ON GRATITUDE TO THE MINISTRY. To the Printer of the Public Advertiser. SIR: Your correspondent Britannicus inveighs violently against Dr. Franklin for his ingratitude to the ministry of this nation, who have conferred upon him so many favors. They gave him the post-office of America, they made his son a governor, and they offered him a post of five hundred a year in the salt office if he would relinquish the interests of his country; but he has had the wickedness to continue true to it, and is as much an American as ever. As it is a settled point in government here that every man has his price, 'tis plain they are bunglers in their business, and have not given him enough. Their master has as much reason to be angry with them as Rodrigue, in the play, with his apothecary, for not effectually poisoning Pandolpho, and they must probably make use of the apothecary's justification, namely: 66 "SCENE IV. "Rodrigue and Fell the Apothecary. Rodrigue. You promised to have this Pandolpho upon his bier in less than a week; 'tis more than a month since, and he still walks and stares me in the face. "Fell. True; and yet I have done my best endeavors. In various ways I have given the miscreant as much poison as would have killed an elephant. He has swallowed dose after dose; far from hurting him, he seems the better for it. He hath a wonderfully strong constitution. I find I cannot kill him but by cutting his throat, and that, as I take it, is not my business. Rodrigue. Then it must be mine." PHILOSOPHICAL.* [TO PETER COLLINSON, LONDON.] THE ELECTRICAL KITE. PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 16, 1752. AS FREQUENT mention is made in public papers from Europe of the success of the Philadelphia experiment for drawing the electric fire from clouds by means of pointed rods of iron erected * We have already quoted (page 106) the high and authoritative estimate placed upon Franklin's philosophical writings by Sir Humphrey Davy. Lord Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, remarks upon them as follows: "The most ingenious and profound explanations are suggested, as if they were the most natural and obvious way of accounting for the phenomena; and the author seems to value himself so little on his most important discoveries, that it is necessary to compare him with others before we can form a just notion of his merits. As he seems to be conscious of no exertion, he feels no partiality for any part of his speculations, and never seeks to raise the reader's ideas of their importance by any arts of declamation or eloquence. Indeed, the habitual precision of his conceptions, and his invariable practice of referring to specific facts and observations, secured him, in a great measure, both from extravagant conjectures, in which too many naturalists have indulged, and from the zeal and enthusiasm which seem so naturally to be engendered in their defence. He was by no means averse to give scope to his imagination in suggesting a variety of explanations of obscure and unmanageable phenomena; but he never allowed himself to confound these vague and conjectural theories with the solid results of experience and observation. In his meteorological papers, and in his observations upon heat and light, there is a great deal of such bold and original suggestion; but the author evidently sets little value on them, and has no sooner disburdened his mind of the impressions from which they proceeded, than he seems to dismiss them entirely from his consideration, and turns to the legitimate philosophy of experiment with unabated diligence and humility. As an instance of this disposition, we may quote part of a letter to the Abbé Soulavie upon a new theory of the earth, which he proposes and dismisses, without concern or anxiety, in the course of a few sentences; though, if the idea had fallen on the brain of an European philosopher, it might have germinated into a volume of eloquence, like Buffon's, or an infinite array of paragraphs and observations, like those of Parkinson or Dr. Hutton." on high buildings, &c., it may be agreeable to the curious to be informed that the same experiment has succeeded in Philadelphia, though made in a different and more easy manner, which is as follows: Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which being properly accommodated with a tail, loop and string, will rise in the air like those made of paper; but this, being of silk, is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder-gust without tearing. To the top of the upright stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine next the hand is to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join a key may be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. As soon as any of the thunder-clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine, will be electrified, and the loose filaments of the twine will stand out every way, and be attracted by an approaching finger. And when the rain has wetted the kite and twine, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key the vial may be charged; and from electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled, and all the other electric experiments be performed which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning completely demonstrated. *In 1747, Franklin wrote, in reference to his electrical pursuits, to Peter Collinson: "I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and time as this has lately done; for, what with making experiments when I can be alone, and repeating them to my friends and acquaintance, who, from the novelty of