worn out, they might have new ones of their own making. I have sent you a fine piece of Pompadour satin, fourteen yards, cost eleven shillings a yard; a silk negligée and petticoat of brocaded lutestring, for my dear Sally, with two dozen gloves, four bottles of lavender water, and two little reels. The reels are to screw on the edge of the table, when she would wind silk or thread."

He now asked permission of the Assembly to return home; and, while waiting their reply, made the tour of Hanover and Holland. The only answer the Assembly made to his request, was to elect him agent for another year.

Meanwhile the news of the Repeal had filled America with delight. Never did any other people so abandon themselves to rapturous exultation, as the colonists on this occasion. In Boston, the very debtors were brought out of jail, that there might, at such a moment, be no one unhappy in the town. When the glad tidings reached Philadelphia, the frequenters of the principal coffee-house sent for the captain of the ship to make one of their company, presented him with a gold-laced hat, and gave presents to every man and boy of his crew. They kept a punch-bowl replenished all day, free to every one who would drink the health of the king. At night the city was illuminated, and the people were regaled with unlimited beer. "I never heard so much noise in my life," wrote Sally Franklin to her 'honored papa'; "the very children seemed distracted." The next day Governor Penn and the Mayor entertained three hundred gentlemen at the State-house, who drank the health of Dr. Franklin, with all the honors, and resolved to clothe themselves, on the next birthday of the king, in complete suits of English manufacture, and give their homespun to the poor. On the birthday there was a grand banquet in a grove on the banks of the Schuylkill, and a procession, of which the sublime feature was a barge, forty feet long, named FRANKLIN, from which salutes were fired, as it passed along the streets.* One of Franklin's nieces wrote to him that a good lady of their acquaintance, who was lying at the point of death, just before the good news arrived, had expressed a longing desire to hear from England before she died, that she might carry the news of the Repeal to her father, who, in his life, had been "a good old whig."

* Watson's "Annals of Philadelphia," ii.. 270.

At the October election in Philadelphia, the "old ticket" was once more triumphant, and that, too, in the absence of its chief, Chance has preserved a little note, dashed off by Sally Franklin, to her brother, the Governor of New Jersey, dated October 3d, 1766: "Dear Brother:- The Old Ticket forever! We have it by 34 votes! God bless our worthy and noble agent, and all his family! were the joyful words we were waked with at 2 or 3 o'clock this morning, by the White Oaks. They then gave us three huzzas and a blessing, then marched off. How strong is the cause of truth! We have beat three parties: the Proprietary, the Presbyterians, and the Half-and-Half. As we knew you would be glad to hear, mamma has sent George, and Mr. Wharton will write also."*

Dr. Franklin was too modest a man not to enjoy, and keenly too, his complete reinstatement in the good-will of his countrymen. Amid the applause that rushed upon him like a torrent, there was a long letter from his sister, Mrs. Mecom, who told him that his "Answers were thought, by the best judges, to exceed all that had been wrote on the subject, and being given in the manner they were, they were a proof that they proceeded from principle, and sufficient to stop the mouths of all gainsayers." The good lady had a favor to ask of her generous brother: "It is to procure me some fine old linen or cambric (as a very old shirt or cambric handkerchief), dyed into bright colors, such as red and green, a little blue, but chiefly red; for, with all my own art, and good old Uncle Benjamin's memorandums, I can't make them good colors; and my daughter Jenny, with a little of my assistance, has taken to making flowers for the ladies' heads and bosoms, with pretty good acceptance; and if I can procure those colors, I am in hopes we shall get something by it worth our pains, if we live till spring." Indorsed on the back of this letter, in the hand-writing of Dr. Franklin, are these words: "Sister Mecom, Nov. 8, 1766. Answered by Captain Freeman, and sent a box of millinery."t

CHAPTER III.

REACTION AFTER THE REPEAL.

MORALISTS do not usually warn mankind of the danger of being too good. Nevertheless, history shows us, that bodies of men, influenced by extraordinary eloquence or peculiar circumstances, may perform actions more virtuous than they are capable of sustaining, and consequently repent of their noblest deeds. Polonius might have added to the other admonitions bestowed upon the departing Laertes a caution not to attempt a flight of magnanimity beyond his strength, lest he should afterwards droop, fatigued, below his natural and proper elevation.

