merican
cause an alliance with France and other Continental powers would be.
While in Europe as an agent of the colonies he gave his energy and
experience to assisting a secret committee to negotiate foreign aid in
the war. It was a time of invisible ink, and Franklin instructed this
committee how to use it. He saw that Europe must be engaged in the
struggle to make the triumph of liberty in America complete and
permanent.

It was 1776. Franklin was now seventy years old and was in America. The
colonies had resolved to be free. A committee had been chosen by the
Continental Congress in Philadelphia to prepare a draft for a formal
Declaration of Independence, a paper whose principles were destined to
emancipate not only the united colonies but the world. The committee
consisted of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert R.
Livingston, and Roger Sherman. Mr. Jefferson was appointed by this
committee to write the Declaration, and he made it a voice of humanity
in the language of the sages. He put his own glorious thoughts of
liberty into it, and he made these thoughts trumpet tones, and they,
like the old Liberty Bell, have never ceased to ring in the events of
the world.

When Jefferson had written the inspired document he showed it to
Franklin and Adams, and asked them if they had any suggestions to offer
or changes to make.

Franklin saw how grandly and adequately Jefferson had done the work. He
had no suggestion of moment to offer. But the composition was criticised
in Congress, which brought out Franklin's wit, as the following story
told by an eye-witness will show:

"When the Declaration of Independence was under the consideration of
Congress, there were two or three unlucky expressions in it which gave
offense to some members. The words 'Scotch and other foreign
auxiliaries' excited the ire of a gentleman or two of that country.
Severe strictures on the conduct of the British king in negativing our
repeated repeals of the law which permitted the importation of slaves
were disapproved by some Southern gentlemen, whose reflections were not
yet matured to the full abhorrence of that traffic. Although the
offensive expressions were immediately yielded, these gentlemen
continued their depredations on other parts of the instrument. I was
sitting by Dr. Franklin, who perceived that I was not insensible to
('_that I was writhing under_,' he says elsewhere) these mutilations.

"'I have made it a rule,