the thing, come continually in crowds to see them, I have during some months past had little leisure for anything else." Collinson wrote to him from London, in 1753: "The King of France strictly commands the Abbé Mazéas to write a letter in the politest terms to the Royal Society, to return the king's thanks and compliments, in an express manner, to Mr. Franklin, of Pennsylvania, for his useful discoveries in electricity, and the application of pointed rods to prevent the terrible effects of thunder-storms." [TO DR. LINING, AT CHARLESTON.] VARIOUS EXPERIMENTS-TREATMENT OF INVENTORS. PHILADELPHIA, March 18, 1775. YOUR question, how I came first to think of proposing the experiment of drawing down the lightning, in order to ascertain its sameness with the electric fluid, I cannot answer better than by giving you an extract from the minutes I used to keep of the experiments I made, with memorandums of such as I purposed to make, the reasons for making them, and the observations that arose upon them, from which minutes my letters were afterwards drawn. By this extract you will see that the thought was not so much "an out-of-the-way one "but that it might have occurred to an electrician. "Nov. 7, 1749.- Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars: 1. Giving light. 2. Color of the light. 3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7. Subsisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes through. 9. Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals. 11. Firing inflammable substances. 12. Sulphureous smell. The electric fluid is attracted by points. We do not know whether this property is in lightning. — But, since they agree in all the particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise in this? Let the experiment be made." I wish I could give you any satisfaction in the article of clouds. I am still at a loss about the manner in which they become charged with electricity; no hypothesis I have yet formed perfectly satisfying me. Some time since, I heated very hot a brass plate two feet square, and placed it on an electric stand. From the plate a wire extended horizontally four or five feet, and, at the end of it, hung, by linen threads, a pair of cork balls. I then repeatedly sprinkled water over the plate, that it might be raised from it in vapor, hoping that if the vapor either carried off the electricity of the plate, or left behind it that of the water (one of which I supposed it must do, if, like the clouds, it became electrized itself, either positively or negatively), I should perceive and determine it by the separation of the balls, and by finding whether they were positive or negative; but no alteration was made at all, nor could I perceive that the steam was itself electrized, though I have still some suspicion that the steam was not fully examined, and I think the experiment should be repeated. Whether the first state of electrized clouds is positive or negative, if I could find the cause of that, I should be at no loss about the other; for either is easily deduced from the other, as one state is easily produced by the other. A strongly positive cloud may drive out of a neighboring cloud much of its natural quantity of the electric fluid, and, passing by it, leave it in a negative state. In the same way, a strongly negative cloud may occasion a neighboring cloud to draw into itself from others an additional quantity, and, passing by it, leave it in a positive state. How these effects may be produced you will easily conceive, on perusing and considering the experiments in the enclosed paper; and from them too it appears probable that every change from positive to negative, and from negative to positive, that during a thunder-gust we see in the cork balls annexed to the apparatus, is not owing to the presence of clouds in the same state, but often to the absence of positive or negative clouds, that, having just passed, leave the rod in the opposite state. The knocking down of the six men was performed with two of my large jars not fully charged. I laid one end of my discharging-rod upon the head of the first; he laid his hand upon the head of the second; the second his hand on the head of the third, and so to the last, who held in his hand the chain that was connected with the outside of the jars. When they were thus placed, I applied the other end of my rod to the prime conductor, and they all dropped together. When they got up, they all declared they had not felt any stroke, and wondered how they came to fall; nor did any of them either hear the crack, or see the light of it. You suppose it a dangerous experiment; but I had once suffered the same myself, receiving, by accident, an equal stroke through my head, that struck me down, without hurting me; and i had seen a young woman who was about to be electrified through the feet (for some indisposition) receive a greater charge through the head, by inadvertently stooping forward to look at the placing of her feet, till her fore head (as she was very tall) came too near my prime conductor: she dropped, but instantly got up again, complaining of nothing. A person so struck sinks down doubled, or folded together as it were, the joints losing their strength and stiffness at once, so that he drops on the spot where he stood instantly, and there is no previous staggering, nor does he ever fall lengthwise. Too great a charge might, indeed, kill a man; but I have not yet seen any hurt done by it. It would certainly, as you observe, be the easiest of all deaths. The experiment you have heard so imperfect an account of is |