Penn was roused from his quiet and benevolent labors in behalf of the colonists, the negroes, and the Indians, by the intelligence that a movement had been begun in England for the abolition of the proprietary system of governing the American colonies. Deeply interested in this intelligence, he thought it due to his interests to embark for England, where, accordingly, he arrived in December 1701.

The bill which had brought him from America was not proceeded with; and the accession of Queen Anne to the throne in 1702 was a favorable event for his interests. Penn, however, never returned to America, but spent the remaining sixteen years of his life in England. It is melancholy to add that these last years of the existence of so good a man were clouded with misfortune. His outlay on Pennsylvania had far exceeded the immediate returns which the property could yield; and the consequence was, that he was involved in pecuniary embarrassments. To meet these, he was obliged, in 1709, to mortgage the province for £6600. The loss of a lawsuit added to his difficulties; and for some time he was a prisoner within the rules of Fleet. In 1712, he agreed to sell his rights to government for £12,000. The bargain, however, was never concluded, owing to his being incapacitated by three apopletic fits, which, following each other rapidly, deprived him to a great extent of memory and consciousness. He lingered on, however, till the 30th of July 1718, when he died at Ruscombe, in Berkshire, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.

Penn’s appearance and personal habits are thus described by Mr. Clarkson:—​‘He was tall in stature, and of an athletic make. In maturer years he was inclined to corpulency; but used a great deal of exercise. His appearance at this time was that of a fine portly man. He was very neat, though plain in his dress. He walked generally with a cane. He had a great aversion to the use of tobacco. However, when he was in America, though he was often annoyed by it, he bore it with good-humor. Several of his particular friends were one day assembled at Burlington; while they were smoking their pipes, it was announced to them that the governor’s barge was in sight, and coming up the river. The company supposed that he was on his way to Pennsburg, about seven miles higher up. They continued smoking; but being afterwards unexpectedly informed that he had landed at a wharf near them, and was just entering the house, they suddenly concealed their pipes. Perceiving, from the smoke, when he entered the room what they had been doing, and discovering that the pipes had been hid, he said pleasantly, ‘Well, friends, I am glad to see that you are at least ashamed of your old practice.’ ‘Not entirely so,’ replied Samuel Jennings, one of the company; ‘but we preferred laying down our pipes to the danger of offending a weak brother.’ They then expressed their surprise at this abrupt visit, as, in his passage from Philadelphia, not only the tide, but the wind had been furiously against him. He replied, with a smile on his countenance, ‘that he had been sailing against wind and tide all his life.’

The colony made rapid progress after Penn’s death, settlers being attracted to it from all parts of the old world by the freedom of its constitution and its natural advantages. The proprietorship was vested in the heirs of Penn by his second marriage, his children by his first marriage having inherited his British estates, which, at the time of Penn’s death were of greater value than his American property. In the year 1752, while Pennsylvania was still a British colony, the French made encroachments on it from the north-west, and built Fort Duquesne—​now Pittsburg. Philadelphia, the capital of Pennsylvania, speedily grew in size and importance. Its name is associated with some of the most distinguished events in the history of the United States. It was there that the delegates of the various colonies assembled in the year 1774, when they declared against the right of the mother country to tax the colonies; and it was also there that the famous declaration of independence was proclaimed in 1776. On the conclusion of the war of independence, Penn’s descendants sold their right of proprietorship over Pennsylvania to the American government for £130,000. Philadelphia continued to be the seat of the federal government till the year 1800. In the present day it is a large and populous city, celebrated for the number of its foundations and benevolent institutions, all less or more originating in the philanthropic principles early introduced into Pennsylvania.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

This celebrated individual, the youngest but two of a family of seventeen children, was born at Boston, in Massachusetts, on the 17th of January, 1706. His father was at first a dyer, and afterwards a soap-boiler and tallow-chandler, and had quitted England in order to escape the prosecution of the non-conformists, under Charles II. His son Benjamin was sent to a grammar-school at eight years of age, with a view of being educated for the church; but this design was soon abandoned, and the subject of our memoir, after having made a slight progress in writing and arithmetic, returned home, and assisted at his father’s trade. This employment was very irksome to Franklin, whose inclinations had become directed to a sea-faring life; and it was at length agreed that he should be apprenticed to his cousin who was a cutler. An obstacle to this, however, arose in the amount of premium required, and he was eventually bound, in his twelfth year, to his brother James, a printer.

