ur business. You
undertook to conduct me to the earth; and you have brought me into
hell.'

"'No sir,' said the guide, 'I have made no such mistake. This is
really the earth, and these are men. Devils never treat one another in
this cruel manner. They have more sense, and more of what men (vainly)
call humanity.'"

It was after the study of human nature, under the most favorable of
possible circumstances, for more than three-quarters of a century,
that this philosopher wrote these terrible comments upon our fallen
race.

The latter part of October, 1781, Lord Cornwallis surrendered his
whole army, of over seven thousand men, at Yorktown. The French fleet
cut off his escape by sea. Seven thousand French soldiers, united with
five thousand American troops, prevented any retreat by land. The
Americans had thus captured two British armies. It was in vain for
England to think of sending a third. The conflict was virtually
decided.

"The Prime Minister," Lord North, it is said, "received the tidings as
he would have taken a ball in his breast. He threw his arms apart. He
paced wildly up and down the room, exclaiming, from time to time, 'Oh
God! it is all over.'"

All England now was clamoring against the war. Thousands of persons
had perished in the campaigns, and financial embarrassments had come
to nearly all her institutions of industry. The English government
made vigorous endeavors, offering great bribes, to induce the American
envoys at Paris to abandon their French allies, and make a separate
peace. Franklin wrote to Mr. Hartley, through whom he received these
proposals,

"I believe there is not a man in America, a few _English
Tories_ excepted, that would not spurn the thought of
deserting a noble and generous friend, for the sake of a
truce with an unjust and cruel enemy."

British diplomacy tried all its arts of intrigue to separate America
from France in the negotiations for peace, but all in vain. The
British minister, Mr. Grenville, in an interview with Mr. Franklin,
ridiculed the idea that America owed France any gratitude, urging that
France sought only her own selfish interests.

"I told him," Franklin writes, "that I was so strongly
impressed with the kind assistance afforded us by France, in
our distress, and the generous and noble manner in which it
was granted, without exacting or stipulating for a single
privilege, or particular advantage to hersel