Penn, he turned to the study of the electrical phenomena of nature, with the most marvelous results. Early in 1749 came his "Observations and Suppositions towards forming a new Hypothesis for explaining the several Phenomena of Thunder-gusts." In 1750 he wrote "Opinions and Conjectures concerning the Properties and Effects of the Electrical Matter, and the Means of Preserving Buildings, Ships, &c., from Lightning, arising from Experiments and Observations made at Philadelphia, 1749." Of all his writings on the subject of electricity his greatest is this, for in it is that short paragraph in which he describes and suggests the many uses of the lightning-rod. It had long been a custom with Franklin to make known the results of his experiments in electricity to his old friend Peter Collinson, of London, and by Collinson the letters were from time to time laid before the Royal Society. There they met with that reception which in all ages and by the great mass of all people has always been given to whatever is new. Franklin was laughed at, and the contents of his letters declared to be of no account. But Collinson thought otherwise, and when the "Observations" and "Opinions reached him, determined that they should be given to the world. Dr. Fothergill gladly wrote the preface. Cave, of the Gentlemen's Maga

zine, consented to publish them, and in May, 1751, a little pamphlet entitled "New Experiments and Observations in Electricity, made at Philadelphia, in America," came out and went the round of Europe. One copy was presented to the Royal Society, and Sir William Watson requested to make an abstract. A second passed over to France, fell into the hands of the Count de Buffon, was translated at his request by M. Dubourg, had a great sale at Paris, and soon appeared in German, Latin, and Italian. Louis had every experiment described in the pamphlet repeated in his presence. Abbé Nollet, who taught the royal children what was then called “natural philosophy," added his mite by asserting that no such person as Franklin existed. Buffon, De Lor, and Dalibard hastened to put up the apparatus described in the pamphlet for drawing electricity from the clouds, and each succeeded. Dalibard was first, and on the 10th of May, 1752, demonstrated that lightning and electricity are the same. One month later, Franklin flew his famous kite at Philadelphia and proved the fact himself. The Royal Society of London, which had laughed at his theory of lightning, now made him a member, and the next year honored him with a Copley medal.

While the whole scientific world was thus

doing him honor, he suddenly abandoned his studies and went back to politics, and was once more loaded with offices of every sort. His townsmen elected him assemblyman, and he took his seat in 1752. The home government appointed him, with William Hunter of Virginia, postmaster-general for the colonies. The assembly sent him with its speaker to hold a conference with the Indians at Carlisle. There, as he beheld the drunken orgies round the bonfire on the public square, he seems for the first time to have realized the squalid misery to which contact with the white man was fast reducing the Indian tribes. The fruit of his mission was a treaty, and in time a pamphlet, which he named "Remarks concerning the Savages of North America." A tradition is extant that it was written many years afterwards, and printed for his own amusement on his private press at Passey; for it was not given to the world till 1784. As a piece of humorous satire, the "Remarks" deserve to be ranked among the best of his writings. So well is it done that no number of perusals will suffice to determine whether the butt of his wit is the white man or the red; the pious Dutchman of Albany who went to church to hear good things on Sunday and defrauded the Indian during the week, or the ignorant savage who

despised civilization and believed the church a place where the pale-face learned to be inhospitable and to cheat.

son.

In public life Franklin displayed great executive power mingled with traits which cannot be too strongly condemned. The vicious political doctrine that to the victor belongs the spoils, he adopted in its worst form, and, though he never sought office, he never, in the whole course of his life, failed to use his office for the advancement of men of his own family and his own blood. When he became a member of the assembly, his place of clerk, made vacant by his election, was by his influence given to his When he became postmaster-general of the colonies, he at once made his son controller of the post-office, and gave the postmastership of Philadelphia, in turn to the same son, to a relative, and to one of his brothers. When he was postmaster of the United States, his deputy was his son-in-law, Richard Bache. Yet no man ever performed the duties of the place better than Franklin. In his hands the whole system of the post-office underwent a complete change. He straightened the routes; he cut down the postage; he forced the post-riders to hasten their pace; he opened the mail-bags to newspapers by whomsoever printed, and made their carriage a source of revenue to the crown;

he

established the penny-post in the large towns; and for the first time advertised unclaimed letters in the newspapers. Mails that used to go out but once a week, began under him to go out three times as often. Riders who in the winter used to make the trip from Philadelphia to New York but twice each month, now, in the coldest weather, went over the route once a week. When in a fit of passion the home government deprived him of his place, the American post-office paid the salaries of the postmasters, and yielded a revenue three times as great as then came from the Irish post-office to the crown.

Franklin began the work of reform by visiting every post-office in the country save that at Charleston, and had scarcely returned from his journey when he was sent to Albany on a matter of great concern. The final contest for the supremacy of France or England in America had begun. Looking back on that contest after the lapse of one hundred and thirty years, it is easy to see that it could not in the nature of things have ended otherwise than it did. Both nations began their occupation of America at almost precisely the same time. The first successful English settlement was made at Jamestown in 1607, and the first successful French settlement at Quebec in 1608. But