LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 Chap. — J 0/'^) 
 Sknlf r4^€w 
 
 PRESENTED BT ^ /" 
 
 ,^^UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
 ■ — ■ — ■ — - ■„ ...^ , I , I 
 
Ban jarr. in Frankl in 
 
 Venerated 
 
 For Benevolence 
 
 iiumired For Talents 
 
 Esteemed for Patriotism 
 
 Beloved for 
 
 Philanthropy. 
 
CEREMONIES 
 
 ATTENDING THE UNVEILING 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Statue of Benjamin Franklin 
 
 June 14, 1899 
 
 Presented to the City of Philadelphia 
 
 BY 
 
 Mr. JUSTUS C. STRAWBRIDGE 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 Printed by Allen, Lane & Scott 
 
 1899 
 
<.^ 
 
 <0' 
 
 vJ- 
 
 0^' 
 
 ■X-' 
 
 
 5 '7 4 3 4 
 
Committee on arrangements 
 
 Dr. Charles Custis Harrison, 
 
 Provost of the University of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Dr. Coleman Sellers, 
 
 Vice-President of the American Philosophical Society. 
 
 James G. Barnwell, Esq., 
 
 Librarian, Library Company of Philadelphia. 
 
 Benjamin H. Shoemaker, Esq., 
 
 President Pennsylvania Hospital. 
 
 Judge Samuel W. Pennypacker, 
 
 The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 
 
 John Birkinbine, Esq., 
 
 President of Franklin Institute. 
 
 /IDarsbal 
 
 Charles W. Duane, 
 
 Of Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 Bssistant fniarsbals 
 
 Franklin Bache, Benjamin Franklin Pepper, 
 
 R. NoRRis Williams, Thomas Leiper Hodge. 
 
 [All of whom are descendants of Benjamin Franklin.] 
 
ContaiuinG tbc a^^rc09C9 of 
 
 Page. 
 
 Provost Charles C. Harrison 15 
 
 Hon. James M. Beck 17 
 
 Hon. Josiah Quincy, Mayor ot Boston 49 
 
 Hon. Charles Emory Smith, Postmaster-General of the 
 
 United States 53 
 
 Hon. Samuel H. Ashbridge, Mayor of Philadelphia .... 56 
 
Ifntrobuction 
 
Untrobuctton 
 
 This volume is prepared as a memorial of the 
 presentation to the city of Philadelphia of the statue 
 of Benjamin Franklin, by Mr. Justus C. Straw- 
 bridge, of Philadelphia. His attention was directed 
 to the fact that there did not exist in the city of 
 Philadelphia a fitting monument to its greatest citizen. 
 While we cannot claim Franklin as a Philadelphian 
 by birth, it is remembered that he came to us un- 
 heralded by fame, cast his lot with our people, and 
 here took his chances in the fortunes of the world — 
 which seem to have dealt generously with him. It 
 was with us that he achieved his great success in 
 many fields of activity. We all know of his devo- 
 tion to the interests of the city of Philadelphia; of 
 the conspicuous services he rendered the Colony, and 
 subsequently State, of Pennsylvania; the patriotic 
 service he rendered the country during its period of 
 War for Independence; and afterward, in the pacific 
 and quiet upbuilding of the Republic. 
 
 It would very much transgress the limits of this 
 introduction to refer even by title to the notable 
 acts of Franklin's life; or to recount what he did for 
 science, for education, or even in the thousand and 
 one minor ways in which the service of public af- 
 fairs attracted his active interest; from the gravest 
 question to the consideration of an ordinance to 
 
 (9) 
 
10 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 keep the streets of the town clean; nothing seemed 
 too great — nothing too small — for his careful and 
 philosophical attention. 
 
 Our people have good reason to felicitate the 
 donor of the beautiful statue, which stands on the 
 site made memorable by having been once occupied 
 by the noble mansion erected by Pennsylvania to be 
 a home for the President of the United States, and 
 when that plan failed through the removal of the 
 seat of Government, by the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania for a period of seventy years, and now a per- 
 manent part of the public domain as the site of the 
 United States Post OfTfice. 
 
