Benjamin Franklin is not named as the greatest American. Washington and Lincoln always will be ranked before him, because in certain achievements they stand altogether alone. The deeds which made Washington and Lincoln great required special gifts in mind and character—endowments found in such full measure only in few men and at rare intervals.
Mr. Choate's Eloquent Tribute.
Joseph H. Choate, recently ambassador to Great Britain, in his inaugural address as president of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, in 1903, paid eloquent tribute to Franklin:
His whole career has been summed up by a great French statesman, who was one of his personal friends and correspondents, in six words, Latin words of course: "Eripuit caelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis," which, unfortunately for our language, cannot be translated into English in less than twelve: "He snatched the lightning from the skies, and the scepter from tyrants."
Surely the briefest and most brilliant biography ever written. He enlarged the boundaries of human knowledge by discovering laws and facts of Nature unknown before, and applying them to the use and service of man; and that entitles him to lasting fame.
But his other service to mankind differed from this only in kind, and was quite equal in degree. For he stands second only to Washington in the list of heroic patriots who on both sides of the Atlantic stood for those fundamental principles of English liberty which culminated in the independence of the United States, and have ever since been shared by the English-speaking race the world over.
In view of his fifteen years' service in England and ten in France, of the immense obstacles and difficulties which he had to overcome, of the art and wisdom which he displayed, and the incalculable value to the country of the treaties which he negotiated, he still stands as by far the greatest of American diplomats.
Though greatest in no one thing, Franklin was great in many things. He was, in his time and place, a great statesman, a great diplomat. He was a great scientist, a great philosopher, a great inventor, a great man of letters, a great business man.
The Variety of His Talents.
All his qualities were made valuable by his practical sense. He was interested in nothing unless he saw in it some use. The result was that he found use in almost everything. It is no wonder that he is called "the many-sided Franklin."