BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

STAGES of history, as I have already intimated, will not keep symmetrically to centuries. In many respects the eighteenth century terminated, and the nineteenth opened, long before the end of the former as reckoned by years and calendars. The period in which the career of Franklin became inseparably blended with English history shows little of the spirit of the eighteenth century as manœuvred in politics by Bolingbroke, and dictated to in literature by Pope. The lines of the era to which he is assigned must be drawn so as not to shut out Cobbett, and the dawn of modern Radicalism. Theirs was a season no longer of pamphleteering skirmishes, and spectacular Parliamentary tournaments. It occupied itself with the tearing asunder of nations' flesh and blood. Its combats were between causes wrestling in grim earnest for nothing less than death and life. The battle raged first on the other side of the Atlantic for State independence. It did not close there. When American liberties had asserted themselves, the scene of the strife shifted to England. France caught some of the impulse, and England some. The Thirty Years' War for the rights of English citizenship which lasted till 1832 was a sequel to the American War of Independence. Different as were their forms, the two revolutions, in America, and in England, were animated by principles of kindred origin. The victory of English Parliamentary reform was won in part across the ocean. Franklin's demonstrations of the rottenness of the administrative work of a corrupt representative system prepared the way for the battering-ram swung with beneficial

results, if not from the most scrupulous motives, against the crumbling edifice by the editor of the Political Register.

If the several causes of the foundation of the Republic of the United States were ranged according to their respective importance, first of all would come the perverse policy of Mr. George Grenville, and the want of moral courage in Lord North to resist the unenlightened obstinacy of George the Third. If not demerits but only merits were classified, an equal rank, and that the highest, must be assigned to George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. So far as any historical events can be appropriated to individuals, those two men were the joint authors of the great Republic. The common English impression of Franklin recognises only two stages in his career. From the struggling printer he is transformed at a bound into the powerful diplomatist who rent in twain Great Britain and her American colonies. The actual Franklin rose gradually to this enormous influence. He had already become independent in fortune before he engaged in public affairs. When he had once taken to public life, he made it his profession, though he sighed after science. Step by step he grew to be the most prominent citizen of Philadelphia. He was appointed Clerk of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania; he became a justice of the peace, an alderman, a burgess of the Assembly. He established the first public library in America. He founded an academy and an hospital. He set on foot a militia force for the defence of the province against the French in Canada. "There was," he writes in his Memoirs, "no such thing as carrying a public-spirited project through without my being concerned in it." If it were so small a matter as clearing away the dust from the roadways or lighting the city, he had to set the example. One question was always asked when subscriptions for an improvement were requested: "Have you consulted Franklin, and what does he think of it?" From Pennsylvania his influence spread throughout the American colonies. He was appointed Postmaster-General for America. That office he kept for over twenty years. His enemies in

England often hoped to taunt him into surrendering it. But he lacked, he was in the habit of saying, "the Christian virtue of resignation." It was his rule "never to ask for offices," but also "never to resign them." Franklin had passed his seventieth year before he arrived at the Court of France as the champion of American independence. A long and active life had preceded his greatest exploit, the conclusion of the Peace of 1783.

In view of an impending war with France in 1754, he drew up a plan for "the union of all the colonies under one government, so far as might be necessary for defence, and other important general purposes." The scheme roused jealousy in England, and Franklin attributes to that feeling the despatch of General Braddock from England with two regiments of regulars for the expedition against Fort Duquesne. Though the project of the campaign was not Franklin's, only by his help was the army able to move a step. Horses and carriages could not be procured until Franklin had personally guaranteed payment to the lenders. He accompanied the force, and in vain endeavoured to dissuade the General from marching in a slender line nearly four miles long through a country infested by hostile Indians. The General's answer was: "The savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia; but upon the King's regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression." In the panic which followed Braddock's defeat, Franklin carried a Bill in the Pennsylvania Assembly for the embodiment of a militia force. To concentrate more attention on the movement, he persuaded the Governor to proclaim a fast, that "the blessing of Heaven might be implored on our undertaking." He even obtained subscriptions from Quakers for gunpowder under the euphemism of "bread, flour, wheat, and other grain." He raised and commanded a regiment, Governor Dunbar offered to commission him as general of a force which he was to raise and lead against Fort Duquesne. Franklin had the modesty to decline the service which had proved fatal to Braddock.

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