the repeal, and offered payment for the tea destroyed at Boston, in the event of their repeal.

He rendered himself obnoxious by his zeal for his country, for which he was insulted before the privy council, and dismissed from the direction of the post office, estimated at 7500 dollars a year.

The king's governors were ordered not to sign any warrant for his salaries.

Returning home, he devoted himself to the cause of independence. He was chairman of the committee of safety, and invented the chevaux de frize for the defence of the Delaware.

He, in 1775, associated with Messrs. Hanson and Lynch, at the head-quarters near Boston, arranged the affairs of the union between the northern states and general Washington.

In spring, 1776, he was associated with Messrs. Carrol and Chew in a mission to Canada; the same year he was appointed to France; put all the money he possessed into the hands of Congress* (about $3000), and sailed for France, in the midst of war and danger, in the 70th year of his age.

He made no bargain for salary, or appointments, but was told he should have $2500 a year, his expenses paid, and to be assisted by a secretary.

When, in 1764, Pennsylvania sent him to England on the same salary, they allowed him a year's advance for the expenses of his passage. He had no allowance from Congress, was badly accommodated in a vessel, not fit for the northern seas, and which foundered on her return.

He served as commissioner and plenipotentiary at the court of France; and performed services which were not probably duties of his station. No secretary being sent, the business was executed partly before the commissioners left him, and entirely after by himself, with the aid of his grandson, who was allowed never exceeding three hundred pounds a year.

He served as consul for several years; and as special judge in admiralty causes; and issued commissions to privateers, of which the Black Prince alone captured in one year seventy-five sail.

He served as commissary of purchases, receiving and paying bills of exchange, amounting to 2,500,000 livres.

In a letter of Silas Dean to colonel Wm. Duer, of New York, he thus notices the services of Franklin :-" Congress drew bills of exchange upon president Laurens, in Holland, several months before he left America; they drew on Mr. Jay, long before his arrival in Spain; all of which bills were honoured by the doctor. You in America believed that this was done with money received from Spain and Holland; not at all; the drafts were constantly sent to Franklin to be discharged; even the salaries of Mr. Jay, and Mr. Adams, and their suites, were paid by the doctor out of funds which his address obtained from the treasury of France. The agents of particular states were provided with large sums in the same way, out of funds ostensibly obtained for the subsistence of the army. Our ambassadors and agents have cost us, for some time, at least twenty thousand pounds sterling each year; the redemption of prisoners as much more. Congress was several times requested by the doctor not to draw on him for more, but they always continued to draw, often without notice, and were always paid."

It is true, that by his fellow-citizens of Pennsylvania, he was received on his return with gratulations, and they conferred on him the highest trusts they could bestow. It has been before noticed, that, by the editor of the edition of 1779 it was said, "the times appear not ripe enough to give expression to the veneration due to Franklin ;" and even now, in the fifty-seventh year of American independence, that justice remains to be suitably done. The secret enmities which were directed against him during the whole time of his eventful mission at Paris have been shatched from the indignation of the history, by the consignment of the private papers of the venerable Charles Thomson to the flames; an error having its motive in virtue, but certainly operating as a denial of positive as well as of retributive justice. Charles Thomson, being rebuked in terms of affection and respect for this sacrifice, excused himself to the writer by expressions to this effect: "The reputation and the actions of Dr. Franklin required no other vindication than the independence of his country; during the whole period of his services at home and abroad, no person knew them better than myself; as to his enemies, it is an act of charity to future generations that they should be consigned to oblivion, were it only to leave the revolution unblemished by their exposure. Men who have held their heads very high would otherwise not appear to very great advantage."

Though honoured in his favourite city and state, Congress never made that remuneration which he had a right to expect; and it will at some day not remote be inquired by the faithful historian, to what causes it should be ascribed that even in his latter years, and after his demise, his descendants should have been proscribed in the very city which he and they had so much honoured and adorned. After the foundation of the federal government, there appeared a manifest tendency to proscribe him and others, who had been eminently conspicuous in the cause of independence; and this spirit extended to the institutions of which he was the author, which deserve some brief remarks here.

