A 2397

THE LIFE i į

OF

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,

INCLUDING A SKETCH OF

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE WAR

OF INDEPENDENCE,

AND OF

THE VARIOUS NEGOCIATIONS AT PARIS FOR PEACE;

WITH THE HISTORY OP

HIS POLITICAL AND OTHER WRITINGS.

LONDON:-1826.

PRINTED FOR HUNT AND CLARKE,

TAVISTOCK-STREET, COVENT-GARDEN.

THE LIFE

OF

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

CHAPTER 1.

Importance of his life and character. ---Family history.-Early destination

and apprenticeship-Absconds, and arrives at Philadelphia. THE lives of great and useful men have been compared to the course of rivers. They often rise in the most obscure and desolate regions; a child might leap over their sources; and thorns and briars alone appear destined to obey their unregarded progress :

Bat silently that slighted thing

Shall demonstrate its living spring. The stream widens and deepens ; it becomes the pride of the meadows, and the fertilizer of extensive districts.; it arrives within the sweep of tides and the bustle of commerce; conveys prosperity to towns and cities; bears on its bosom the hopes and fortunes of millions, and at length reaches the ocean, the health and hope of a country.

The life of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, which extends through nearly the whole of the eighteenth century, realized this ancient metaphor in a most remarkable degree. He was at once the humble mechanic, the yet humbler son of a tallow-chandler whose business he hated, and the artificer of his country's independence. ' He was an oppressed apprentice in the obscure and dingy press-room of a provincial town, and one of the most formidable opponents of