AT HOME: PRESIDENT OF PENNSYLVANIA: THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION: DEATH

On September 12, 1785, the ship brought Franklin into Delaware Bay, and the next morning he rejoiced to find himself "in full view of dear Philadelphia." A multitude, filling the air with huzzas of salutation, greeted his landing and escorted him to his door. Private welcomes and public addresses poured in upon him. His health had been much improved by the sea air and rest, and he rejoiced, as his foot touched the streets of the town which after all his wanderings was his home, to feel himself by no means yet a worn-out man, though in fact he had seventy-nine years of a busy life behind him. His fellow citizens evidently thought that the reservoir which had been so bountiful could not yet be near exhaustion, and were resolved to continue their copious draughts upon it. They at once elected him to the State Council, of which he was made President; and, as he said, "I had not firmness enough to resist the unanimous desire of my country folks; and I find myself harnessed again in their service for another year. They engrossed the prime of my life. They have eaten my flesh, and seem resolved now to pick my bones." A visible and a natural pleasure lurks in the words; old age finds nothing sweeter than a tribute to the freshness of its powers; and especially Franklin saw in this honor a vindication against his maligners. From it he understood that, however some individuals might indulge in dislike and distrust, the overwhelming mass of his fellow citizens esteemed him as highly as he could wish. The distinction, however, cost posterity an unwelcome price, for it prevented further work on the autobiography, which otherwise would probably have been finished.[94]

He came into office as a peacemaker amid warring factions, and in the fulfillment of his functions gave such satisfaction that in 1786 he was unanimously reëlected; and the like high compliment was paid him again in the autumn of 1787. It was like Washington and the presidency: so long as he would consent to accept the office, no other candidate was thought of. He also took substantially the same course which had been taken by Washington as commander-in-chief concerning his pay; for he devoted his whole salary to public uses. He had the good fortune to be able to carry out his somewhat romantic, and for most persons impracticable, theory in this respect, because his private affairs were prospering. His investments in real estate in Philadelphia had risen greatly in value and in their income-producing capacity since the war, and he was now at least comfortably endowed with worldly goods.

He still continued to ply his pen, and the just but annoying complaints which came from Great Britain, that English creditors could not collect their ante-bellum debts from their American debtors, stimulated him to a bit of humor at which his own countrymen at least were sure to laugh, however little droll it might seem to Englishmen, who reasonably preferred good dollars to good jokes. "We may all remember the time," he wrote, "when our mother country, as a mark of her parental tenderness, emptied her gaols into our habitations, 'for the better peopling,' as she expressed it, 'of the colonies.' It is certain that no due returns have yet been made for these valuable consignments. We are therefore much in her debt on that account; and as she is of late clamorous for the payment of all we owe her, and some of our debts are of a kind not so easily discharged, I am for doing, however, what is in our power. It will show our good will as to the rest. The felons she planted among us have produced such an amazing increase that we are now enabled to make ample remittance in the same commodity," etc., etc.

Nevertheless these English assaults nettled him not a little; and further he dreaded their possible influence in the rest of Europe outside of England. The English newspapers teemed with accounts of the general demoralization and disintegration of the States; it was said that they had found their ruin in their independence, and the unwillingness of American merchants to pay their debts was in one paragraph attributed to their dishonesty, and in the next to the hopeless poverty which was described as having possession of the country. It was in good truth what Mr. John Fiske has called it, "The Critical Period of American History." But Franklin was at once too patriotic and too sanguine to admit that matters were so bad as they seemed. His insight into the situation proved correct, and the outcome very soon showed that the elements of prosperity which he saw were substantial, and not merely the phantoms of a hopeful lover of his country. During these years of humiliation and discouragement he was busy in writing to many friends in England and in France very manly and spirited letters, declaring the condition of things in the States to be by no means so ill as it was represented. Industry had revived, values were advancing, the country was growing, welfare and success were within the grasp of the people. These things he said repeatedly and emphatically, and in a short time the accuracy of his knowledge had to be admitted by all, whether friends or enemies. He would not even admit that the failure to arrange a treaty of commerce with England was the serious misfortune which most Americans conceived it to be. In his usual gallant fashion of facing down untoward circumstances he alleged again and again that the lack of such a treaty was worse for Great Britain than for the States. If British merchants could stand it, American merchants, he avowed, could stand it much better. He was for showing no more concern about it. "Let the merchants on both sides treat with one another. Laissez les faire," he said. The presence of such a temper in the States, in so prominent a man, was of infinite service in those troubled years of unsettled, novel, and difficult conditions.

