangible proof of what had long been suspected, that the governor and his lieutenant were plotting against the liberties of Massachusetts. They were soon talked about at every town-meeting and on every street-corner. The assembly twitted Hutchinson with them, and asked for copies of these and other such papers as he might see fit to communicate. He replied, somewhat sarcastically, “If you desire copies with a view to make them public, the originals are more proper for the purpose than any copies.” Mistaken and dangerous as Hutchinson's policy was, his conscience acquitted him of any treasonable purpose, and he must naturally have preferred to have the people judge him by what he had really written rather than by vague and distorted rumors. His reply was taken as sufficient warrant for printing the letters, and they were soon in the possession of every reader in England or America who could afford sixpence for a political tract. On the other side of the Atlantic they aroused as much excitement as on this, and William Whately became concerned to know who could have purloined the letters. On slight evidence he charged a Mr. Temple with the theft, and a duel ensued in which Whately was wounded. Hearing of this affair, Franklin published a card in which he avowed his own share in the transaction, and in a measure screened all others by drawing the full torrent of wrath and abuse upon himself. All the ill-suppressed spleen of the king's friends was at once discharged upon him. Meanwhile the Massachusetts assembly formally censured the letters, as evidence of a scheme for subverting the constitution of the colony, and petitioned the king to remove Hutchinson and Oliver from office. In January, 1774, the petition was duly brought before the privy council in the presence of a large and brilliant gathering of spectators. The solicitor-general, David Wedderburn, instead of discussing the question on its merits, broke out with a violent and scurrilous invective against Franklin, whom he derided as a man of letters, calling him a “man of three letters,” the Roman slang expression for f-u-r, a thief. Of the members of government present, Lord North alone preserved decorum; the others laughed and clapped their hands, while Franklin stood as unmoved as the moon at the baying of dogs. He could afford to disregard the sneers of a man like Wedderburn, whom the king, though fain to use him as a tool, called the greatest knave in the realm. The Massachusetts petition was rejected as scandalous, and next day Franklin was dismissed from his office of postmaster-general.

They are in error who think it was this personal insult that led Franklin to favor the revolt of the colonies, as they are also wrong who suppose that his object in sending home the Hutchinson letters was to stir up dissension. His conduct immediately after passing through this ordeal is sufficient proof of the unabated sincerity of his desire for conciliation. The news of the Boston tea-party arriving in England about this time, led presently to the acts of April, 1774, for closing the port of Boston and remodelling the government of Massachusetts. The only way in which Massachusetts could escape these penalties was by indemnifying the East India company for the tea that had been destroyed; and Franklin, seeing that the attempt to enforce the new acts must almost inevitably lead to war, actually went so far as to advise Massachusetts to pay for the tea. Samuel Adams, on hearing of this, is said to have observed: “Franklin may be a good philosopher, but he is a bungling politician.” Certainly in this instance Franklin showed himself less far-sighted than Adams and the people of Massachusetts. The moment had come when compromise was no longer possible. To have yielded now, in the face of the arrogant and tyrannical acts of April, would have been not only to stultify the heroic deeds of the patriots in the last December, but it would have broken up the nascent union of the colonies; it would virtually have surrendered them, bound hand and foot, to the tender mercies of the king. That Franklin should have suggested such a step, in order to avoid precipitating a conflict, shows forcibly how anxious he was to keep the peace. He remained in England nearly a year longer, though many things were done by the king's party to make his stay unpleasant. During the autumn and winter he had many conversations with persons near the government, who were anxious to find out how the Americans might be conciliated without England's abandoning a single one of the wrong positions that she had taken. This was an insolvable problem, and when Franklin had become convinced of this he reluctantly gave it up and returned to America, arriving in Philadelphia on 5 May, 1775, to find that the shedding of blood had just begun. On the next day the assembly of Pennsylvania unanimously elected him delegate to the 2d Continental congress, then about to assemble. He now became a zealous supporter of the war, and presently of the Declaration of Independence. When congress, in July, decided to send one more petition to the king, he wrote a letter which David Hartley read aloud in the house of commons. “If you flatter yourselves,” said Franklin, “with beating us into submission, you know neither the people nor the country. The congress will await the result of their last petition.” A little more than two years afterward, in December, 1777, as parliament sat overwhelmed with chagrin at the tidings of Burgoyne's surrender, Hartley pulled out this letter again and upbraided the house with it. “You were then” said he, “confident of having America under your feet, and despised every proposition recommending peace and lenient measures.” When this unyielding temper had driven the Americans to declare their independence of Great Britain, Franklin was one of the committee of five chosen by congress to draw up a document worthy of the occasion. To the document, as drafted by Jefferson, he seems to have contributed only a few verbal emendations. The Declaration of Independence made it necessary to seek foreign alliances, and first of all with England's great rival, France. Here Franklin's world-wide fame and his long experience of public life in England enabled him to play a part that would have been impossible for any other American. He had fifteen years of practice as an ambassador, and was thoroughly familiar with European politics. In his old days of editorial work in Philadelphia, with his noble scholarly habit of putting every moment to some good use, he had learned the French language, with Italian and Spanish also, besides getting some knowledge of Latin. He was thus possessed of talismans for opening many a treasure-house, and among all the encyclopædist philosophers of Paris it would have been hard to point to a mind more encyclopædic than his own. Negotiations with the French court had been begun already, through the agency of Arthur Lee and Silas Deane, and in the autumn of 1776 Franklin was sent out to join with these gentlemen in securing the active aid and cooperation of France in the war. His arrival, on 21 December, was the occasion of great excitement in the fashionable world of Paris. By thinkers like D'Alembert and Diderot he was regarded as the embodiment of practical wisdom. To many he seemed to sum up in himself the excellences of the American cause—justice, good sense, and moderation. It was Turgot that said of him, “Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis.” As symbolizing the liberty for which all France was yearning, he was greeted with a popular enthusiasm such as perhaps no French man of letters except Voltaire has ever called forth. Shopkeepers rushed to their doors to catch a glimpse of him as he passed along the sidewalk, while in evening salons jewelled ladies of the court vied with one another in paying him homage.

As the first fruits of his negotiations, the French government agreed to furnish two million livres a year, in quarterly instalments, to aid the American cause. Arms and ammunition were sent over, and Americans were allowed to fit out privateers in French ports, and even to bring in and sell their prizes. Further than this France was not yet ready to go. She did not wish to incur the risk of war with England until an American alliance could seem to promise her some manifest advantage. This surreptitious aid continued through the year 1777, until the surrender of Burgoyne put a new face upon things. The immediate consequence of that great event was an attempt on the part of Lord North's government to change front, and offer concessions to the Americans, which, if they had ever been duly considered, might even at this late moment have ended in some compromise between England and the United States. Now, if ever, was the moment for France to interpose, and she seized it. On 6 February, 1778, the treaty was signed at Paris which ultimately secured the independence of the United States. For the successful management of this negotiation, one of the most important in the annals of modern diplomacy, the credit is almost solely due to Franklin. Another invaluable service was the negotiation of loans without which it would have been impossible for the United States to carry on the war. As the Continental congress had no power to levy taxes, there were but three ways in which it could pay the expenses of the army: (1) By requisitions upon the state governments; (2) by issuing its promissory notes, or so-called “paper money”; (3) by foreign loans. The first method brought in money altogether too slowly; the second served its purpose for a short time, but by 1780 the continental notes had became worthless. The war of independence would have been an ignominious failure but for foreign loans, and these were made mostly by France and through the extraordinary sagacity and tact of Franklin. It is doubtful if any other man of that time could have succeeded in getting so much money from the French government, which found it no easy matter to pay its own debts and support an idle population of nobles and clergy upon taxes wrung from a groaning peasantry. During Franklin's stay in Paris the annual contribution of 2,000,000 livres was at first increased to 3,000,000, and afterward, in 1781, to 4,000,000. Besides this, which was a loan, the French government sent over 9,000,000 as a free gift, and guaranteed the interest upon a loan of 10,000,000 to be raised in Holland. Franklin himself, just before sailing for France, had gathered together all the cash he could command for the moment, beyond what was needed for immediate necessities, and amounting to nearly £4,000, and put it into the United States treasury as a loan.

