Franklin's reputation grew with his success. "It was," wrote his colleague John Adams, "more universal than that of Leibnitz or New ton, Frederick the Great or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed than all of them. . . . If a collection could be made of all the gazettes of Europe of the latter half of the 18th century, a greater number of pane gyrical paragraphs upon le grand Franklin would appear, it is believed, than upon any other man that ever lived." A few weeks after signing the definite treaty of peace in 1783, Franklin renewed an appli cation which he had previously made just after signing the preliminary treaty, to be relieved of his mission, but it was not until 7 March 1785 that Congress adopted a resolution permitting "the Honorable Benjamin Franklin to return to America as soon as convenient." Three days later, Thomas Jefferson was appointed to suc ceed him. On 13 Sept. 1785, and after a so journ of nearly nine years in the French capi tal, first in the capacity of commissioner and subsequently of minister plenipotentiary, Frank lin once more landed in Philadelphia, on the same wharf on which, 62 years before, he had stepped, a friendless and practically penniless runaway apprentice of 17. Though now in his 79th year, and a prey to infirmities not the neces sary incidents of old age, he had scarcely un packed his trunks after his 'return when he was chosen a member of the municipal council of Philadelphia, and its chairman. Shortly after, he was elected president of Pennsylvania, his own vote only lacking to make the vote unan imous. "I have not firmness," he wrote to a friend, "to resist the unanimous desire of my country folks ; I find myself harnessed again into their service another year. They engrossed the prime of my life; they have eaten my flesh, and seem resolved now to pick my bones." He was unanimously re-elected to this dig nity for the two succeeding years, and while holding that office was chosen a member of the convention which met in May 1787 to frame the Constitution under which the people of the United States are still living. With the adoption of that instrument, to which he probably contributed as much as any other individual, he retired from official life; though not from the service of the public, to which for the remaining years of his stay on earth his genius and his talents were faithfully consecrated. Among the fruits of that unfamiliar leisure, always to be remembered among the noblest achievements of his illustrious career, was the part he had in organizing the first anti-slavery society in the world; and as its president, writing and signing the first remonstrance against slavery ever ad dressed to the Congress of the United States.
In surveying the life of Dr. Franklin as a whole, the thing that most impresses one is his constant study and singleness of purpose to promote the welfare of human society. It was his daily theme as a journalist, and his yearly theme as an almanac-maker. It is that which first occurs to us when we recall his career as a member of the Colonial assembly; as an agent of the provinces in England; as a diplo matist in France; and as a member of the con ventions which crowned the consistent labors of his long life. Nor are there any now so bold as to affirm that there was any other per son who could have been depended upon to accomplish for his country or the world what Franklin did, in any of the several stages of his versatile career.
Though holding office for more than half of his life, the office always sought Franklin, not Franklin the office. When sent to England as the agent of the colony, he withdrew from business with a modest competence judiciously invested mostly in real estate. He never seems
to have given a thought to its increase. Frugal in his habits, simple in his tastes, wise in his indulgences, he died with a fortune neither too large nor too small for his fame as a citizen or a patriot. For teaching frugality and economy to the colonists, when frugality and economy were indispensable to the conservation of their inde pendence and manhood, he has been sneered at as the teacher of a "candle-end-saving philoso phy," and his Poor Richard' as a "collection of receints for laying up treasures on earth rather than in Franklin never taught, either by precept or example, to lay up treas ures on earth. He taught the virtues of in dustry, thrift and economy as the virtues su premely important in his time, to keep people out of debt and to provide the means of edu cating and dignifying society. He never coun tenanced the accumulation of wealth for its own i sake, but for its uses,— its prompt con vertibility into social comforts and refinements. It would be difficult to name another man of any age to whom an ambition to accumulate wealth as an end could be imputed with less propriety.Though probably the most inventive genius of his age, and thus indirectly the founder of many fortunes, he never asked a patent for any of his inventions or discoveries. Though one of the best writers of the English language that his country has yet produced, he never wrote a line for money after he withdrew from the calling by which he made a modest provision for his family.
For the remaining half of his life both at home and abroad, though constantly operating upon public opinion by his pen, he never availed himself of a copyright or received a penny from any publisher or patron for any of these labors. In none of the public positions which he held, even when minister plenipotentiary, did his pay equal his expenditures. He was three years president of Pennsylvania after his return from France, and for his services declined to appro priate to his own use anything beyond his neces sary expenditures for stationery, postage and transportation. It is not by such methods that men justly incur the implied reproach of "laying up treasures on earth," or of teaching a candle end-saving philosophy.
Franklin courted fame no more than for tune. The best of his writings, after his re tirement from journalism, he never gave to the press at all; not even his incomparable autobi ography, which is still republished more fre quently than any of the writings of Dickens or of Thackeray. He always wrote for a larger purpose than mere personal gratification of any kind. Even his bagatelles and jeux d'esprst read in the salons of Paris, though apparently intended for the eyes of a small circle, were inspired by a desire to make friends and create respect for the struggling people and the great cause he represented. Few if any of them got into print until many years after his decease. Franklin was from his youth up a leader, a lion in whatever circle he entered, whether in the printing-house, the provincial, assemblies, as agent in England, or as a courtier in France. There was no one too eminent in science or literature, on either side of the Atlantic, not to esteem his acquaintance a privilege. He was an honorary member of every important scientific association in the world, and in friendly correspondence with most of those who con ferred upon those bodies any distinction; and all this by force of a personal, not to say planetary, attraction that no one brought within his sphere could long resist.