He soon made great progress in this business, and an acquaintance formed with several booksellers’ apprentices, enabled him to indulge his love of reading, by borrowing books, which they had facilities to obtain. ‘It has often happened to me,’ he says, in a memoir of the early part of his life, ‘to pass the greater part of the night in reading by my bed-side, when the book had been lent to me in the evening, and was to be returned the next morning, lest it might be missed or wanted.’ This disposition being noticed by a Mr. Matthew Adams, who had a large collection of books, he offered the use of them to Franklin, who soon became an author, and composed several little pieces in verse. Two of these, a ballad, called ‘The Lighthouse Tragedy,’ and a song on the noted pirate, Blackbeard, were, by his brother’s directions, printed: but the most unpoetic part of the story remains to be told—​their author was despatched about the town to sell them. Franklin says, ‘the first had a prodigious run, because the event was recent, and had made a great noise;’ but ‘they were wretched verses in point of style—​mere blindman’s ditties.’ His father seems to have been of the same opinion, for he ridiculed the productions; ‘and thus,’ says their author, ‘my exultation was checked, and I escaped the misfortune of being a very miserable poet.’ At this period he formed an acquaintance with a young man of the name of Collins, who was also a great lover of books. They were frequently together, and were both fond of disputation, which they sometimes carried on in writing. This, probably, assisted in bringing out some of the dormant qualities of Franklin’s mind; but his style was greatly inferior to that of his rival, to improve which he took the following method:—​‘I bought,’ he says, ‘an odd volume of The Spectator, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view, I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiments in each sentence, laid them by a few days; and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before in any suitable words that should occur to me. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time, if I had gone on making verses; since the continual search for words of the same import, but of different length to suit the measure, or of different sound, for the rhyme, would have laid me under constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales in the Spectator, and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also, sometimes, jumbled my collection of hints into confusion, and, after some weeks, endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and complete the subject. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of my thoughts. By comparing my works with the original, I discovered many faults, and corrected them; but sometimes had the pleasure to fancy that, in certain particulars of small consequence, I had been fortunate enough to improve the method of the language; and this encouraged me to think that I might, in time, come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.

Franklin added to his habits of industry a self-denial and control over his passions, even at this early age, which were truly surprising. When about sixteen, a work fell into his hands, which recommended vegetable diet: this he determined to follow, and undertook to provide for himself, upon his brother’s allowing him one-half of the ordinary expense of his board, of which half, even, he contrived, by great abstemiousness, to save a considerable portion. Here was a new fund for the purchase of books; and he accordingly obtained such as enabled him to perfect himself in those elementary branches of knowledge in which he was deficient, among which were arithmetic and geometry.

In 1720, his brother established a public paper, entitled The New England Courant, the second that had appeared in America. Franklin was employed to distribute the copies, and, occasionally, being present at the meetings which were held at his brother’s house, by a number of literary characters, who were contributors, his love of authorship was rekindled, and he sent a communication in the usual way, but in a feigned hand. It was received, and commented upon in Franklin’s hearing; who, in his memoir, tells us, he had, ‘the exquisite pleasure to find that it met with their approbation, and that, in the various conjectures they made respecting its author, no one was mentioned who did not enjoy a high reputation in the country for talents and genius.’ Many other articles were written, and forwarded in the same manner, and, being equally well received, their author made himself known; expecting that the discovery would insure for him more respect and greater fraternal indulgence than he had previously experienced. His brother, however, continued to treat him with much rigor, and being a man of ungovernable passions, frequently proceeded to the extremity of blows. ‘This severe and tyrannical treatment,’ says Franklin, ‘contributed, I believe, to imprint on my mind that aversion to arbitrary power, which, during my whole life, I have ever preserved.’

The brothers, however, had soon occasion to be reconciled with each other. James, in consequence of an offensive article in the Courant, was taken into custody, and imprisoned for a month; Benjamin, during that period, was intrusted with the management of the paper, in which he inserted several pasquinades against the governor and other persons in authority. James’s enlargement was accompanied with an arbitrary order, that he should ‘no longer print the newspaper called The New England Courant.’ To evade this order, it was determined that his brother’s indentures should be given up, and the paper, in future, be printed in the name of Benjamin Franklin. A new contract was at the same time secretly entered into between the parties, by which Benjamin’s services were to be secured for the remainder of the term of his former apprenticeship; but, a fresh quarrel arising, Franklin thought proper to separate from his brother; ‘dishonorably,’ as he candidly acknowledges, ‘availing himself of the circumstance that the contract could not safely be produced.’