EXPLANATORY B ENJAMIN FRANKLIN abroad and the one with his philosophy and diplomacy, the other with his generalship and victories, are the two equally great and unequalled champions of American History. Neither of them can be spared from the record of the foundation of the great Republic any more than they can be compared in their diverse merits and achievements. The story of the latter is fresh and almost perfect; while that of the former is as yet freckled, and tarnished with error. The aim and object of this brief bibliographical essay is to disentangle the old, and present to view some of the new, hitherto unused materials for the history of the life and remarkable career of Franklin. In doing this a vindication of the British government and Franklin's grandson from the oft repeated charge of conspiring to destroy or suppress the old philosopher's papers follows as a matter of course. This paper was drawn up for the special purpose of announcing the sale of my Franklin Collection, and is only half the story, the remaining and more private information being reserved for the purchaser, or for future personal use. Sufficient however has been told, it is believed, to awaken new interest in the untold biography of Franklin, and to show that the important history of American Diplomacy is yet to be written. URING THIRTY YEARS MR HENRY STEVENS HAS LOST NO opportunity of adding to his collection of materials for the LIFE, TIMES AND WORKS OF FRANKLIN. Sooner or later everything saleable is believed to turn up in London, the centre of money and mutability. Here it is said most do congregate historical materials and historic doubts. At all events the present collection is a sample of what one may achieve in a single generation in London by good luck, persistence, vigilance and a dogged weakness for sacrificing other worldly gains to a pet object. Rightly or wrongly this has been done and the results are here for the first time summarized and set forth. Has the enthusiastic collector 'paid too dear for his whistle'? In bringing it together he has exhausted his three score, and locked up his 'staff of life.' Whether foolish or wise let another generation pronounce the verdict. The intrinsic value must be tested and measured, like everything else, by posterity's judgment of the extent and real historic importance of the collection. There is probably no man in all history playing a prominent part, who has been more unfortunate in his record than BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. He was as careless as Shakspeare of his literary and scientific reputation. He was too busy in making history ever to overtake himself and find time to sit down quietly to record it. His pen was always on the wing, but his chickens never came home to roost. When once on the road to fame, he never more had a home of his own, but always lived for the public, the prey of interested friends, greedy editors, hungry publishers, enterprising booksellers and such like human parasites. Of all his many books published during his lifetime, Franklin never revised a proof sheet or saw one of them through the press himself. He invented, but secured no patent: he wrote but took no copyright. Yet notwithstanding he was B proud of his achievements in science, in literature, in politics and in diplomacy; and he ever petted his parasites. But with all this liberality and apparent carelessness he was parsimonious of his papers though unmethodical in their preservation. He took copies of everything, and trusted loyally to posterity to see him correctly posted into the archives of two hemispheres. But posterity though honest is sometimes dilatory and unfortunate. It is well known that Franklin's 'Papers,' by his will, became the patrimony of his grandson. It has many times been asserted, and sometimes believed, that that grandson, with some dishonorable motive or purpose, made away with, destroyed, or mutilated the better part of them. These charges still flourish and have been reiterated over and over again, with increasing gusto, for the last eighty years, until they begin to dwarf the real and true history of Franklin and his Times. The Papers, however, still exist, and-Truth, as ever, will prevail. To help kill once more these groundless charges, the writer with his Franklin Collection on his shoulders rises to explain. Franklin died ninety years ago. He lived eighty-five years, and left to the world his Autobiography down to his fifty-first year, a masterpiece which makes every one regret that he broke off in the very middle of his manhood. What do we know? What can we learn of the last thirty-three years of that eventful life, from 1757 to 1790 ? Nearly twenty years of that time were passed in England as agent of Pennsylvania and other Colonies, staving off or shaping the inevitable crisis of American Independence. Nine years he passed in France as Minister Plenipotentiary of the Congress during the Revolutionary War for establishing that same American Independency. In all these years, in which a new Nation was born and came of Age, Franklin more than any other one man living might have exclaimed with truth quorum pars magna fui,' but he never did. He left that egotistical classic expression to his coming and going associates, whose envy, malice and all uncharitableness were apparent to his keen eye, and rather amused than offended him. Nothing of this is reached in his Autobiography, but it is found in his unpublished letters with names and 'dates in full. Many a self-asserting artist has tried to fill out and complete Phidias's matchless, footless and handless figure of Theseus in the British Museum, but no one has yet succeeded. In like manner many an ambitious author has vainly endeavoured to piece out Franklin's Autobiography. The last state of that patch-work is even worse than the first, as one might expect, from the simple reason that the real materials of a Life of Franklin from the end of his Autobiography to the end of his career have been and are still inaccessible. What is more, no writer has for the last sixty years supposed or even suspected that the unpublished papers of Franklin are still in existence. Yet with the exception perhaps of the revised and polished Autobiography, they are fully equal in bulk and importance to what has already been printed. Hence as yet no biography of Franklin : and hence as yet no full and comprehensive history of the foundation and structure of the American Republic. But when this corresponding European portion is added, American History, thanks to Franklin and to France, will assume its due proportions. This is not all. An important part of the history of the British American Colonies from a little before the acquisition of Canada to the Declaration of Independence and of the United States from the beginning of the Revolution to the |