who, in the character of your physician, have saved you from the palsy, dropsy, and apoplexy? one or other of which would have done for you long ago, but for me.

FRANKLIN. Oh! Oh!-for Heaven's sake leave me; and I promise faithfully to take exercise daily, and live temperately.

GOUT. I know you too well. But I leave you with an assurance of visiting you again at a proper time and place; for my object is your good, and you are sensible now that I am your real friend.1

While engaged in doing all in his power for the interest of the United States, Franklin also used his influence to secure the recognition of certain great principles of international intercourse which are now either fully admitted by most civilized countries, or promise soon to be. He pledged America to the policy of the protection of the merchant ships of neutral nations during war. He exposed the ruinous folly of the English laws which restricted the free importation of breadstuffs into Great Britain at a time when her people were suffering for want of food; and although he had helped to fit out privateers against her commerce, he was one of the first to endeavor to obtain the consent of the leading powers of Europe to the abolition of such methods of warfare.

But so far as America and England were concerned, an event was now at hand which was to make the work of

Captain Paul Jones no longer necessary. On Sunday, Nov. 25, 1781, a special government messenger reached London with the intelligence that Lord Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown. When the prime minister, Lord

1 "A Petition of the Left Hand" and "The Ephemera" should also be read. See Bigelow's "Franklin's Works."

North, was informed of this decisive defeat, he threw up his arms as if struck by a bullet, exclaiming, "O God! it is all over!" Parliament was summoned at once to consider the crisis. The majority believed that further prosecution of the war would be useless. The king and his friends held out and would not hear of any cessation of hostilities, but at length they had to yield, and Lord North retired from office to be succeeded by Lord Rockingham, on the express condition that peace should be made. When the news was announced there were shouts of joy in the streets; many houses were illuminated, and the people cheered the members of the House of Commons who had voted against the king as "the saviours of their country."

It was now evident that the Revolution was practically over, but many delays occurred before a definitive treaty could be made between the United States and Great Britain. There were four chief questions to be settled, which involved not only England and America, but also France and Spain as parties to the agreement. These were: 1. The full and unequivocal recognition of the independence of the thirteen states as a nation; 2. The recognition of the Mississippi River as the western boundary of the States, of Canada as the northern, and of Florida as the southern; 3. The recognition of the right of the Americans to fish on the Banks of Newfoundland; 4. Compensation to the Loyalists in America for their loss of property. On the first point there was practically no very serious disagreement, but the commissioners appointed to negotiate the peace could not come to terms on the remaining three. England thought Maine should be included in her Canadian possessions. Spain objected to our holding all the

Reduced Copy of the Signatures and Seals of the English and American

Commissioners who signed the Treaty of Peace between

Great Britain and the United States, 1783.

territory as far west as the Mississippi, and both France and England were opposed either to our catching or to our curing fish on the shores of Newfoundland. In regard to making compensation to Loyalists (or Tories), which England at first strongly insisted upon, Franklin was firm in his refusal. He said that it was like the man who heated a poker red-hot to run his neighbor through; the neighbor refused in the most emphatic way to allow the weapon to be thrust into him even so much as a single inch, and the man who had heated the poker then demanded that his neighbor should at least pay him for the time and fuel he had spent in getting the iron red-hot! This ridicule had. its effect, and Great Britain said no more about Loyalist claims.

On the other points the debate went on for months. John Adams and John Jay, who, with Franklin, represented the United States, both doubted the good faith of France which, notwithstanding her friendliness during the war, they believed to be bent on cutting us off from all territory west of the Alleghanies, and even of depriving us of the navigation of the Mississippi. Jay was disgusted, and urged that the matter be postponed or dropped. "What, asked Franklin, "would you break off negotiations now?" "Yes," answered the resolute Jay, "just as I break the pipe I am smoking"; and with that he tossed it into the fire. But Franklin felt that it would be inexpedient to anger France at such a juncture. His politic management soothed all irritated feelings, and on Sept. 3, 1783,1 a final treaty of

1 A preliminary treaty had been signed, without the knowledge of France, in 1782. Franklin admitted that this was an irregularity, but asserted that the provisional treaty was conditioned on its final acceptance by France.

A reduced copy of the signature of the English and American commissioners to the final treaty (with their respective seals) is shown on preceding page.