d earnest documents, some
witticism, which men of the intensity of soul of John Adams and Thomas
Jefferson, felt to be out of place. Still the wisdom of his counsels
invariably commanded respect. Upon learning of the burning of
Charleston, he wrote to Dr. Priestly,[25]

"England has begun to burn our seaport towns, secure, I
suppose, that we shall never be able to return the outrage
in kind. She may, doubtless, destroy them all. But if she
wishes to recover our commerce, are these the probable
means? She must certainly be distracted; for no tradesman,
out of Bedlam, ever thought of increasing the number of his
customers by knocking them in the head; or of enabling them
to pay their debts by burning their houses."

[Footnote 25: "And here perhaps we have one of the reasons why Dr.
Franklin, who was universally confessed to be the ablest pen in
America, was not always asked to write the great documents of the
Revolution. He would have put a joke into the Declaration of
Independence, if it had fallen to him to write it. At this time he was
a humorist of fifty years standing, and had become fixed in the habit
of illustrating great truths by grotesque and familiar similes. His
jokes, the circulating medium of Congress, were as helpful to the
cause, as Jay's conscience or Adams' fire; they restored good humor,
and relieved the tedium of delay, but were out of place in formal,
exact and authoritative papers."--_Parton's Franklin_, Vol. 2. p. 85.]

One of Franklin's jokes, in Congress, is very characteristic of the
man. It was urged that the Episcopal clergy should be directed to
refrain from praying for the king. Franklin quenched the injudicious
movement with a witticism.

"The measure is quite unnecessary," said he. "The Episcopal clergy, to
my certain knowledge, have been constantly praying, these twenty
years, that 'God would give to the king and council wisdom.' And we
all know that not the least notice has been taken of that prayer. So
it's plain that those gentlemen have no interest in the court of
Heaven."

If we sow the wind we must reap the whirlwind. Terrible was the
mortification and mental suffering which Franklin endured from the
governor of New Jersey. He had lived down the prejudices connected
with his birth and had become an influential and popular man. He,
with increasing tenacity adhered to the British Government, and became
even the malignant opponent of the Am