graph attributed to their dishonesty, and in the next to the
hopeless poverty which was described as having possession of the
country. It was in good truth what Mr. John Fiske has called it, "The
Critical Period of American History." But Franklin was at once too
patriotic and too sanguine to admit that matters were so bad as they
seemed. His insight into the situation proved correct, and the outcome
very soon showed that the elements of prosperity which he saw were
substantial, and not merely the phantoms of a hopeful lover of his
country. During these years of humiliation and discouragement he was
busy in writing to many friends in England and in France very manly and
spirited letters, declaring the condition of things in the States to be
by no means so ill as it was represented. Industry had revived, values
were advancing, the country was growing, welfare and success were within
the grasp of the people. These things he said repeatedly and
emphatically, and in a short time the accuracy of his knowledge had to
be admitted by all, whether friends or enemies. He would not even admit
that the failure to arrange a treaty of commerce with England was the
serious misfortune which most Americans conceived it to be. In his usual
gallant fashion of facing down untoward circumstances he alleged again
and again that the lack of such a treaty was worse for Great Britain
than for the States. If British merchants could stand it, American
merchants, he avowed, could stand it much better. He was for showing no
more concern about it. "Let the merchants on both sides treat with one
another. _Laissez les faire_," he said. The presence of such a temper in
the States, in so prominent a man, was of infinite service in those
troubled years of unsettled, novel, and difficult conditions.

Dr. Franklin was not at first elected a member of the deputation from
Pennsylvania to the convention which framed the Constitution of the
United States. But in May, 1787, he was added in order that, in the
possible absence of General Washington, there might be some one whom all
could agree in calling to the chair.[95] It was fortunate that even an
unnecessary reason led to his being chosen, for all future generations
would have felt that an unpardonable void had been left in that famous
assemblage, had the sage of America not been there. Certainly the
"fitness of things," the historical picturesqueness of the event,
imperatively demanded Dr. Franklin's venerabl