gion. God makes great allowance for the frailties of his fallen
children. It requires the wisdom of omniscience to decide how much
wickedness there may be in the heart, consistently with piety. No man
is perfect.

During the reign of George III., terrible wars were waged throughout
all the world, mainly incited by the British Court. Millions perished.
The moans of widows and orphans ascended from every hand. This wicked
Christian king sent his navy and his army to burn down our cities and
villages, and to shoot husbands, fathers, and sons, until he could
compel America to submit to his despotism. The population of England
being exhausted by those wide spread wars, he hired, of the petty
princes of Europe, innocent peasantry, to abandon their homes in
Germany, to burn and destroy the homes of Americans. Finding that not
sufficient, he sent his agents through the wilderness to rouse, by
bribes, savage men, who knew no better, to ravage our frontiers, to
burn the cabins of lonely farmers, to tomahawk and scalp their wives
and children.

Such a man may be a good Christian. God, who can read the secrets of
the heart, and who is infinite in his love and charity, alone can
decide. But if we imagine that man, George Guelph, at the bar of
judgment, and thronging up as witnesses against him, the millions
whose earthly homes he converted into abodes of misery and despair, it
is difficult to imagine in our frail natures, how our Heavenly Father,
who loves all his children alike, and who, as revealed in the person
of Jesus, could weep over the woes of humanity, could look with a
loving smile upon him and say, "Well done, good and faithful servant,
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

Franklin of course continued in as determined an opposition to the new
tax as to the old one. He wrote,

"I have some little property in America. I will freely spend
nineteen shillings in the pound to defend my right of giving
or refusing the other shilling. And after all, if I cannot
defend that right, I can retire cheerfully with my little
family into the boundless woods of America, which are sure
to afford freedom and subsistence to any man who can bait a
hook or pull a trigger."

The ability which Franklin had displayed as the agent of Pennsylvania
before the court of St. James, gave him, as we have said, a high
reputation in all the colonies. In the spring of 1768 he was highly
gratified by the intelligen