About that time, also, the King of France gave him a signal testimony of respect, by joining him with some of the most illustrious men of the nation to examine that ignis-fatuus of philosophy, the animal magnetism of the maniac, Mesmer; the pretended effects of which had astonished all Paris. From Dr. Franklin's hand, in conjunction with his brethren of the learned committee, that compound of fraud and folly was unveiled, and received its death-wound. After this nothing very interesting was before the public, either in philosophy or politics, during his stay; and he was principally occupied in winding up his affairs, and preparing for his return to America.

These small offerings to the memory of our great and dear friend (whom time will be making still greater, while it is spunging us from its records) must be accepted by you, Sir, in that spirit of love and veneration for him, in which they are made; and not according to their insignificancy in the eyes of a world, which did not want this mite to fill up the measure of his worth.

His death was an affliction which was to happen to us at some time or other. We have reason to be thankful he was so long spared; that the most useful life should be the longest also; that it was protracted so far beyond the ordinary span allotted to humanity, as to avail us of his wisdom and virtue, in the establishment of our freedom in the west; and to bless him with a view of its dawn in the east, where men seemed till now to have learned every thingbut how to be free.

Extract of a Letter from Dr. Joseph Priestley to the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, dated Northumberland, Nov. 10, 1782.1

Sir,

I have just read in the Monthly Review, vol. 36, p. 357, that the late Mr. Pennant said of Dr. Franklin, that, "living under the protection of our mild government, he was secretly playing the incendiary, and too successfully inflaming the minds of our fellow subjects in America, till that great explosion happened, which for ever disunited us from our happy colonies."

As it is in my power, as far as my testimony will be regarded, to refute this charge, I think it due to our friendship to do it. It is probable, that no person now living was better acquainted with Dr. Franklin and his sentiments on all subjects of importance, than myself, for several years before the American war. I think I knew him as well as one man can generally know another. At that time I spent the winters in London, in the family of the Marquis of Lansdown, and few days passed without my seeing more or less of Dr. Franklin; and the last day that he passed in England, having given out that he should depart the day before, we spent together, without any interruption, from morning till night.

Now he was so far from wishing for a rupture with the colonies, that he did more than most

Inserted in the number for February, 1803..

men would have done, to prevent it. His constant advice to his countrymen, he always said, was to bear every thing from England, however unjust;" saying, that "it could not last long, as they would soon outgrow all their hardships." On this account Dr. Price, who then corresponded with some of the principal persons in America, said, he began to be very unpopular there. He always said, "If there must be a war, it will be a war of ten years, and I shall not live to see the end of it." This I have heard him say many times.

It was at his request, enforced by that of Dr. Fothergil, that I wrote an anonymous pamphlet, calculated to show the injustice and impolicy of a war with the colonies, previous to the meeting of a new parliament. As I then lived at Leeds, he corrected the press himself, and, to a passage, in which I lamented the attempt to establish arbitrary power in so large a part of the British empire, he added the following clause, "to the imminent danger of our most valuable commerce, and of that national strength, security, and felicity, which depend on union and on liberty."

The unity of the British empire, in all its parts, was a favorite idea of his. He used to compare it to a beautiful China vase, which, if once broken, could never be put together again: and so great an admirer was he at the time of the British constitution, that he said he saw no inconvenience from its being extended over a great part of the globe. With these sentiments he left England; but when, on his arrival in America, he found the war begun, and that there was no receding, no man entered more warmly into the interests of what he then considered as his country, in opposition to that of Great Britain. Three of his letters to me (one written immediately on his landing) will prove this.2

By many persons Dr. Franklin is considered as having been a cold-hearted man, so callous to every feeling of humanity, that the prospect of all the horrors of a civil war could not affect him. This was far from being the case. A great part of the day abovementioned that we spent together, he was looking over a number of American newspapers, directing me what to extract from them for the English ones; and, in reading them, he was frequently not able to proceed for the tears literally running down his cheeks. To strangers he was cold and reserved; but where he was intimate, no man indulged in more pleasantry and good humour. By this he was the delight of a club, to which he alludes in one of the letters above referred to, called the Whig club, that met at the London Coffee-house, of which Dr. Price, Dr. Kippis, Mr. John Lee, and others of the same stamp, were members.

1

See negotiations to prevent a breach, Part iii. of these Memoirs.

2

See Memoirs, Part iv. and Private Correspondence, Part i. and 11.

From the PATRIOTE FRANÇOIS of M. Brissot de Warville, Member of the National Assembly and National Convention of France.

The American Revolution has produced a multitude of virtuous citizens, intrepid warriors, and enlightened politicians; but we have seen no one possess, in so high a degree, the character of a true philosopher, as Dr. Benjamin Franklin. His love of mankind occupied every instant of his life; and he displayed the most indefatigable zeal in their service. His knowledge was great and extensive, his manners were simple, his morals were pure.

This portrait will not afford a line of separation sufficiently marked between him and other patriot politicians, if I do not add a characteristic feature to it; this is, that Franklin, in the midst of the vast scene in which he acted such a brilliant and conspicuous character, kept his eyes constantly fixed on a theatre infinitely more vast and extensive,—on Heaven, and a future life! This is the sole circumstance that can support and aggrandize man upon earth, and make of him a true philosopher.

The different anecdotes recounted in the first part of his private life, might afford, to an attentive observer, some idea of his character; and it indeed appears to me to be impossible to read it, without a certain degree of tenderness, mingled with respect.—It exhibits Franklin strolling about the streets of Philadelphia with about four-and-sixpence in his pocket, unknown to any of the inhabitants, eating one loaf with avidity, holding another under each arm, and quenching his thirst with the water of the Delaware!

