with great ones, like Pennsylvania and Virginia. Round this question it was war utter and uncompromising war to the death, or to the disruption of the Union. For those who were in the right could not give way, and those who were in the wrong would not. A way out was found in the end by Franklin, who, not in one act, but by two approximations, developed his plan for allaying the fears of the little States, lest they be overborne, and yet saving the larger ones from what would have become, had it been practicable at all, a tyranny as impudent as it was unjust. The plan was to have two Houses, and give a proportional representation in the one and an equal representation in the other, and to divide or balance their functions so as to secure just government for the whole. This, the central or the basic article in the Constitution of the United States, was a gift of Franklin to his country not unworthy to rank with his earlier services. And when at last the draft Constitution was framed, and it was time to put it to the House for acceptance in its entirety, that it might then be submitted to the nation for approval, it was Franklin who carried it over its final perils by a speech of matchless wisdom, tolerance, and humour. His labours had the only reward which a heart like his could desire. For though but two and a half years of life remained to him when the Convention finished its work in September 1787, he yet lived long enough to see justified that confidence in the good-citizen qualities of his countrymen, and that faith in the great future of the nation, which he had held unwaveringly, and without an effort, in the midst of conditions and in spite of signs that had seemed to other men desperate. Yet even the termination of his third Presidentship of Pennsylvania in the autumn of 1788, if it ended his official career, did not end his public services. He still plied, from time to time, a pen that influenced opinion, in spite of anonymity, as no other could. Some of the wisest and wittiest of his writings belong to the last two years of his life, so full of suffering as those years were. Most of that period was passed in bed, and the intermissions of agonising pain were few and brief; yet through all he kept at bay alike the dullness of old age and the peevishness of physical distress. His last public act was to forward, as President of an Abolition Society, a memorial to Congress asking it " to devise a means of removing this inconsistency [the maintenance of negro slavery] from the character of the American people." His last contribution to literature was a brilliant letter, signed "Historicus," in refutation of a pro-slavery speech in Congress. That was on March 23, 1790. He was now bearing up, with patience though not with success, against a crushing combination of maladies. One day his breathing ceased altogether, and he was thought to be dead. But he rallied, and at once resumed his cheerful and benevolent interest in all good causes and efforts. On April 17 he passed into a state of coma, and died in the evening about ten o'clock. His own State honoured him with great obsequies; and Congress voted that "the usual badge of mourning be worn for a month." It was not much. But it was all the recognition of Franklin's unequalled services which Congress had ever vouchsafed to make. The true scene of national mourning for the death of Franklin was in France; and there the most striking tributes, both of affection and of intellectual commemoration by the greatest men, were paid to his worth. Later generations of Americans have recognised with pain that the glories of their Revolution are a little imperfect because of an act of justice forgone, are a little dimmed to all honest eyes by an appearance of insufficient gratitude-even the costless gratitude of a "thank you " was begrudged to such a servant, citizen, and patriot as no other country ever had in the history of man. |