the prime of my life. They have eaten my flesh, and seem resolved now to pick my bones." In 1787 he was chosen a delegate to the convention to frame the Constitution of the United States—an instrument which he deemed not perfect yet as near perfection as the joint wisdom of any numerous body of men could carry it, handicapped by "their prejudices, their passions, their local interests, and their selfish views." In 1789, as President of the Abolition Society, Franklin signed a memorial against slavery which was laid before the House of Representatives; and on March 23, 1790, less than a month before his death, he wrote for the Federal Gazette, an ironical justification of the enslaving of Christians by African Mohammedans—quite in the vein of the celebrated Edict of the King of Prussia. As the shadows thickened about him, he settled his estate, paid his compliments to his friends, and departed, on the seventeenth day of April, 1790, in his eighty-fifth year.
In the matter of religion Franklin was distinctly a product of the eighteenth century enlightenment. He took his direction in boyhood and early manhood from deistical writers like Pope, Collins, Shaftesbury, and Mandeville. At various periods of his life he drew up articles of belief, which generally included recognition of one God, the providential government of the world, the immortality of the soul, and divine justice. To profess faith in as much religion as this, he found emotionally grati-
