in their service till the peace. I must therefore buckle again to business, and thank God that my health and spirits are of late improved. I fancy it may have been a double mortification to those enemies you have mentioned to me, that I should ask as a favor what they hoped to vex me by taking from me; and that I should nevertheless be continued. But this sort of consideration should never influence our conduct. We ought always to do what appears best to be done, without much regarding what others may think of it. I call this continuance an honor, and I really esteem it to be a greater than my first appointment, when I consider that all the interest of my enemies, united with my own request, were not sufficient to prevent it."

An interesting feature of these years of negotiation were the indirect overtures made Franklin by the British ministry. Though George III was convinced that "hatred of this country is the constant object of his mind," he yet thought it "proper to keep open the channel of intercourse with that insidious man," and through David Hartley and other informal agents he endeavored to negotiate an arrangement which should regain at least a nominal sovereignty over the colonies, and by ending the war with them enable England “to avenge the faithless and insolent conduct of France." But Franklin held that "the true political interest of America consists in observing and fulfilling, with the greatest exactitude, the engagements of our alliance with France, and behaving at the same time towards England so as not entirely to extinguish her hopes of a reconciliation," and so he refused to play false to an ally, or consider a reunion with Great Britain, on any terms.

"You may please yourselves and your children," he told one of these negotiators, "with the rattle of your right to govern

us, as long as you have done with that of your king's being king of France, without giving us the least concern, if you do not attempt to exercise it. That this pretended right is indisputable, as you say, we utterly deny. Your Parliament never had a right to govern us, and your king has forfeited it by hist bloody tyranny."

"The English seem not to know either how to continue the war, or to make peace with us," he told Washington, even after Yorktown; but finally a treaty was concluded, and, his work done, he turned homeward, writing to the Englishman who had striven most for peace the following farewell: "I cannot quit the 'coasts of Europe without taking leave of my ever dear friend, Mr. Hartley. We were long fellow-laborers in the best of all works, the work of peace. I leave you still in the field, but, having finished my day's task, I am going home to go to bed. Wish me a good night's rest, as I do you a pleasant evening."

This hope for a rest was but illusive. No sooner had he landed at Philadelphia than "the two parties in the Assembly and Council, the constitutionists and anti-constitutionists, joined in requesting my service as counsellor, and afterwards in electing me as President. Of seventy-four members in Council and Assembly, who voted by ballot, there was in my first election but one negative, besides my own." "I had on my return some right," he acknowledged to a friend, "to expect repose; and it was my intention to avoid all public business. But I had not firmness enough to resist the unanimous desire of my country folks; and I find myself harnessed again in their service for another year.

THE UNITED STATES COMMISSIONERS TO NEGOTIATE THE TREATY OF PEACE (1783).

From a photograph given by Charles Sumner to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts of an unfinished picture by Benjamin West,

They engrossed the prime of my life.

They have eaten my flesh, and seem resolved now to pick my bones." It is poetically appropriate that his last public service was performed in the Federal Convention, and that no man in that body contributed more to bring about the lasting union of the States, of which he had been among the earliest suggestors, and for which he had worked so unceasingly. His closing remarks, "whilst the last members were signing," form a fitting end to his own career.

"Dr. Franklin, looking towards the president's chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had found it difficult to distinguish, in their art, a rising from a setting sun. 'I have,' said he, ' often and often, in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the president, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now, at length, I have the happiness to know that it is a rising, and not a setting sun.'"