nothing if our Assemblies with the king have a true legislative authority, and are too strong for compliment, as tending to confirm a claim of subjects in one part of the king's dominions to be sovereigns over their fellow-subjects, when in truth they have no such right;" now urging in them, in favour of maintaining the union, that were the general sentiments of England consulted, the terms asked would be at least equitable, for that, "except where the spirit of Toryism prevails, they wish us well and that we may preserve our liberties."

It was not, in fact, until 1774, on the eve of the outbreak of hostilities, that Franklin's position changed, and his hope of a reconciliation between England and the colonies gave way. No doubt a personal

insult did much to weaken his efforts for peace during the last year of his English residence. He had become convinced that the irritation between the two countries was fanned by officers in the provinces, who reported falsely to the Home Government on the condition of affairs and the temper of the colonists; and he was confirmed in his suspicions by copies of letters from the Governor of Massachusetts and others which came to his hands. It is not known how these letters were obtained, as Franklin would never say anything except that he came by them honourably. He sent them to the Assemblies, in the hope of lessening the breach between the two countries by showing that "the injuries complained of by one of them did not proceed from the other, but from traitors amongst themselves;" and their publication brought on him at once the bitter enmity of a host of powerful men in England. This broke out on the occasion of the presentation of the petition of Massachusetts for the recall of Governor Hutchinson. After long delay it was at last heard before the Privy Council at the Cockpit, Westminster, thirty-five lords being present. When the case for the petitioners had been opened by Dunning, Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, replied for the Crown. After giving what he called a history of the province for the past ten years, full of abuse of the Assembly and praise of the Governors, he turned upon Franklin and poured out for an hour a flood of (to use Lord Shelburne's words) "scurrilous invective," encouraged by the thirty-five lords, "the indecency of whose behaviour exceeded, as is agreed on all hands, that of any committee of election." He accused Franklin of being the cause of all the troubles, and in concluding compared the doctor to Zanga in the play of "Revenge," and quoting the lines,

"Know then 'twas I:

I forged the letter, I disposed the picture;
I hated, I despised, and I destroy,"

ended his diatribe with, "I ask, my lords, whether the revengeful temper attributed by poetic fiction to the bloody African is not surpassed by the coolness and apathy of the wily American !"

In chapter viii., vol. ii., will be found Franklin's account to his Government of these transactions. That he felt and resented very

keenly the insult to himself, and from this time took up a very different attitude to the English Government, is no doubt true. He was not the man to overlook personal slights, and no one could bide his time. more patiently, or hit back harder when that time came. But, greatly to his credit, he did not even then allow his personal feelings to interfere with his duty as agent to the colonies, and he felt the rejection of the petition more on their account than his own. "What I feel on my own account," he writes, "is half lost in what I feel for the public. When I see that all petitions and complaints of grievances are so odious to Government that even the mere pipe which conveys them becomes obnoxious, I am at a loss to know how peace and union are to be maintained or restored between the different parts of the empire." And, though now thoroughly distrustful of the English Government and Parliament, he still continued to work for reconciliation so loyally as to bring on himself the suspicion of the Colonial Assemblies. He has to assure his constituents of the falseness of reports that he is still in favour at Court and with the Ministers. "I have seen no Minister since January, nor had the least communication with them. The generous and noble friends of America in both Houses do indeed favour me with their notice and regard, but they are in disgrace at Court, as well as myself." These generous and noble friends did their best indeed to atone for the insolent folly of the Government. The greatest of them, Lord Chatham, sought out Franklin, before moving in the House of Lords on American affairs, to set his judgment by Franklin's, "as men set their watches by a regulator." "He stayed with me near two hours, his equipage waiting at the door" (in Craven Street); "and being there while people were coming from church, it was much taken notice of and talked of, as at that time was every little circumstance that men thought might possibly affect American affairs. Such a visit from so great a man on so important a business flattered greatly my vanity, and the honour of it gave me the more pleasure as it happened on the very day twelve months that the ministry had taken so much pains to disgrace me before the Privy Council." Lord Stanhope, by Lord Chatham's request, brought Franklin to the bar of the House of Lords when he introduced his plan for the conciliation of the colonies. In moving its rejection, Lord Sandwich declared he "could not believe it the production of an English peer. It appeared to him rather the work of some American; and, turning his face towards me, who was leaning on the bar, said he fancied he had in his eye the person who drew it up, one of the most bitter and mischievous enemies this country had ever known. This drew the eyes of many lords upon me, but, as I had no inducement to take it to myself, I kept my countenance as immovable as if my features had been made of wood." Notwithstanding the efforts of the Duke of Richmond, Lords Shelburne, Camden, and others, Chatham's plan was summarily rejected, leaving Franklin to moralize on the absurdity of such a body claiming sovereignty over three millions of virtuous people in America,

