Bishop of St. Asaph: "The course of nature
must soon put a period to my present mode of existence. This I shall
submit to with the less regret, as, having seen during a long life a
good deal of this world, I feel a growing curiosity to be acquainted
with some other." It was characteristic that in these closing days it
was the progress of mankind in knowledge and welfare which especially
absorbed his thoughts. When he reflected on the great strides that were
making he said that he almost wished that it had been his destiny to be
born two or three centuries later. He was one of the few men who has
left on record his willingness to live his life over again, even though
he should not be allowed the privilege of "correcting in the second
edition the errors of the first."

[Note 101: He habitually wrote in this vein; see, for example,
_Works_, ix. 266, 283, and _passim_.]

The French Revolution excited his profoundest interest. At first he said
that he saw "nothing singular in all this, but on the contrary what
might naturally be expected. The French have served an apprenticeship to
liberty in this country, and now that they are out of their time they
have set up for themselves."[102] He expressed his hope that "the fire
of liberty, ... spreading itself over Europe, would act upon the
inestimable rights of man as common fire does upon gold: purify without
destroying them; so that a lover of liberty may find _a country_ in any
part of Christendom." The language had an unusual smack of the French
revolutionary slang, in which he seems in no other instance to have
indulged. But as the fury swelled, his earlier sympathies became merged
in a painful anxiety concerning the fate of his many good old friends.

[Note 102: Parton's _Life of Franklin_, ii. 600.]

Franklin's last act was a memorial addressed to Congress, signed by him
in his capacity as president of the abolition society, and praying that
body: "That you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from
the character of the American people; that you will promote mercy and
justice towards this distressed race; and that you will step to the very
verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of
traffic in the persons of our fellow men." He had always spoken of
slavery with the strongest condemnation, and branded the slave-trade as
"abominable," a "diabolical commerce," and a "crime."

A large part of the last year or two of his life was passed by