r year. They engrossed the
prime of my life; they have eaten my flesh, and seem resolved now to
pick my bones."

He was unanimously re-elected to this dignity for the two succeeding
years, and while holding that office was chosen a member of the
convention which met in May 1787 to frame the Constitution under which
the people of the United States are still living.

With the adoption of that instrument, to which he probably contributed
as much as any other individual, he retired from official life; though
not from the service of the public, to which for the remaining years
of his stay on earth his genius and his talents were faithfully
consecrated.

Among the fruits of that unfamiliar leisure, always to be remembered
among the noblest achievements of his illustrious career, was the part
he had in organizing the first anti-slavery society in the world; and
as its president, writing and signing the first remonstrance against
slavery ever addressed to the Congress of the United States.

In surveying the life of Dr. Franklin as a whole, the thing that most
impresses one is his constant study and singleness of purpose to
promote the welfare of human society. It was his daily theme as a
journalist, and his yearly theme as an almanac-maker. It is that
which first occurs to us when we recall his career as a member of the
Colonial Assembly; as an agent of the provinces in England; as a
diplomatist in France; and as a member of the conventions which
crowned the consistent labors of his long life. Nor are there any now
so bold as to affirm that there was any other person who could have
been depended upon to accomplish for his country or the world, what
Franklin did in any of the several stages of his versatile career.

Though holding office for more than half of his life, the office
always sought Franklin, not Franklin the office. When sent to England
as the agent of the colony, he withdrew from business with a modest
competence judiciously invested mostly in real estate. He never seems
to have given a thought to its increase. Frugal in his habits, simple
in his tastes, wise in his indulgences, he died with a fortune neither
too large nor too small for his fame as a citizen or a patriot. For
teaching frugality and economy to the colonists, when frugality and
economy were indispensable to the conservation of their independence
and manhood, he has been sneered at as the teacher of a
"candle-end-saving philosophy," and his 'Poor