within his control. To refer to this, however, is to anticipate. The point to be noted here is that Franklin's retirement from business meant his entry into the sphere of what, at the risk of appearing paradoxical, I shall call official usefulness. Of course it is the aim and reason-for-being of officials, as such, to prevent anything useful from being done by anybody, and to do as little harm themselves as they can with the remainder of their time. At any rate, in Franklin's own words :—

"The publick now considering me as a man of leisure, laid hold of me for their purposes, every part of our civil government, and almost at the same time, imposing some duty upon me. The governor put me into the commission of the peace; the corporation of the city chose me of the common council, and soon after an alderman; and the citizens at large chose me a burgess to represent them in Assembly."

Thus the leading Pennsylvanian was a leading Pennsylvanian still, only more full of works than ever. But he is now rendering services to the province upon a scale and of a kind that would not have been possible to a private member of the community, however distinguished, influential, and honoured. Of these Occupations such as his improvement of the postal system of the entire colonies; his Plan of Union, submitted to the Congress at Albany in 1754; his co-operation with General Braddock (by which he averted an impending risk of Pennsylvania being dragooned if not devastated by that iracund defender of colonial safeties); his brief but creditable career as a military commander and builder of wooden frontier fortresses-of these he has given in the latter part of the Autobiography a summary which is sufficient in regard to the historical events, but which makes too little of his own part and merit in the things that took place. But it was as leader of

the popular party in the constitutional conflict with the Penns, proprietaries of Pennsylvania, that his powers were now (from about 1850 onwards) most signally developed and used to most farreaching effect. It is, finally, in the course of this provincial conflict that he arrives at the further limit of what I have called his second stage: when, at the crossing of an invisible line, the leading Pennsylvanian becomes the Representative Americanbecause the most absolutely and comprehensively American man on that continent-and as such is planted forward, outside his own country, and upon the universal platform of the world, to be the intellectual and moral protagonist of a new nation, and the advocate of his distressed people to the hearts of the peoples of Europe.

Now regarding the first of these periods, the Philadelphian period, the Autobiography gives a sufficient and a famous account. Regarding the second, the Pennsylvanian period, it speaks with less fulness, and the record is abruptly broken off. Regarding the third-the American or Continental period, when he became so conspicuously a citizen of the world, just because he loved his native country best the Autobiography tells us nothing at all, ceasing as it does at a point some twenty years earlier. That is a loss which can never be made good, even by the longest and best biography, and the biographies of Franklin are amongst the longest and best in the English language. Within the limits of this appendix all that can be attempted is a brief summary, indicating the part played by Franklin in the history of the Revolutionary era. But even this may be serviceable to some readers of the present reprint, to whom, as few of them can have had the advantage of being born American citizens, knowledge of these things may not have come by nature. First, however,

something must be said in order to make more intelligible to English readers that struggle against the proprietors which engaged Franklin's energies during the latter part of his Pennsylvanian period.

THE PROVINCE was named after Admiral William Penn, to whose son-a more famous WilliamCharles II. conveyed it in 1681, in lieu of a monetary settlement of the large claim against the Crown which the said son had inherited from the Admiral. Under the title of Proprietor (or Proprietary) of Pennsylvania, William Penn was invested with the functions of a captain-general over this vast region, with power to make treaties with the Indians and to purchase lands from them; and while retaining the status of an English gentleman at home, was virtually created a prince beyond the seas.

"He was to appoint judges and magistrates; could pardon all crimes, except murder and treason; and whatever things he could lawfully do himself he could appoint a deputy to do, he and his heirs for ever. But he could lay no impost, no customs, no tax, nor enact a law, without the consent of the freemen of the province in Assembly represented. Of the land he was absolute proprietor; nor would he dispose of any of it absolutely. He sold great tracts at forty shillings per hundred acres, all subject to an annual quit-rent of one shilling per hundred acres. He also reserved manors, city lots, and various portions of territory, either holding them against a rise in value or letting them to tenants.'

The history of the province is not our proper topic, so it will be sufficient if the reader takes note of two things that had happened in the interval between, say, 1681 and 1753. In the first place the province of Pennsylvania had grown wonderfully in all senses, by the addition of lands

purchased from the Indians, and by the rapid incoming and thriving of settlers. Thus Philadelphia, a garden city with over fourteen thousand inhabitants, was also a great place of trade and shipping, and the business and marketing centre for a provincial population of nearly two hundred thousand. In the second place, the proprietorship had passed to Thomas and Richard Penn, the surviving sons of the founder. Thomas Penn possessed three-fourths of the entire estate; and was in all respects so much the leading personality in this brotherhood that Franklin frequently speaks of "the proprietary," as if there were only one to be reckoned with. The proprietaries were not, in an absolute sense, legislators of Pennsylvania. But through their right of appointment they had a predominant influence, and by their power of veto on all acts of Assembly they were in a position to hinder the conduct of public business to any extent they pleased. They were pleased to do so on all occasions when their prerogatives or their private interest seemed to be either immediately or remotely impinged upon or imperilled. The resident governor of the province was but the nominee and political man-of-business of the Penns, the factor and watch-dog of what was to them merely an enormous private estate. The more that estate became developed by the intelligence and industry, the character and courage of other men-religious men from all the world who had made their homes there, on the confines of the wilderness and with the savage for their neighbour -the more did the Penn interests seem worth fostering and looking after with the closest vigilance and the most jealous foresight. Governor after governor was sent out, each with his secret instructions to this end; and the effect of these instructions was that the history of each governorship is a story of protracted wrangles between the representatives of the

people and the deputy of the proprietors. The governor could refuse to sign the bills of the Assembly if the Assembly showed a disposition to encroach or no disposition to comply; and sometimes a whole table-load of these inhibited acts of parliament awaited his pleasure to become law. The Assembly could retaliate by refusing or deferring to "consider the question of the governor's support"-in plain English to pay him his salary, which was optional and honorary and of unfixed amount. Meanwhile the man must live, and bills of another kind than those forwarded by the Assembly were apt to accumulate upon his table. Thus the situation tended to resolve itself into a question of who could hold out longest: the Assembly under the inconveniences of an arrest of public business, or the governor under the discomforts and the privations due to a stoppage of supplies. On one occasion at least the comedy was played out to the point at which the curtain came down upon the historic tableau of a governor receiving his salary with the one hand while with the other he appended his signature to the Assembly's bills. Latterly, however, the proprietors had bethought them to safeguard their interests against the risks of such a surrender by taking a bond of the new governor before sending him out; so that for him to give way upon any point contrary to the spirit or letter of his instructions, would now mean not only ignominious recall, but more or less financial damage for himself or his guarantors.

The antagonism between Proprietors and People that was inherent in the system of government led to a succession of minor disputes, having a merely local interest. But about the time when Franklin entered public life the questions at issue began to take a broader character, entitling them to be considered constitutional rather than local ones. This