On the fall of Lord North's ministry in March, 1782, Franklin sent a letter to his friend, Lord Shelburne, expressing a hope that peace might soon be made. When the letter reached London, the new ministry, in which Shelburne was secretary of state for home and colonies, had already been formed, and Shelburne, with the consent of the cabinet, replied by sending over to Paris an agent to talk with Franklin informally, and ascertain the terms upon which the Americans would make peace. The person chosen for this purpose was Richard Oswald, a Scottish merchant of frank disposition and liberal views. In April there were several conversations between Oswald and Franklin, in one of which the latter suggested that, in order to make a durable peace, it was desirable to remove all occasion for future quarrel; that the line of frontier between New York and Canada was inhabited by a lawless set of men, who in time of peace would be likely to breed trouble between their respective governments; and that therefore it would be well for England to cede Canada to the United States. A similar reasoning would apply to Nova Scotia. By ceding these countries to the United States, it would be possible, from the sale of unappropriated lands, to indemnify the Americans for all losses of private property during the war, and also to make reparation to the Tories whose estates had been confiscated. By pursuing such a policy, England, which had made war on America unjustly, and had wantonly done it great injuries, would achieve not merely peace, but reconciliation with America, and reconciliation, said Franklin, is “a sweet word.” This was a very bold tone for Franklin to take; but he knew that almost every member of the Whig ministry had publicly expressed the opinion that the war against America was unjust and wanton; and being, moreover, a shrewd hand at a bargain, he began by setting his terms high. Oswald seems to have been convinced by Franklin's reasoning, and expressed neither surprise nor reluctance at the idea of ceding Canada. The main points of this conversation were noted upon a sheet of paper, which Franklin allowed Oswald to take to London and show to Lord Shelburne, first writing upon it an express declaration of its informal character. On receiving this memorandum, Shelburne did not show it to the cabinet, but returned it to Franklin without any immediate answer, after keeping it only one night. Oswald was presently sent back to Paris, empowered as commissioner to negotiate with Franklin, and carried Shelburne's answer to the memorandum that desired the cession of Canada for three reasons. The answer was terse: “1. By way of reparation.—Answer: No reparation can be heard of. 2. To prevent future wars.—Answer: It is to be hoped that some more friendly method will be found. 3. As a fund of indemnification to loyalists.—Answer: No independence to be acknowledged without their being taken care of.” Besides, added Shelburne, the Americans would be expected to make some compensation for the surrender of Charleston, Savannah, and the city of New York, still held by British troops. From this it appears that Shelburne, as well as Franklin, knew how to begin by asking more than he was likely to get. England was no more likely to listen to a proposal for ceding Canada than the Americans were to listen to the suggestion of compensating the British for surrendering New York. But there can be little doubt that the bold stand thus taken by Franklin at the outset, together with the influence he acquired over Oswald, contributed materially to the brilliant success of the American negotiations. This is the more important to be noted in connection with the biography of Franklin, since in the later stages of the negotiations the initiative passed almost entirely out of his hands, and into those of his colleagues, Jay and Adams. The form that the treaty took was mainly the work of these younger statesmen; the services of Franklin were chiefly valuable at the beginning, and again, to some extent, at the end. There were two grave difficulties in making a treaty. The first was, that France was really hostile to the American claims. She wished to see the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi divided between England and Spain; England to have the region north of the Ohio, and the region south of it to remain an Indian territory under the protectorate of Spain, except a narrow strip on the western slope of the Alleghanies, over which the United States might exercise protectorship. In other words, France wished to confine the United States to the east of the Alleghanies, and forever prevent their expansion westward. France also wished to exclude the Americans from all share in the fisheries, in order to prevent the United States from becoming a great naval power. As France, up to a certain point, was our ally, this antagonism of interests made the negotiation extremely difficult. The second difficulty was the unwillingness of the British government to acknowledge the independence of the United States as a condition that must precede all negotiation. The Americans insisted upon this point, as they had insisted ever since the Staten Island conference in 1776; but England wished to withhold the recognition long enough to bargain with it in making the treaty. This difficulty was enhanced by the fact that, if this point were conceded to the Americans, it would transfer the conduct of the treaty from the colonial secretary, Shelburne, to the foreign secretary, Fox; and these two gentlemen not only differed widely in their views of the situation, but were personally bitter enemies. Presently Fox heard of the private memorandum that Shelburne had received from Franklin but had not shown to the cabinet, and he concluded, quite wrongly, that Shelburne was playing a secret part for purposes of his own. Accordingly, Fox made up his mind at all events to get the American negotiations transferred to his own department; and to this end, on the last day of June, he moved in the cabinet that the independence of the United States should be unconditionally acknowledged, so that England might treat as with a foreign power. The motion was lost, and Fox prepared to resign his office; but the very next day the death of Lord Rockingham broke up the ministry. Lord Shelburne now became prime minister, and other circumstances occurred which simplified the problem. In April the French fleet in the West Indies had been annihilated by Rodney; in September this was followed by the total defeat of the combined French and Spanish forces at Gibraltar. This altered the situation seriously England, though defeated in America, was victorious as regarded France and Spain. The avowed object for which France had entered into alliance with the Americans was to secure the independence of the United States, and this point was now substantially gained. The chief object for which Spain had entered into alliance with France was to drive the English from Gibraltar, and this point was now decidedly lost. France had bound herself not to desist from the war until Spain should recover Gibraltar; but now there was little hope of accomplishing this, except by some fortunate bargain in the treaty. Vergennes now tried to satisfy Spain at the expense of the United States, and he sent a secret emissary under an assumed name to Lord Shelburne, to develop his plan for dividing the Mississippi valley between England and Spain. This was discovered by Jay, who counter-acted it by sending a messenger of his own to Shelburne, who thus perceived the antagonism that had arisen between the allies. It now became manifestly for the advantage of England and the United States to carry on their negotiations without the intervention of France, as England preferred to make concessions to the Americans rather than to the house of Bourbon. By first detaching the United States from the alliance, she could proceed to browbeat France and Spain. There was an obstacle in the way of a separate negotiation. The chevalier Luzerne, the French minister at Philadelphia, had been busy with congress, and that body had sent instructions to its commissioners at Paris to be guided in all things by the wishes of the French court. Jay and Adams, overruling Franklin, took the responsibility of disregarding these instructions; and the provisions of the treaty, so marvellously favorable to the Americans, were arranged by a separate negotiation with England. In the arrangement of the provisions, Franklin played an important part, especially in driving the British commissioners from their position with regard to the compensation of loyalists. After a long struggle upon this point, Franklin observed that, if the loyalists were to be indemnified, it would be necessary also to reckon up the damage they had done in burning villages and shipping, and then strike a balance between the two accounts; and he gravely suggested that a special commission might be appointed for this purpose. It was now getting late in the autumn, and Shelburne felt it to be a political necessity to bring the negotiation to an end before the assembling of parliament. At the prospect of endless discussion, which Franklin's suggestion involved, the British commissioners gave way and accepted the American terms. Affairs having reached this point, it remained for Franklin to lay the matter before Vergennes in such wise as to avoid a rupture of the cordial relations between America and France. It was a delicate matter, for, in dealing separately with the English government, the Americans laid themselves open to the charge of having committed a breach of diplomatic courtesy; but Franklin managed it with entire success.

