Among the acquaintances of Franklin at this time was John Baskerville, whose improvements in printing and type-founding had commended him to the literary world. He was born the same year with Franklin, and similarity of mechanical tastes brought them together. William Strahan, king's printer, and a member of Parliament, was one of Franklin's most intimate associates and admirers, and his regard seems to have been reciprocated. "He was very urgent with me," says Franklin, in a letter to his wife, to stay in England, and prevail with you to remove hither with Sally. He proposed several advantageous schemes to me, which appeared reasonably founded." a letter to Mrs. Franklin, dated London, December 13, 1757, Mr. Strahan writes of her husband: -"I never saw a man who was, in every respect, so perfectly agreeable to me. Some are amiable in one view, some in another, he in all." It is a painful example of the estrangements produced by war to read, in connection with this, the following letter (by some supposed not wholly serious) from Franklin to Strahan, written some eighteen years afterwards:

In

Philad., July 5, 1775. MR. STRAHAN: You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns and murder our people. Look upon your hands; they are stained with the blood of your relations! You and I were long friends, you are now my enemy; and I am

Youre

nklin

After the independence of the Colonies, the friendly intercourse of Franklin with Strahan was renewed, and old ties were reknit with added warmth on both sides.

In the autumn of 1757 Franklin had an attack of illness, resulting in a violent cold and fever; during which, as he writes to his wife, he was now and then a little delirious." They cupped me," he continues, "on the back of the head, which seemed to ease me for the present. I took a good deal of bark, both in substance and infusion; and, too soon thinking myself well, I ventured out twice, to do a little business and forward the service I am engaged in, and both times got fresh cold and fell down again. My good doctor grew very angry with me for acting contrary to his cautions and directions, and obliged me to promise more observance for the future." The "good doctor" here alluded to was Doctor Fothergill, who attended Franklin very carefully and affectionately during his illness, which lasted nearly two months.

Franklin entered into the objects of his mission with his usual alacrity and fidelity of attention. A brief review of these objects will be appropriate in this place.

By the death of the widow of William Penn, and of Springett Penn, son and heir of William Penn the younger, the territorial rights of the province were reunited, under the will of William Penn, the founder, in John, Thomas, and Richard, his sons by his second wife. John, the eldest, born in Pennsylvania during his father's last visit, possessed a double share. By John's death, without issue, his half of Pennsylvania descended to his next brother, Thomas, who thus became "Proprietary" of three-fourths of the province, his brother Richard being the "Proprietary" of the remainder.

To extend their influence, these Proprietaries had claimed the appointment of judicial and other officers. They had forbidden all other persons to purchase lands of the natives,

thus establishing a monopoly in their own favor; and they had insisted on the exemption of their immense estates from taxation. In an address to the Proprietaries in 1751, the General Assembly urge the old complaint, that the Province was at the sole expense of Indian treaties, of which the chief benefit resulted to the Proprietaries in the

cession of lands. Disputes ensued on these controverted claims between the General Assembly and the Governor, who was the nominee of the Proprietaries, and the representative of their interests. The ready pen and clear judgment of Franklin were frequently called into requisition in drawing up reports and representations in reply to the Proprietaries and their advocates; and, at last, having showed himself more than a match for the writers on the other side, the Assembly sent him as their agent, as already mentioned, to represent their case to the king.

On his arrival in England he found that the newspapers were mostly in the Proprietary interest, and that "intelligence from Pennsylvania," evidently manufactured with a view to prejudicing public opinion, represented the inhabitants of the province as actuated by a selfish and refractory spirit; although they merely withstood the claim of the Proprietaries to an exemption from a taxation which was as necessary to the defence of their own estates as to the general safety. One of Franklin's first steps was to reform an erroneous public opinion, through the same medium by which it had been created,—namely, the press. It having been stated in a newspaper called The Citizen, or General Advertiser, that ravages had been committed by the Indians on the inhabitants of the western part of the province, and that the Assembly's pertinacious disputes with the Governor prevented anything being done for the public protection, Franklin caused a reply to be inserted in the same newspaper. over the signature of his son, William Franklin, and dated from the "Pennsylvania Coffee-house, London, Sept. 16, 1757." In this communication a circumstantial denial is given to the charges brought against the Assembly, and more especially the Quaker portion of that body.

