cause of his country in opposition to that of Great Britain. Three of his letters to me, one written immediately after his landing, and published in the collection of his miscellaneous works, p. 365, 552, and 555, will prove this.

By many persons, Dr Franklin is considered as having been a cold-hearted man; so callous to every feeling of humanity, that the prospect of all the horrors of a civil war could not affect him. This was far from being the case. A great part of the day abovementioned, that we spent together, he was looking over a number of American newspapers, directing me what to extract from them for the English ones; and in reading them, he was frequently not able to proceed, for the tears literally running down his cheeks. To strangers he was cold and reserved; but, where he was intimate, no man indulged more pleasantry and good humour: by this, he was the delight of a club to which he alludes in one of his letters above referred to, called the Whig Club, that met at the London Coffee House, of which Dr Price, Dr Kippis, Mr John Lee, and others of the stamp, were members.

Hoping that this vindication of Dr Franklin will give pleasure to many of your readers, I shall proceed to relate some particulars relating to his behaviour, when lord Loughborough, then Mr Wedderburne, pronounced his violent invective against him at the privy council, on his presenting the complaints of Massachusetts. (I think it was against their governor.) Some of the particulars may be thought amusing.

On the morning of the day on which the cause was to be heard, I met Mr Burke in Parliament Street, with Mr Douglas, afterwards bishop of Carlisle; and after introducing us to each other, as men of letters, he asked me, whither I was going? I said, I could tell him where I wished to go. He then asked me where that was: I said, to the Privy Council, but that I was afraid I could get no admission; he then desired me to go along with him. Accordingly I did; but when we got into the ante-room, we found it quite filled

with persons desirous of getting admission. Seeing this, I said we should never get through the crowd; he said, give me your arm, and locking it fast in his, he soon made his way to the door of the privy council. I then said, Mr Burke, you are an excellent leader; he replied, I wish other persons thought so too.

After waiting a short time, the door of the privy council opened, and we entered the first, when Mr Burke took his stand behind the first chair, next to the president, and I behind that the next to his. When the business was opened, it was sufficiently evident from the speech of Mr Wedderburne, who was counsel for the governor, that the real object of the court was to insult Dr Franklin. All this time he stood in a corner of the room, not far from me, without the least apparent emotion.

Mr Dunning, who was the leading counsel on the part of the colony, was so hoarse, that he could hardlymake himself heard; and Mr Lee, who was the second, spoke but feebly in reply; so that Mr Wedderburne had a complete triumph. At the sallies of his sarcas-tic wit, all the members of the council, the president himself (lord Gower) not excepted, frequently laughed outright. No person belonging to the council behaved with decent gravity except lord North, who coming late, took his stand behind the chair opposite

to me.

When the business was over, Dr Franklin in going out, took me by the hand, in a manner that indicated some feeling; I soon followed him, and going through the ante-room, saw Mr Wedderburne, surrounded with a circle of his friends and admirers. Being known to him, he stepped forward, as if to speak to me, but I turned aside and made what haste I could out of the place.

The next morning I breakfasted with the Doctor, when he said he had never before been so sensible of the power of a good conscience. He was accused of clandestinely procuring certain letters, containing complaints against the governor, and sending them to

America, with a view to excite their animosity against him, and thus to embroil the two countries. But he assured me, that he did not even know that such letters existed, till they were brought to him, as agent of the colony, in order to be sent to his constituents; and the cover of the letters being lost, he only guessed at the person to whom they were addressed by the

contents.

That Dr Franklin, notwithstanding he did not shew it at that time, was much impressed by the business of the privy council, appeared from this circumstance: when he attended there he was dressed in a suit of Manchester velvet; and Silas Dean told me, that when they met at Paris, to sign the treaty between France and America, he purposely put on that suit.

Hoping that this communication will be of some service to the memory of Dr Franklin, and gratify his friends,

I am, Sir, yours &c.

Northumberland, Nov. 10, 1802.

J. PRIESTLEY.

CONDORCET in his "Eloge de Franklin," thus ably epitomizes his intellectual claims and character.

"The education of Dr Franklin had not opened to him the career of the sciences, but nature had given him a genius capable of comprehending, and even of embellishing them.

"His first essays on electricity fully prove, that he was but very little acquainted with this part of natural philosophy. Being at an immense distance from Europe, he possessed but imperfect machines. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, he soon discovered the immediate cause of electrical phenomena. He explained it, by demonstrating the existence of a fluid, insensible while it remains in a state of equilibrium, and which instantly manifests itself, either when this

equilibrium is destroyed, or while it endeavours to reestablish it. His analysis of the grand Leyden experiment is a chef-d'œuvre at once of sagacity, of perspicuity, and of art.

"Soon after this, he perceived an analogy between the effects of thunder and electricity, which struck him prodigiously. He conceived the idea of an apparatus, by means of which he proposed to interrogate the heavens; he makes the experiment, and the answer fully confirms his conjectures. Thus the cause of lightning is now known; its effects, so ruinous, so irregular in appearance, are not only explained, but

imitated.

"We at length know why the lightning silently and peaceably follows certain bodies, and disperses others with a loud noise; why it melts metals, sometimes shivers to atoms, and sometimes seems to respect those substances which surround it.

"But it was but little to imitate the thunder: Dr Franklin conceived the audacious idea of averting its vengeance.

"He imagined, that a bar of iron, pointed at the end, and connected with the ground, or rather with the water, would establish a communication between a cloud and the earth, and thus guarantee, or protect the objects in the immediate neighbourhood of such a conductor.

"The success of this idea was fully commensurate to all his wishes; and thus man was enabled to wield a power sufficient to disarm the wrath of heaven!

"This great discovery was by far too brilliant and too singular not to conjure up a numerous host of enemies against it. Notwithstanding this, the custom of using conductors was adopted in America, and in Great Britain; but at the commencement of war with the mother-country, some soi-disant English philosophers endeavoured, by unfair experiments, to throw doubts upon the utility of his scheme, and seemed to wish to ravish this discovery from Benjamin Franklin, by way of punishing him for the loss of thirteen colonies.

"It is unfortunately more easy to mislead a nation in regard to its proper interests, than to impose upon men of science relative to an experiment: thus those prejudices which were able to draw England into an unjust and fatal contest, could not make the learned of Europe change the form of the electrical conductors of Franklin. They multiplied in France after France had become allied to America: in truth, the sentence of the police has been opposed to it in some of our towns, as it has been opposed in Italy by the decisions of casuists, and with just as little success.

"In a free country the law follows the public opinion; in despotic governments the public opinion often contradicts the laws, but always concludes at length by submitting itself to their influence. At this day, the use of this preservative has become common among all nations, but without being universally adopted. A long course of experiment does not permit us any longer to doubt of its efficacy.

"If the edifices provided with it have still some dangers to dread, this happens because between the bounded efforts of man and the boundless force of nature, there can never be established any other than an unequal contest.

"But what an immense career has this successful experiment opened to our hopes!

"Why may we not one day hope to see the baneful activity of all the scourges of mankind melt away, as that of thunder has done before the powers of genius, exercised through an immensity of ages?

"When all the regions of nature are disarmed by the happy use of her gifts, we shall experience nothing but her benefits.

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Humanity and frankness were the basis of his morality. An habitual gaiety, a happy facility in regard to every thing respecting the common concerns of life, and a tranquil inflexibility in affairs of importance, formed the character of Dr Franklin. These two latter qualities are easily united in men, who endowed with a superior mind and strong understand