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mity of the tyranny which had a long while oppressed and dishonored it; but it combated her with different weapons.

In the one, fanaticism was an error of individuals, and the unhappy consequence of their education and their studies; to enlighten them, it was sufficient to dissipate the phantoms of a wandering imagination. In fine, it was only the fanatics themselves that it was necessary to

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In the other, where fanaticism, guided by politics, had founded upon error a system of domination, and where, leagued with every species of tyranny, it had promised to blind mankind, provided it was permitted to oppress them, it became necessary to rear up against it the whole force of public opinion, and to oppose, to so dangerous a power, all the efforts of the friends of reason and of liberty. The business there, was not to enlighten the fanatics, but to unmask and disarm them. One might add to this parallel, new in the history of philosophy, that VOLTAIRE and Franklin, the two men who had separately, but at one and the same time, conceived this salutary project, had the happiness to meet, in their old age, at Paris—to enjoy their glory together, and congratulate each other upon their triumph.

The philosopher, who prepared the felicity of his country by enlightening men, and forming them into citizens, was destined to render it services still more direct, and no less useful. The times were no longer such, as when the poverty of the English colonies was sufficient to prevent the wars of Europe from extending to them. They had already become sufficiently flourishing to tempt the avidity of an enemy; and it was equally dangerous for their repose and their liberty, to be either abandoned by Great Britain, or defended by its armies.

Dr. Franklin, who, ever since the year 1736, had acted as Secretary to the Assembly of Pennsylvania, thought that it would be proper to profit by a war in which England was so nearly interested, in order to teach the Pennsylvanians to assume, for the defence of the mother country, those arms which would be one day necessary against herself, for the maintenance of their own rights; and accordingly, in 1744, he formed the plan of a national militia.

The people relished the proposal; Philadelphia alone furnished a thousand men. The command was offered to Franklin; he refused it, and served as a common soldier under Mr. Laurence, whom he himself had proposed as the fittest person to act as general.

It was necessary to build forts, and money was wanting; he provided the necessary sums by means of a lottery, of which he himself formed the plan.

The success of this measure was retarded for some time, by a very singular difficulty. The Quakers form a very numerous body in Pennsylvania; and such is the purity of the principles of that sect, that they look upon it as criminal, to contribute money even in behalf of a defensive war. The natural effect of an exaggerated morality, adopted by enthusiasm, is to place its sectarists under the necessity of either violating its precepts, or of sacrificing the counsels of reason, and the dictates of judgment. At length they endeavor to elude their own laws; they dissemble the violation of them by means of subtile distinctions, and by adroit and equivocal modes of reasoning. By these means, they prevent the fanatics and hypocrites of their own sect from rising against them, and do not

wound the feelings of the people, who, in all religions, attach their ideas of morality to certain consecrated words.1

The philosophical indulgence of Dr. Franklin, and the address which he made use of upon more than one occasion, often enabled him to conciliate the patriotism of the Quakers with the principles of their sect.

Never was any man more anxious to exhibit the most scrupulous respect for the religious weaknesses and follies of other men; towards feeble and sickly minds, he ever evinced the same delicate attentions, which worthy men generally make use of in regard to the infirmities of infancy.

The education of Dr. Franklin had not opened to him the career of the sciences, but nature had given him a genius capable of comprehending, and even of embellishing them.

His first essays on electricity fully prove, that he was but very little acquainted with this part of natural philosophy. Being at an immense distance from Europe, he possessed but imperfect machines. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, he soon discovered the immediate cause of electrical phenomena. He explained it, by demonstrating the existence of a fluid, insensible while it remains in a state of equilibrium, and which instantly manifests itself, either when this equilibrium is destroyed, or while it endeavours to re-establish it. His analysis of the grand Leyden experiment is a chef-d'œuvre at once of sagacity, of perspicacity, and of art.

Soon after this, he perceived an analogy between the effects of thunder and electricity, which struck him prodigiously. He conceived the idea of an apparatus, by means of which, he proposed to interrogate the heavens; he makes the experiment, and the answer fully confirms his conjectures. Thus the cause of lightning is now known. Its effects, so ruinous, so irregular in appearance, are not only explained, but imitated.

