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England, throughout a space of almost twenty years, ascribable to the treachery or negligence of the person to whom he intrusted them when he went to France." Mr. Sparks animadverting on that injustice to Franklin, of which we took notice in the preceding part of this preface, written before Mr. Sparks's publication appeared, he thus manfully expresses himself:

"Owing to a train of circumstances which, at one time, were not well understood, but how admit of an easy and full explanation, the character of Franklin suffered in the hands of some of his late associates and contemporaries. Suspicions of his political integrity, and even of his private honesty, were scattered among the credulous, and produced impressions on the minds of many of his countrymen, which his brilliant name and great services have as yet hardly effaced. After a laborious inquiry into this matter, with no ordinary means of information and opportunities of research, particularly in regard to his acts as minister plenipotentiary in France, and in negotiating the treaty of peace at the end of the war, I feel authorized to declare, that his conduct admits of unqualified vindication; that so far from open censure or the whispers of suspicion, he deserves the lasting praise and gratitude of his country, for the manly, consistent, undeviating, honourable, and efficient course he pursued, in the face of numerous obstacles and embarrassments, during the whole nine years of his residence in France. His patriotism and fidelity to his trust were equalled only by his unrivalled talents and sagacity."

It may be proper to state the nature of some of those odious imputations, in which personal jealousy and the angry hate of the refugees who had obtained amnesty united in propagating. During the periods of the first and second presidency, it had been whispered by certain persons, that Franklin had obtained a million of livres from the court of Versailles, and had appropriated it to his private use. The writer of this preface has frequently heard the calumny unreservedly uttered; and it was not until Thomas Jefferson entered upon the presidential duties, that the authentic means of putting an end to this odious moral assassination could be reached. It appeared that this report had at an early period of the first presidency been made the subject of an official but secret investigation, and Mr. Gouverneur Morris, official agent at Paris, was instructed to trace the subject to its source.

This million unaccounted for, as the libellists said, was found to be that very million which has been a subject of petition for nearly half a century, and which was only decided to be repaid by Congress in 1832-3; Franklin was suspected of receiving and appropriating to his own use. Mr. Gouverneur Morris, by no means an admirer of Dr. Franklin or his philosophy, to his honour, performed his duty with integrity. He found that this million had been advanced by the French court before Franklin had arrived in France; that it was placed to the order of Baron Beaumarchais; and that it was disposed of in supplying military stores, of which the government of the United States had acknowledged the receipt. But what ap. pears most remarkable is, that although this report of the American minister at Paris reposed in the archives of the department of state, the calumny was tolerated antil Thomas Jefferson caused it to be exposed, and set the slander to rest for ever.

The letters first ushered to the public by Mr. Sparks unfold further the domestic and social character of Franklin. One of his eulogists has described him as silent in company, and given to converse freely with only one person. The in

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ference intended by this trait of character, is not exactly that which naturally belongs to it. In the habitual innocency and playfulness which he was fond of indulging with his grandchildren, he frequently introduced, in reproof of too light and frequent volubility, this admonition :-" Recollect you have two ears, and two eyes, and only one mouth, which shows you must not speak more than half what you hear, and of half as much as you see."

He entertained a very unfavourable opinion of the ordinary modes and topics of conversation in mixed companies; he did not consider them always the most favourable places for obtaining or communicating knowledge; in mixed companies capacities are generally unequal, and egotism or the desire to show off qualities more superficial than solid too generally predominates; useful topics are rarely thought of, and where gaiety prevails, it is good philosophy to partake and not to disturb it by the interposition of gravity, or serious discussions, which are better adapted to the retired privacy and deliberation of individuals of similar temper and dispositions he was in his domestic relations habitually cheerful and gay; and though no man possessed a more ready or keen wit, he repressed it abroad; considering vanity as a predominating passion, and too often using an exaggerated freedom with the qualities and failings of neighbours.