Dr. Franklin was not at first elected a member of the deputation from Pennsylvania to the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States. But in May, 1787, he was added in order that, in the possible absence of General Washington, there might be some one whom all could agree in calling to the chair.[95] It was fortunate that even an unnecessary reason led to his being chosen, for all future generations would have felt that an unpardonable void had been left in that famous assemblage, had the sage of America not been there. Certainly the "fitness of things," the historical picturesqueness of the event, imperatively demanded Dr. Franklin's venerable figure in the constitutional convention of the United States of America.

As between the two theories of government which divided that body, Franklin ranged himself with the party opposed to a strong and centralized government endowed with many functions and much power.[96] The simplest government seemed to him the best; and he substantially gave in his allegiance to those democratic ideas which afterward constituted the doctrines of the Jeffersonian school in American politics. It was natural that he should do so; he was a cheerful optimist all his life long, and few men have ever so trusted human kind as he did; so now he believed that the people could take care of themselves, as indeed the history of the past few years and the character of the population of the States at that time indicated that they could. He attended regularly all the sessions, and gave his opinions freely; but they are only dimly revealed in the half-light which enfolds in such lamentable obscurity the debates of that interesting body. What little is known can be briefly stated.

The same theory which he was practicing concerning his own salary he wished to see introduced as an article of the Constitution. The President, he thought, should receive no salary. Honor was enough reward; a place which gave both honor and profit offered too corrupting a temptation, and instead of remaining a source of generous aspiration to "the wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the trust," it would be scrambled for by "the bold and the violent, the men o£ strong passions and indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits."[97] In our day such a notion and such arguments would be quickly sneered out of the debate; but they were in keeping with the spirit of that era when the first generation which for ages had dared to contemplate popular government was carried away by the earliest romantic fervor of inexperienced speculation.

It is familiar that the gravest question which perplexed the convention was whether the larger and the smaller States should stand upon terms of equality, or whether some proportion should be established. After a discussion, recurred to at intervals during many weeks, had failed to develop any satisfactory solution of this problem, pregnant with failure, Franklin moved that the daily proceedings should be opened with prayer.[98] But Hamilton said that a resort to prayer would indicate to the people that the convention had reached a desperate pass; and either this or some other reason was so potent that scarcely any one voted yea on the motion. What could be more singular than to see the skeptical Franklin and the religious Hamilton thus opposed upon this question! Franklin next suggested a compromise: an equal number of delegates for all States; an equal vote for all States upon all questions respecting the authority or sovereignty of a State, and upon appointments and confirmations; but votes to be apportioned according to the populations of the States respectively upon all bills for raising and spending money. He was in favor of a single legislative chamber, and his plan was designed to be applied to such a system. Its feasibility would probably have been defeated through the inevitable complexity which would have attended upon it in practice.[99] Nevertheless it was a suggestion in the right direction, and contained the kernel of that compromise which later on he developed into the system of an equal representation in the Senate, and a proportionate one in the House. This happy scheme may be fairly said to have saved the Union.

Upon the matter of suffrage Franklin voted against limiting it to freeholders, because to do so would be to "depress the virtue and public spirit of our common people," for whose patriotism and good sense he expressed high esteem. He opposed the requirement of a residence of fourteen years as a preliminary to naturalization, thinking four years a sufficient period. He thought that the President should hold office for seven years, and should not be eligible for a second term; he should be subject to impeachment, since otherwise in case of wrong-doing recourse could be had only to revolution or assassination; he should not have the power of an absolute veto.

When at last the long discussions were over and the final draft was prepared, Franklin found himself in the position in which also were most of his associates, disapproving certain parts, but thinking adoption of the whole far better than rejection. He was wise enough and singular enough to admit that he was not infallibly right. "Nothing in human affairs and schemes is perfect," he said, "and perhaps that is the case of our opinions." He made an excellent speech,[100] urging that at the close of their deliberations all should harmonize, sink their small differences of opinion, and send the document before the people with the prestige of their unanimous approbation. While the last members were signing, relates Madison, "Dr. Franklin, looking toward the president's chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. 'I have,' he said, 'often and often in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.'"

