Benjamin Franklin (Classic Reprint)

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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
I shall get forward as speedily as possible to that point in Franklin's career where his important public services begin, at the same time commending every reader to turn again for further refreshment of his knowledge to those pages which might well have aroused the envy of Fielding and Defoe.
Franklin came from typical English stock. For three hundred years, perhaps for many centuries more, his ancestors lived on a small freehold at Ecton in Northamptonshire, and so far back as record or tradition ran the eldest son in each generation had been bred a blacksmith. But after the strange British fashion there was intertwined with this singular fixedness of ideas a stubborn independence in thinking, courageously exercised in times of peril. The Franklins were among the early Protestants, and held their faith unshaken by the terrors of the reign of Bloody Mary. By the end of Charles the Second's time they were non-conformists and attendants on conventicles ; and ab

Table of Contents

CONTENTS; i; CHAPTER FAGS; I Early Years1; II A Citizen of Philadelphia : Concernment in; Public Affairs17; III Representative op Pennsylvania in England:; Return Home58; IV Life in Philadelphia85; V Second Mission to England : L 99; VI Second Mission to England: II 141; VII Second Mission to England : III The Hutchin-; son Letters: the Privy Council Scene:; Return Home175; VIII Services in the States202; TX Minister to France : I Deane and Beaumar-; chais: Foreign Officers217; X Minister to France: II Prisoners: Trouble; with Lee and others245; JX Minister to France : III Treaty with France :; More Quarrels264; XII Financiering300; XIII Habits of Ltfe and of Business : an Adams In-; cident 333; XIV Peace Negotiations : Last Years in France 352 XV At Home: President of Pennsylvania: The; Co