ust be viewed in
America.

"By PLACES, you mean places among us; for you take care, by
a special article, to secure your own to yourselves. We must
then pay the salaries in order to enrich ourselves with
those places. But you will give us PENSIONS, probably to be
paid too out of your expected American revenue, and which
none of us can accept without deserving, and perhaps
obtaining, _suspension_.

"PEERAGES! Alas! in our long observation of the vast servile
majority of your peers, voting constantly for every measure
proposed by a minister, however weak or wicked, leaves us
small respect for that title. We consider it as a sort of
tar-and-feather honor, or a mixture of foulness and folly,
which every man among us, who should accept it from your
king, would be obliged to renounce, or exchange for that
confessed by the mobs of their own country, or wear it with
everlasting infamy."[33]

[Footnote 32: In reference to the promises contained in the letter,
Franklin referred to a book which it was said George III. had
carefully studied, called _Arcana Imperii_. A prince, to appease a
revolt, had promised indemnity to the revolters. The question was
submitted to the keepers of the king's conscience, whether he were
bound to keep his promises. The reply was,

"No! It was right to make the promises, because the revolt could not
otherwise be suppressed. It would be wrong to keep them, because
revolters ought to be punished."]

[Footnote 33: Sparks' Franklin, Vol. iii, p. 278.]

In the spring of 1778, Paul Jones entered upon his brilliant career,
bidding defiance, with his infant fleet, to all the naval power of
Great Britain, agitating entire England with the terror of his name.
Franklin was his affectionate friend, and, in all his many trials, he
leaned upon Franklin for sympathy. So tremendously was he maligned by
the English press, that American historians, unconsciously thus
influenced, have never done him justice. As a patriot, and a noble
man, he deserves to take rank with his friends, Washington and
Franklin.

In 1779, Lafayette, returning to France, from America, brought the
news that Franklin was appointed by Congress as sole plenipotentiary
of the new nation of the United States, to the generous kingdom, which
had acknowledged our independence, and whose fleets and armies were
now united with ours. All France rejoiced. With gr