es must be added another of even greater weight: his errand
there was to assist in dismembering the British Empire, than which
nothing of a political nature was at this time much nearer every
Frenchman's heart.

The history of this mission, and how Franklin succeeded in procuring
from the French King financial aid to the amount of twenty-six
millions of francs, at times when the very existence of the republic
depended upon them, and finally a treaty of peace more favorable to
his country than either England or France wished to concede, has been
often told; and there is no chapter in the chronicles of this republic
with which the world is more familiar.

Franklin's reputation grew with his success. "It was," wrote his
colleague John Adams, "more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton,
Frederick the Great or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and
esteemed than all of them.... If a collection could be made of all the
gazettes of Europe for the latter half of the eighteenth century, a
greater number of panegyrical paragraphs upon _le grand Franklin_
would appear, it is believed, than upon any other man that ever
lived."

A few weeks after signing the definitive treaty of peace in 1783,
Franklin renewed an application which he had previously made just
after signing the preliminary treaty, to be relieved of his mission;
but it was not until the 7th of March, 1785, that Congress adopted a
resolution permitting "the Honorable Benjamin Franklin to return to
America as soon as convenient." Three days later, Thomas Jefferson was
appointed to succeed him.

On the 13th of September, 1785, and after a sojourn of nearly nine
years in the French capital, first in the capacity of commissioner and
subsequently of minister plenipotentiary, Franklin once more landed in
Philadelphia, on the same wharf on which, sixty-two years before, he
had stepped, a friendless and practically penniless runaway apprentice
of seventeen.

Though now in his seventy-ninth year, and a prey to infirmities not
the necessary incidents of old age, he had scarcely unpacked his
trunks after his return when he was chosen a member of the municipal
council of Philadelphia, and its chairman. Shortly after, he was
elected president of Pennsylvania, his own vote only lacking to make
the vote unanimous. "I have not firmness," he wrote to a friend, "to
resist the unanimous desire of my countryfolks; and I find myself
harnessed again into their service anothe