"First. Let a tax be laid of a louis per window, on every window that is provided with shutters to keep out the light of the sun.

"Second. Let the same salutary operation of police be made use of to prevent our burning candles, that inclined us last winter to be more economical in burning wood; that is, let guards be placed in the shops of the wax and tallow-chandlers, and no family be permitted to be supplied with more than one pound of candles per week.

"Third. Let guards also be posted to stop all the coaches, &c., that would pass the streets after sunset, except those of physicians, surgeons, and midwives.

"Fourth. Every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set a ringing; and if that is not sufficient, let cannon be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually, and make them open their eyes to see their true interest.

"All the difficulty will be in the first two or three days; after which the reformation will be as natural and easy as the present irregularity; for ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte. Oblige a man to rise at four in the morning, and it is more than probable he shall go willingly to bed at eight in the evening; and, having had eight hours' sleep, he will rise more willingly at four the following morning. But this sum of ninety-six millions and seventy-five thousand livres, is not the whole of what may be saved by my economical project. You may observe, that I have calculated upon only one half of the year, and much may be saved in the other, though the days are shorter. Besides, the immense stock of wax and tallow left unconsumed during the summer, will probably make candles much cheaper for the ensuing winter, and continue cheaper as long as the proposed reformation shall be supported.

"For the great benefit of this discovery, thus freely communicated and bestowed by me on the public, I demand neither place, pension, exclusive privilege, nor

any other reward whatever. I expect only to have the honour of it. And yet I know there are little, envious minds who will, as usual, deny me this, and say that my invention was known to the ancients, and perhaps they may bring passages out of the old books in proof of it. I will not dispute with these people that the ancients knew not the sun would rise at certain hours; they possibly had, as we have, almanacks that predicted it: but it does not follow from thence, that they knew he gave light as soon as he rose. This is what I claim as my discovery. If the ancients knew it, it must have been long since forgotten, for it certainly was unknown to the moderns, at least to the Parisians; which to prove, I need use but one plain simple argument. They are as well instructed, judicious, and prudent a people as exist anywhere in the world, all professing, like myself, to be lovers of economy; and, from the many heavy taxes required from them by the necessities of the state, have surely reason to be economical. I say it is impossible that so sensible a people, under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing.

"I am, &c.

"AN ABONNE."

Dr Franklin is certainly from this time to be con sidered rather as a statesman than a professed philosopher; but he continued to extend his researches into electricity, and particularly examined, in 1759, the tourmalin, a stone which has the singular property of being electrified positively on one side, and negatively on the other, by heat alone, without friction. Professor Simpson of Glasgow, too, reported to Dr Franklin some experiments (made by Dr Cullen) on the cold produced by the evaporation of air; the latter endeavoured to improve upon them, and found by the evaporation of ether in the exhausted receiver of an

air-pump, so great a degree of cold was produced in a warm summer's day, that water was congealed by it. Among other things, he applied this discovery to the solution of the following phenomena, which had hitherto been unexplained: "That the temperature of the human body, when in health, never exceeds 96o of Fahrenheit's thermometer, though the atmosphere which surrounds it may be heated in a much greater degree;" which, on this principle, he attributed to increased perspiration, and conseqent evaporation.

In 1760 he mentions, in a letter to Mr Small, some observations tending to shew, that in North America the north-east storms regularly begin in the south-west, and instances one particularly, which, extending a considerable distance, commenced at Philadelphia, and four hours afterwards was felt at Boston. This he accounts for by supposing, that the heat about the gulf of Mexico occasioned considerable rarefaction of the air, and that the air farther north, rushing in, was succeeded by cooler and denser air still farther north, until it occasioned a perpetual current in this direction.

It was during this visit to London also that, being delighted with the tones produced by wet fingers pressed along the brim of different sized glasses, he endeavoured to make an instrument which should include three complete and regular octaves: he describes it at length, in a letter to the celebrated father Beccaria*.

Dr Franklin, as a politician, considered himself at this time a bona fide member of the great British commonwealth, and entered warmly into the state of the general politics of this country. Conceiving that, by prosecuting the war with France upon the European continent, we were expending our resources upon objects of no permanent British interest, he warmly recommended, in all companies, an attack upon French North America. The subsequent disputes between the mother-country and her colonies * Vide Appendix. No. 2.

were calculated to throw our author's exertions upon this point into the shade; but, in a cool review of facts, there can be little doubt that Great Britain was, and is, indebted to him for the possession of Canada. With the first William Pitt he could not at this time obtain any personal interview. "I considered him as an inaccessible," he says; "I admired him at a distance, and (after some failures) made no more attempts for a nearer acquaintance." But through his secretaries, Messrs Potter and Wood, who cultivated our author's acquaintance, that great minister was very happy to receive his suggestions, and frequently mentions his high opinion of him.

He pressed upon government the relative situation of the Indians with regard to the English and French possessions, and urged that so long as the arts and arms of France were aided by the local knowledge, and were perpetually fostering the ill will, of the native tribes, our western frontiers would always be exposed to predatory warfare, and that the French had been encroaching upon our colonies from their first settlement in the country.

Mr Pitt is said to have been "determined, by the simple accuracy of his statements," to undertake the expedition, which, it is unnecessary to say, was so ably executed by the lamented Wolfe. It is singular that Franklin should thus have been connected first with events that more completely humbled the French power abroad, than any other occurrence of the last century; and that he should subsequently live to wield the power of France for the equally decided humiliation of Great Britain.

In the year 1760, upon the prospect of a peace with France, he engaged in a controversy on the relative importance of Great Britain retaining Guadaloupe or Canada, a subject upon which lord Bath had previously addressed a letter to two great men. author's reasoning on this occasion was, that the security of a dominion is a justifiable and prudent ground upon which to demand cession from an enemy; that

Our

the erection of forts on the western frontier had been by no means a sufficient security against the Indians and the French; but that the possession of Canada would be, and ought therefore to be had while it was in our power; that the blood and treasure spent in the American war, were not spent in the cause of the colonies alone; and that the French remaining in Canada was an encouragement to the disaffected in the colonies. He was always remarkable for strengthening his arguments by matters of fact. In stating the advantages to the mother-country arising from her increasing trade with the colonies, he instances that which was then carrying on with Pennsylvania alone, and quotes the following table of its amazingly rapid increase :—

An Account of the Value of the Exports from England to Pennsylvania, in one Year, taken at different periods.

In 1723 they amounted only to

1730 they were

1737.

£. S. d.

15,992 19

4

1742

1747.

1752.

1757

201,666 19 11

268,426 6 6

Dr Franklin visited Scotland during his stay in Great Britain at this time; but we have no other record of his journey into that country, than his being greeted with the honorary title of doctor of laws by the university of St Andrews.

At this period too the government of New Jersey happening to fall vacant, the minister, without any solicitation on his part, conferred it on the doctor's eldest son.

Our author returned to America in the summer of 1762, relieving the tedium of the voyage by making observations on the well known effect of oil in calming sea-water. This he at first considered, with many