Mr Strahan,

Youanas

Philad July 5. 175

Member of Parliament, which has

and one of that Majority doomed my Country to

Country to Destruction

You have begun to burnour Towns, and murder our People, _ Look upon

Your Hands - They

your

are stained with the

Blood of Relations ! - You and I were Cony Friends : — You are now my

mys-and

Jam, a

Ene

Yours, Branklin

issue bills of credit to pay for them. Before the year ended, the Delaware was so protected by forts, batteries, and a chevaux-de-frise, that when, in 1777, a British fleet essayed to ascend the river, it was retarded for two months by these works. Mr. Henry Laurens assigns to Dr. Franklin all the credit of the chevaux-de-frise. A letter from Mr. Laurens to Major Huger, written while the fleet was engaged in reducing the defenses of the river, contains this sentence: "Forts Mifflin and Mercer, together with some of our armed vessels, have performed such acts of defense against the attempts of a British fleet and army, as will unite the commanders in future history with the name of Franklin, when that valuable man shall be celebrated for his construction of the marine chevaux-de-frise."* Josiah Quincy writes to General Washington, October 31st, 1775: Dr. Franklin's row-galleys are in great forwardness; seven of them are completely manned, armed, etc. I went down the river the other day with all of them. I have as much confidence in them as you have. But the people here have made machines to be sunk in the channel of Delaware River. Three rows of them are placed in the river, with timbers, barbed with iron. They are frames of timber sunk with stone; machines very proper for our channel in the Narrows. Dr. Franklin says they may be made in the form of a chevaux-de-frise, and used to great advantage."

num.

It was a busy summer with him. "In the morning at six," he wrote to Priestley, July 7th, "I am at the Committee of Safety, which committee holds till near nine, when I am at the Congress, and that sits till after four in the afternoon. Both these bodies proceed with the greatest unanimity, and their meetings are well attended. It will scarce be credited in Britain, that men can be as diligent with us from zeal for the public good, as with you for thousands per anSuch is the difference between uncorrupted new states, and corrupted old ones. Great frugality and great industry are now become fashionable here. Gentlemen, who used to entertain with two or three courses, pride themselves now in treating with simple beef and pudding. By these means, and the stoppage of our consumptive trade with Britain, we shall be better able to pay our voluntary taxes for the support of our troops. Our savings in the article of trade amount to near five millions sterling per annum." Franklin's grandson has preserved a dateless anecdote, which may

* "Materials for History," p. 61.

"Letters to Washington," i., 75.

be in place here. Some of the more strenuous patriots of Pennsylvania desired the Committee of Safety, most of whom were dissenters, to require the Episcopal clergy to refrain from praying for the King. Dr. Franklin, foreseeing that such an injunction would create more disturbance than the matter was worth, quenched the proposal in laughter. "The measure," said he, "is quite unnecessary; for the Episcopal clergy, to my certain knowledge, have been constantly praying, these twenty years, that 'God would give to the king and his council wisdom,' and we all know that not the least notice has ever been taken of that prayer. So, it is plain, the gentlemen have no interest in the court of Heaven." The Committee laughed, and the motion was dropped.

August 1st, Congress adjourned to meet again on the 5th of September; having been in session two months and twenty days.

CHAPTER II.

FATHER AND SON LOSE A SON.

"THE gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to scourge us."

The law of nature, thus expressed by Shakspeare, Dr. Franklin was about to exemplify, after having escaped it for the long period of forty-five years. All the atonement to society for the error of his youth which was possible, he had made, in giving to his illegitimate son the advantages of education, and of his own position in the world. Yet from the very completeness of that atonement sprang the bitterest mortification of his whole life. The father's justice and liberality had raised the son to a hight whence he could wound that father's pride, affection and patriotism; and all the world witness the stroke.

