, and
carry on the war for that object, while these cities burn, these
pleasant fields whiten and bleach with the bones of their owners, and
these streams run blood. It will be upon us, it will be upon us, if
failing to maintain this unseasonable and ill-judged Declaration, a
sterner despotism, maintained by military power, shall be established
over our posterity, when we ourselves, given up by an exhausted, a
harassed, a misled people, shall have expiated our rashness and atoned
for our presumption on the scaffold.

[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN]

(_At the close of Mr. Dickinson's speech there is a loud clamor for
recognition. The president recognizes Benjamin Franklin of
Pennsylvania._)

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. [12]Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Continental
Congress:--I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see
clearly, through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We
may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good. We
may die; die colonists; die slaves; die, it may be ignominiously and on
the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that
my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall
be ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may.
But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a
country, and that a free country.

But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured that this
Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood; but
it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick
gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future as the sun in
heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in
our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with
thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, and illuminations. On its
annual return they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of
subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of
gratitude, and of joy. Sir, before God, I believe the hour has come. My
whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I
hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off
as Mr. Adams of Massachusetts began, that, sink or swim, live or die,
survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment,
and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, independence
_now, a