On the part of the Americans the treaty of 1783 was one of the most brilliant triumphs in the whole history of modern diplomacy. Had the affair been managed by men of ordinary ability, the greatest results of the Revolutionary war would probably have been lost; the new republic would have been cooped up between the Atlantic and the Alleghanies; our westward expansion would have been impossible without further warfare; and the formation of our Federal union would doubtless have been effectively hindered or prevented. To the grand triumph the varied talents of Franklin, Adams, and Jay alike contributed. To the latter is due the credit of detecting and baffling the sinister designs of France; but without the tact of Franklin this probably could not have been accomplished without offending France in such wise as to spoil everything.

Franklin's last diplomatic achievement was the negotiation of a treaty with Prussia, in which was inserted an article looking toward the abolition of privateering. This treaty, as Washington observed at the time, was the most liberal that had ever been made between independent powers, and marked a new era in international morality. In September, 1785, Franklin returned to America, and in the next month was chosen president of Pennsylvania. He was re-elected in 1786 and 1787. In the summer of the latter year he was a delegate to the immortal convention that framed the constitution of the United States. He took a comparatively small part in the debates, but some of his suggestions were very timely, as when he seconded the Connecticut compromise. At the close of the proceedings he made a short speech, in which he said: “I consent to this constitution, because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.” His last public act was the signing of a memorial addressed to congress by an anti-slavery society of which he was president. This petition, which was presented on 12 February, 1790, asked for the abolition of the slave-trade, and for the emancipation of slaves. The southern members of congress were very indignant, and Mr. Jackson, of Georgia, undertook to prove, with the aid of texts from Scripture, the sacredness of the institution of slavery. On 23 March, Franklin wrote an answer, which was published in the “National Gazette.” It was an ingenious parody of Jackson's speech, put into the mouth of a member of the “divan of Algiers,” and fortified by texts from the Koran. This characteristic article, one of the most amusing he ever published, was written within four weeks of his death.

The abilities of Franklin were so vast and so various, he touched human life at so many points, that it would require an elaborate essay to characterize him properly. “He was at once philosopher, statesman, diplomatist, scientific discoverer, inventor, philanthropist, moralist, and wit, while as a writer of English he was surpassed by few men of his time. History presents few examples of a career starting from such humble beginnings and attaining to such great and enduring splendor. The career of a Napoleon, for example, in comparison with Franklin's, seems vulgar and trivial. The ceaseless industry of Franklin throughout his long life was guided to an extraordinary degree by the clear light of reason, and inspired by a warm and enthusiastic desire for the improvement of mankind. He is in many respects the greatest of Americans, and one of the greatest men whose names are recorded in history. In accordance with his wishes, Franklin's remains were deposited beside those of his wife and daughter, in the yard of Christ church, at the corner of 5th and Arch streets, Philadelphia, under a plain marble stone inscribed “Benjamin and Deborah Franklin.” (See accompanying illustration.) In early life he had written a fanciful epitaph for himself, which was published in the “New England Courant” and has become famous: “The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer, like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, and stripped of its lettering and gilding, lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be lost; for it will, as he believed, appear once more in a new and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author.”

Franklin left a charming “Autobiography,” covering the earlier part of his life down to his arrival in London in 1757. The best edition is the one edited by John Bigelow (Philadelphia, 1868). His works were edited by Jared Sparks (10 vols., Boston, 1850). In 1885 a large mass of unedited manuscripts, by Franklin or relating to him, collected by the late Henry Stevens, of Vermont, for a long time a resident in London, was purchased by congress. A new edition of Franklin's complete works, edited by John Bigelow and containing much new material obtained from the Stevens manuscripts, is now in course of publication (10 vols., New York, 1887). See Condorcet's “Éloge de Franklin” (Paris, 1790); Bauer's “Washington and Franklin” (Berlin, 1803-'6); Schmaltz's “Leben Benj. Franklin's” (Leipsic, 1840); Parton's “Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin” (2 vols., New York, 1864); Mignet's “Vie de Franklin” (Paris, 1873); and Hale's “Franklin in France” (Boston, 1887). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 526-533.

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

DR. FRANKLIN was unquestionably a very remarkable man; one who, in any age or country, would, by the mere force of his native talents, have made a respectable figure in life. It is probable, however, that had his lot thrown him in an older or more refined community than America was in his youth, he would not have been contemplated as the sun of the system. He, like many other distinguished characters, was much indebted to circumstance. It must be admitted, too, that he had many conceits, or fancies; that he was by no means without his foibles; and that, in his own phrase, he committed some great errors in the early part of his career.

This is not said with any view of detracting from the eminent merit of Dr. FRANKLIN, but as his own and the candid opinion of posterity; when he looked back upon his errors, he freely confessed them, pointing out to others the rocks and quicksands on which he struck, or into which his passions or his inclinations had plunged him. Most of his mistakes seem to have been the effect of constitution, or at least constitutional organization favored their growth. His passions were not violent; his affections were rather steady than warm; his sensibilities rather correct than acute.

It has been ascertained that the Franklin family were settled at the village of Ecton, in Northamptonshire, England, on a freehold estate, of about thirty acres, more than three hundred years ago; the eldest sons generally having been blacksmiths. “Our humble family,” observes FRANKLIN, in the admirable memoir which he wrote of his own life, “early embraced the reformed religion. Our forefathers continued protestants through the reign of Mary, when they were sometimes in danger of persecution, on account of their zeal against popery.”

The family preserved its attachment to the Church of England, till towards the close of the reign of Charles II., when some of its members, amongst whom was Josias the father of BENJAMIN, the subject of this memoir, became non-conformists. Marrying early in life, Josias came with his first wife and a few children to America; BENJAMIN was born in Boston, January 17th, 1706; he was the fifteenth of seventeen children; his father attained the age of eighty-seven, and his mother that of eighty-five. Over their grave at Boston, some years after their death, our philosopher placed a stone, bearing the following inscription:—

“HERE LIE
JOSIAS FRANKLIN, and Abiah his wife; they lived together with reciprocal affection fifty-nine years, and, without private fortune, without lucrative employment, by assiduous labor and honest industry, decently supported a numerous family, and educated with success thirteen children and seven grandchildren. Let this example, reader, encourage thee diligently to discharge the duties of thy calling, and to rely on the support of Divine Providence.

 He was pious and prudent,
She discreet and virtuous.
Their youngest son, from a sentiment of filial duty, consecrates
This stone
To their memory.”