 The committee in charge of these exercises rep- 
 resented institutions which were directly or indirectly 
 brought into being by Benjamin Franklin; and, in- 
 deed, it is doubtful if a parallel case can be found 
 in the country; for instance, the Philadelphia Hos- 
 pital was represented on this Committee — the first 
 hospital inaugurated in what is now the United 
 States; the first learned body, of which Franklin 
 can justly be called the founder, the Philosophical 
 Society; the Library Company, and the University 
 of Pennsylvania. All can trace their being and au- 
 thorship to the marvelous foresightedness of the 
 man whom we honor. The Historical Society and 
 the Franklin Institute — both organized a quarter of 
 a century or more subsequent to Franklin's death — 
 are the direct outgrowth of the above-mentioned 
 institution. It would indeed be a work of super- 
 erogation to proceed in this vein. 
 
 Prior to the ceremonies at the Opera House, 
 luncheon was served at the University Club. At 
 the request of Mr. Strawbridge, Postmaster-Gen- 
 eral Charles Emory Smith bade the guests welcome 
 in a few most happily chosen words. 
 
INTRODUCTION. II 
 
 There were present the Hon. Charles Emory- 
 Smith, Postmaster-General; Wilson S. Bissell and 
 Thomas L. James, former Postmasters-Generals; 
 Josiah Quincy, Mayor of Boston; Mayor Samuel H. 
 Ashbridge and his predecessors in office, Edwin S. 
 Stuart and Charles F. Warwick; Charles C. Har- 
 rison, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania; 
 A. H. Fetterolf, President of Girard College; Rich- 
 ard Rathbun, of the Smithsonian Institution; E. D. 
 Warfield, President of Lafayette College; Henry 
 A. Rowland, of Johns Hopkins University; David 
 P. Todd, of Amherst College; John Birkinbine, of 
 the Franklin Institute; Coleman Sellers, Chairman 
 of the Committee; Hon. James M. Beck, orator of 
 the day; John J. Boyle, sculptor; E. A. Pesoli, 
 French Consul; William Sellers, Judge Penny- 
 packer, Joseph G. Rosengarten, Dr. John Marshall, 
 Frank Miles Day, Hon. Henry H. Bingham, Hon. 
 Robert Adams, Jr., Abraham L. English, John H. 
 Converse, Franklin Bache, Isaac H. Clothier, 
 Dr. Thomas Dunn EngHsh, Paul Leicester Ford, Syd- 
 ney George Fisher, L. Clarke Davis, Abraham M. 
 Beitler, Eugene Ellicott, Horace W. Sellers, B. 
 Franklin Pepper, Benjamin H. Shoemaker, J. W. 
 Bailey, John T. Morris, W. A. Breckenridge, H. H. 
 Hoyt, Jr., James Mitchell, E. D. Hemphill, Jr., Will- 
 iam F. Keim, John L. Sullivan, John P. Miller, L. A. 
 Yeiser, J. Hampton Moore, William J. Hammer, and 
 James G. Barnwell. 
 
IProcession of Students of "Glnivcrsit^ of IPennsslvanta 
 
 Much eclat was added to the ceremonies by the 
 presence of the greater part of the graduating classes 
 of 1899 of the University of Pennsylvania. 
 
 The procession of the students was formed on 
 the campus of the University at 3.15 P. M., headed 
 by the Municipal Band; they marched down Walnut 
 Street to Seventeenth Street, Seventeenth Street to 
 Chestnut Street, Chestnut Street to the Opera 
 House, where they occupied seats which had been 
 reserved for them. 
 
 The Chief Marshal of the student body was Mr. 
 E. D. Hemphill, Jr., President of the College Class 
 of '99. Mr. Hemphill was assisted by Mr. John J. 
 Sullivan, President of the Law Class of '99; Dr. 
 W. F. Keim, President of the Medical Class of '99; 
 Mr. L. A. Yeiser, President of the Dental Class of 
 '99; and Mr. John P. Miller, President of the Vet- 
 erinary Class of '99. 
 
XTbe Hbbresses at the ©pera IHouse 
 
^be at)^rc00e0 at tbc ©pera 1bomc 
 
 The meeting- at the Chestnut Street Opera House 
 was called to order by Mr. Eugene Ellicott, the 
 assistant to the Provost of the University of Penn- 
 sylvania, who occupied the chair during the exer- 
 cises. Mr. Ellicott first introduced Provost Charles 
 C. Harrison. 
 