There had existed in Pennsylvania a law called the test act, which was intended to counteract the private intrigues and the undisguised hostility which was manifested by the adversaries of the revolution who had not emigrated. The moderation of the people forbade any molestation on account of opinion, and many who were, from education or other causes, partial to the royal cause remained in perfect security while they refrained from actual interference with the cause of liberty. In the moment of the triumphant establishment of independence, the generosity of the friends of liberty held forth an amnesty, and opened to those who had been opposed to the national independence the common rights of freemen. None was more earnest or effectively active in the repeal of the test law than Franklin. With an ingratitude that is unhappily too fréquent, the power and influence which had been so long repressed by a perfidious discretion, soon displayed itself; and thenceforward exhibited a character, which never ceased till the generation had nearly passed away, of hostility to the principles of freedom. The repeal of the test law forms a salient point in the politics of the period, which affected all public measures. Those who were thus liberally treated identified themselves with every measure hostile to liberal principles, and became an active and propelling power in one of the parties which grew up on the formation of the federal government. The artifices and the malignity of this class of ungrateful men, gave much of their grossness to party spirit, in the first twelve years of the federal government, and

3*

contributed at once to produce and imbitter the melancholy state of society which closed the last century, and by their violence to the overthrow of that party; from which period the state of society is happily contrasted by the social quiet, security, and concord which have been experienced during the subsequent thirty years.

It was said of David Mallet's life of Chancellor Bacon, that "it contained no illustration of the philosophy of the period; and that had he written the life of Marlborough, he might have omitted the tactics of the period with the same propriety." The same characteristic belongs to more than one history of the American revolution, in which Franklin appears not to have held even a secondary place.

Among the transactions which followed the peace, the abrogation of the constitution which had been drawn up by Franklin for Pennsylvania, merits some notice. The same month which is marked by the Declaration of Independence gave birth to the convention which formed the republican constitution of Pennsylvania. Dr. Franklin was the president of that convention. The constitution which it adopted presents his political opinions; a single assembly and a plural executive were in his judgment the proper basis of a government for a free people. Averse from any form which would subject human affairs to the caprice or passions of any individual, he considered a single executive as constituting in effect a monarchy, the natural tendency of which was to despotism. It was completed 28th September, 1776, having a preamble assigning the causes of its formation; its first chapter was a Bill of Rights, embracing all those free principles of action, right, and security which leave no room for the equivocations of unwritten law, and asserting all that was necessary to social security, freedom of action and opinion.

The second chapter contained the plan of a frame of government, wherein the legislative power was assigned to an assembly of responsible delegates, and the executive to a president and council. The assembly to be annually chosen by ballot, and the members to be eligible for only four years out of seven ; no members elected by the state to Congress of the United States to sit longer than two years successively, and to be ineligible for three years afterwards. All bills presented at any session to lie over after debate for another session, and to be printed in the interval for public consideration; and by the § 47, a council of censors was constituted to be chosen every seventh year, to sit one year, whose duty it should be to inquire whether the constitution had been administered inviolate; the legislators faithful; the executive performed their duty; in what manner the revenue had been collected and disposed of; and if they should find cause, to call a convention in two years after their session for the revision of the constitution, &c.

This constitution, was in operation until after the present constitution of the United States was established. The parties which grew out of the contest on that occasion assumed various names, which as is not uncommon were sometimes deceptive, and displayed in action what was very different from or absolutely opposed to the signification of the title assumed.

It was in the heat of these excitements that the constitution of Pennsylvania furnished by Franklin was assailed; and while the friend of freedom cannot but regret the various modes by which constitutions have been subverted in more recent times, he who is familiar with history will be apt to moderate his surprise

at what has happened in other countries, when he learns that even in Pennsylvania, the constitution of Franklin was not terminated by the means and mode provided within itself; but that proceedings characterized by violence put an end to it, and supplied its place by the constitution which still exists.

This abstract of history would be defective, if the causes and consequences were not adverted to. The § 36 of Franklin's constitution is in the following words: "As every freeman, to preserve his independence (if without a sufficient estate), ought to have some profession, calling, trade, or farm, whereby he may honestly subsist, there can be no necessity for, nor use in establishing offices of profit; the usual effects of which are dependance and servility, unbecoming freemen, in the possessors and expectants; faction, contention, corruption, and disorder among the people. But if any man is called into public service, to the prejudice of his private affairs, he has a right to a reasonable compensation."