The father had emigrated to enjoy religious freedom; he was a tallow-chandler and soap-boiler. Young FRANKLIN, having been intended for the ministry, was sent to a grammar school when eight years of age; but as the father’s circumstances frustrated that design, he was taken home, and employed in cutting wicks, filling moulds, and waiting on his parents, performing in fact the duties of an errand boy and youngest apprentice. Not liking that occupation, in which he continued two years, he wished to become a sailor; but it was at length determined that he should be a printer; he was accordingly bound to one of his brothers, who, having learned the trade in London, had returned and settled in Boston. Previously to this, the youth had evinced a strong partiality for reading; it was now in some measure gratified, and conceiving a passion for poetry, he wrote two ballads on local subjects, which his brother printed, and then despatched him about the town to sell the copies. Finding, however, that prose was more likely to become his forte than verse, he paid great attention to a volume of the Spectator, which accidentally fell into his hands; his nights were now devoted to perusing such books as his limited resources enabled him to obtain. It is curious and interesting to trace the progress of his mind, and we therefore enumerate some of the books which thus early engaged his attention. Defoe’s Essays on Projects, and Dr. Mathers on Doing Good, were among his earliest studies: the style of the Spectator delighted him; in his memoirs will be found an account of his exertions to imitate it. Aware of the difficulties he must encounter without a knowledge of arithmetic, in which he had failed at school, he now borrowed a little treatise, which he mastered without assistance; he then studied navigation. At the age of sixteen, he read Locke on the Human Understanding, the Port Royal Logic, and Xenophon’s Memorabilia.

At this age, he adopted a system of vegetable diet, by which he saved one half the money allowed for his board; and he states that by abstaining from flesh, he found his apprehension quicker, and the faculties of his mind in general improved. We now find the philosophic young typographer purchasing books with the little sums he was enabled to save by the frugality of his diet.

His brother commenced, during this apprenticeship, the publication of a newspaper, the second that had appeared in America. After having assisted in setting the types, and printing the paper, young FRANKLIN was sent to distribute the copies. At this time, though yet a boy, he enjoyed the singular pleasure of being the admired author of many essays in the periodical; a circumstance which he had the address to keep a secret, for some time, even from his brother; but on its becoming known, he was severely lectured for his presumption, and treated with great severity. From the passionate disposition of his relative, who even went so far as to beat him, he regarded his apprenticeship as the most horrid species of servitude. “Perhaps,” says he, “this harsh and tyrannical treatment of me might be a means of impressing me with the aversion to arbitrary power that has stuck to me through my whole life.”

It so turned out, that one of the political articles gave offence to the general court of the colony; the publisher was imprisoned, and forbidden to print any more copies; to elude this prohibition, BENJAMIN was now made the nominal editor, and his indentures were ostensibly cancelled. His brother having obtained his release, our youth took advantage of this act, to assert his freedom, and thus escape from the ill usage he had been subjected to. He had in the course of his reading imbibed, from Shaftesbury and Collins, those sceptical notions which he is known to have held during a part of his life. The odium to which these subjected him, his father’s displeasure, and his brother’s abuse, seemed to leave him no alternative but to seek another home; and at the age of seventeen, he embarked on board a small vessel bound to New York.

Not meeting with employment in that city, he proceeded to Philadelphia, where, on his arrival, he did not think it prudent, in consequence of his small stock of money, to treat himself with a dinner. He therefore bought three pennyworth of bread, and receiving three large rolls, a far greater quantity than he expected, he made a satisfactory meal of one, and gave the remaining two to a poor woman and her children; his whole stock was now a single dollar. “Who would have dreamed,” says Brissot de Warville, “that this poor wanderer would become one of the legislators of America, the ornament of the new world, the pride of modern philosophy.”

Having worked for a short time with a printer at Philadelphia, he attracted Sir William Keith’s notice; Sir William was then governor of the province of Pennsylvania, and wished to see a paper established; he therefore induced FRANKLIN to return to Boston and solicit pecuniary aid from his father, on the promise of great encouragement from the governor. The father, however, refused the required aid, on the ground that he was too young—only eighteen—to be entrusted with such a concern. In consequence of this refusal, Sir William said he would advance the sum that might be necessary, and our tyro should go to England and purchase the requisite materials, for which he would give him letters of credit.

To England, therefore, FRANKLIN went, though he had never obtained the promised letters, having been deluded by promises of their being sent on board the ship after him, and hoping, during the progress of the voyage, that they were in the governor’s packet, and to receive them on its being opened. What were his feelings on finding himself in this just expectation cruelly deceived? The letters delivered to his keeping had no reference to him or his affairs; he was, in London without money, friends, or credit, almost three years before the period of manhood. His freethinking ideas received a check when he remembered that Sir William had agreed with him on topics of religion: from the disgraceful abandonment of moral obligation which FRANKLIN experienced in him, and subsequently in other freethinkers, he began to doubt the soundness of the principles of those who lived without God in the world. The moral duties are very feebly performed, if not grossly violated, by those who acknowledge not the force of religious ties.

In London, where he arrived in 1725, he soon found employment at Palmer’s printing-office. Whilst there, happening to be engaged on a new edition of Wollaston’s “Religion of Nature,” he wrote and printed a little metaphysical tract by way of answer, under the title of “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain.” On reading this treatise, his master complimented him on his talents, but condemned its principles as abominable. The pamphlet, however, procured him an introduction to Dr. Mandeville, who promised to present him to Sir Isaac Newton, but did not keep his word. Sir Hans Sloane, hearing that he had a purse made of asbestos, invited him to his house, exhibited his curiosities, and purchased the purse for a handsome sum.

Although guilty of some excesses while in London, he afterwards became a model of temperance and industry, and even reformed his brother printers by his example and exhortation.

While in London, he continued to devote his leisure hours, to books and study, and in 1726, after a stay of eighteen months, he returned to America, with Mr. Denham, a merchant of Philadelphia, as his clerk, on a salary of £50 a year. On his arrival, he found that his old sweetheart, Miss Read, had been induced by her parents, in consequence of his neglect, which FRANKLIN justly regarded as one of the great errors of his life, to marry another man. Extraordinary circumstances, however, prevented that couple from ever living together; and, at a subsequent period, FRANKLIN married the lady, who proved an excellent and invaluable wife.

His truly worthy master, Mr. Denham, died in the course of the ensuing year, when FRANKLIN returned to his original, business, first under Keimer his former master, then with a young man of the name of Meredith; they printed a newspaper, which was conducted with much ability, and acquired FRANKLIN some reputation; the project was very profitable, and afforded him an opportunity of distinguishing himself as a political writer. He also opened a shop for the sale of books and stationery.

In 1732, having had leisure for both reading and writing, he began to publish “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” which he continued with great success for many years. “The Way to Wealth,” extracted from that publication, and consisting of numerous and valuable concise maxims, has been translated into various languages, and inserted in almost every newspaper and magazine in England and America.

About this period, FRANKLIN was one of a number of individuals who originated the Library Company of Philadelphia. The combination was at first small. FRANKLIN printed the first notices of the meetings of the directors, and circulated them himself; the payments were made very slowly, and some time elapsed before the organization of the company. The subject of our brief biography performed the duties of librarian for a short period, for which he received a salary. At a subsequent period, when the project was agitated of erecting the present ornamental and substantial structure, for the books of the institution, Dr. FRANKLIN intimated that he should bequeath his own collection to the company as soon as a suitable building might be prepared. This intention was never fulfilled; he left only eighteen quarto volumes to them. The statue which graces the front of the library, was executed in Italy, by order and at the expense of William Bingham, Esq.; it is one of the few statues of marble in the country, and is justly admired, if not for its striking resemblance, at least as a work of art. It is probably owing to this figure, and the knowledge of the fact of his being one of the founders, that the institution has obtained the sobriquet of the Franklin Library.