He did what he could to secure the adoption of the instrument by the people; and when that end was happily achieved he joined his voice to the unanimous cry with which the American nation nominated George Washington as the only possible candidate for the presidency. He said: "General Washington is the man whom all our eyes are fixed on for President, and what little influence I may have is devoted to him."

It was about the time of the election that he himself took his farewell of public life. The third year of his incumbency in the office of president of Pennsylvania expired in the autumn of 1788, and his physical condition precluded all idea of further official labors. Nature could not have committed such an incongruity, such a sin against æsthetic justice, as not to preserve Benjamin Franklin's life long enough to enable him to see the United States fairly launched as a real nation, with an established government and a sound constitution giving promise of a vigorous career. But evidently with this boon the patience of nature was exhausted; for Franklin's infirmities now increased upon him terribly. He endured extreme pain during periods steadily increasing in length and recurring at ever-shortening intervals. He bore his suffering, which too often became agony, with heroic fortitude; but it was evident that even his strong frame could not long hold out against the debilitating effects of his merciless disease. Yet while it racked his body it fortunately spared his mental faculties; and indeed so lively did his interest in affairs remain that it seemed to require these physical reminders to show him how old he was; save for his body, he was still a man in his prime. He once said: "I often hear persons, whom I knew when children, called old Mr. Such-a-one, to distinguish them from their sons, now men grown and in business; so that by living twelve years beyond David's period, I seem to have intruded myself into the company of posterity, when I ought to have been abed and asleep,"—words which should take their place among the fine sayings of the ages.

He was courageous and cheerful. In November, 1788, he wrote: "You kindly inquire after my health. I have not of late much reason to boast of it. People that will live a long life and drink to the bottom of the cup must expect to meet with some of the dregs. However, when I consider how many more terrible maladies the human body is liable to, I think myself well off that I have only three incurable ones: the gout, the stone, and old age; and, those notwithstanding, I enjoy many comfortable intervals, in which I forget all my ills, and amuse myself in reading or writing, or in conversation with friends, joking, laughing, and telling merry stories, as when you first knew me, a young man about fifty."[101] He does not seem to have taken undue credit to himself; there is no querulousness, or egotism, or senility in his letters, but a delightful tranquillity of spirit. His sister wrote to him that the Boston newspapers often had matter in his honor. "I am obliged to them," he wrote; "on the other hand, some of our papers here are endeavoring to disgrace me. I take no notice. My friends defend me. I have long been accustomed to receive more blame, as well as more praise, than I have deserved. It is the lot of every public man, and I leave one account to balance the other." So serene was the aged philosopher, a real philosopher, not one who, having played a part in life, was to be betrayed in the weakness and irritability of old age. He felt none of the mental weariness which years so often bring. He was by no means tired of life and affairs in this world, yet he wrote in a characteristic vein to the Bishop of St. Asaph: "The course of nature must soon put a period to my present mode of existence. This I shall submit to with the less regret, as, having seen during a long life a good deal of this world, I feel a growing curiosity to be acquainted with some other." It was characteristic that in these closing days it was the progress of mankind in knowledge and welfare which especially absorbed his thoughts. When he reflected on the great strides that were making he said that he almost wished that it had been his destiny to be born two or three centuries later. He was one of the few men who has left on record his willingness to live his life over again, even though he should not be allowed the privilege of "correcting in the second edition the errors of the first."

The French Revolution excited his profoundest interest. At first he said that he saw "nothing singular in all this, but on the contrary what might naturally be expected. The French have served an apprenticeship to liberty in this country, and now that they are out of their time they have set up for themselves."[102] He expressed his hope that "the fire of liberty, ... spreading itself over Europe, would act upon the inestimable rights of man as common fire does upon gold: purify without destroying them; so that a lover of liberty may find a country in any part of Christendom." The language had an unusual smack of the French revolutionary slang, in which he seems in no other instance to have indulged. But as the fury swelled, his earlier sympathies became merged in a painful anxiety concerning the fate of his many good old friends.