The discussions which had arisen on the formation of the federal constitution had unfolded unequivocal prepossessions towards monarchical institutions, and the forms of the English government especially: Titular distinctions and the appetite for place, ranks, orders, and degrees-patricians and plebeians-the well-born and the vulgar, were heard of, and menaced a restoration of the vices and follies which had cost so much to overcome and do away. A constitution which required every man to have a profession, calling, or trade, and which at once held forth the incongruity of sinecure offices, could not but be odious to the newly self-incarnated nobility; and the work of Franklin, under which the commonwealth prospered in quiet, was doomed to a like proscription with that of his family. An illustration of the state of society at the period, is pertinent to the historical purpose of this preface. Such were the ridiculous extremes of the passions of the period, that the intolerance of faction, temporarily ascendant in political power, carried its influence into private society. The enjoyment of peace after the recent afflictions of war naturally led the youth of both sexes to social intercourse and innocent felicity. Dancing assemblies were among the seasonable recreations. A grandson of Franklin, who had been educated with peculiar care and affection during his residence in Europe, had returned home with his intellect well cultivated and the polish of the best manners. Modest and unassuming, amiable and unaffected, his deportment during the completion of his education at the university of his native city had acquired for him private esteem and public admiration. Without seeking distinction, he was by common assent considered the model and became the leading director of those innocent and rational assemblies. But that jealous and unquiet spirit which had closed the doors of the presidential levees against the talented and accomplished daughter of Franklin, carried its proscription into the dancing assemblies; and, surprising as the fact may appear at the present day, the grandson was interdicted from those assemblies of which he was the first ornament, upon this significant plea—that he was a printer! Such an occurrence would appear from its complex absurdity and extravagance almost incredible; but there still survive too many witnesses of the fact to leave it doubtful.

The constitution of the commonwealth, it may be better conceived from this anecdote, was not adapted to the views and wishes of the then dominating influence. In the flush of success in some points of political contention, and using but abusing the influence of a great name, while in the prosecution of their vengeance

against popular government equal and free, they conspired to subvert Franklin's constitution, and to establish another which, by a concentration of official patronage, comparatively greater in the executive than that possessed by the royal prototype of England, they calculated would secure to them the power and the offices of the state for ever; nor did they hesitate to resort to means odious and violent to accomplish their purpose. The existing constitution had provided legal means for its correction and amendment; those were wholly disregarded; and such was the temper of the authors. of the transactions, that members of the assembly were forced from their dwellings to give an appearance of sanction by their presence, to an act against which they had protested, for which they refused to vote, and to which their constituents were opposed: to complete their purpose, they excluded from the new constitution every provision for its amendment; a feature which was a favourite in all the constitutions formed contemporaneously and since.

This omission, however, only indicated the hopes and purposes of the authors. They had seen the monarch of England governing an unpaid parliament by patronage and influence. The whole power of appointment was therefore vested in the executive. The judiciary, in the absence of a church establishment, was a power to be made permanent to secure the duration and identity of their domination, and the dependance of the bar. Fortunately for mankind, power is constantly blinded by the excess of its passions; the combination was circumscribed and local, but suffrage was diffusive and all comprehending: the illusion which suggested the calculation of a perpetuation of power in the dominant party, survived scarcely ten years; for the general election of 1779 terminated their career, and transferred that very power to the hands of their democratic adversaries. The chief actors in those irrational transactions have moved off the stage, and their descendants who survive are blended with the community, undistinguished, but enjoying that peace, order, and security which began to bless society only at the moment of their overthrow. The reputation of Franklin has gradually ceased to be assailed, and his posterity in the third degree, by the mere force of their faculties and virtues, have found their way to the chairs of philosophy in their native city, to the scientific branches of the military establishment, and to a reputable rank in the naval institutions, of their country.

These incidents belong to history, they carry a moral which cannot be disregarded, but the generation now upon the tapis haye no means but a vague tradition to appreciate how great the obligations they owe to the men of those days, the evils they have escaped, or the afflictions endured and overcome in arriving at the present state of peace, concord, and prosperity.

It would be remiss on this occasion not to notice a recent collection and publication of familiar letters of Dr. Franklin, by Jared Sparks, Esq. of Boston. A few of those letters had appeared in the edition of 1818, but the rest have never before reached the press; they are principally addressed to his relatives, and to Miss Stevenson, to whom letters appear addressed, in the early published editions: miscellaneous fragments form an appendix thereto, taken from some volumes which had been collected by Col. W. Duane, and transferred from his private library to the Philadelphia Atheneum; these will also be found at the close of the second volume of this edition. In the preface to Mr. Sparks's publication, he deplores the loss of "Franklin's letter-book, embracing the entire period of his agency in