When a new issue of paper money was made at Philadelphia, FRANKLIN displayed great ingenuity in sketching and engraving the border for the notes, and in conducting the letter-press; and when in want of new letter, as no letter-foundry then existed on the American continent, he used types as punches, and struck the matrices in lead. He also made his own printing-ink, and was frequently his own joiner. “Reading,” says he, “was the only amusement I allowed myself. I spent no time in taverns, gaming, or frolics of any kind; and my industry in my business continued as indefatigable as it was necessary. My original habits of frugality continued, and my father having, among his instructions to me when a boy, frequently repeated a proverb of Solomon, ‘Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men;’ I thence considered industry as a mean of obtaining distinction, which encouraged me; though I did not think I should ever literally stand before kings, which, however, has since happened, for I have stood before five, and even had the honor of sitting down with one (the king of Denmark) to dinner. We have an English proverb that says,

‘He that would thrive,
 Must ask his wife;’

It was lucky for me that I had one as much disposed to industry and frugality as myself. She assisted me cheerfully in my business, folding and stitching pamphlets, tending shop, purchasing old linen rags for the paper-makers, &c. We kept no idle servants, our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was for a long time bread and milk, (no tea) and I ate it out of a two-penny porringer, with a pewter spoon; but mark how luxury will enter families, and make a progress in spite of principle: being called one morning to breakfast, I found it in a china bowl, with a spoon of silver. They had been bought for me without my knowledge, by my wife, and had cost her the enormous sum of three and twenty shillings; for which she had no other excuse or apology to make, but that she thought her husband deserved a silver spoon and china bowl, as well as any of his neighbors. This was the first appearance of plate and china in our house, which afterwards, in a course of years, as our wealth increased, augmented gradually to several hundred pounds in value.”

Such are a few of the interesting particulars communicated by this eminent man himself, for the benefit and amusement of his countrymen. His industry, frugality, activity, intelligence; his plan for bettering the condition of the province, for introducing improved systems of education; his municipal services, made him an object of attention to the whole population. He was consulted by the governor and council, on the most important occasions, and soon elected a member of the assembly.

At the age of twenty-seven, he undertook to learn Spanish, French, and Italian; and when he had nearly mastered them, he applied himself to Latin. He was prominent as a founder of the university of Pennsylvania, and of the American Philosophical Society, and was instrumental in the establishment of the Pennsylvania Hospital, though he has received more credit in that particular, than he is properly entitled to, as the records of that charity sufficiently show. We do not design to take from Dr. FRANKLIN, any praise to which he is fairly entitled; fortunately for his fame, he does not require any adventitious aid to command our reverence, and that of all posterity.

Dr. FRANKLIN started in 1741 the “General Magazine and Historical Chronicle,” and invented in 1742, the Franklin stove; for this improvement on the old fashioned open fireplace, he refused a patent, on the ground that such inventions ought to be made universally subservient to the common good of mankind; an example which the citizens of this nation have been slow to follow. This stove, though still occasionally seen, is in turn superseded by later improvements, and the general introduction of anthracite. Being in Boston, in 1746, he witnessed some experiments in electricity; they were imperfectly performed, but were nevertheless the origin of one of the most brilliant discoveries in natural philosophy, which alone would have been fame enough to have established a claim to immortality.

Upon his return to Philadelphia, he repeated the same experiments with complete success, and adding others, of which some accounts had reached him from England, the science for a time wholly occupied his ambition. He acquired by practice a dexterity in performing those experiments, and soon diffused his fame through the world, and drew upon his native country the regard and attention of all Europe. He was the first who fired gun-powder, gave magnetism to needles of steel, melted metals, and killed animals of considerable size, by means of electricity.

The various steps by which he acquired his knowledge of this science, are too well known to need repetition here. A relation of his experiments was communicated by FRANKLIN himself, in letters to a friend in London. “Nothing,” says Priestley, “was ever written on the subject of electricity more justly admired, in all parts of Europe, than these letters. Electricians everywhere employed themselves in repeating his experiments, or exhibiting them for money. All the world in a manner, even kings themselves, flocked to see them, and all retired full of admiration for the invention of them.” On the continent his discoveries were made public by the celebrated Buffon; the experiments were repeated by M. de Loz, before Louis XV., and were verified by many other philosophers. In Turin, by Father Beccaria; in Russia, by Professor Richmann, who, in the experiment of the kite, perished by a stroke of lightning.

The rights of the colonies had ever been a favorite subject, which he advocated both with his pen and in private, as our dearest prerogative. It was determined to hold a general congress at Albany; to this, FRANKLIN was named as deputy, and on the route, he digested a plan of union, regulating all the great political interests of the colonies and the mother country. His plan was adopted, congress proposing a general government for the provinces, to be administered by a president appointed by the crown, assisted by a grand council, to be chosen by the various provincial assemblies; the council was to have the power of laying taxes for the common exigencies. This Albany plan, as it was called, although unanimously sanctioned by congress, was rejected by the board of trade, as savoring too much of the democratic, and by the assemblies, as having too much of the influence of the mother country.

Appointed deputy post-master-general in 1751, he applied his mind to facilitating the intercourse between the different settled portions of the continent. In this he met with frequent difficulties incident to a new country, where the want of roads formed an almost insurmountable obstacle to the best laid schemes; but he persevered, and to him we are indebted for some suggestions which, having been acted on, have served to perfect the present admirable system of transportation, which equalizes so rapidly the very distant points of our vast country. In his official capacity, he advanced large sums from his private funds to assist General Braddock, though he feared the result of his expedition, and had made some fruitless suggestions with regard to its conduct. When Braddock’s defeat was ascertained, he introduced a bill for establishing a volunteer militia; he accepted a commission as a commander, and raised a corps of five hundred and sixty men, with whom he went through a laborious campaign, and was chosen colonel after his return, by the officers of a regiment.

The proprietaries of Pennsylvania claiming to be exempted from taxation, an unpleasant dispute arose, and Colonel FRANKLIN was deputed by the provincial assembly, in 1757, to visit England as their agent. He published soon after a large work, entitled the “Historical Review,” which was much liked, and increased his reputation, both at home and abroad, and he received the additional appointment of agent for the provinces of Massachusetts, Maryland, and Georgia. The degree of doctor of laws was now conferred on him by the university of Oxford, as well as by those in Scotland, and the Royal Society elected him a follow.

The personal connections which Dr. FRANKLIN formed during this residence in England, were of the most valuable and distinguished kind; he corresponded extensively with the most eminent individuals of the continent, and his letters to his friends and constituents must have occupied much of his time. A recent volume, edited by Jared Sparks, of his “Familiar Letters,” assists us materially in forming an estimate of his private character, while the “Diplomatic Correspondence,” lately published by act of congress, proves how sincerely he loved his native country, and what care he took of her interests while residing in his official capacity at the court of France. These letters added to his own memoirs and works, afford ample evidence, if any were wanting, of the striking union of a cultivated mind with a native and brilliant imagination.