Who could have dreamed that this miserable wanderer should become one of the future legislators of America; the ornament of the new world; the pride of modern philosophy, and an ambassador to a nation the most rich, the most powerful, and the most enlightened in the universe?

Who could have believed that France, that Europe, should one day elevate statues to a man, who had no where to repose his head ?

This circumstance recals to my memory J. J. Rousseau, with three halfpence (his whole fortune) in his purse, and tormented by famine, balancing in his own mind whether he ought to sacrifice his all, in order to procure a supper, or a bed! After putting an end to this combat between rest and hunger, he lies down, and falls asleep in the open air; and thus, seemingly abandoned by nature and by men, he enjoys the protection of the one, and despises that of the other. The citizen of Lyons, who disdained Rousseau because he was ill clothed, has died unknown; and the man in rags, has now altars erected to his memory.

These examples ought to console men of genius, who have been reduced by fortune to a similar condition, and who are obliged to struggle against want.

Adversity is calculated to form them; let them persevere, and the same recompense awaits

them.

Franklin being persuaded that knowledge could never spread, unless it had been first collected in a central point, as it were, was always extremely desirous to encourage literary, and political

clubs. In one of these clubs, founded by him, the following were the questions put to the candidate :

"Do you believe, that a man ought to be despised or persecuted for opinions merely speculative, on account of any particular faith that he may happen to profess ?"

"Do you love truth, for its own sake?"

"Will you employ all your efforts, in order to know it yourself, and to instil it into others?"

From the "Eloge de Franklin," by the celebrated Condorcet.

Having, during his residence in England, remarked the advantages resulting from newspapers, and associations, known under the denomination of Clubs, and societies formed on the basis of a voluntary subscription, Franklin proposed to adopt them in his native country.

He accordingly began by publishing a Gazette, the columns of which he filled up, during a scarcity of news, by means of essays of his own composition, in which the moral was generally presented under the form of an apologue; in which reason was animated by gay but amiable pleasantries; and in which philosophy, without ceasing to be within the comprehension of the simple colonists for whom it was destined, was on a level with the ideas of an European.

It was a new Spectator, as it were, that he produced, but with much more nature, simplicity, grace; with an aim more extended, and, above all, more useful.

and

Instead of the uncertain hope of correcting some few of the vices of a nation, corrupted by riches and inequality, he conceived a reasonable expectation of rectifying the ideas, of depurating and polishing the virtues of a nascent people.

Several of the fugitive pieces printed at that period by Franklin, have been preserved; and there are some of them, which Voltaire and Montesquieu would not have disavowed.

He would never permit his Gazette to be disgraced by personalities. This species of malice, which presents the ready means of drawing down the popular vengeance upon those whom an editor is inclined to hate, appeared to him to be equally hurtful and dangerous. It seemed to furnish a perfidious kind of arms, which the hypocritical and the factious might use with address, in order to provoke suspicion against virtues and talents the most eminent; to render all reputations uncertain; to destroy character, and the authority of a good name, a circumstance so necessary in an infant republic, and then deliver up the public confidence to those obscure and intriguing men who know how to surprise it.

The Americans were not then that enlightened people, who have since astonished us by the wisdom of their constitutions. Religion, and the incessant labor necessary to form establishments in a wild and savage country, had alone occupied the minds and the bodies of the first generations of Europeans.

Franklin perceived how much they stood in need of the light of philosophy; but it was necessary to make them feel this, without announcing an intention, which would have but too plainly discovered his own superiority.

He accordingly formed a club, composed of several of the inhabitants of Philadelphia, whose, fortunes were on a level with his own. It consisted of only twelve persons, and the number was never augmented. But in consequence of his advice, the majority of the members established similar associations; by this means, they all became animated with the same spirit; but he was careful not to connect them by a solemn confederation, and still less by a dependence upon the mother society.

It was his intention to form a more liberal communication of knowledge, and of sentiments, among the citizens; to habituate them to the custom of acting together in behalf of their common interests; and to enable them to propagate and disperse their opinions, without forming a party.

He thought that if a private association ought never to conceal itself, it ought still less to exhibit itself to public view; that useful, while it acts by the separate interests of its members, by the concert of their intentions, by the weight which their virtues or their talents give to their opinions, it might become dangerous, if, operating in a mass, and forming in some respects a nation within a nation, it should be at length able to oppose its own will to that of the people, and to place between individuals and the national power, a foreign force, which, directed by an ambitious man, might equally menace liberty and the laws.

It is customary, in the English clubs, to subject all those to a slight fine, who transgress their laws. In that of Philadelphia, a slight fine was levied every time an improper expression was made use of.—Those most obstinate in the belief of their own infallibility, were obliged to make use of a certain diffidence in their assertions, and to adopt a degree of modest circumlocution, that prevented the self-love of the company from being shocked by the powerful influence of words upon ideas,—this at length extended even to opinions.1

In the mean time, Franklin began, in an adroit manner, to declare war against fanaticism, which of course must have taken deep root in a country peopled by persecution. Those sentiments of universal benevolence, which so easily enter into mild and gentle minds; those maxims of simple truth which good sense never rejects, conduct, by little and little, to indulgence, and to reason; and at least reduce to a state incapable of doing them hurt, that enemy to mankind, which it would have been imprudent to have attacked in front.

That, at the very same epoch, in two different parts of the globe, philosophy avenged huma

"1mo. To declare that the candidate had no animosity against any of the members of the assembly.

"2do. To profess an equal degree of love for all men, whatever might be their faith.

"3tio. To look upon every attempt against the independence of religion, and of opinion, to be tyranny.

"4to. To love the truth for its own sake—to take pleasure in extending and propagating it. "This," says M. Condorcet," was the profession of faith of a society which rendered great service to the Assembly of Pennsylvania, without ever pretending to govern it."