Toasts were now given, the first being for the health of the Royal Family, then that of the Elector Palatine and the visitors, and finally every member of the club drank the health of his brother members, one by one; for it would be considered a great want of politeness in England to drink the health of more than one person at a time. When this formality terminated, champagne was introduced, which had the effect of putting every one in good humor. Tea followed the champagne, served with bread and butter and toast, and this was succeeded by coffee, which was very inferior to the tea. In France it is the custom to drink only one cup of excellent coffee; the English drank five or six cups of a vile decoction which they call coffee. Brandy, rum, and other spirituous liquors wound up this philosophical banquet, which terminated at half-past seven. We then went to a meeting of the Royal Society, everybody being very gay, yet not uproarious."*

At many such banquets Franklin, doubtless, assisted. The ordinary dinners, however, were less sumptuous than this. But as every gentleman who complimented the Society with an annual haunch of venison, or its equivalent in beef or turtle, was regarded as an honorary member, we may infer that the jolly philosophers were often regaled with noble viands. These are extracts from the records of the club in Franklin's time: "The Society being this day entertained with halfe a bucke by the Most Hon. the Marquis of Rockingham, it was agreed nem. con. to drink his health in claret."-"On the 4th October, Andrew Mitchell proposes to compliment the club with a fine turtle which he expects very soon from the West Indies."-" Andrew Mitchell, Esq.'s turtle happening to die as the ship came up channel, the company dined on ordinary fare." "The company were this day forced to dine in a room different from what they used to dine in, by a turtle being dressed in the house which weighed 400 lbs."-" William Hanbury, Esq., having this day entertained the company with a chine of beef, which was 34 inches in length, and weighed upwards of 140 lbs., it was agreed nem. con. that two such chines were equal to halfe a bucke or a turtle, and entituled the donor to be an honorary member of this Society."

-“

Mr. Weld's History of the Royal Society contains some interest

* Quoted from M. Faujas de St. Fond in Admiral Smyth's History of the Royal Society Club.

ing notices of Dr. Franklin. "At the time of his election," says that author," he was in America, which prevented him signing the charter book within the required time; but the council, fully aware of his brilliant talents, unanimously resolved, on motion of Mr. William Watson, that the name of Benjamin Franklin, who has deserved so highly of the Society, and whose affairs oblige him to reside in Philadelphia, be inserted in the lists before his admission, and without any fee, or other payment to the Society; and that such name be continued in the lists so long as he shall continue to reside abroad.'"*

Franklin's certificate runs thus: "Benjamin Franklin, Esq., of Philadelphia, a gentleman who has very eminently distinguished himself by various discoveries in natural philosophy, and who first suggested the experiments to prove the analogy between lightning and electricity, being desirous of being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, is recommended by us, in consideration of his great merit, and of his many communications, as highly deserving the honor he desires."t

Mr. Weld preserves a letter of Dr. Franklin, not contained in any collection of his works, which carries us into the council room of the Society, and shows Franklin taking a friendly part in procuring for Dr. Priestley the honor of the Copley medal. It was addressed to Mr. Canton, the electrician :

"After the Society was gone, my Lord Morton said (when I offered him the paper) that it ought to have been delivered before and read to the Society; he, however, desired me to produce it to the council. Then the reading of it was opposed, as not being referred to them by the Society. But this was at last got over, by Dr. Morton's proposing that the giving a medal to Dr. Priestley should be taken into consideration, and that in order to judge the better of the propriety of that proposal, the paper should be read. It was accordingly read. I was then desired, as the best judge present, to give my opinion of the merit of the experiments as to the medal, which I did in plain terms, declaring it as my judgment that the great pains and expense the doctor had been at in making them, and the importance of the experiments themselves, well deserved that encouragement from the Society; and that it

* Weld's History of the Royal Society, ii., & + Id., ibid.

was a mark of distinction justly due to so much philosophical industry and sagacity.

"One that sat near me told me he was surprised at the account I had given, as he had been assured the Medal was intended to be bestowed on the Doctor for writing a history, which was thought wrong, but it now appeared he had made many valuable experiments. Then a question arose, how far it was proper to give a Medal for experiments that had not been sent to the Society till they were published; and this occasioned a search for Sir Godfrey Copley's Will, which could not be found; but an agreement was found recorded beween the Society and his executors, that the £5 should be given for the best experiment within the year, proposed and directed to be made by the Society, and made in their presence. This not having been the practice of late years, it began to be whispered that most of the Medals had been irregularly given. A subsequent resolution was, however, found, to print the clause of Sir Godfrey Copley's Will in every number of Transactions, for the encouragement of foreigners to endeavor obtaining the reward, as there was reason to fear a failure of experiments upon the former plan. By this time it grew late, and it was concluded that the books should be searched to find all the steps that had been taken in disposing of this prize, whether in money or in medals, from the first instance in 1717 to the last; with the reasons and grounds on which the Council had proceeded, and that a copy of this part of Sir Godfrey Copley's Will should be obtained from the Commons, when, at the next council, the matter might be reconsidered, and the Medal then given to Dr. Priestley, if the Council thought fit, and it should be found not contrary to the Will so to do. Thus the business ended for that time; and how it will conclude at last seems an uncertainty, for I think some persons are busy in an opposition to the measure. But I hope it will end in favor of merit, in which case I think our friend cannot miss it."*

Dr. Priestley obtained the medal.