With a view to enlightening public opinion still further in regard to the rights of the people of Pennsylvania, as opposed to the claims of the two sons of William Penn, in the beginning of 1759 an anonymous work was published, entitled "An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania from its origin." The motto was as follows: "Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty

nor safety." The authorship of this work was at once charged upon Franklin, although by some it was attributed to his old comrade, James Ralph, then resident in London. The volume was dedicated to Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons; and, in his dedication, the writer says, "The cause we bring is, in fact, the cause of all the provinces in one. It is the cause of every British subject in every part of the British dominions. It is the cause of every man who deserves to be free, everywhere."

Following the dedicatory epistle is an "Introduction," in which Thomas Penn is referred to as "an assuming landlord, strongly disposed to convert free tenants into abject vassals, and to reap what he did not sow." As an excuse

for bringing before the British public "the transactions of a Colony till of late hardly mentioned in our annals," the author remarks: "But then, as there are some eyes which can find nothing marvellous but what is marvellously great, so there are others which are equally disposed to marvel at what is marvellously 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." The author does not presume that "such as have long been accustomed to consider the Colonies in general as only so many dependencies on the Council-board, the Board of Trade, and the Board of Customs, or as a hot-bed for causes, jobs, and other pecuniary emoluments, and as bound as effectually by instructions as by laws, can be prevailed upon to consider these patriot rustics with any degree of respect. Derision, on the contrary, must be the lot of him who imagines it in the power of the pen to set any lustre upon them." And he eloquently concludes in these words: "But how contemptibly soever these gentlemen may talk of the Colonies, how cheap soever they may hold their Assemblies, or how insignificant the planters and traders who compose them, truth will be truth, and principle principle, notwithstanding. Courage, wisdom, integrity, and honor, are not to be measured by the sphere assigned them to act in, but by the trials they undergo, and the vouchers they furnish; and, if so manifested, need neither robes nor titles to set them off."

The Proprietaries were much incensed by the language applied to them in this work. The belief that it was from the pen of Franklin was so fixed and general, that he made no public disavowal of the authorship,- partly, perhaps, through a willingness to incur all the odium of it, and partly because he was really responsible for the publication and for many of the facts. In the Philadelphia edition of his works, published as late as 1840, the "Historical Review" is inserted entire, as from his pen. It appears, however, from a letter to David Hume, dated September 27, 1760, that the work was incorrectly attributed to him. In this letter (first published by Mr. Sparks) he says: "I am obliged to you for the favorable sentiments you express of the pieces sent to you; though the volume relating to our Pennsylvania affairs was not written by me, nor any part of it, except the remarks on the proprietor's estimate of his estate, and some of the inserted messages and reports of the Assembly, which I wrote when at home, as a member of committees appointed by the House for that purpose. The rest was by another hand." The "Historical Review," though anonymous, appears to have been of considerable service in gaining friends for the Assembly, in opposition to the Proprietaries.

In conformity with directions from the Assembly, Franklin had an interview with the Proprietaries, resident in England, and discussed the points of difference. The Messrs. Penn would not relax in their arbitrary claims. They seemed ambitious of holding the whole population of the province in a state of vassalage. Not only did they claim political privileges, insisting on giving such instructions to their deputy governor as made him a mere puppet in their hands, and trammelled him in a manner to render him powerless for good to the people, but they looked sharply after their pecuniary interests, and continued to chaffer with the Assembly for an exemption of their princely domains from

taxation.

While the quarrel was pending, the Assembly passed a law taxing the proprietary estates, which law was approved by Governor Denny. This and several other laws, having a similar sanction, were so displeasing to the Proprietaries, that they removed the Governor from office. The laws