when they seemed to have scarce discretion to govern a herd of swine. "Hereditary legislators! thought I: there would be more propriety, because less mischief, in having (as in some university of Germany) hereditary professors of mathematics." Still, to the last he never allowed himself to neglect the least chance of accommodating the difficulties between the two countries. After the Boston tea-riots had for a moment brought the English Government to its senses, and induced them to reopen negotiations, he gave the most convincing proof of his loyalty as a friend of peace by offering (in the absence of instructions) himself to guarantee the payment of the value of the tea thrown into Boston harbour if the Massachusetts Acts were at once repealed, thereby risking his whole private fortune; while to the offers of the ministry, through Lord Howe, of immediate payment of the arrears of his salary, ample appointments for himself and his friends, and other subsequent rewards in consideration of his help in this crisis, his reply was, "I shall deem it a great honour to be in any shape joined with your lordship in so good a work, but if you hope service from any influence I may be supposed to have, drop all thought of procuring me any previous favours from ministers my accepting them would destroy the very influence you propose to make use of: they would be considered as so many bribes. to betray the interests of my country."

We cannot within our limits do more than thus indicate in outline the course pursued by Franklin in those critical years ending in March, 1775, when, on the eve of war, he returned to America, hopeless of any settlement except by arms, and resolved to throw in his lot with his own country, and to devote all he possessed of fortune, experience, ability to her service. The more carefully the record is scrutinized the more difficult will the situation appear, and the more trustworthy and able the man who filled it.

After eighteen months at home, during which he sat in the second Congress as delegate, assisted in the compilation of the Declaration of Independence, and presided over the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, he went as envoy from the States to France, where he took up his residence at Passy, then a suburb of Paris, and remained till the end of the war. Before starting he converted all his available property into money, and lent the proceeds to the Revolutionary Government, and did his best to open Lord Howe's eyes to the real position of affairs in the colonies. That nobleman had taken the command of the British fleet, with a commission to treat with the insurgents in hopes of bringing about a reconciliation. For effecting this he relied much on his old friendship with Franklin and the remembrance of the efforts they had made together in England for a like object. But Franklin, while giving him full credit for sincerity in his desire for peace and reunion, warns him that no peace except "as between distinct States now at war" will ever be accepted by the colonies. Such a peace might even yet be made if England would punish the governors who had

created and fomented the discord, but he knows that Lord Howe has no power to offer, and that England in her abounding pride and deficient wisdom will not consent to, such terms. "Her fondness for conquest as a warlike nation, her lust of dominion as an ambitious one, and her thirst for a gainful monopoly as a commercial one (none of them legitimate causes of war), will all join to hide from her eyes every view of her true interests. . . . . Long did I endeavour, with unfeigned and unwearied zeal, to preserve from breaking that fine and noble china vase, the British empire; for I knew that, once broken, the separate parts could not even retain their share of the strength or value that existed in the whole, and that a perfect reunion could scarce ever be hoped for. Your lordship may possibly remember the tears of joy that wet my cheek when at your good sister's in London you once gave me hopes that a reconciliation might soon take place. I had the misfortune to find those expectations disappointed, and to be treated as the cause of the mischief I was labouring to prevent. My consolation under that groundless and malevolent treatment was that I retained the friendship of many wise and good men in that country, and among the rest some share in the regard of Lord Howe."

