same time that they secure the person of a citizen from assaults, they would likewise provide for the security of his reputation." This article is wit and gayety from the beginning to the end. In August, 1789, was laid the corner-stone of a new building designed for the Library founded by the Junto, half a century before. The edifice thus begun was the handsome and commodious one in Fifth Street, opposite the State House, in which the Library has ever since been deposited. It is still an ornament to the neighborhood, and exhibits in a niche in front of the building a marble statue of Franklin, presented by William Bingham. Dr. Franklin, whose infirmities prevented his attending the ceremony, wrote an inscription for the corner-stone, but omitted the mention of his own name. The Committee supplied the omission, and the inscription, as amended by them, reads thus:

"Be it remembered

In honor of the Philadelphia Youth,
(then chiefly artificers)

that in MDCCXXXI.,
they cheerfully,

at the instance of Benjamin Franklin,
one of their number,

instituted the Philadelphia Library,
which, though small at first,

is become highly valuable and extensively useful
and which the walls of this edifice
are now destined to contain and preserve,
the first stone of whose foundation
was here placed,

the thirty-first day of August, 1789."

The artisans of Philadelphia manifested great interest in the construction of the new building. A number of apprentices, we are told, were allowed to give enough labor to it to purchase a share in the Library. The designers of the building must have been gentlemen rich in faith, for though the Library then numbered little more than six thousand volumes, they provided an edifice which is only full now that it contains seventy thousand. There are a few larger libraries than this in the United States, but it is doubtful if there is one which contains so large a proportion

of valuable matter. It has the best of all the works which have appeared since it was founded, with as little of the trash as could be expected in an institution managed by and working for fallible beings. A fund is now (1862) forming for the purpose of erecting a still larger building, that shall have the advantage of being fireproof, which the present structure does not possess. There is no question that Philadelphia, so liberal in works of real utility, will enable the managers to carry out their scheme on a scale as ample for the present time as the building in Fifth Street was for 1789.

The abolition of slavery and the care of emancipated negroes were the last public objects which engaged the attention and employed the pen of Franklin. As president of "The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of free Negroes unlawfully held in bondage," he wrote a Plan for improving the condition of the free blacks. He advised a committee of twenty-four members, to be divided into four sub-committees; one, to superintend the general conduct of the free negroes, and give advice, protection, and aid to such as needed them: another, to place out young negroes as apprentices: another, to provide schools for the free blacks: and another, to provide employ ment for adults. He wrote, also, an eloquent address to the public, asking pecuniary aid to carry out his plan. "Slavery," said he, "is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. 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 affections 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." And hence, he argued, the duty which devolved upon the community to receive these poor creatures coming from the house of bondage, with cordiality, and to give them the assistance, the advice, the instruction, the protection of which they stood in need.

Among Franklin's private letters of this year, there is one, written

in December, to Noah Webster, which must have filled four or five sheets of letter paper, full of interesting gossip upon words and phrases, corruptions of language, recollections of his old printing days, and the art preservative of arts. Webster was then a young man just married, but he had already published the Spelling-Book, upon which he lived while he wrote his great dictionary, and which still sells a million copies a year.

He wrote to General Washington to congratulate him upon his recovery from the illness which had so much alarmed the country. "For my own personal ease," he wrote, "I should have died two years ago; but, though those years have been spent in excruciating pain, I am pleased that I have lived them, since they have brought me to see our present situation. I am now finishing my eightyfourth year, and probably with it my career in this life; but in whatever state of existence I am placed in hereafter, if I retain any memory of what has passed here, I shall with it retain the esteem, respect, and affection, with which I have long been, my dear friend, yours most sincerely."

"Would to God, my dear sir," replied Washington, "that I could congratulate you upon the removal of that excruciating pain under which you labor, and that your existence might close with as much ease to yourself, as its continuance has been beneficial to our country and useful to mankind; or, if the united wishes of a free people, joined with the earnest prayers of every friend to science and humanity, could relieve the body from pains or infirmities, that you could claim an exemption on this score. But this cannot be, and you have within yourself the only resource to which we can confidently apply for relief, a philosophic mind.

