FRANKLIN
FRANK LI X
of commons, closed a personal letter with the
significaut sentence "" I hereby wisli you a pios-
perous voyage and long health." He reached
Philadelphia, May 5, 1775. On his arrival he
was elected bj' the Pennsylvania assembly a del-
egate to the Continental congress and by subse-
quent re-elections sat in that body during 1775-
7G, until Ills departure for FVance. He brought
forward a plan for the union of the colonies, and
had a place on everj- important committee. He
was chairman of the committee to organize a
postal system, and as first postmaster-general of
the colonies established a system afterward
adopted by the United States and which substan-
tially becauie permanent. He was chairman of
the provincial committee of safety, and with
Delegates Lynch and Harrison visited General
Washington at Cambridge, Mass., in September,
1775, to confer on miUtary affairs. In 1776 he was sent on a fruitless mission to Montreal, Can- ada, to confer with Arnold; and in the journey he encountered great hardshijjs. He was presi- dent of the Pennsylvania convention in the spring of 1776 to form an independent state con- stitution, and was one of the committee of five appointed by the Continental congress to frame the Declaration of Independence, which instru- ment he signed. With Jolin Adams and Edward Rutledge he was deputed by congress to visit Ad- miral Howe, who had sought the interview with the hope of arranging terms of peace. He was sent to France in 1776 with Arthur Lee of Vir- ginia to join Silas Deane. the three being accred- ited as envoys from the American colonies to the kingdom of France. He reached Paris, Dec. 31,
1776, and was received with demonstrations of great joy. He was then seventy -one years old and his only companion was his grandson, Wil- liam Temple Franklin, a lad of sixteen years, who was his clerk and assistant. He urged a loan from the French government; encouraged American privateering by issuing commissions, settling personal misimderstandings, and seeing to the distribution of prize money; purchased ships, and quieted unpaid mutineers. Jolm Paul Jones found in him a firm friend and owed to him his opportunities to gain renown as a naval hero. Jones said of Franklin "his letters would make a coward brave. " He secured from France the loan of 3,000,000 livres in 1777, and in Jan- uary, 1778, an offer of a treaty of amity and com- merce and another offensive and defensive with the colonies conditional on their not making a separate peace, or relmquishing their indepen- dence. Tills, the treaty of Paris, was signed. Feb. 6. 1778, and secured the nationality of the United States. France sent to the United States M. Gerard as its accredited minister in March, 1778, and in February, 1779, Franklin received his com-
mission from congress as the first U.S. minister
plenipotentiary at the French court, and his most
delicate work and the one least remembered
was obtaining loans from the French court to
carry on the War four years longer. The loans
thus obtained amounted to over $6,000,000. He
asked to be allowed to resign his post in March,
1781, but congress refused to accept his resigna-
tion. With John Adams and John Jay he pre-
pared provisional articles for a treaty of peace
with Great Britain, on the basis of the indejien-
dence of the United States, which was signed at
Paris, Aug. 30, 1783, and then Franklin again
sought from congress an acceptance of his resig-
nation, which they delayed to act upon. On
Sept. 3, 1783, definite treaties by France and the
United States with Great Britain were signed.
He then arranged commercial treaties with Den-
mark, Portugal and Morocco, and, just as he was
leaving Paris, a treaty with Prussia, by which
privateering was abolished, and private property
by land and sea held secure from destruction in
time of war. This treaty Genei'al Washington
declared " marked a new era in international
morality." In March, 1785, congress allowed
FrankHn to return to his home, and Thomas
Jefferson succeeded him at the French court.
On arriving in Philadelphia in 1785, he was
elected to the state council, was made president
of Pennsylvania and unanimously re-elected in
1786 and 1787. He was a delegate from Pennsyl-
vania to the convention that framed the Federal
constitution, May, 1787, where he ojiposed the
Federal party in their plans for a centralized
government, and when the constitution was
framed, used his efforts to have it immediately
adapted by the states. When adopted lie named
George Washington as his choice for President.
His last active days were devoted to the interests
of the Abolition society of which he was presi-
dent, in praj'ing to congress to provide for the
suppression of slavery and the slave-trade. This
petition was pi-esented to congress, March 23,
1790, and in replying to the petition. Representa-
tive James Jackson of Georgia made a speech in
which he quoted Holy scripture in defence of
slavery. Franklin while confined to his bed by
the infirmities of age, composed a parody on
the speech which was extensively published, and
was his last public paper. His religious belief
was the subject of much controversy among sec-
tarian theologians. To President Stiles of Yale
college, he wrote in the last year of his life, " As
to Jesus of Nazareth, I think His system of
morals and His religion as He left them to us the
best the world ever saw or is likely to see ....
I have, with most of the present dissenters in
England, .some doubts as to His divinit}' though it
is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having