In those select societies which sprung up under his guidance in his first maturity, and of which the philosophical society and the city library are existing monuments, he was the actuating spirit. Among his associates of those early days his wit was as interesting as his philosophy was instructive; the questions which he propounded in the Junto extended to every department of practical knowledge, and had for their aim uniformly utility and the promotion of benevolence; in the discussions which arose he had always a principal but an unobtrusive share; he was not dogmatical in any thing; though he spoke frequently, he was never guilty of a long or an incomprehensible speech; and when others flagged, he was always ready to bring his philosophy and his good humour into action. Several sheets of his first thoughts suggested for discussion lie before the writer; with their first terms altered, interlined, improved, augmented, or abridged. From those fragments the following are selected.

"The great secret of succeeding in conversation is to admire little, to hear much; always to distrust your own judgment, and sometimes that of your friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as possible; to hearken to whatever is said, and answer to the purpose."

Another extract, though not strictly analogous, is distantly so, and cannot be out of place.

"How shall we judge of the goodness of a writing? or what qualities should a writing on any subject have, to be good and perfect in its kind?

"Answer. To be good, it ought to have a tendency to benefit the reader, by improving his virtue or his knowledge.

The method should be just; that is, it should proceed regularly from things known to things unknown, distinctly, clearly, and without confusion.

"The words used should be the most expressive that the language affords, provided they are the most generally understood.

"Nothing should be expressed in two words that can as well be expressed in

one i. e. no synonymas should be used; but the whole be as short as possible consistent with clearness.

"The words should be so placed as to be agreeable to the ear in reading, Summarily......it should be smooth,

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"For the contrary qualities are displeasing.'

clear, and
short.

The early perceptions of Franklin on nearly every subject were far in advance of his contemporaries. His memorable essay on population, and other thoughts on the subject, preceded the Congress of delegates from all the colonies in 1754. The articles agreed upon by that assembly were composed by him; he had penetrated futurity; and there was a certain harmony between the tone of his thoughts and the occurrences of the period which brought about that Congress, which may be historically considered as the first germination of that great revolution which was terminated by the peace of 1783.

Franklin has been, by writers hostile to freedom, considered as one premeditating a revolution, and labouring to fulfil his own prophecy. But persons who imagine this only prove their want of due discrimination. His mind had anticipated posterity, not with a view to augment its acceleration, but,-as he viewed the electric fluid,-among the phenomena of human society. Having sounded the depths of the generations of men, it is probable that he discerned a necessary and inevitable consequence, the future outnumbering of the people of this continent, so as to reverse the tenor of an expression which he uttered after the race of events had outstript his speculations. "A small island in the west of Europe governing the American continent, and subjecting it to a policy incompatible with human freedom, resembles a jolly boat governing the motion of an hundred gun ship;" he perhaps saw the day when the ship would "cut the painter," as it has happened. The sagacity which then outstript his contemporaries, was not a creation, but a discernment of future events; he was no stranger to history, and in the colonies of Spain he could discern enough to induce a generous desire, that his own country should not gradually sink or be sunk, by the relentlessness of power, into a similarly degrading condition.

Indeed the British politicians of 1754 appear to have taken an alarm, and in seeking to arrest the progress of events, suspended the plans then digested, and appear thenceforward to have entered upon a policy more repressive and rigorous. Among the autograph notes before referred to, is the following question proposed to be debated at the Junto.

"If the sovereign power attempts to deprive a subject of his right (or, which is the same thing, what he thinks his right), is it justifiable to resist if he is able?" This sentiment is much older than the Congress at Albany; and in poor Richard's almanac, for 1751, three years before the Albany meeting, the following article is found under the title genealogy.