Soon after his return from England, Dr. Franklin sent his grandson to pay his duty to his father at Perth Amboy, the capital of New Jersey at that time. Governor Franklin, who had not seen his son since he was an infant, gave him a paternal welcome, it appears; for Dr. Franklin wrote, soon after, that the young gentle

66

man was very happy" at Perth Amboy with his father, and was coming back in September to enter the college at Philadelphia. When Congress adjourned, Dr. Franklin himself went to Perth Amboy, and remained for several days at his son's house; but was, probably, not "very happy" there.

William Franklin had long ago lived down the early prejudice entertained against him on account of his birth and inexperience He had been an active, just, and courteous governor, and became, at length, a popular one. Besides being efficient and enterprising as a magistrate, he was a handsome and extremely agreeable man, as abounding in facetious anecdote, almost, as his father. Like his father, too, he had become correct in his habits, after his marriage with Miss Downs, to whom he was devotedly attached. A tradition of this lady's gentleness and unobtrusive worth still lives in the minds of aged Jerseymen in the neighborhood of Perth Amboy. Governor Franklin, as the ancient records show, promoted the improvement of roads in his province, induced the Assembly to offer bounties to successful farmers, and was among the earliest advocates of a mitigation of the laws relating to the imprisonment of debtors. He invested the surplus of his salary in a tract of land on the banks of the Rancocus, near Burlington, which he converted into what we should now call a model farm. He imported from England such agricultural implements as the skill of Jersey artisans was not then competent to produce, renowned as their success in this branch of manufacture has since become. Like Washington and Jefferson, he was learned in plows, and could talk of crops and beeves with the best farmers going. His library was, probably, the best in the province, and he still exhibited his tact in performing electrical experiments. Happy in his home, useful and honored as governor and as citizen, he seemed destined to pass and end his days in dignified and prosperous tranquillity.

Another destiny, however, awaited him. Without supporting, or expressly approving the earlier measures of the ministry against the freedom of the colonies, he could not forget that he was a royal governor; he remained, as we have seen, "a thorough government man," and deemed the opposition of the colonists, more "mad" than the measures of the ministry. He only did what nearly all the king's servants in America did; what all men, except

the strongest and the noblest, will do in similar circumstances, i. e., he sympathized with the power which had given and could take away his place. This, too, is a law of nature for seven-tenths of the family of man. All that an average man hath will he give for his life; and most men, in critical circumstances, appear to be of Shylock's opinion, that he takes a man's life who takes away his means of living. Let us allow, also, that the law of nature is beneficent which impels a man to cling most tenaciously to the nest which warms and shelters those whom he should love better than himself. And this does but enhance the merit of those superior men, who know when a truer regard for the nestlings requires the brave abandonment of the nest and the familiar sources that supplied it with food.

During this visit of Dr. Franklin to his son, the last visit he ever made him, father and son discussed the controversy between the mother country and the colonies. Tradition reports that their conversations on this exciting topic were frequent and very warm; each trying his utmost, and each failing utterly, to convince the other. No man in the colonies, not John or Samuel Adams, nor Jefferson, nor Patrick Henry, was more perfectly resolved upon resistance than Dr. Franklin. All his familiar letters of this year show it. Probably, to his son, he said in substance, what he had written: "The eyes of all Christendom are now upon us, and our honor as a people is become a matter of the utmost consequence to be taken care of. If we tamely give up our rights in this contest, a century to come will not restore us in the opinion of the world; we shall be stamped with the character of dastards, poltroons, and fools; and be despised and trampled upon, not by this haughty, insolent nation only, but by all mankind."

On one point only, father and son appear to have agreed: both blamed General Gage for precipitating hostilities. But, widely as they differed on the grounds of the dispute, they separated amicably on this occasion. At least, Dr. Franklin wrote his son a friendly letter six weeks after, telling him with what willingness the people submitted to the losses and hardships of the war, and how unfaltering was the resolution even of those whom the burning of Charlestown and the siege of Boston had driven homeless and beggared upon the world. "I am not terrified," said he, "by the expense of this war, should it continue ever so long. A little more frugality or a little more industry in individuals will with