He returned to America in 1762, and would have gladly rested himself in the bosom of domestic life, surrounded by his fellow citizens, who appreciated his talents and respected his patriotism; but in this he was destined to be disappointed. New difficulties arose between the province and the proprietaries, and FRANKLIN was again invested with the appointment of agent, in 1764. New and important events were on the eve of transpiring, and FRANKLIN appeared in England, no longer as simply a colonial agent, but as the representative of America. Thirty-nine years had elapsed since his first landing on the British shore as a destitute and forlorn, nay, a deluded mechanic.

Great Britain had already announced the project of taxing her colonies, and Dr. FRANKLIN was the bearer of a remonstrance from the province of Pennsylvania against it, which he presented to Mr. Grenville before the passage of the justly odious stamp act. Throughout the existence of that measure, he opposed its operations in every possible mode, bending the energies of his prolific mind, to prove the unconstitutionality as well as the impolicy of casting a yoke on the shoulders of an indignant community who were likely to bear it with an ill grace.

His conduct on this occasion was highly praiseworthy. When the repeal was about to be attempted, it was concerted by his friends, that he should appear before the house of commons, and be examined on the whole question at issue. Here he displayed (February 3d, 1766,) so much firmness, readiness, and epigrammatic simplicity of manner, and information so much to the point on subjects of commerce, policy of government, finance, &c.; his precision of language was so remarkable, that the effect was irresistible, and the repeal inevitable.

Dr. FRANKLIN became still more bold and vehement in his expostulations, on the passage of the revenue acts of 1767. He then openly predicted to the English, that general resistance by the colonies, and a separation from the mother country, would be the inevitable result of those and other similar measures of the ministry. These were, however, madly pursued; FRANKLIN saw the coming storm with a clear vision and undaunted firmness; but he continued to adhere to his original plan, to make every effort to enlighten the public mind in England, to arrest the ministry in their infatuation, and to inculcate proper moderation and patience, as well as constancy and unanimity, on the part of his countrymen. He took every suitable means, at the same time, to keep on good terms with the British government, aware of the importance of such a standing to enable him to serve his country effectually; but he ceased not to proclaim the rights, justify the proceedings, and animate the courage of the suffering colonists. He was not ignorant, to use his own words, “that this course would render him suspected, in England of being too much an American, and in America, of being too much of an Englishman.” This be braved in the conscious panoply of his own esteem, and continued to serve his country till circumstances, which we shall briefly hint at, induced him hastily to embark for home.

His transmission of the celebrated letters of Hutchinson and Oliver, in 1772, which had been placed in his hands, is matter of history, and not the least memorable of his acts at this opening period of the American revolution. His own share in the transaction was immediately avowed, though he could never be prevailed upon to divulge the names of the persons from whom he had received those documents. The Massachusetts assembly, indignant in consequence of these letters, petitioned the ministry, through Dr. FRANKLIN, when he was immediately held up as the mark for the virulent abuse, the hatred and ridicule of the periodical press, who would fain have extended the feeling to the whole nation. The spirit and wit with which he met the conflict, are particularly exemplified in his two satirical papers; “The Prussian Edict,” and the “Rules for Reducing a Great Empire to a Small One.”

When the discussion of the petition before the privy council came on, FRANKLIN was present. Weddeburn, (since Lord Loughborough,) the solicitor-general, assailed him in a very ungentlemanly and undignified manner, descending even to coarse invective. He styled the venerable philosopher, and official representative of four of the American provinces, a “thief and a murderer,” who had “forfeited all the respect of society and of men.” This impotent rage only tended still further to inflame the breasts of the petitioners, who now saw their agent dismissed from his place of deputy postmaster-general. A chancery suit was instituted in relation to the letters, with a view of preventing him from entering upon his own vindication.

Notwithstanding this treatment, the British ministry knew their man too well to leave any means in their power untried to convert the republican notions which had taken root in his bosom. Attempts were actually made, as the schism between the two countries widened, to corrupt the man they had discovered they had no power to intimidate; “any reward,” “unlimited recompense,” “honor and recompense beyond his expectations,” were held up to him to induce a change of conduct. But they all proved unavailing, for he was as inaccessible to bribery as to threats. He was about this time directed to present the famous petition of the first American congress.

At the period when Lord Chatham proposed his plan for a reconciliation between the colonies and the parent country, Dr. FRANKLIN attended behind the bar, in the house of lords. While Chatham was using his powerful eloquence in favor of his plan of pacification, he eulogized FRANKLIN as “one whom Europe held in high estimation for his knowledge and wisdom; who was an honor, not to the English nation only, but to human nature.” This, from such a speaker, must be admitted as high praise.

He soon after was informed that it was the intention of ministers to arrest him, as guilty of fomenting a rebellious spirit in the colonies, and he immediately embarked for America, where he was enthusiastically received, and immediately elected a member of congress.

Dr. FRANKLIN served on many of the most arduous of the committees of that body, particularly as a member of the committee of safety, and of that of foreign correspondence, where he exerted all his influence in favor of the Declaration of Independence, of which instrument he is one of the signers.

Supplies from abroad becoming necessary to the infant republic, Dr. FRANKLIN was sent to France, in 1776, as commissioner plenipotentiary to that court, where he soon succeeded in gaining the confidence of the Count de Vergennes, though not at first publicly recognised. The reception of information that Burgoyne had surrendered, put a new aspect upon our affairs abroad, and our plenipotentiary had the happiness to conclude the first treaty of the new states, with a foreign power, on the 6th of February, 1778. The American was now in high favor at court, sought for in all circles of fashionable society, and extremely useful in forwarding the views of his government, furnishing supplies, and corresponding with the prominent leaders of the revolution.

While resident there, he produced a work entitled “Comparison of Great Britain and America, as to Credit,” by the publication of which he did much to establish the credit of America, throughout Europe; it appeared in 1777. The treaty with France, and the capture of Burgoyne, created of course a great sensation in England, and no sooner were they known than the British ministry began to talk of a reconciliation. Efforts, plain and insidious, were made to sound FRANKLIN as to the terms that might probably, be obtained; his answer uniformly was, “nothing but independence.” He had next to guard against the attempts made to separate France from our interests, and succeeded in defeating them. He was now one of the commissioners for negotiating the peace with the mother country.

These negotiations fairly closed, he earnestly requested, in 1782, to be recalled, stating his anxiety to be again in the bosom of his family; but this was refused. He continued in Paris, where his venerable age, his simplicity of manners, his scientific reputation, the ease, gaiety, and richness of his conversation—all contributed to render him an object of admiration to courtiers, fashionable ladies and savans. He regularly attended the meetings of the Academy of Sciences, and was appointed one of the committee which exposed Mesmer’s animal magnetism.

During this period, Dr. FRANKLIN negotiated two treaties; one with Prussia, and one with Sweden.

On his return to Philadelphia, after having served his country fifty-three years, he filled the office of president of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and served as a delegate in the federal convention, in 1787, and approved the constitution then formed.

Dr. FRANKLIN died April 17, 1790, his faculties and affections unimpaired to the last, and lies buried in Christ Church burying-ground, at the corner of Arch and Fifth streets, Philadelphia, where a plain marble slab covers his remains and those of his wife, on which is inscribed simply,

BENJAMIN AND DEBORAH FRANKLIN,
1790.

A complete edition of his works was published in London, in 1806, in three volumes, octavo. His memoirs, with his posthumous writings, were published by his grandson, William Temple Franklin, in 1819, in three volumes, quarto, and a later edition in Philadelphia, in nine volumes, octavo.

