y unable to foresee in this business those
occurrences which others predicted with such confidence, at least he
showed a grand conception of the future, and his vision took in more
distant and greater facts and larger truths of statesmanship than were
compassed by the British ministers. Witness what he wrote to Lord
Kames:--

"I have long been of opinion that the foundations of the future
grandeur and stability of the British empire lie in America.... I
am therefore by no means for restoring Canada. If we keep it, all
the country from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi will in
another century be filled with British people. Britain itself will
become vastly more populous by the immense increase to its
commerce; the Atlantic sea will be covered with your trading ships;
and your naval power, thence continually increasing, will extend
your influence round the whole globe, and awe the world."

Whatever regret Franklin may have felt at not being able to remain in
England was probably greatly mitigated if not entirely dissipated by the
cordial reception which he met with at home. On December 2, 1762, he
wrote to Strahan that the reports of the diminution of his friends were
all false; that ever since his arrival his house had been full of a
succession of them from morning till night, congratulating him on his
return. The Assembly honored him with a vote of thanks, and also voted
him L3000 towards defraying his expenses. It was, of course, much less
than he had expended during an absence of nearly six years; but it seems
that he considered that, since much of his time had been passed in the
enjoyment of an agreeable leisure, he should bear a corresponding part
of the expense. While on the sea he had been chosen unanimously, as
indeed had been done in each year of his absence, a member of that body;
and he was told that, if he had not got so privately into town, he
should have been met by an escort of 500 horsemen. All this must have
been very gratifying.

[Illustration: De Vergennes]

A different kind of tribute, somewhat indirect, but none the less
intelligible, was at the same time paid to him by the British
government. In the autumn of 1762 his illegitimate son, William
Franklin, was appointed governor of New Jersey. This act created a great
storm of wrath from some of the provincial aristocratic party, and was
vehemently railed at as an "indignity," a "dishonor and disgrace,