The Eve of the Revolution | Page 5

to be off. For it was war time and the packets waited the
orders of General Loudoun, who, ready in promises but slow in
execution, was said to be "like St. George on the signs, always on
horseback but never rides on."
Franklin himself was a deliberate man, and at the last moment he
decided, for some reason or other, not to take the first packet. Behold
him, therefore, waiting for the second through the month of May and
the greater part of June! "This tedious state of uncertainty and long
waiting," during which the agent of the Province of Pennsylvania,
running back and forth from New York to Woodbridge, spent his time
more uselessly than ever he remembered, was duly credited to the

perversity of the British General. But at last they were off, and on the
26th of July, three and a half months after leaving Philadelphia,
Franklin arrived in London to take up the work of his mission; and
there he remained, always expecting to return shortly, but always
delayed, for something more than five years.
These were glorious days in the history of Old England, the most
heroic since the reign of Good Queen Bess. When the provincial printer
arrived in London, the King and the politicians had already been forced,
through multiplied reverses in every part of the world, to confer power
upon William Pitt, a disagreeable man indeed, but still a great genius
and War Lord, who soon turned defeat into victory. It was the privilege
of Franklin, here in the capital of the Empire, to share the exaltation
engendered by those successive conquests that gave India and America
to the little island kingdom, and made Englishmen, in Horace Walpole's
phrase, "heirs apparent of the Romans." No Briton rejoiced more
sincerely than this provincial American in the extension of the Empire.
He labored with good will and good humor, and doubtless with good
effect, to remove popular prejudice against his countrymen; and he
wrote a masterly pamphlet to prove the wisdom of retaining Canada
rather than Guadaloupe at the close of the war, confidently assuring his
readers that the colonies would never, even when once the French
danger was removed, "unite against their own nation, which protects
and encourages them, with which they have so many connections and
ties of blood, interest, and affection, and which 'tis well known they all
love much more than they love one another." Franklin, at least, loved
Old England, and it might well be maintained that these were the
happiest years of his life. He was mentally so cosmopolitan, so much at
ease in the world, that here in London he readily found himself at home
indeed. The business of his particular mission, strictly attended to,
occupied no great part of his time. He devoted long days to his beloved
scientific experiments, and carried on a voluminous correspondence
with David Hume and Lord Kames, and with many other men of note
in England, France, and Italy. He made journeys, to Holland, to
Cambridge, to ancestral places and the homes of surviving relatives;
but mostly, one may imagine, he gave himself to a steady flow of that
"agreeable and instructive conversation" of which he was so much the

master and the devotee. He was more famous than he knew, and the
reception that everywhere awaited him was flattering, and as agreeable
to his unwarped and emancipated mind as it was flattering. "The regard
and friendship I meet with," he confesses, "and the conversation of
ingenious men, give me no small pleasure"; and at Cambridge, "my
vanity was not a little gratified by the particular regard shown me by
the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of the University, and the Heads of
the Colleges." As the years passed, the sense of being at ease among
friends grew stronger; the serene and placid letters to "Dear Debby"
became rather less frequent; the desire to return to America was much
attenuated.
How delightful, indeed, was this Old England! "Of all the enviable
things England has," he writes, "I envy it most its people.... Why
should this little island enjoy in almost every neighborhood more
sensible, virtuous, and elegant minds, than we can collect in ranging
one hundred leagues of our vast forests?" What a proper place for a
philosopher to spin out the remnant of his days! The idea had occurred
to him; he was persistently urged by his friend William Strahan to carry
it into effect; and his other friend, David Hume, made him a pretty
compliment on the same theme: "America has sent us many good
things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco; but you are the first philosopher for
whom we are beholden to her. It is our own fault that we have not kept
him; whence it appears that we do not agree with