[3]. See the Library of Useful Knowledge—Treatise on Electricity, § 48, &c.
In the summer of 1762 he returned to Philadelphia, where he received public thanks, and a grant of £5000 for his services. His popularity was such, that he had been re-elected annually to the Assembly, and he immediately resumed the active part which he had formerly taken in its proceedings.
Among other projects for reform, that relating to the appointment of Governor, which the Proprietaries seem to have exercised with very little regard to the public interest, gave rise to much stormy discussion during the next two years. Franklin’s share in it procured him many enemies, who succeeded in preventing his election in 1764. Yet, a strong petition to the Crown on the subject having been disregarded, he was a second time appointed agent for enforcing the views of the Assembly upon the authorities in England. When there, he by no means limited his exertions to this narrow point: minor dissensions were now merging in the final struggle for national independence, to which the passing of the Grenville Stamp Act in 1763 gave the immediate impulse. Franklin reprobated this tax as arbitrary and illegal, when it was first reported to the Assembly; and his writings in the papers against it with his examination in Parliament, are thought to have contributed much to its repeal under the Rockingham administration, in 1766.
In this and the three next years he paid several visits to the Continent, where he was received with much distinction. He began already to record his observations upon the part the different powers would be likely to take in case of a rupture between England and her colonies: an event which a thorough knowledge of the temper of both led him, even thus early, to contemplate as by no means improbable. The closure of the port of Boston in 1773, and the quartering of troops in the town, filled up the measure of discontent. Franklin was then agent for three provinces besides Pennsylvania; and their remonstrances, which he lost no opportunity of forcing on the attention of the English public as well as the Government, found in him a most efficient supporter. At length, finding all his efforts to bring about a reconciliation entirely fruitless, and having met with much misconstruction and personal indignity at the hands of successive administrations, he resigned his agencies and set sail for Philadelphia, where he arrived in the spring of 1775, after an absence of eleven years.
In the preceding autumn a Congress of delegates from the Assemblies of all the provinces, the idea of which seems to have originated with Franklin, had met at Philadelphia; and their first act was to sign a Declaration of Rights, which had been transmitted to Franklin and the other agents for presentation. The day after his return he was himself elected to serve in this Congress for Pennsylvania, and was intrusted with the management of several important negotiations. In the mean time collisions had taken place between the troops at Boston and the inhabitants, which led to the actions of Lexington and Bunker’s Hill. These events quickened the deliberations of the Congress; and after one more fruitless petition for redress, the Declaration of Independence was published, July 4, 1776, and warlike preparations were actively commenced. The English Ministry now sent out Lord Howe, with full powers to concede every thing but absolute independence; but as the Commissioners appointed to confer with him, of whom Franklin was one, were instructed to treat upon no other terms, the negotiation abruptly terminated.
After his return from a short but unsuccessful mission to Canada, Dr. Franklin had been appointed President of the Convention for settling the constitution of Pennsylvania; but he had not long held the office before his services were again put in requisition by the Congress, as head of the Commission to the Court of France, with powers to negotiate loans, purchase stores, and grant letters of marque. He consented, with all the alacrity of youth, to undertake this charge, though in his 71st year; and, crossing the Atlantic for the fourth time, arrived in France with his colleagues before the end of 1776, and took up his residence at Passy, a village near Paris. The nation at large received the Commission with open arms, and rendered them much assistance, in which the Government secretly participated. But it was not till the surrender of Burgoyne’s army, in October 1777, that the reluctance of the Court to hazard a war with England was overcome. The treaty of alliance, and recognition of the United States, was signed in February 1778, and war immediately was declared against England.
The principal object of the Commission being thus gained, Franklin still continued in France with the character of plenipotentiary during the seven remaining years of the war, till 1783, when England consented to recognize the independence of her late colonies. The definitive treaty for that purpose was signed by himself, and on the part of England by David Hartley, September 3, 1783.
He had of late years been afflicted with those painful disorders the gout and stone, and at last received permission to return, of which he availed himself the following spring, having just completed his 79th year. He was, as may be supposed, most enthusiastically received at Philadelphia, after an absence of eight years and a half; but the Congress, with an ingratitude which has often been justly laid to the charge of republics, made him no acknowledgment or compensation for his long and arduous services; and he felt the neglect rather keenly.
In a very short time we find him again busily engaged in public employments; first as a member of the Supreme Executive Council, and of the Commission for the settlement of the National Confederacy, and soon afterwards as President of the state of Pennsylvania, which he retained for the full legal period of three years. He was also a leading member in several societies for public and charitable purposes. One of the latter was a Society for the Abolition of Slavery, and his last public act was a memorial to Congress on this subject. He then wholly retired from public employments, after a life spent in labours through which nothing could have supported him but a consciousness of the high responsibilities of a mind gifted like his own, and the magnitude of the cause for which his powerful advocacy was so long engaged. He died about two years after his retirement, at the age of eighty-four, in the full enjoyment of all his faculties. Few men ever possessed such opportunities or talents for contributing to the welfare of mankind; fewer still have used them to better purpose: and it is pleasant to know, on his own authority, that such extensive services were rendered without any sacrifice of his own happiness. In his later correspondence he frequently alludes with complacency to a favourite sentiment which he has also introduced into his Memoirs;—“That he would willingly live over again the same course of life, even though not allowed the privilege of an author, to correct in a second edition the faults of the first.”
His remarkable success in life and in the discharge of his public functions is not to be ascribed to genius, unless the term be extended to that perfection of common sense and intimate knowledge of mankind which almost entitled his sagacity to the name of prescience, and made ‘Franklin’s forebodings’ proverbially ominous among those who knew him. His preeminence appears to have resulted from the habitual cultivation of a mind originally shrewd and observant, and gifted with singular powers of energy and self-control. There was a business-like alacrity about him, with a discretion and integrity which conciliated the respect even of his warmest political foes; a manly straight-forwardness before which no pretension could stand unrebuked; and a cool tenacity of temper and purpose which never forsook him under the most discouraging circumstances, and was no doubt exceedingly provoking to his opponents. Indeed his sturdiness, however useful to his country in time of need, was perhaps carried rather to excess; his enemies called it obstinacy, and accused him of being morose and sullen. No better refutation of such a charge can be wished for than the testimony borne to his disposition by Priestley (Monthly Magazine, 1782), a man whom Franklin was justly proud to call his friend. In private life he was most estimable; two of his most favourite maxims were, never to exalt himself by lowering others, and in society to enjoy and contribute to all innocent amusements without reserve. His friendships were consequently lasting, and chosen at will from among the most amiable as well as the most distinguished of both sexes, wherever his residence happened to be fixed.