y borrowing rather than by taxation, and sent bill
after bill to Franklin, who somehow managed to meet them by putting
his pride in his pocket, and applying again and again to the French
Government. He fitted out privateers and negotiated with the British
concerning prisoners. At length he won from France recognition of the
United States and then the Treaty of Alliance.

Not until two years after the Peace of 1783 would Congress permit the
veteran to come home. And when he did return in 1785 his people would
not allow him to rest. At once he was elected President of the Council
of Pennsylvania and twice reelected in spite of his protests. He was
sent to the Convention of 1787 which framed the Constitution of the
United States. There he spoke seldom but always to the point, and the
Constitution is the better for his suggestions. With pride he axed his
signature to that great instrument, as he had previously signed the
Albany Plan of Union, the Declaration of Independence, and the Treaty of
Paris.

Benjamin Franklin's work was done. He was now an old man of eighty-two
summers and his feeble body was racked by a painful malady. Yet he kept
his face towards the morning. About a hundred of his letters,
written after this time, have been preserved. These letters show no
retrospection, no looking backward. They never mention "the good old
times." As long as he lived, Franklin looked forward. His interest
in the mechanical arts and in scientific progress seems never to have
abated. He writes in October, 1787, to a friend in France, describing
his experience with lightning conductors and referring to the work of
David Rittenhouse, the celebrated astronomer of Philadelphia. On the
31st of May in the following year he is writing to the Reverend John
Lathrop of Boston:

"I have long been impressed with the same sentiments you so well
express, of the growing felicity of mankind, from the improvement
in philosophy, morals, politics, and even the conveniences of common
living, and the invention of new and useful utensils and instruments;
so that I have sometimes wished it had been my destiny to be born two or
three centuries hence. For invention and improvement are prolific, and
beget more of their kind. The present progress is rapid. Many of great
importance, now unthought of, will, before that period, be produced."

Thus the old philosopher felt the thrill of dawn and knew that the day
of great mechanical inventions was at hand.