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AMERICAN ORATORS

FRANKLIN

BEN

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ENJAMIN FRANKLIN was born in Boston, Mass., in 1706. In his eighth year he was sent to school, but taken from it two years later in order to assist his father in the business of tallow-chandler and soap-boiler. In his twelfth year he was apprenticed to his elder brother James, who had returned from England with a printing-press and font of type, and who in 1720-21 started a newspaper called "The New England Courant. For this paper a number of articles were written by Benjamin, who had acquired a good style by making himself thoroughly familiar with the "Pilgrim's Progress," with Locke "On the Understanding" and with some odd volumes of the "Spectator.” The relations of the brothers having become inharmonious, Benjamin determined to leave New England, and in 1723 found his way to the city of Philadelphia. Here he was fortunate enough to get employment with a Jew printer named Keimer, and soon found opportunities of securing the goodwill of conspicuous citizens, including Sir William Keith, the governor of the province. Sir William offered to give him the means of going to England and purchasing the material needed for a printing-office, and Franklin, relying on the promise, went to London, only to discover that he had been the dupe of the provincial governor, and must toil for his daily bread. He worked as a printer in London until 1726, when he returned to Philadelphia, and went back to his old employer Keimer. Subsequently he managed to establish a printing business for himself, and in 1729 he bought the "Pennsylvania Gazette, " and eventually placed it at the head of American journals. In 1731 he established the first circulating library on the Continent, and in the following year began the publication of the "Poor Richard's Almanacs," which were continued for a quarter of a century. It was at this period of his life that Franklin by private study acquired considerable familiarity with the Latin, French, Italian and Spanish languages. In 1736 he was chosen a clerk of the General Assembly, and was reëlected in the following year. He was then elected a member of the Assembly, and held that post for ten successive years. In 1737 he was appointed Deputy Postmaster of the colonies under the Crown. About this time he organized the first police force and fire company in the colony, and a few years later initiated the movements which led to the paving of the streets, to the creation of a hospital, to the organization of a military force and to the foundation of the University of Pennsylvania and of the American Philosophical Society. It was while he was engaged in these miscellaneous † 1—Vol. VI.—Orations (1)

avocations that he made the discoveries in electricity which have placed him among the most eminent of natural philosophers. In 1754, when a war with France was impending, Franklin, who, by this time, had become the most important man in Pennsylvania, was sent to a Congress of Commissioners from the different colonies, ordered by the Lords of Trade to convene at Albany and to devise a plan for their common defence. In the following year Franklin was appointed the agent of Pennsylvania in England, where he sojourned some five years. He returned to America in 1762, but two years later he was again sent to the mother country as the special agent of Pennsylvania, and he was in London at the time of the repeal of the Stamp Act, a step which he powerfully furthered. Subsequently, while continuing to represent Pennsylvania, he was commissioned to act as agent for Massachusetts, New Jersey and Georgia, and for some years exercised an influence such as probably has never been possessed by any other American representative at the English Court. In 1775, when he saw that a conflict between the mother country and the colonies was almost inevitable, he again set sail for Philadelphia, and on the very morning of his arrival was elected by the Assembly a delegate to the Continental Congress which placed George Washington at the head of the colonial armies. By this Congress Franklin, who eighteen months before had been dismissed from the office of Deputy Postmaster, which he had held under the Crown, was made Postmaster-General of the united colonies. In 1776 he was one of the Committee of Five which drew up the "Declaration of Independence." In the same year he was chosen president of the convention called to frame a constitution for the State of Pennsylvania. He was selected by Congress to discuss terms of peace with Admiral Lord Howe in July, 1776, and in the following September he was deputed with John Adams and Arthur Lee to solicit assistance from the Court of Louis XVI. On his arrival in Paris he found himself already one of the most talked of men in the world. He was a member of every important learned society in Europe; one of the managers of the Royal Society, and one of the eight foreign members of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. The story of Franklin's mission to Versailles has no parallel in the history of diplomacy. He became at once an object of greater popular interest than any other man in France, an interest which during his eight years' sojourn in that country seemed always on the increase. Streets in several cities and several societies were named after him; the French Academy paid him its highest honors, and he conferred more distinction upon any salon he frequented than it could reciprocate. He animated French society with a boundless enthusiasm for the cause of the rebel colonists, persuaded the government that the interests of France required her to aid them, and finally, at a crisis in their fortunes, obtained a treaty of alliance in the winter of 177778. In the six following years he secured advances in money amounting to 26,000,000 francs, a sum that may well astonish us when we consider that at the time France was practically bankrupt. After signing the treaty of peace with Great Britain in 1783, Franklin, now seventy-seven years of age, requested to be relieved from duty, but it was not until 1785 that Congress

permitted him to return to America. Soon after his arrival in Philadelphia, he was made chairman of the Municipal Council, and subsequently President of the State by an almost unanimous vote. To that office he was twice unanimously reëlected, and was also chosen a member of the Convention which convened in 1787 to frame a Federal Constitution. During the last two years of Franklin's life he helped to organize the first society formed on the American Continent for the abolition of slavery, and as its president signed the first remonstrance against slavery addressed to the American Congress. He died in Philadelphia in 1790. Though he had never derived any pecuniary advantage from his services to his country as a statesman and diplomatist, he left at the time of his death a fortune valued at about £30,000 sterling.

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION

DELIVERED IN THE CONVENTION FOR FORMING THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, PHILADELPHIA, 1787

CONFESS that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present; but, sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it, for, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment of others. Most men, indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error. Steele, a Protestant, in a dedication, tells the Pope that the only difference between our two churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrine is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But, though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French

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