We at length know why the lightning silently and peaceably follows certain bodies, and disperses others with a loud noise; why it melts metals, sometimes shivers to atoms, and sometimes seems to respect, those substances which surround it.

But it was but little to imitate the thunder: Dr. Franklin conceived the audacious idea of averting its vengeance.

He imagined, that a bar of iron, pointed at the end, and connected with the ground, or rather with the water, would establish a communication between a cloud and the earth, and thus guarantee or protect the objects in the immediate neighbourhood of such a conductor.

The success of this idea was fully commensurate to all his wishes; and thus man was enabled to wield a power sufficient to disarm the wrath of Heaven.

It is thus that the Quakers, on being solicited for money in order to purchase gunpowder, presented the sum demanded, under the pretence of its being intended for grain. The Dunkars, more wise perhaps than the Quakers, have never committed their dogmas nor their precepts to writing. They were afraid, as one of their principal men told Dr. Franklin, of either exposing themselves to the danger of professing that which they did not any longer believe, or to the shame of having changed their opinions. VOL. I. 3 I

This great discovery was by far too brilliant, and too singular, not to conjure up a numerous host of enemies against it. Notwithstanding this, the custom of using conductors was adopted in America and in Great Britain; but at the commencement of war with the mother-country, some soi-disant English philosophers endeavored, by unfair experiments, to throw doubts upon the utility of his scheme, and seemed to indicate a wish to ravish this discovery from Benjamin Franklin, by way of punishing him for the loss of thirteen colonies.

It is unfortunately more easy to mislead a nation in regard to its proper interests, than to impose upon men of science relative to an experiment; thus those prejudices, which were able to draw England into an unjust and fatal contest, could not make the learned of Europe change the form of the electrical conductors of Franklin. They multiplied in France, after France had become allied to America; in truth, the sentence of the police has been opposed to it in some of our towns, as it has been opposed in Italy by the decisions of casuists, and with just as little success!1

In a free country, the law follows the public opinion; in despotic governments the public opinion often contradicts the laws, but always concludes at length by submitting itself to their influence. At this day, the use of this preservative has become common among almost all nations, but without being universally adopted. A long course of experiments does not permit us any longer to doubt of its efficacy.

If the edifices provided with it, have still some dangers to dread, this happens, because, between the bounded efforts of man, and the boundless force of nature, there can never be established any other, but an unequal contest.

But what an immense career has this successful experiment opened to our hopes?

Why may we not one day hope to see the baneful activity of all the scourges of mankind melt away, as that of thunder has done, before the powers of genius, exercised through an immensity of ages? When all the regions of nature are disarmed by the happy use of her gifts, we shall experience nothing but her benefits.

In 1754, the King of England, who had formed the project of attacking France, convoked a general congress of the deputies of the different colonies, in order to concert a system of common defence. Dr. Franklin was sent thither, and proposed a plan, which was accepted by the congress; but it was neither agreeable to the assemblies of the particular states, nor to the British ministry. No menace had as yet made the colonies perceive the necessity of this union, which was about to take away from each a part of its independence; and the English government was at one and the same time too cunning not to foresee that this new institution prepared a

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Many religious sectaries are still averse to their use; they consider it as presumption, and say they will trust to the first great cause; though at the same time these very people are taking physic, and get cupped and bled, in order to prevent themselves from being sick and diseased!

resistance to its tyrannical enterprises, and was too little enlightened to know, that nothing remained for it but to direct a revolution, which was an inevitable consequence of the increasing prosperity of the colonies. Indolence or pride on one side, and perfidy on the other, occasioned the rejection of a scheme formed by foresight and traced by wisdom.

Twenty-four years afterwards, it served as a basis to that congress which declared the independence of the United States; and perhaps it would have been a desideratum in the new constitution, to have imitated more its sage simplicity.