In repealing the Stamp Act, the government of Great Britain, under the combined influence of Franklin's array of facts, Burke's new eloquence, Rockingham's great parliamentary connection, the mighty name of Pitt, the distress of trade, and the clamor of the people, had been brought to do a deed in advance of its intelligence and opposed to its instincts. "If I had been prime minister," said Dr. Johnson to Bishop White, of Pennsylvania, "during the recent controversy respecting the Stamp Act, I would have sent a ship-of-war and leveled one of your principal cities to the ground."* Then spoke all that was narrow, bigoted, and brutal in upper England. George Grenville, too, was America-mad, after the Repeal. "He behaves," wrote Franklin, "as if a little out of his head on the article of America, which he brings into every debate without rhyme or reason, when the matter has not the least connection with it."

The violence of a fallen minister would have merely fatigued and emptied an uncorrupt House of Commons. The House of Commons was not uncorrupt.

It was known, nay, it was industriously whispered about that the king felt himself personally aggrieved by the Repeal. To propitiate the king and court, the Declaratory Act, as it was called, had been announced a few days before the Repeal; which act merely delared the absolute supremacy of Parliament over the colo

*Wilson's "Life of Bishop White," p. 39.

nies. This, it was supposed, was necessary to secure the consent of the king and the king's friends to the greater measure that was to follow. But even with this sugaring the pill was bitter in the extreme to the court party, and thirty-three lords joined in protesting against its passage. Nevertheless, it passed in the lords by a majority of thirty-four, and the king felt himself compelled to affix his signature. George III. was so constituted, and had been so educated, that nothing so deeply offended him as to be obliged, for constitutional reasons, to assent to a measure of which he disapproved. George III. sat upon a constitutional throne, but he had an unconstitutional mind. He entertained the erroneous opinion, that the government of Great Britain was a limited monarchy, instead of a limited democracy. He could not bring himself to be the Splendid Nothing which an hereditary, constitutional sovereign must be; his only business in the state being to keep the Supreme Honor out of competition; or, as we should say, to save the enormous cost, in money and morals, of presidential elections.

At that day, the king of England had vast means of corrupting members of Parliament. A large proportion of both Houses appear to have been expectants of good things which were not to be had unless with the king's consent. A member of the House of Commons is reported to have once praised with enthusiasm a speech from one of the party opposed to his own. "Beautiful, beautiful," he exclaimed; "it absolutely brought the tears into my eyes." "But," said a bystander, "your vote was against the speaker's bill." "My vote! Oh, yes; feelings are feelings; but my VOTE! that's quite another matter!" The published papers and correspondence of that period throw abundant light upon the meaning of this honorable member. For example: among the papers of Mr. George Grenville were found, not only lists of the sums of money given to members of parliament, but the following brief, significant epistle from Lord Say and Sele, dated in 1763:

"HONORED SIR:—I am very much obliged to you for that freedom of converse you this morning indulged me in, which I prize more than the lucrative advantage I then received. To show the sincerity of my words (pardon, sir, the perhaps over niceness of my disposition), I return inclosed the bill for £300 you favored me with, as good manners would not permit my refusal of it when tendered by you. Yours, etc., SAY AND SELE.-P. S. As a free

horse wants no spur, so I stand in need of no inducement or douceur to lend my small assistance to the king or his friends in the present administration.”*

It was probably the astonishing and unique circumstance of the refusal of the bribe that induced the minister to preserve this note, Sir James Mackintosh remarks, in commenting upon one of Plunkett's speeches: "It is, I believe, the only speech which is certainly known to have determined the votes of several individuals." And Lord Erskine declared, that nothing but the corruption of Parliament could have neutralized the effect of Burke's immortal orations in behalf of America.

We have testimony upon this subject much more explicit and exact in the Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, who sat in Parliament during a great part of the period when America was the constant topic of debate. Few works have been more bitterly attacked than this. Its faults are obvious enough; but the general trustworthiness of the narrative every subsequent publication of letters and papers of the period has strikingly confirmed. Wraxall derived his curious knowledge of the systematic corruption of Parliament from the men who were the medium of corruption. One of these persons, a member of Parliament named Roberts, who was the parliamentary paymaster under the Pelham administration, gave this testimony toward the close of his life:

"Roberts," says Wraxall, "avowed without reserve, that while he remained at the treasury, there were a number of members who regularly received from him their payment or stipend, at the end of every session, in bank notes. The sums, which varied according to the merits, ability, and attendance of the respective individuals, amounted usually from five hundred pounds to eight hundred pounds per annum. This largess I distributed,' added Roberts, in the Court of Requests, on the day of the prorogation of Parlia ment. I took my stand there; and as the gentlemen passed me, in going to, or returning from the House, I conveyed the money in a squeeze of the hand. Whatever person received the ministerial bounty in the manner thus related, I entered his name in a book, which was preserved in the deepest secrecy; it being never inspected by any human being, except the king and Mr. Pelham.

* Grenville Papers, iii., 145.