Volume II Part 17 (1/2)
”I received your kind letter with your excellent advice to the people of the United States, which I read with great pleasure, and hope it will be duly regarded Such writings, though they htly passed over by many readers, yet if they make a deep impression on one active mind in a hundred, the effects may be considerable Perh it relates toto you When I was a boy I met with a book entitled _Essays to do Good_, which I think ritten by your father It had been so little regarded by a former possessor, that several leaves of it were torn out: but the re as to have an influence on reater value on the character of a _doer of good_, than on any other kind of reputation; and if I have been, as you seee of it to that book Youin your 78th year: I aether It is now more than sixty years since I left Boston, but I re heard them both in the pulpit, and seen them in their houses The last ti of 1724, when I visited him after my first trip to Pennsylvania He receivedleave showed e, which crossed by a bea as I withdrew, he acco partly towards him, when he said hastily, _Stoop, stoop!_ I did not understand hiainst the bea instruction, and upon this he said to , and have the world before you_; STOOP _as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps_ This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me; and I often think of it when I see pride ht upon people by their carrying their heads too high
”I long ain my native place, and to lay my bones there I left it in 1723; I visited it in 1733, 1743, 1753, and 1763 In 1773 I was in England; in 1775 I had a sight of it, but could not enter, it being in possession of the enemy I did hope to have been there in 1783, but could not obtain my dismission from this employment here; and now I fear I shall never have that happiness My best wishes, however, attend my dear country _Esto perpetua_ It is now blessed with an excellent constitution; reat and sincere esteem, I have the honour to be, &c,
B FRANKLIN”
”_To Williaust 19, 1784
”DEAR FRIEND,
”I received your kind letter of April 17 You will have the goodness to placeto the account of indisposition and business, and excuse it I have now that letter before randson, whom you may formerly re to set out in a day or two on a visit to his father in London, I sit down to scribble a little to you, first reco man to your civilities and counsels
”You pressinducee you promise to communicate to me is, in addition to therandson returns, come with him We will talk the matter over, and perhaps you may take me back with you I have a bed at your service, and will try to reeable to you, if possible, as I am sure it will be to me
”You do not 'approve the annihilation of profitable places; for you do not see why a statesman who does his business well should not be paid for his labour as well as any other workreed But why reater the honour In so great a nation there aretheir time to the public; and there are, I make no doubt, overning for nothing, as they do in playing of chess for nothing It would be one of the noblest amusements
That this opinion is not chimerical, the country I now live in affords a proof; its whole civil and cri, or, in so, since the members of its judiciary parliaments buy their places, and do not make more than three per cent for their al interest is five; so that, in fact, they give two per cent to be allowed to govern, and all their tiain Thus _profit_, oneabolished, there reree balanced by _loss_, you may easily conceive that there will not be very violent factions and contentions for such places; nor much of the mischief to the country that attends your factions, which have often occasioned wars, and overloaded you with debts impayable
”I allow you all the force of your joke upon the vagrancy of our Congress They have a right to sit _where_ they please, of which, perhaps, they havetoo often But they have two other rights; those of sitting _when_ they please and as _long_ as they please, in which, e of your Parliament; for they cannot be dissolved by the breath of a , as you were the other day, when it was your earnest desire to have ree that the late war terminated quite contrary to your expectation' Your expectation was ill-founded; for you would not believe your old friend, who told you repeatedly, that by those land would lose her colonies, as Epictetus warned in vain hisYou believed rather the tales you heard of our poltroonery and impotence of body and mind Do you not reeant who h alone, disarht them in prisoners? a story almost as improbable as that of an Irishht in five of the ene_ them And yet,of the general infatuation, you seeeneral_ puts eneral, your General Clarke, who had the folly to say in le's, that with a thousand British grenadiers he would undertake to go froeld all theIt is plain he took us for a species of animals very little superior to brutes The Parliaeneral, I forget his name, that the Yankees never _felt bold_ Yankee was understood to be a sort of Yahoo, and the Parliament did not think the petitions of such creatures were fit to be received and read in so wise an assembly What was the consequence of this monstrous pride and insolence? You first sent s theed to send greater; these, whenever they ventured to penetrate our country beyond the protection of their shi+ps, were ether repulsed and obliged to scamper out, or were surrounded, beaten, and taken prisoners An American planter, who had never seen Europe, was chosen by us to co the whole war
This enerals baffled, their heads bare of laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of their es, in comparison with your own, appeared to be e by this circuotiator appeared, the wise British minister was routed, put in a passion, picked a quarrel with your friends, and was sent home with a flea in his ear But, after all, h to ascribe our success to any superiority in any of those points I as and levers of our machine not to see that our hu, and that, if it had not been for the justice of our cause, and the consequent interposition of Providence, in which we had faith, we must have been ruined If I had ever before been an Atheist, I should now have been convinced of the being and government of a Deity! It is he that abases the proud and favours the huoodness to us, and ratitude!
”But let us leave these serious reflections and converse with our usual pleasantry I reether in the House of Coe had met with such success in the world as ourselves You were then at the head of your profession, and soon afterward becaent for a few provinces, and now act for them all But we have risen by different modes I, as a republican printer, always liked a for_ letters that hold their heads so _high_ as to hinder their neighbours fro You, as a monarchist, chose to work upon _crown_ paper, and found it profitable; while I worked upon _pro patria_ (often, indeed, called _foolscap_) with no less advantage Both our _heaps hold out_ very well, and we seeard to public affairs (to continue in the same style), it seems to me that your _compositors_ in your _chapel_ do not _cast off their copy well_, nor perfectly understand _i_: their _forms_, too, are continually pestered by the _outs_ and _doubles_ that are not easy to be _corrected_ And I think they rong in laying aside some _faces_, and particularly certain _headpieces_, that would have been both useful and ornaood ement, and the master become as rich as any of the company
”I am ever, my dear friend, yours e Wheatley_
”Passy, May 23, 1785
”DEAR OLD FRIEND,
”I sent you a few lines the other day with the medallion, when I should have writtenin of a _bavard_, orriedI bore with him, and now you are to bear withyour letter
”I a of Alphonsus, which you allude to as a sanctification of your rigidity in refusing to allow e as an excuse for ? You do not, it seeh you are, as you say, rising 75 But I a) 80, and I leave the excuse with you till you arrive at that age; perhaps you may then be more sensible of its validity, and see fit to use it for yourself
”I out is bad, and that the stone is worse I aether, and I join in your prayer that you may live till you die without either But I doubt the author of the epitaph you sendof the world, says that
”'He ne'er cared a pin What they said or may say of the mortal within'
”It is so natural to wish to be well spoken of, whether alive or dead, that I iine he could not be quite exeht a wit, or he would not have given hiood an epitaph to leave behind him
Was it not as worthy of his care that the world should say he was an honest and a good , called the _Old Man's Wish_, wherein, after wishi+ng for a warood authors, ingenious and cheerful co on Sundays, with stout ale and a bottle of Burgundy, &c, &c, in separate stanzas, each ending with this burden,