England in 1761. His purpose in coming home was to foment dispute with the governor, raise a cry for a change of government, and be sent back to finish his plan. His plan was to have Pennsylvania made a royal colony and himself made royal governor. But the office of governor was to be his reward for planning and sustaining the stamp act. When, therefore, the act passed, in order to have it faithfully executed he named John Hughes distributer for Pennsylvania and Delaware. While, therefore, other colonial agents who were not to get favor from the king were waiting on the ministers, exciting the London merchants, and contriving to have petitions for repeal sent up from all the manufacturing towns, Franklin remained a quiet spectator. When, therefore, the committee of Bristol merchants visited him with their petition in their hand, he was so reserved and uncivil that they left him in disgust. While the pens of other men were busy denouncing the stamp act and defending the American cause, he had not written one line.

That Franklin had done nothing for the good of the cause was false. That he had written nothing was almost true, for he had sent to the press but one short article. During the early months of 1765 the London press had displayed its usual ignorance of colonial affairs, and had

been full of all manner of contradictory statements. At one moment it was said that the Americans were about to establish manufactories and ruin the mother country; and at the next, that there was nothing that the Americans could manufacture. Their sheep were first described as the finest in the world; and then as few and the poorest in the world. When a few dozens of such statements had appeared in print, some friend to America ventured to call their makers to account, and was himself reproved by Franklin in a short piece which amused the coffee-houses for a month. Readers who pretended to know, he wrote, objected, that setting up manufactories by the Americans was not only improbable but impossible; that labor was so dear that iron could not be worked with profit; that wool was so scarce that enough could not be had to make each inhabitant one pair of stockings a year. But no one surely would be deceived by such groundless objections. Did not every one know that the very tails of American sheep were so laden with wool that each had a little wagon on four little wheels to support and keep it from dragging on the ground? Would the Americans. calk their ships and litter their horses with wool if it were not plenty and cheap? Could labor be dear where one English shilling passed

for twenty-five? Some incredulous people might declare the story of three hundred silk throwsters being engaged at London, in one week, to go to New York was a fable, and protest there was no silk in America to throw. But let them know that agents from the Emperor of China had been at Boston treating about the exchange of raw silk for wool to be carried in Chinese junks through the Straits of Magellan. This was certainly as true as the news from Quebec that the inhabitants of Canada were making ready for a cod and whale fishery in the Upper Lakes. Here again ignorant people might object that the Upper Lakes were bodies of fresh water, and that cod and whale were fish never caught but in water that was salt. But let these people know that cod, when attacked, fly into any water where they can be safest; that whales when they have a mind to eat cod, follow them wherever they fly; and that the grand leap of the whale in the chase up the falls of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.

This manner of treating grave matters in a humorous way is characteristic of Franklin's best writings; and he never overwhelmed his adversaries so completely as when he met their ignorance, stupidity, and folly with his good

natured wit. Two contributions to the newspapers in 1773 are cases in point. The crisis in the quarrel with Great Britain had then been reached. The long list of infamous acts summed up in the Declaration of Independence had almost been completed. The Townshend revenue act had been laid and in part repealed; Gage had taken possession of Boston; the "Liberty" had been seized; the "Gaspée had been burned; citizens of Boston had been shot down in the streets; legislatures had been summoned to meet at places unusual, uncomfortable, far from the depositories of public records; and the tea flung into Boston harbor. Enraged at the just resistance of the colonies, the whole Tory press of England put up a shout for vengeance. The Americans seemed to have scarcely a friend left, when two short pieces in defense of them were printed in the "Public Advertiser." These pieces, as Franklin declared, were designed to set forth the conduct of England "towards the colonies in a short, comprehensive, and striking view," and to make the view more striking were given uncommon titles and drawn up in unusual forms. To one he gave the name "Rules for reducing a great empire to a small one." The other he called "An Edict of the King of Prussia." The Rules were twenty in number, were ad

dressed to all ministers charged with the management of domains so extensive as to be troublesome to govern, and prescribed, as the best way of reducing such empires, precisely the line of conduct Great Britain had taken with America.

In the Edict the King of Prussia was made to assume the same attitude towards Great Britain that George III. had assumed toward America. All the world knew, the Edict stated, that the island of Britain was a colony of Prussia; that the first settlements had been made by men drawn out from Germany by Hengist and Horsa, Hella and Uffa, Cerdicus and Ida; that the colony had flourished for ages under Prussian protection, had been defended by Prussia in the late war with France, and had never been emancipated from Prussian control. As descendants of the ancient Germans, they were still subjects of the Prussian crown, and, as dutiful subjects, were bound to help replenish the coffers exhausted in their defense. On them, therefore, were laid every tax, every duty, every commercial restriction, every manufacturing hindrance imposed by Great Britain on her colonies. Englishmen were forbidden to dig iron, to make steel, to put up rollingmills, to raise wool unless for manure, to make a hat, or to complain when, for the better