Franklin's last act was a memorial addressed to Congress, signed by him in his capacity as president of the abolition society, and praying that body: "That you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people; that you will promote mercy and justice towards this distressed race; and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow men." He had always spoken of slavery with the strongest condemnation, and branded the slave-trade as "abominable," a "diabolical commerce," and a "crime."

A large part of the last year or two of his life was passed by Franklin in his bed. At times when his dreadful suffering seemed to become intolerable, it was quelled, so far as possible, by opium. But at intervals it left him, and still whenever he thus got a respite for a few days he was again at work. It was in such an interval that he wrote his paper condemning the liberty, which was becoming the license, of the press. If the law permitted this sort of thing, he said, then it should restore also the liberty of the cudgel. The paper is not altogether antiquated, nor the idea altogether bad!

It was even so late as March 23, 1790, that he wrote the humorous rejoinder to the pro-slavery speech delivered in Congress by Jackson of Georgia. But the end was close at hand; and when this brilliant satire was composed, there lacked but a few days of the allotted term when that rare humor was to be stilled forever, and that broad philanthropy was to cease from the toil in which it had never tired alike for the free and the oppressed.

On April 12, 1790, a pain in the chest and difficulty of breathing, which had been giving him much trouble, ceased for a short while, and he insisted upon getting up in order to have his bed re-made; for he wished to "die in a decent manner." His daughter expressed the conventional wish that he might yet recover and live many years. "I hope not," he replied. Soon afterward the pain returned, and he was advised to change his position, so that he could breathe more easily. "A dying man can do nothing easy," he said; and these are the last words which he is known to have uttered. Soon afterward he sank into a lethargy, and so remained until at eleven o'clock, P. M., on April 17, 1790, he died.

A great procession and a concourse of citizens escorted his funeral, and Congress voted to "wear the customary badge of mourning for one month." The bits of crape were all very well, a conventional, insignificant tribute; but unfortunately the account of the country, or at least of Congress as representing the country, did not stand very honorably, to say nothing of generously, with one of its oldest, most faithful, and most useful servants.[103] Again and again Franklin had asked for some modest office, some slight opening, for his grandson, Temple Franklin. The young man's plans and prospects in life had all been sacrificed to the service of Franklin as his secretary, which was in fact the service of the country; yet he had never been able to collect even the ordinary salary pertaining to such a position. Throughout a long life of public service, often costly to himself in his own affairs, Franklin had never asked any other favor than this, which after all was rather compensation than favor, and this was never given to him. When one reflects how such offices are demanded and awarded in these days, one hardly knows whether to be more ashamed of the present or of the past. But this was not all nor even the worst; for Franklin's repeated efforts to get his own accounts with the government audited and settled never met with any response. It needed only that Congress should appoint a competent accountant to examine and report. Before leaving France Franklin had begged for this act of simple, business-like justice, which it was the duty of Congress to initiate without solicitation; he had the fate of the "poor unhappy Deane" before his eyes, to make him uncomfortable, but in this respect he was treated no better than that misused man. After his return home he continued his urgency during his last years, not wishing to die leaving malignant enemies behind him, and accounts open which he could no longer explain and elucidate. Indeed, stories were already circulating that he was "greatly indebted to the United States for large sums that had been put into [his] hands, and that [he] avoided a settlement;" yet this request was still, with unpardonable disregard of decency and duty, utterly ignored. He never could get the business attended to, and Benjamin Franklin actually could not extort from an indifferent Congress the small satisfaction of having his accounts passed. The consequence was that when he died the United States appeared his debtor, and never extricated itself from that painful position.[104] It was only in this matter that he ever showed the slightest anxiety concerning his reputation with posterity. He wanted to leave the name of an honest man; but otherwise he never was at the trouble of preparing a line to justify any of his actions, therein differing from many of his contemporaries.

France showed a livelier affection and warmer appreciation toward the great dead than did his own countrymen. At the opening of the National Assembly, June 11, 1790, Mirabeau delivered an impassioned eulogy in the rhetorical French fashion; and the motion to wear mourning for three days was carried by acclamation. The president of that body, M. Siéyes, was instructed to communicate the resolution to Washington. At the celebration of the municipality of Paris the citizens generally wore a mourning badge; and the grain market, where the oration was delivered, was draped in black. The Academy of Sciences of course did formal honor to his memory, as did likewise the revolutionary clubs. A street at what was in his day Passy, but is now included in Paris, near the Trocadéro, perpetuates by his name the admiration which France felt for him.