Dr. FRANKLIN was free from any deep religious bias; for some time he subscribed towards the support of a Presbyterian clergyman, in Philadelphia; but after attending him a few weeks, and finding that he was rather an indifferent preacher, and rarely inculcated a moral principle, he withdrew, and confined himself to the use of a small liturgy, or form of prayer, drawn up in 1728, entitled, “Articles of Belief, and Acts of Religion.” “About the same time,” he observes, “I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection; I wished to live without committing any fault at any time, and to conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company, might lead me into. On the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was by the endeavor a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been, if I had not attempted it.”

Blessed with, an excellent constitution, aided by temperance, Dr. FRANKLIN enjoyed a long continuance of robust health. As he advanced in years, however, he became subject to fits of the gout, to which, in 1782, a nephritic colic was superadded. From that time, he was afflicted with the stone as well as the gout, and for the last twelve months of his life, those complaints confined him almost entirely to his bed. Early in the spring of 1790, he was attacked by fever, and a complaint of his breast, which proved fatal, and his long and useful life was closed without a groan. He left one son, William, a zealous loyalist, and a daughter, married to Mr. Bache, a merchant of Philadelphia.

We have thus given the leading facts in the life of FRANKLIN, from his cradle to the grave. It is necessary to the proper completion of our pleasing task, to add a few remarks for the purpose of illustrating the character of so remarkable an individual. His early bias to literature was fostered in some measure by his father, who entertaining a high estimate for literary merit, applauded the industry, and excited the emulation of the son. In this he was standing in his own light, for it abstracted the youth from the pursuit of the trade by which the family lived, and induced him to disenthral himself from the fetters of so rude and inglorious an occupation. It, however, was a fortunate circumstance for the country. The business of a printer led him naturally amongst books, and his inquiring mind to the cultivation of letters; to promote this object, he early formed a literary club with a few ingenious young men about his own age, who conferred together on the subject of their studies, a practice which may be warmly recommended—many of our most eminent men trace to such associations the development of their minds.

Of FRANKLIN’S youthful levity on the subject of religion, it is necessary to remark, that when he had acquired a riper age, and more ample intelligence, he emphatically condemned it; but the extreme aversion, which, like many others of honest feelings, he entertained for that senseless dogmatism and mischievous intolerance which prevailed, both in Europe and America, led him sometimes to express sentiments on religious subjects, that by the severity of his age, were not always approved. He believed that honest men without any regard to religious denominations, were equally entitled to esteem. He insisted that in discussing the mysteries of our faith, much less time should be spent than in practising the duties which it enjoins; and indeed in all the business of his life, in morals and politics, as well as religion, he was much more an advocate for practice than speculation. But of the pure and innocent service of the Deity; of the essential doctrines of Christianity, no man has ever spoken with more reverence; and with such a life as FRANKLIN generally led, we should, perhaps, offer an injury to religion in supposing him, as some have done, an enemy to its prevalence, or a stranger to its benign influence.

The resolution he took up in his twenty-first year, was one which might more frequently be adopted than we see it to be. He was then on his voyage from England, and employed himself in marking down its incidents in a journal. It struck him while thus amusing himself, that it was unbecoming the character of a man to whom heaven has imparted intelligence and reason, to fluctuate without a design through life; and he then resolved to form some plan for his future conduct, by which he might promote his fortune, and procure respect and reputation in society. This plan is prefaced by the following reflections. “Those who write of the art of poetry, teach us, that if we would write what would be worth the reading, we ought always before we begin, to form a regular design of our piece; otherwise we shall be in danger of incongruity. I am apt to think it is the same as to life. I have never fixed a regular design in life: by which means it has been a confused variety of different scenes. I am now entering upon a new one; let me, therefore, make some resolutions, and form some schemes of action, that henceforth, I may live in all respects like a rational creature.”

To these remarks, he attached a set of rules and moral principles, which, while they show his noble ardor for virtue, may afford those animated with the same spirit, no unprofitable example. They are partly as follow:—

“I resolve to be extremely frugal, for some time, until I pay what I owe.

“To speak the truth in every instance, and give no one expectations that are not likely to be answered; but aim at sincerity in every word and action, the most amiable excellence in a rational being.

“To apply myself industriously in whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind by any foolish project of growing suddenly rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty.

“I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever, not even in a matter of truth; but rather by some means excuse the faults I hear charged upon others, and upon proper occasions speak all the good I know of every body,” &c.

To these resolutions, though formed in the ardor of youthful imagination, he adhered with a scrupulous fidelity.

Soon after his return to Philadelphia, he instituted another club, in connection with several young men of respectable character and abilities, denominated “The Junto,” of which he has spoken in his memoirs with great affection. Subjects of a scientific, moral, or political cast, were discussed at their meetings. The association endured with undiminished vigor, for thirty years, and was at last succeeded by the present Philosophical Society.

It is a just remark, that the exigencies in which FRANKLIN had passed his early youth, and the expedients he was forced to adopt, that he might improve his fortune, drew him from all barren speculations towards those only which might tend to ameliorate the condition and happiness of his species. All his leading enterprises appear to have been undertaken with an eye to the public good, and even to minor affairs he gave the same tendency. To practice virtue, and disseminate it among mankind, he considered his duty wherever he went, and he allowed no common distraction of life to turn him from his laudable purpose. Like Lycurgus, he wished that the praise of virtue and contempt for vice should be interwoven with all the actions of men, and that excellent objects and actions should be perpetually before the gaze of the multitude. He carried this so far, as even to assist in making the common devices on coins, which are so constantly under our inspection, of a character to convey a prudential maxim; thus the old penny he caused to be impressed with the word “Fugio”—I fly; and on the reverse, “mind your own business.”

His Poor Richard’s Almanac he made the vehicle of conveying moral apothegms, precepts of economy, rules for the preservation of health, and such general principles of instruction as were most adapted to the purposes of common life. Of this Almanac ten thousand copies were circulated in America every year; this, considering the then limited population, sufficiently exhibits the estimation in which it was held. The last, 1757, in which he collected the principal matter of the preceding numbers, was republished in various forms in Great Britain, and thence translated into foreign languages, was dispersed and read with great avidity throughout the whole continent. An edition in a large folio volume has just been published in Paris in the highest style of typographical art, under the title of “Le Bon Homme Richard.”

His efforts to diffuse literature, form libraries, &c., were the means of disseminating a taste for polite letters; reading became everywhere the fashionable amusement, spreading its influence even to the humble walks of life. This, in a republican state, is an object of importance, where some equality in the diffusion of intellectual, as well as physical benefits, is essential to the purity and permanence of political institutions.

His discoveries in electricity have been already noticed. It cannot be expected that we should here enumerate all the experiments he made, or the treatises he composed on the various branches of science; for there is scarcely one that has not occupied some portion of his time and attention. He made use of oil to show its effects in stilling the waters of the ocean; he endeavored to ascertain whether boats are not drawn with more difficulty in small canals, than in large bodies of water; to improve the art of swimming, and to prove that thirst may be allayed by bathing in salt water. He made observations, also, in his several voyages, on the gradual progress of the north-east storms along the American coast, contrary to the direction of the winds; and likewise, for the benefit of navigation, made experiments on the course, velocity, and temperature of the gulf stream. He made also curious observations on the air; upon the relative powers of metals in the conducting of heat, and of the different degrees acquired by congenial bodies of various colors, from the rays of the sun. He composed likewise an ingenious treatise upon the formation of the earth, and the existence of an universal fluid; music, too, came in for a share of his grasping mind, and he cultivated that science with success. He revived and improved the harmonica, performing upon that instrument with taste.
It was a peculiarity which gave FRANKLIN a great advantage from his early youth, to have mingled business with study and speculation. He thus acquired theoretical and practical knowledge together, and was skilful in applying his information. Lord Kaimes was highly gratified to become his correspondent, from the delight he took in him as a philosopher; their friendship, formed in Europe, subsisted until the termination of their lives.