"It is amusing to compute the number of men and women among the ancients who clubbed their faculties to produce a single modern. As you reckon back ward the number augments, in the same ratio as the price of the coat which wa sold for a halfpenny a button continually doubled. Thus,

A nobleman of the present day is the great result, who numbers 1
His father and mother

His grandfather and grandmother

His great grandfather, and great grandmother

2

4

8

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"There are twenty-one generations, without taking a plurality of children in any case or intermarriage, and allowing three generations for one hundred years, we are carried back to the era of the Norman Conquest, at which time each nobleman of that race at the present day, to exclude ignoble blood from his veins, ought to have one million forty-eight thousand five hundred and seventy-six noble an

cestors..

"Carry the reckoning three thousand years farther back, and the number amounts to five hundred millions, probably more than exists at one time on the earthproving pretensions to ancestry to be-a joke!"

In a letter to his daughter, Mrs. Sarah Bache, concerning the order of Cincinnati, there is another explication of this subject, given in a very sarcastic style. The domestic economy of Franklin, has been generally inferred to be sordid and penurious, perhaps from a misapprehension of the economical morality of Poor Richard, which has never been considered by his biographers in the spirit of its author. Those who laboured to find in this production a pretext for disparaging him, have discovered matter of reprobation even in its morality; it has been held forth as inculcating a paltry and niggard economy. Those critics never place themselves in the position he held, nor look at the state of the society to which Poor Richard addressed himself. In the centre of an assemblage of colonies, detached and varying in climates and positions; originating in incongruous elements; with interests not always harmonious, rendered dissonant by foreign policy, and restricted from the exercise of their faculties abroad and at home; forbidden to be industrious, and oppressed wherever the natural instincts in seeking happiness had bounded over unnatural restraints; he saw those instinctive powers of the human character directing enterprise with such powerful success in opposition to law, as to induce policy to relax, and to connive at

those very illicit enterprises, because they brought from the sources of the precious metals fruits more rich and ample than those of merely lawful mercantile commerce, and transferred the treasures of Mexico and Peru to the coffers of the English treasury.

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The restraints of colonial policy forbade indulgence in luxury of living, or enjoyment; but the propensity to imitate European fashions was even then too prevalent for the pecuniary means of the people. An effort to restrain those propensities, to induce a community of thought in social relations, to inculcate simplicity of manners, as alone adapted to the state of society in which policy, in violation of nature, had placed them, were the objects of Poor Richard. Perhaps, indeed, he may have anticipated an event, which was to arrive at some uncertain and remote day, when the liberty of posterity might have to depend on a frugal and hardy yeomanry; and however remote such a crisis might then appear to be, that steps could not be taken too early to avert such fatal effeminacy as had marked the decline of Italy and Spain. To accomplish such provident purposes Poor Richard was happily adapted; the success was signal as the conception was original; the production was indeed more admired for its simplicity and ingenuity, than as a deep moral design; but the moral effects have been realized, and still retain their influence with the pleasure of recollection.

In his domestic economy he has been generally supposed to be penurious and niggardly, and that the household of the philosopher was regulated by sordid maxims. No mistake could be greater; in every stage of his progress he was regulated by what he possessed, not by what he might possess. He was severe in avoiding debt, and equally so against whatever was wasteful; among his maxims at home, was "Share where it is needful, but waste nothing." Mrs. Franklin differed from those opinions of others concerning her husband, and frequently deemed it necessary to suggest lessons of prudence to the very master of prudence; she sometimes complained of unnecessary purchases and hard bargains-" Debby," said the doctor, "is not the dam full? Would you wish it to overflow and go to waste? More than enough is too much: let us share what we can spare, as Poor Richard says."

W. D.

THIS loose preface was deemed necessary, were it for no other end than to point out errors, and afford hints to some future biographer, should one arise, whose benevolence and disinterestedness of purpose may be in sympathy with the American sage.

The arrangement of the whole of former editions, with very large additions, are embraced in these two volumes.

The first volume embraces the autobiography and continuation, with political and some philosophical subjects; for the ready access to any of which, an alphabetical index of principal matters is prefixed to the first volume.

The second volume is preceded by a table of contents, which designates every separate subject contained therein.

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