em on a basis
upon which they could stand firm. In such matters, however, one may
easily make mistakes, breed ill blood, and do harm; and his wisdom and
good sense soon led him to put forth his chief efforts and to display
especial earnestness and constancy in promoting the well-being of all
men. It was an object sufficiently noble, one would think, worthy of the
greatest brain and the largest heart, and having certain very
commendable traits in the way of practicability and substantial
possibilities. His desire was to see the community prosperous,
comfortable, happy, advancing in the accumulation of money and of all
physical goods, but not to the point of luxury; it was by no means the
pile of dollars which was his end, and he did not care to see many men
rich, but rather to see all men well to do. He was perfectly right in
thinking that virtuous living has the best prospects in a well-to-do
society. He gave liberally of his own means and induced others to give,
and promoted in proportion to the ability of the community a surprising
number of public and quasi public enterprises; and always the fireside
of the poor man was as much in his thought as the benefit of the richer
circle. Fair dealing and kindliness, prudence and economy in order to
procure the comforts and simpler luxuries of life, reading and knowledge
for those uses which wisdom subserves, constituted the real essence of
his teaching. His inventive genius was ever at work devising methods of
making daily life more agreeable, comfortable, and wholesome for all who
have to live. In a word, the service of his fellow men was his constant
aim; and he so served them that those public official functions which
are euphemistically called "public services" seemed in his case almost
an interruption of the more direct and far-reaching services which he
was intent upon rendering to all civilized peoples. Extreme religionists
may audaciously fancy that the judgment of God upon Franklin may be
severe; but it would be gross disloyalty for his own kind to charge that
his influence has been ignobly material.

As a patriot none surpassed him. Again it was the love of the people
that induced this feeling, which grew from no theory as to forms of
government, no abstractions and doctrines about "the rights of man." He
began by espousing the cause of the people of the province of
Pennsylvania against proprietary despotism, and for many years he was a
patriot in his colony, before