94: Franklin's _Works_, ix. 459.]

He came into office as a peacemaker amid warring factions, and in the
fulfillment of his functions gave such satisfaction that in 1786 he was
unanimously reelected; and the like high compliment was paid him again
in the autumn of 1787. It was like Washington and the presidency: so
long as he would consent to accept the office, no other candidate was
thought of. He also took substantially the same course which had been
taken by Washington as commander-in-chief concerning his pay; for he
devoted his whole salary to public uses. He had the good fortune to be
able to carry out his somewhat romantic, and for most persons
impracticable, theory in this respect, because his private affairs were
prospering. His investments in real estate in Philadelphia had risen
greatly in value and in their income-producing capacity since the war,
and he was now at least comfortably endowed with worldly goods.

He still continued to ply his pen, and the just but annoying complaints
which came from Great Britain, that English creditors could not collect
their _ante-bellum_ debts from their American debtors, stimulated him to
a bit of humor at which his own countrymen at least were sure to laugh,
however little droll it might seem to Englishmen, who reasonably
preferred good dollars to good jokes. "We may all remember the time," he
wrote, "when our mother country, as a mark of her parental tenderness,
emptied her gaols into our habitations, '_for the better peopling_,' as
she expressed it, '_of the colonies_.' It is certain that no due returns
have yet been made for these valuable consignments. We are therefore
much in her debt on that account; and as she is of late clamorous for
the payment of all we owe her, and some of our debts are of a kind not
so easily discharged, I am for doing, however, what is in our power. It
will show our good will as to the rest. The felons she planted among us
have produced such an amazing increase that we are now enabled to make
ample remittance in the same commodity," etc., etc.

Nevertheless these English assaults nettled him not a little; and
further he dreaded their possible influence in the rest of Europe
outside of England. The English newspapers teemed with accounts of the
general demoralization and disintegration of the States; it was said
that they had found their ruin in their independence, and the
unwillingness of American merchants to pay their debts was in one
para