It is probable that in the first outbreak of difficulties with the mother country, FRANKLIN entertained no farther design than that of vindicating the constitutional liberties of his country, and that no ambition for her independence had at this time entered his imagination; he continued to still the angry passions which had been kindled by the operation of bad or over-bearing laws, till they were insupportable. He still kept up discussions with the parliament, and maintained some appearance of impartiality; but by the introduction of British troops, into Boston, and the tumults and massacres occasioned by that measure; by all the proceedings, indeed, of the government subsequent to the repeal of the stamp act, he knew well that passions were inflamed too fierce and vengeful to be appeased by the application of gentle remedies. He observed, also, not only in the minds of those who were entrusted with the supreme management of affairs in England, but throughout the whole nation, that there prevailed a spirit of arrogance and contempt for Americans, or in the phraseology of the times, “the rebels of the colonies,” which must have confirmed his opinions on that subject. Though he still recommended, in all his letters to the colonies, a moderation and decorum, that the ministry might have no pretext that might justify a more open violation of their liberties; there is, nevertheless, a strain of vehemence in all his writings of this period, which indicate that he was himself not less exasperated than his ardent countrymen at home.

During his long residence in England, he had been treated with all the rancor and malice, the resentful and unmanly arrogance, which power usually produces in ignoble minds. The worthy portion of the community, however, approved his various merits, and he has expressed in his letters, his gratification at the marks of attachment, friendship, generosity, and affectionate attention which he received.

On his voyage homewards, he had employed himself in philosophical speculations, and in writing a circumstantial detail of the whole of his public operations during his absence; this constitutes a very interesting portion of his biography published by his grandson, furnishing many conspicuous examples of his devotion to liberty, of his spirit and patriotism; and affords a specimen of those diplomatic talents which proved so beneficial to his country.

When appointed in 1776, with John Adams and Edward Rutledge, to hear certain propositions of English commissioners who had arrived on our coast to propose terms of accommodation, or rather “offer pardon upon submission,” to congress, Lord Howe, the chief of the embassy, endeavored to wheedle him by kind words into using his influence in promoting the great object of “the king’s paternal solicitude.” His reply was highly honorable to his patriotism and abilities; he insisted that directing pardons to be offered to the colonies, who were the parties injured, expressed “that opinion of our baseness, ignorance, and insensibility, which your uninformed and proud nation has long been pleased to entertain of us; but it can have no other effect than that of increasing our resentments.” He continues in a noble strain of independent sentiment, and concludes, “when you find reconciliation impossible on any terms given you to propose, I believe you will then relinquish so odious a command, and return to a more honorable private station.”

When Dr. FRANKLIN left America for France, he placed the whole of his possessions in money, between three and four thousand pounds, in the hands of congress, thus testifying his confidence in the success of their cause, and inducing others of greater means to imitate so laudable an example.

His colleagues, Mr. Adams, Mr. Jay, and Mr. Laurens, assisted materially to lighten his labors; advantages were gained by their joint exertions very far beyond what either in France or America had been anticipated; and if we may judge from the tenor of FRANKLIN’S letters, far beyond his own expectation. “Had it not been,” says he, “for the justice of our cause, and the consequent interposition of Providence, in which we had faith, we must have been ruined. If I had ever before been an atheist, I should now have been convinced of the being and government of a Deity. It is he that abases the proud and elevates the humble; may we never forget his goodness, and may our future conduct manifest our gratitude.”

In his treaties with Sweden and Prussia, Dr. FRANKLIN introduced an article highly honorable to his memory, and one which he had attempted in vain to add to his negotiations with Great Britain; it was the prohibiting from injuries of war, the property and persons of unarmed individuals. This principle has been acknowledged to a greater or less degree since by civilized nations, and may be dated in a measure to the influence of the subject of our biography.

 A defensive war Dr. FRANKLIN thought justifiable, but he preferred peace whenever it could be obtained, provided it was honorable; nor was he without a hope that the interests of nations might prevail over the perversity of human nature, so far as to produce some alleviation of the calamities insuperably attendant upon warfare. “I hope,” he says in one of his letters, “that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats; for in my opinion, there never was a good war, nor a bad peace. What vast additions to the convenience and comforts of living might we acquire, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture, even to tops of the mountains!” “When,” says he to Dr. Priestley, “shall we make that discovery in moral philosophy, which will instruct men to compose their quarrels without bloodshed? When will men cease to be wolves to one another, and learn, that even successful wars at length become misfortunes to those who urgently commence them?”

On Dr. FRANKLIN’S return from France, he was attended at his landing by the members of congress, of the university, and by the principal citizens, who, formed into processions, went out to escort him; amidst their acclamations he was conducted to his dwelling. He received from public assemblies of every description, the most affectionate addresses; all testifying their gratitude for his services, and joy at his safe return. General Washington, in a public letter, greeted his arrival with the same grateful sentiments, and he says himself, “I am surrounded by friends, and have an affectionate good daughter and son-in-law to take care of me. I have got into my niche, a very good house, which I built twenty-four years ago, and out of which I have been ever since kept by foreign employments.”

He continued in his retirement to ponder deeply on the condition of man, and to seek by every means in his power to promote the interest of his fellow creatures. Several of his writings at this period, and later, when entirely disabled from going abroad by his infirmities, are evidence of this fact. Many societies, the philosophical, of which he was president, that for political inquiries, for alleviating the miseries of public prisons, and for promoting the abolition of slavery, held their meetings at his house, to enjoy the benefit of his council.

When his death was known, congress ordered a general mourning for him throughout America, of one month. In France, the expression of public grief was highly flattering to his memory; there the event was solemnized under the direction of the municipality of Paris, by funeral orations; the national assembly decreed that each of the members should wear mourning for three days, “in commemoration of the event,” and that a letter of condolence for the irreparable loss they had sustained, should be directed to the American congress. These were honors truly glorious, and such as were never before paid by any public body of one nation to a citizen of another.

In stature, FRANKLIN was above the middle size; manly, athletic, and gracefully proportioned. His countenance had an air of serenity and peace; the natural effect of conscious integrity. The harmony of the features is remarkable; seeming formed at once to excite love and veneration, command authority, or conciliate esteem. His mind was stored with knowledge, which he had a very happy manner of imparting, enlivening his conversation by ingenious illustrations, sprightly thoughts or pleasantry, winning even the morose. Amidst all the pageantry of European courts, where a large portion of his life was passed, as well as in the intercourse he kept up with the most fashionable society, he retained his republican dress and the simplicity of his manners, never showing any mean pride in concealing the humility of his birth.

Such was Dr. FRANKLIN. In estimating his character, much regard must be had to the times; and faults of education or habit may well be pardoned in one whose main design was undoubtedly good.

Source: National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, 1839, Volume 2.


FRANKLIN, Thomas, Jr., New York, abolitionist, member of the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, founded New York 1785

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 223-224)


FRASER, K.



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.