Mr. Jefferson has preserved a club anecdote which Franklin related to him as they sat side by side in the old Congress, when it was proposed to permit the importation of medical books. "When I was in London," said Franklin, "there was a weekly club of

Weld's History of the Royal Society, ii., 67.

physicians, of which Sir John Pringle was President, and I was invited by my friend, Dr. Fothergill, to attend when convenient. I happened to be there when the question to be considered was whether physicians had, on the whole, done most good or harm? The young members, particularly, having discussed it very learnedly and eloquently till the subject was exhausted, one of them observed to Sir John Pringle, that although it was not usual for the President to take part in a debate, yet they were desirous to know his opinion on the question. He said, they must first tell him whether, under the appellation of physicians, they meant to include old women; if they did, he thought they had done more good than harm; otherwise, more harm than good."*

We have before remarked that there was no class of persons with whom Dr. Franklin more easily glided into intimacy, than liberallyminded clergymen. However he may have differed from such men in matters of opinion, he was in moral accord with them, and felt peculiarly at home in their society. Three clergymen, at this time, were his frequent associates, who remained his warm friends to the end of their lives. One was Dr. Richard Price, a clergyman of Welsh extraction, the pastor of a Unitarian church in London, a warm advocate of the Americans. "For a truly Christian spirit," says Dr. Priestley, "disinterested patriotism, and true candor, no man, in my opinion, ever exceeded Dr. Price," a character which his reputation and his writings confirm. He afterwards wrote. powerfully and boldly in defense of the colonies, and opposed the hostile measures of Lord North's administration down to the very end of the revolution. He had the reward, first, of the unanimous applause of Congress, and, afterwards, of seeing in a pew of his little chapel, Sunday after Sunday, John Adams, the first minister of the United States to the court of St. James, accompanied by his wife, whose admirable letters record the fact. He never ceased to correspond with Dr. Franklin, until death removed one of them from the sublunary scene.

Dr. Joseph Priestley, the librarian of Lord Shelburne, an office which gave him leisure, and some months of every year in London, was much with Dr. Franklin at this time. He was still a diligent experimenter and observer in natural science, preaching occasion

* Works of Jefferson, viii., 501.

ally as opportunity offered. With Priestley, it appears, Dr. Franklin had frequent conversations upon theological subjects. They did not agree in opinion. Dr. Priestley says, in his Autobiography: "It is much to be lamented, that a man of Dr. Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done so much as he did to make others unbelievers. To me, however, he acknowledged that he had not given so much attention as he ought to have done to the evidences of Christianity, and he desired me to recommend to him a few treatises on the subject, such as I thought most deserving of his notice, but not of great length, promising to read them, and give me his sentiments on them. Accordingly, I recommended to him Hartley's Evidences of Christianity in his Observations on Man, and what I had then written on the subject in my Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion. But the American war breaking out," he does not think Franklin ever read them.

I do not understand what Dr. Priestley meant by saying that Franklin was an unbeliever in Christianity, since he himself was open to the same charge from nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Christendom. Upon looking into the works of this eminent man, I find that he rejected the doctrines of the Trinity, the Atonement, Original Sin, and Miraculous Inspiration. He regarded Jesus Christ as "a mere man," but divinely commissioned and divinely assisted; and though the books composing the Bible, he thought, were neither inspired, nor infallible, nor correct, and were to be judged and criticised as other writings are, yet they were correct in the main, and were extremely valuable as a record of events the most instructive and sublime. For a man holding these opinions to call Dr. Franklin an unbeliever in Christianity, resembles the oft-cited case of one culinary vessel descanting upon the sooty hue of another. Perhaps, if the two men were now alive, we might express the theological difference between them by saying that Priestley was a Unitarian of the Channing school, and Franklin of that of Theodore Parker.

*

*

Dr. Priestley further says: "In Paris, in 1774, all the philosophical persons to whom I was introduced were unbelievers in Christianity, and even professed atheists." * "I was told by some of them that I was the only person they had ever met, of whose understanding they had any opinion, who professed to believe in