Among illustrious Americans Franklin stands preëminent in the interest which is aroused by a study of his character, his mind, and his career. One becomes attached to him, bids him farewell with regret, and feels that for such as he the longest span of life is all too short. Even though dead, he attracts a personal regard which renders easily intelligible the profound affection which so many men felt for him while living. It may be doubted whether any one man ever had so many, such constant, and such firm friends as in three different nations formed about him a veritable host. In the States and in France he was loved, and as he grew into old age he was revered, not by those who heard of him only, but most warmly by those who best knew him. Even in England, where for years he was the arch-rebel of all America, he was generally held in respect and esteem, and had many constant friends whose confidence no events could shake. It is true, of course, that he had also his detractors, with most of whom the reader has already made acquaintance. In Pennsylvania the proprietary party cherished an animosity which still survives against his memory, but which does not extend far beyond those who take it as an inheritance. It does him no discredit with persons who understand its source. In New England a loyalty to those famous New Englanders, John Adams and Samuel Adams, seems to involve in the minds of some persons a depreciation of Franklin. In English historical literature the patriotic instinct stands in the way of giving Franklin quite his full due of praise. But the faults and defects of character and conduct which are urged against him appear little more than the expression of personal ill will, when they are compared with the affection and the admiration given to him in liberal measure by the great mass of mankind both in the generations which knew him as a living contemporary and in those which hear of him only as one of the figures of history. It is not worth while to deify him, or to speak with extravagant reverence, as if he had neither faults nor limitations. Yet it seems ungracious to recall these concerning one who did for his fellow men so much as Franklin did. Moral, intellectual, and material boons he conferred in such abundance that few such benefactors of the race can be named, though one should survey all the ages. A man of a greater humanity never lived; and the quality which stood Abou Ben Adhem in good stead should suffice to save Franklin from human criticism. He not only loved his kind, but he also trusted them with an implicit confidence, reassuring if not extraordinary in an observer of his shrewdness and experience. Democrats of the revolutionary school in France and of the Jeffersonian school in the United States have preached an exaggerated gospel of the people, but their words are the dubious ones of fanatics or politicians. Franklin was of a different kind, and had a more genuine and more generous faith in man than the greatest democrat in politics who ever lived.

Franklin's inborn ambition was the noblest of all ambitions: to be of practical use to the multitude of men. The chief motive of his life was to promote the welfare of mankind. Every moment which he could snatch from enforced occupations was devoted to doing, devising, or suggesting something advantageous more or less generally to men. His detractors have given a bad, but also a false coloring to this trait. They say that the spirit of all that he did and taught was sordid, that the motives and purposes which he set before men were selfish, that his messages spoken through the mouth of Poor Richard inculcated no higher objects in life than money-getting. This is an utterly unfair form of stating the case. Franklin was a great moralist: though he did not believe in the Christian religion according to the straitlaced orthodox view, he believed in the virtues which that religion embodies; and he was not only often a zealous preacher, but in the main a consistent exemplar of them. Perhaps he did not rest them upon precisely the same basis upon which the Christian preacher does, but at least he put them on a basis upon which they could stand firm. In such matters, however, one may easily make mistakes, breed ill blood, and do harm; and his wisdom and good sense soon led him to put forth his chief efforts and to display especial earnestness and constancy in promoting the well-being of all men. It was an object sufficiently noble, one would think, worthy of the greatest brain and the largest heart, and having certain very commendable traits in the way of practicability and substantial possibilities. His desire was to see the community prosperous, comfortable, happy, advancing in the accumulation of money and of all physical goods, but not to the point of luxury; it was by no means the pile of dollars which was his end, and he did not care to see many men rich, but rather to see all men well to do. He was perfectly right in thinking that virtuous living has the best prospects in a well-to-do society. He gave liberally of his own means and induced others to give, and promoted in proportion to the ability of the community a surprising number of public and quasi public enterprises; and always the fireside of the poor man was as much in his thought as the benefit of the richer circle. Fair dealing and kindliness, prudence and economy in order to procure the comforts and simpler luxuries of life, reading and knowledge for those uses which wisdom subserves, constituted the real essence of his teaching. His inventive genius was ever at work devising methods of making daily life more agreeable, comfortable, and wholesome for all who have to live. In a word, the service of his fellow men was his constant aim; and he so served them that those public official functions which are euphemistically called "public services" seemed in his case almost an interruption of the more direct and far-reaching services which he was intent upon rendering to all civilized peoples. Extreme religionists may audaciously fancy that the judgment of God upon Franklin may be severe; but it would be gross disloyalty for his own kind to charge that his influence has been ignobly material.

