deprecated, even after midsummer of 1775, even after Bunker Hill and Charlestown, any measures which might" have a bad effect" upon the minds of people in England. These were for sending petitions to the King, even at that time of day; whereas Franklin put more faith in a permanent Union of the colonies, and drew up a plan for effecting it. The plan was reserved for a later time, however, since it was deemed advisable, Franklin himself consenting, that the futile and stultifying petition to the Kingyet another of these disgraced and disregarded petitions to the King!—should go forth in the name of Congress. This was done, that the "moderate" men should not seem to have been overborne in the National Council, and that the fate of the petition might convince them when the arguments of their compatriots and colleagues had failed. And the event was according to the forecast: the almost dramatic and spectacular contempt with which that petition was treated in England made up the minds of thousands in America. And meantime, as one scene of slaughter succeeded another, the royal troops always taking the initiative, it grew more apparent to the colonists that what had occurred earlier in the year was no affair of an unfortunate rencontre or an administrative blunder, but the carrying out of a steady policy of haughty subjection; of a determination to bear them to the ground and then dictate to them on what terms they were to live. So these months, the summer and autumn of 1775, saw a heightening of feeling that was preparing the way for a momentous general change of mind and policy. Thus it was with Franklin more than most men. No man then living knew both countries so well as he, and none could judge so securely the waste, the gratuitousness, and the wrong. The absurdity also, the outrage upon common sense it must have seemed, when he thought of

who they were, those governing persons so far away, who claimed to dispose of the property and make forfeit the lives of those industrious Americans around him, who were not indebted to them for life, nor for a crumb of bread. But those fatuous governing persons could send armies into this distant country; and though they could not reason, nor understand reason, they could destroy, and destroy, and destroy. Many expedients-he had proved it at the cost of his own patience-had seemed insuperably difficult to them; but the last, the most brutal, and, to a humane mind, the most difficult of all— into that they could throw themselves with a light heart. So he reasoned, remembering the past and looking round at the present; and to him, reasoning so, Bunker Hill and the burning of Charlestown left, of his old allegiance for England, but a very slender filament of remembered feeling by the time October of that year had come. Then he went to the conference with Washington. When setting out to return home, accounts reached him of the wanton destruction of Falmouth in Maine, by British menof-war; neither church nor school spared; the houses which had escaped the cannonade deliberately fired by the torch, marines being landed to carry out that splendid exploit; all the shipping burned, so that the poor people should neither have the means of restoring their fortunes nor of finding food-and all this done on the verge of a northern winter! Such was the wisdom and mercy of the King, whom some folk were still for petitioning; such were the rights of sovereignty and, to Americans, the blessings of the English connection. Whatever others might think of it, Franklin resolved at once that rights like these were to be warred against by allgood men, and that the sooner the egregious connection ceased to exist, the less anomalous the world would be. If he had doubted at all before, he had

done with doubting now. From this moment he devoted himself utterly-every power of his mind, every fibre of his body-to the cause which he now publicly declared for, the Independence of America.

My topic not being the history of the Revolution, I can do little more than name rapidly the three or four chief events with which he was connected during the next twelvemonth. In the winter of 1775-6, the Colonists, accepting what was a tacit declaration of war against them by the MotherCountry, had begun military operations against the British forces in Canada. After opening well, these operations became inglorious, if they did not bring disgrace. Congress decided early in the spring to send a commissioner to see if its affairs could not be retrieved somewhat; and in spite of his seventy years and two months, it chose to send Franklin. Never sparing himself in his country's service, he did not refuse the duty now imposed upon him; but the journey into these Polar regions went near to killing him; and though he came back alive, he felt for many a day afterwards the effect of the hardships then undergone. As to the situation there, it was fairly irretrievable, and he reported to that effect. Two pieces of good news gladdened his heart on getting back. The first was that a plentiful supply of gunpowder was now on hand. The second was that during the past two months Independence had been gaining new adherents by the hundred every day. It was no longer the whispered word of two or three, but the war-cry of a growing host. This was good hearing; and he threw himself with a will into making that disposition prevail more and more. In June the great issue was fought out in Congress and the momentous Resolution carried. Franklin was one of a committee of five appointed to draw up a Declaration; but the Declaration was the work of Thomas Jefferson alone. A

few days later came the first Fourth of July in universal history. Eight days later still, arrived off Sandy Hook Franklin's esteemed friend Lord Howe, bringing overtures of conciliation; and a fleet and an army (a second army) to enforce them with. On September II, there took place, in a hut on Staten Island, a picturesque conference between Lord Howe and a commission consisting of Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge, who had been sent by Congress in compliance with Lord Howe's request, to hear what his lordship had to offer. The Commissioners sat very tight, and his lordship was bound by his instructions, so between the two parties matters got no forarder. His lordship, indeed, had nothing ready for immediate offer, save the King's pardon for those who would give in their submission. Pardon, submission!-these were not the things that Americans were asking or giving eight weeks after the Fourth of July. So the Commissioners withdrew; and Lord Howe continued his negotiations with the help of two armies and a fleet. Against such arguments one needed to have a strong case; and the eyes of Congress looked across the world for signs of aid, Better than watching and waiting, was to go and seek for it, go and ask it. So, on an evening towards the end of October, there slipped secretly out of Philadelphia an old man of seventyone accompanied by two boys, his grandsons. Early next morning they rode from Chester on the Delaware to Marcus Hook, three miles beyond, and embarked on board a sloop of war-the Reprisal sixteen guns-which was waiting out of sight to receive them. Then the sloop stole down the river and put out into a wintry sea. The old man was Benjamin Franklin, accredited Envoy to the Court of Versailles.

FRANKLIN WAS not venturing into a strange world in going to France for aid, nor into one where an interest in the American cause had yet to be created. During his residence in England he had paid visits to the French capital, and had been received with the distinction which his fame as a savant, and his European prestige as a practical moralist, could not but ensure for him in that city of the philosophers and the economists. He made also many friendships of that kind, that fervour and fastness through life, which he had the gift of making wherever he went. These, like every other power or acquisition of his, were now at the service of his country. When a Committee of Secret Correspondence was formed in November 1775, he had written at once to men on the continent of Europe who would have moved the world, or tried to, at his request. And some of them had effected much, before the following summer was come. There was indeed a very general social and popular interest in the subject of American insurgency throughout all Europe, but especially in France: an interest sympathetic in the highest degree. In France there was also an interest felt by statesmen, an interest of special vivacity, in the progress and upshot of England's quarrel with her colonies. For if the colonists were to shake themselves free, as they well might, then the balance of power as between England and France would be more comfortable to contemplate than the issue of the last war had left it. Those two kinds of interest in the question-that of popular enthusiasm and that of political deliberation-met and fused in the mind of Caron de Beaumarchais. As a privileged person at court and almost a statesman (on occasion) without an office, he maintained for some months his parable that the historic juncture involved almost a call of destiny to the Most Christian King, to come