From December, 1776, to July, 1785, Franklin represented the colonies at the French Court, proving himself a diplomatist of the first rank, and rendering his country, in her extreme need, services only second to those of George Washington. Within a few months of his landing he had roused in France an enthusiasm for the American cause which he was able to maintain through good and evil fortunes till the negotiations for peace. Deep as was the financial distress of France, and in spite of the opposition of Controller Necker, "who is not well disposed towards us, and is supposed to embarrass every measure to relieve us by grants of money," he obtained from that Government loans amounting to eighteen millions, besides free gifts from the king of at least twelve millions, "for which no returns but that of gratitude and friendship are expected," and a guarantee for the loan from Holland. He retained the confidence of the French Court and ministers, in spite of the importunity with which he had constantly to press for military and financial help, the efforts of jealous colleagues to undermine him, and of English friends (with whom he still corresponded) to wean him from the French alliance; and it was in great measure through his influence that Spain and Holland were brought into the alliance against England.

The delicacy of the position was such as to make it scarcely possible that accusations of unfaithfulness and insincerity should not be more or less plausibly made against the holder of it. As early as 1778, when the colonies were hardest pressed, emissaries from England were sounding Franklin as to a separate peace, and warning him to take care of his own safety. To one of these, Dr. Hartley, M.P., he replies characteristically: "I thank you for your kind caution, but having nearly finished

a long life, I set but little value on what remains of it. Like a draper when one chaffers with him for a remnant, I am ready to say, 'As it is only the fag-end I will not differ with you about it: take it for what you please.' Perhaps the best use such an old fellow can be put to is to make a martyr of him." And again, in 1779, remonstrating with his old friend for thinking him capable of entertaining so base a proposal as the abandonment of the French alliance: "It is worse than advising us to drop the substance for the shadow. The dog after he found his mistake might possibly have recovered his mutton, but we could never hope to be trusted again by France, or, indeed, by any other nation under heaven, We know the worst you can do to us, if you have your wish, is to confiscate our estates and take our lives, to rob and murder us; and this, you have seen, we are ready to hazard rather than come again under your detested government. You must observe, my dear friend, that I am a little warm. Excuse me. It is over; only let me counsel you not to think of being sent hither on so fruitless an errand." This attitude of entire readiness to treat as an independent nation, but not to treat separately, and in the meantime to leave no stone unturned for strengthening the allies and confounding the enemy of his country, was held by Franklin with perfect consistency until, after the change of ministry and the return of his old friend Lord Shelburne to the Colonial Office in 1782, negotiations became for the first time serious, and a peace possible.

It is in regard to these negotiations that the prejudice arose against Franklin in England which has lasted till this day. He is supposed to have been vindictive and determined on forcing humiliating terms on England; to have shown unworthy suspicion himself of the English negotiators; to have instilled the same feeling into the minds of Messrs. Jay and Adams, his colleagues; and, lastly, to have been the cause of the ultimate refusal of all compensation to the loyalists, after having led the English Government to expect his assistance in this matter, upon which the king and Lord Shelburne laid the greatest stress. It is only as to the last of these that any ground exists for the prejudice in question, and that of the flimsiest kind. Early in the preliminary negotiations, Mr. Oswald, Lord Shelburne's agent, asked Franklin for a copy of a paper of notes prepared by the doctor, upon which they had been conferring as to the conditions which might possibly be entertained. The copy was given, and contained the suggestion that so much of the Crown lands of Canada should be sold as would raise “a sufficient sum to pay for the houses burnt by the British troops and their Indians, and also to indemnify the royalists for the confiscation of their estates." The copy had scarcely left his hands when Franklin repented this suggestion, and, in reporting the negotiation to his colleague, John Adams, he omitted a copy of these "notes," merely giving their substance, as "on reflection I was not pleased with my having hinted a reparation to Tories for their forfeited estates, and