As a patriot none surpassed him. Again it was the love of the people that induced this feeling, which grew from no theory as to forms of government, no abstractions and doctrines about "the rights of man." He began by espousing the cause of the people of the province of Pennsylvania against proprietary despotism, and for many years he was a patriot in his colony, before the great issue against England made patriotism common. His patriotism had not root in any revolutionary element in his temper, but was the inevitable outcome of his fair-mindedness. That which was unfair as between man and man first aroused his ire against the grinding proprietaries; and afterward it was the unfairness of taxation without representation which especially incensed him; for an intellect of the breadth and clearness of his sees and loves justice above all things. During the struggle of the States no man was more hearty in the cause than Franklin; and the depth of feeling shown in his letters, simple and unrhetorical as they are, is impressive. All that he had he gave. What also strikes the reader of his writings is the broad national spirit which he manifested. He had an immense respect for the dignity of America; he was perhaps fortunately saved from disillusionment by his distance from home. But be this as it may, the way in which he felt and therefore genuinely talked about his nation and his country was not without its moral effect in Europe.

Intellectually there are few men who are Franklin's peers in all the ages and nations. He covered, and covered well, vast ground. The reputation of doing and knowing various unrelated things is wont to bring suspicion of perfunctoriness; but the ideal of the human intellect is an understanding to which all knowledge and all activity are germane. There have been a few, very few minds which have approximated toward this ideal, and among them Franklin's is prominent. He was one of the most distinguished scientists who have ever lived. Bancroft calls him "the greatest diplomatist of his century."[105] His ingenious and useful devices and inventions were very numerous. He possessed a masterly shrewdness in business and practical affairs. He was a profound thinker and preacher in morals and on the conduct of life; so that with the exception of the founders of great religions it would be difficult to name any persons who have more extensively influenced the ideas, motives, and habits of life of men. He was one of the most, perhaps the most agreeable conversationist of his age.

He was a rare wit and humorist, and in an age when "American humor" was still unborn, amid contemporaries who have left no trace of a jest, still less of the faintest appreciation of humor, all which he said and wrote was brilliant with both these most charming qualities of the human mind. Though sometimes lax in points of grammar, as was much the custom in his day, he wrote as delightful a style as is to be found in all English literature, and that too when the stilted, verbose, and turgid habit was tediously prevalent. He was a man who impressed his ability upon all who met him; so that the abler the man and the more experienced in judging men, the higher did he rate Franklin when brought into direct contact with him; politicians and statesmen of Europe, distrustful and sagacious, trained readers and valuers of men, gave him the rare honor of placing confidence not only in his personal sincerity, but in his broad fair-mindedness, a mental quite as much as a moral trait.

It is hard indeed to give full expression to a man of such scope in morals, in mind, and in affairs. He illustrates humanity in an astonishing multiplicity of ways at an infinite number of points. He, more than any other, seems to show us how many-sided our human nature is. No individual, of course, fills the entire circle; but if we can imagine a circumference which shall express humanity, we can place within it no one man who will reach out to approach it and to touch it at so many points as will Franklin. A man of active as well as universal good will, of perfect trustfulness towards all dwellers on the earth, of supreme wisdom expanding over all the interests of the race, none has earned a more kindly loyalty. By the instruction which he gave, by his discoveries, by his inventions, and by his achievements in public life he earns the distinction of having rendered to men varied and useful services excelled by no other one man; and thus he has established a claim upon the gratitude of mankind so broad that history holds few who can be his rivals.

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