It has been urged as a reproach to Franklin, that he had given a negative to the governor appointed by the King of Great Britain; but circumstances required this sacrifice; it was the band that would have connected a sucker, at that time young and tender, to the parent tree, from which it had sprouted forth; and which ought not to have been cut until the moment that the young plant, after having extended its roots, and developed its branches, had acquired sufficient vigor to nourish it by means of its own proper strength.

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CHARACTER OF Dr. Franklin. (By the Same.)

Humanity and frankness were the basis of his morality. An habitual gaiety, a happy facility in regard to every thing respecting the common concerns of life, and a tranquil inflexibility in affairs of importance, formed the character of Dr. Franklin.—These two latter qualities are easily united in men, who, endowed with a superior mind, and strong understanding, abandon trifling things to doubt and to indifference.

His system of conduct was simple; he endeavored to banish sorrow and wearisomness, by means of temperance and labor. "Happiness," he was used to say, "like a body, is composed

of insensible elements."

Without disdaining glory, he knew how to despise the injustice of opinion; and while enjoying renown, he could pardon envy.

During his youth, he had carried his pyrrhonism to the very foundations of morality; the natural goodness of his heart, and the directions of his conscience, were his sole guides; and they very rarely led him astray.

A little later in life, he allowed that there existed a morality founded upon the nature of man, independent of all speculative opinions, and anterior to all conventions.

He thought, that our souls, in another life, received the recompense of their virtues, and the punishment of their faults; he believed in the existence of a God, at once beneficent and just, to whom he offered up, in the secrecy of his own conscience, a silent, but pure homage.

He did not despise the exterior forms of religion; he even thought them useful to morality; he, however, submitted himself to them but seldom.

All religions appeared to him to be equally good, provided an universal toleration was the principle of them, and that they did not deprive, of the recompense due to virtue, those who were of another belief, or of no belief at all.

The application of the sciences to the common purposes of life, and to domestic economy, was often the subject of his researches; he took pleasure to demonstrate, that, even in the most common affairs of life, custom and ignorance are but bad guides; that we were far from having exhausted the resources of nature; and were only deficient in men capable of interrogating her.

He never wrote any thing upon politics, except some tracts required by circumstances, and produced upon the spur of the occasion.

It was easy to perceive, that he always endeavored to reduce all questions to their simple elements, and to present them in such a manner to the public, that the unlearned might be enabled to understand, and to resolve them. It was to such that he always addressed himself. Sometimes it was an error that he attempted to root out and destroy; and sometimes an useful truth, for which he wished gently to prepare their minds, that at length they might be enabled to receive, and, above all, to preserve it. It is in vain that we shall search for any subject, on which he could be supposed to have written from the mere impulse of glory.

Sometimes he employed those forms, which, in appearance only, disguise the truth, in order to render it more affecting, and which, instead of disclosing, allow the pleasure of divining it. It was thus that, while seeming to teach the surest means for diminishing the extent of a state, which is found too difficult to be governed, he lampooned the conduct of the English ministry in regard to America; thus, also, by way of displaying the injustice of the pretensions of Great Britain in regard to her colonies, he supposes the King of Prussia to publish an edict, in which he subjects England to the payment of certain taxes, under pretext that the inhabitants of the banks of the Oder had formerly conquered and peopled it.

His conversation, like his style, was always natural, and often ingenious. In his youth, he had read Xenophon, an author who had inspired him with a taste for the Socratic method of argument, and he took pleasure in employing it, sometimes by putting artful questions, tending to make the advocates of a false opinion refute themselves; sometimes, by an application of their principles to other events, obliging them thus to recognise the truth, when disengaged from

He was occupied a long time in endeavoring to make the forms of chimnies more perfect, and to introduce œconomy in regard to combustible substances, by regulating the intensity and the equality of heat, and the renewal of the air in places warmed artificially. Several years before he became so celebrated as he afterwards was, and at the period when he began to enjoy an independent fortune, it was proposed to him to procure a patent for a stove of his own invention. This he rejected; saying, at the same time, "I have profited by the inventions of others, and is it not just that they, in return, should profit by mine?"

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