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George the Third ordered the pointed rods pulled down from Kew palace. The queen's physician, Sir John Pringle, was Franklin's friend, and a good scientist besides; when appealed to by the King, in the dispute, he replied, "The laws of nature are not changeable at royal pleasure." For this offense, he was deprived of his position at court and obliged to resign the presidency of the Royal Society.

The matter of the pointed rods was an excellent subject for the making of epigrams and it soon became fashionable to turn one in which figured the King, the American, and the points.

This is one of the best:

“While you, great George, for knowledge hunt

And sharp conductors change for blunt

The Empire's out of joint.

Franklin another course pursues

And all your thunder heedless views

By keeping to the point."1

1 Introduction, S. I. 108.

XII. COLONIAL AGENT

1756-1762

COMMENT. When Franklin sailed for England, in 1757, he entered upon that long career of public service which was so essential to the birth of a new nation in America. From this time on, his life mingles in events with which every school boy or girl is familiar, and the account he writes is really contemporary history. As such, it should be read, but the historical narrative of the same period must not be neglected. Franklin's views, however just, are personal and contemporary. In the century and more, since he wrote, many secret records have come to light. Historians have been diligent in searching out and comparing letters, documents, official reports, on both sides of the ocean, and the story of the eighteenth century as told in recent histories is fuller, more complete, fairer, than any account before written. These histories which give such vivid, well-proportioned narratives of the past are based in considerable part upon accounts written at the time by men who took part in the events. The formal history furnishes the background for the lives of individuals, but it is through the latter that we come to realize what it would have been to live in those early days and share in the struggle the benefits of which we reap. Further, these contemporary stories of the fortunes of individuals give us an understanding of the personal character and human nature of the men who wrote them which it is impossible to gain from a strictly historical narrative.

Such an account of the events of the years 1757-8 as the one written by Franklin should be read first of all from the personal point of view; it is simply a narrative, in the first person, of how the agent of the Colony of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin by name, discharged the commission on which

he was sent to England. This story of the mission on which he went is properly of central importance, but in it mingles the personal interests and points of view of the individual who necessarily sympathized with the colonists whom he represented. And just here, at the beginning of the years in which the story of his life was also the story of the life of the American people, the narrative of Franklin ceases abruptly. We must forever regret that all who come after him thus lost the personal account of those affairs of which he was so great a part.

D.

Franklin's Outline. Denny's Arrival and Courtship to me. His character. My service to the Army in the affair of Quarters. Disputes about the Proprietor's Taxes continued. Project for paving the City. I am sent to England.

Our new governor, Captain Denny, brought over for me the before-mentioned medal from the Royal Society, which he presented to me at an entertainment given him by the city. He accompanied it with very polite expressions of his esteem for me, having, as he said, been long acquainted with my character. After dinner, when the company, as was customary at that time, were engaged in drinking, he took me aside into another room, and acquainted me that he had been advised by his friends in England to cultivate a friendship with me, as one who was capable of giving him the best advice, and of contributing most effectually to the making his administration easy; that he therefore desired of all things to have a good understanding with me, and he begged me to be assured of his readiness on all occasions to render me every service that might be in his power. He said much to me, also, of the proprietor's good disposition towards

the province, and of the advantage it might be to us all, and to me in particular, if the opposition that had been so long continued to his measures was dropped, and harmony restored between him and the people; in effecting which, it was thought no one could be more serviceable than myself; and I might depend on adequate acknowledgments and recompenses, etc., etc. The drinkers, finding that we did not return immediately to the table, sent us a decanter of Madeira, which the governor made liberal use of, and in proportion became more profuse of his solicitations and promises.

My answers were to this purpose: that my circumstances, thanks to God, were such as to make proprietary favors unnecessary to me; and that, being a member of the Assembly, I could not possibly accept of any; that, however, I had no personal enmity to the proprietary, and that, whenever the public measures he proposed should appear to be for the good of the people, no one should espouse and forward them more zealously than myself; my past opposition having been founded on this, that the measures which had been urged were evidently intended to serve the proprietary interest, with great prejudice to that of the people; that I was much obliged to him (the governor) for his professions of regard to me, and that he might rely on everything in my power to make his administration as easy as possible, hoping at the same time that he had not brought with him the same unfortunate instruction his predecessor had been hampered with.

On this he did not then explain himself; but when he afterwards came to do business with the Assembly, they

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