long-cherished hope of an ultimate reconciliation. It is an ominous coincidence that in this year of his great humiliation he sent with a letter of recommendation to his son-in-law in Philadelphia, Thomas Paine, an obscure Englishman of Whiggish temper, two years later to become the fieriest advocate of American independence. In disgrace with the Court, Franklin lingered in England to exhaust the last possibilities of amicable adjustment; petitioning the king, conferring with Burke and Chatham, and curiously arranging for secret negotiations with the go-betweens of the Ministry over the chess board of Lord Howe's sister. He sailed from England in March, 1775, half-convinced that the Ministry were bent upon provoking an open rebellion. When he arrived in Philadelphia, he heard what had happened at Lexington and Concord. On July 5, 1775, he wrote a letter to an English friend of thirty years standing, William Strahan, then a member of Parliament; it was shortened like a Roman sword and sharpened to this point:
You and I were long Friends:—You are now my Enemy,—and I am
As Franklin was sixty-nine years old in 1775, he might fairly have retreated to his library, and have left the burden of the future state to younger hands. He had hardly set foot on shore, however, before
