The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-07-24
THE MAKERS
 OF THE NATION
(By Clark Brink Mills, Ph. D.)
ARTICLE II. Benjamin Franklin-The Diplomat ist of the Revolution.

Benjamin Franklin-The Diplomat
 ist of the Revolution.
 It is a suggestive truth that the great men of the world appear in groups. However we may explain the phenom- enon, the fact remains. Our own coun- try furnishes no exception. And these groups have appeared in times of emergency, like cancellations that shine with the greatest brilliancy when. the night is dark. Thus in the gloomy days of the Civil War we had such men as Stanton and Seward and Chase and Sherman and Grant and Lincoln to guide through the awful storm. At an earlier day. when the slavery and nullification agitation threatened wreck came such giants as Calhoun and Ben- ton and Douglas and Clay and Web- ster. In the Revolutionary period, when the feeble colonies were attempt ing to throw off the supremacy of the mother country and set up housekeep- ing for themselves, they had to aid them in the task such instructors as John and Samuel Adams, Jay, Madison, Patrick Henry, Jefferson. Hamilton. Franklin and Washington. What brilliant galaxy. Surely if any nation has reason to point with pride to the men who gave success and character to it's early fortunes that nation is the United States.
 In the Revolutionary group no name except that of immortal Washington shines with a more splendid radiance than that of Benjamin Franklin. Printer, journalist, book seller. author. inventor, philosopher, diplomatist, phil- anthropist, in all these fields he stood in the front rank, with few equals and no superiors. Franklin died in 179O, 1S0 years ago, but through all these years his fame has come down to us undimmed and is even greater today than ever before.
 Of Humble Parents.
 Like many of Americas great ones, this man was born of humble parents. His father was a tallow chandler and soap boiler in Boston,, There Frank lin was born in 1706, so that he was 70 years of age when he voted for the Declaration of Independence. He was an energetic and enterprising youth, and when but r years old left his brother, a printer, to whom he had been apprenticed .and ran away to Philadelphia, where when he was 2S years of age he had established a newspaper of his own.
 Few men have. had such diversity of gifts and have so excelled in them all. He came as near being uni versal genius, perhaps, as any man that ever lived. It is not however, his multiplicity of achievements that we can now consider. We desire, rather, to set forth briefly his services to his country, especially his invaluable work abroad in attempting to secure for the colonies justice from England and recognition and help from France.
 Before Franklin was 50 years old he had acquired a fortune, retired from business, established a wide and grow ing reputation as a scientific investi- gator and had become the most famous and popular man in Philadelphia. Nor was his fame limited to the city of his adoption. He was known and honored throughout the cvolony, and his name as a wise. learned and patriotic man had become familiar in Virginia and throughout the colony, and his name in situation to enter upon that wider activity and that larger usefulness for which he was destined.
 It was the custom among the colonies to appoint agents to represent them in England. especially when legislation was pending in the mother country that affected colonial interests, or when such legislation was sought.
 Emissary to England.
 In 1755. at the beginning of the French and Indian war; a dispute arose between the Assembly of Pennsylva- mia and the Governor. We must re- member that Pennsylvania was what was called a proprietary" colony-that is. colony whose territory was orig inally granted to a single individual, called the proprietary" and that this proprietary chose the Governor. The dispute in Pennsylvania arose from the refusal on the part of the Governor to tax the proprietary lands for the purpose of defending the colony against the assaults of the French and Indians on the western and northern frontier.