the lifetime of the founder of the colony, that Penn himself was on the point of surrendering a jurisdiction, fruitful principally in vexation, to the crown, reserving to his family only the right in property which the royal charter conferred. But this was not done; and the difficulties, irksome in the days of the father, were doubly so in the hands of the sons. Their deputy governors were placed in a most awkward relation. In conciliating the people, they offended the proprietaries, and were recalled; or their instructions were so pointed as to leave them no discretion, and their weary terms of service were spent in fruitless altercations with the Assembly.

No law was considered as finally enacted in Pennsylvania until it had received the royal sanction. By the terms of the original charter, all enactments were to be sent to Great Britain, and if, within five years, they were not disapproved of by the king, their approval was presumed. Subsequently, however, the terms of the charter were interfered with by instructions from the crown, that such acts as were supposed to affect the royal prerogative, or to involve points in dispute between Parliament and the colonies, should not be passed without a clause deferring their operation until they had received the royal sanction. The method in which a law was discussed in London was sufficiently humiliating to the pride of the Assembly; and as we review the process now, the wonder is that the tedious and dilatory proceedings did not sooner urge the provincial

Assembly into rebellion. An act of the provincial Assembly was first laid before the Board of Trade, as if the primary consideration in relation to the colony was a matter of pounds and pence; and the main object to be secured was that the Americans should not make any movement, unwatched, in which the interests of the British merchants and factors, and the revenue of the crown, should not be consulted. To make the colonies dependencies of the Board of Trade was a fatal error of the British crown; and in many of the revolutionary papers, and the writings which preceded the war of separation, we find evidences of the keenness with which the col onists felt and resented the insult; for such they considered it. The pecuniary bearing of the bill, if any it had, being ascertained and corrected, if it was deemed to need amendment, it went next to the king's solicitor, that the prerogative might be defended from encroachment. Thence it came back to the Board of Trade, and that body having acted upon it, it went before the king's council for final action. While these steps were in progress, the proprietaries kept an agent employed to watch the bill, and, if they took exceptions to it, to argue them before the Board of Trade. The Assembly was compelled, also, to appear before the Board by an agent; and thus, for every important act done by their representatives, the colony was, in effect, put upon trial. Franklin's mission was more comprehensive than had been intrusted to any previous agency. It was not only the reconciliation of a

present difficulty, but embraced the endeavor to remove the causes which impeded the general harmony and clogged the prosperity of the colony. To his discretion, and to his intimate knowledge of all points of the colonial business, the duty could be safely confided. The replies to the governor's addresses, in which the cause of the people was ably vindicated by the Legislature, were chiefly from his pen. He was the popular champion during the many years that he served in the provincial Assembly.

These replies, messages, and reports of the Assembly were published in London in a work entitled "An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania." It appeared anonymously in London early in the year 1759, and caused Dr. Franklin to receive a great deal of censure and abuse as the supposed author. This was, however, to have been anticipated from the very nature of the work, a controversial rather than a strictly impartial one; the charge against the proprietaries could but provoke reply from them and their friends; and the forcible language in which the oppressions of the people are depicted, left those assailed no choice but defense. Franklin never publicly admitted or denied the charge of authorship; but in an official letter, referring to the work, he speaks of it as one which "we" have in press, and thus admits that it was done with his privity. The reports and messages before alluded to, form a very large portion of the volume; other parts Dr. Franklin himself ac

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knowledges in a letter to David Hume, and the Dedication and Introduction are known to be from his pen. The Introduction we subjoin, as one of the happiest specimens of his style:

"To obtain an infinite variety of purposes by a few plain principles, is the characteristic of nature. As the eye is affected, so is the understanding; objects at a distance strike us according to their dimensions, or the quantity of light thrown upon them; near, according to their novelty or familiarity, as they are in motion or at rest. It is the same with actions. A battle is all motion, a hero all glare; while such images are before us, we can attend to nothing else. Solon and Lycurgus would make no figure in the same scene with the King of Prussia; and we are at present so lost in the military scramble on the Continent next us, in which, it must be confessed, we are deeply interested, that we have scarce time to throw a glance toward America, where we have also much at stake, and where, if any where, our account must be made up at last.

"We love to stare more than to reflect, and to be indolently amused at our leisure rather than commit the smallest trespass on our patience by winding a painful, tedious maze, which would pay us in nothing but knowledge.

"But then, as there are some eyes which can find nothing marvelous but what is marvelously great, so there are others which are equally disposed to marvel at what is marvelously little, and who can derive as much entertainment from their microscope

in examining a mite, as Dr. in ascertaining the geography of the moon or measuring the tail of a

comet.

"Let this serve as an excuse for the author of these sheets, if he needs any, for bestowing them on the transactions of a colony till of late hardly mentioned in our annals; in point of establishment one of the last upon the British list, and in point of rank one of the most subordinate; as being not only subject, in common with the rest, to the crown, but also to the claims of a proprietary, who thinks he does them honor enough in governing them by deputy; consequently, so much further removed from the royal eye, and so much the more exposed to the pressure of self-interested instructions.

"Considerable, however, as most of them for happiness of situation, fertility of soil, product of valuable commodities, number of inhabitants, shipping, amount of exportations, latitude of rights and privileges, and every other requisite for the being and well-being of society, and more considerable than any of them all for the celerity of its growth, unassisted by any human help but the vigor and virtue of its own excellent constitution.

“A father and his family, the latter united by interest and affection, the former to be revered for the wisdom of his institutions and the indulgent use of his authority, was the form it was at first presented in. Those who were only ambitious of repose, found it here; and as none returned with an evil report of the land, numbers followed, all partook of