"If to be venerated for benevolence, if to be admired for talents, if to be esteemed for patriotism, if to be beloved for philanthropy, can gratify the human mind, you must have the pleasing consolation to know that you have not lived in vain. And I flatter myself that it will not be ranked among the least grateful occurrences of your life to be assured that, so long as I retain my memory, you will be recollected with respect, veneration, and affection by your sincere friend."

CHAPTER V.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S LAST PUBLIC ACT.

Ir will be seen more clearly by posterity than it can be by us, that the Declaration of Independence of 1776 was the knell of American slavery.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

These words were followed by victory so marvelous, that such cool heads as Washington and Franklin could not help regarding it as the visible sanction and indorsement of an Omnipotent God. The victory secure, the first thought of free America was to apply the Declaration to the case of the negro slaves. From that hour began the struggle between Interest and Conscience, or between erroneous and enlightened views of Interest, which has been well named the Irrepressible Conflict, and which, continuing without cessation for seventy-five years, sought, at length, the final arbitrament of arms. The very compromises of the Constitution, which seemed to give a kind of national sanction to slavery, were admitted only because the majority of the Convention took it for granted that an anomaly so palpably absurd and inconsistent as slavery, would not, could not stand its ground against the new spirit of the age. They felt, as Mr. Mill has recently expressed it, that slavery had been "completely judged and decided ;"* the only question that remained was, the most convenient mode of ending it, and that was the concern of the States.

There was, however, one branch of the system which lay within the province of Congress, and that was the importation of slaves from Africa. Hence, while the Northern States were maturing plans for the abolition of slavery within their own borders, and Virginia was indulging the sentimentalities of the question, admitting the wrong, but persisting in it, Congress discussed proposi tions for suppressing the slave-trade. There was a great debate on this subject in the spring of 1789, which attracted universal atten.

"Political Economy," i., 319, Am. Ed.

tion, and was read with the deepest interest by the aged Franklin. The debate arose on the motion to lay a tax of ten dollars on each slave imported.

The leader of the opposition to all measures tending to the abolition of slavery or the slave-trade, was Mr. James Jackson, of Georgia, an active and influential member. He spoke on the subject in the manner and in the spirit since so familiar to the people of the United States. Take a few sentences from Mr. Benton's "Abridgment of the Debates:"

"Mr. Jackson said it was the fashion of the day to favor the liberty of slaves. He would not go into a discussion of the subject; but he believed it was capable of demonstration that they were better off in their present situation than they would be if they were manumitted. What are they to do if they are discharged? Work for a living? Experience has shown us they will not. Examine what has become of those in Maryland; many of them have been set free in that State. Did they turn themselves to industry and useful pursuits? No, they turn out common pickpockets, petty larceny villains. And is this mercy, forsooth, to turn them into a way in which they must lose their lives? for when they are thrown upon the world, void of property and connections, they cannot get their living but by pilfering. What is to be done for compensation? Will Virginia set all her negroes free? Will they give up the money they cost them, and to whom? When this practice comes to be tried there, the sound of liberty will lose those charms which make it grateful to the ravished ear. But our slaves are not in a worse situation than they were on the coast of Africa It is not uncommon there for the parents to sell their children in peace; and in war the whole are taken and made slaves together. In these cases it is only a change of one slavery for another; and are they not better here, where they have a master, bound by the ties of interest and law to provide for their support and comfort in old age or infirmity, in which, if they were free, they would sink under the pressure of woe for want of assistance ?"*

After much debate the motion was withdrawn, on the understanding that the proposition should be revived in the form of a separate bill. The House sat until late in the summer, but the promised bill does not appear to have been introduced.

"Benton's Abridgment," i.. 74.