 ADDRESS OF PROVOST CHARLES C. 
 HARRISON, 
 
 Of the University of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: — It is a very great 
 pleasure to me to extend on behalf of the benefactor 
 of to-day and on behalf of the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania, the American Philosophical Society, the 
 Franklin Institute, the Library Company of Philadel- 
 phia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the 
 Pennsylvania Hospital a most cordial greeting and 
 welcome to this assembly, and to open with a few 
 words of prelude the ceremonies which are about to 
 take place. 
 
 With becoming and characteristic modesty, the 
 man to whom we are indebted for this pious act 
 prefers to remain as inconspicuous as circumstances 
 will permit. I need hardly refer, however, to the 
 realization of Mr. Strawbridge's gift without ven- 
 turing to suggest that it affords a true and sincere 
 ground for all of us interested in the city of our 
 
 (15) 
 
i6 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 
 affection to rest awhile and to reflect each for him- 
 self as to what are the conditions which make a city 
 truly great. Upon this occasion, which Mr. Straw- 
 bridge has made so emphatic, we may well look at 
 the work of Franklin and of the societies and insti- 
 tutions which he founded — of which he was a part 
 and which he inspired — and recollect that they will 
 last as long as the city lasts, and that their work 
 will last longer. Are we not brought to think, upon 
 such an occasion as this, of the difference between 
 what is ephemeral and what is permanent, and of 
 our own civic duty and of the city's duty, to safe- 
 guard the one and not the other, so that each gen- 
 eration may transmit such institutions to the next 
 with an increased momentum of efffciency? 
 
 What the six institutions, which are here united, 
 compass in their public good, is best set forth in 
 these noble words of the president of Harvard Uni- 
 versity, when he said : — 
 
 "All the professions called learned or scientific 
 are fed by them; the whole school system depends 
 upon them, and could not be maintained in effi- 
 ciency without them; they foster piety, art, liter- 
 ature, and poetry; they gather in and preserve the 
 intellectual capital of the race, and are the store- 
 houses of the acquired knowledge on which inven- 
 tion and progress depend; they enlarge the bound- 
 aries of knowledge; they maintain the standards of 
 honor, public duty, and public spirit, and diffuse the 
 refinement, culture, and spirituality without which 
 added wealth would only be added grossness and 
 corruption." 
 
 The thought which I would like modestly to sug- 
 gest at this time is that of a scientific union for 
 Philadelphia — for such great alliances exist else- 
 where — composed of representatives each of the 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECK. 1/ 
 
 learned societies, impressed with the need of vniited 
 action in upholding- the city's literary and scientific 
 standing, and working in cordial and sympathetic 
 association. And I feel quite sure that the events 
 of to-day will have a greater fruition, if, in addition 
 to the unveiling of the statue and the recollection 
 of the man Franklin, we may imitate his power of 
 combination, and associate ourselves in such alliance 
 for the highest purposes of the city of Philadelphia. 
 
 At the conclusion of Provost Harrison's address 
 of welcome, Mr. Ellicott introduced Hon. James M. 
 Beck, United States Attorney for the Eastern Dis- 
 trict of Pennsylvania, the orator of the day. 
 
 ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES M. BECK. 
 
 My Fellow Citizens: — Had you walked down 
 High Street one hundred and sixty years ago you 
 would have noticed near the market place an unpre- 
 tentious dwelling, whose first floor was also a shop. 
 There you would have seen a stalwart young man of 
 thirty-three years, with eyes so clear and penetrating 
 that they seemed to look into the very heart of 
 things, and a smile so genial and captivating as to 
 charm friend and stranger alike. Were you tempted 
 to buy, he would have left his printing press long 
 enough to serve you with any of his wares, which 
 at least in variety, if not in quantity, would not have 
 done discredit to a modern department store, for you 
 could have bought imported books or perfumed 
 soap, legal blanks or Rhode Island cheese, Dutch 
 quills or live geese feathers, peddlers' books or Bohea 
 tea, the current almanac of Poor Richard, then in 
 great demand, or a gallon of sack, of whose quality, 
 
1 8 ADDRESS OF 
 
 if his advertisement is to be believed, even Falstaff 
 would not have disapproved. Or if you had called 
 in response to the advertisement in the Gazette that 
 "B. Franklin pays ready money for old rags," he 
 would have driven a bargain with you, and then have 
 brought his purchase home in a wheelbarrow. 
 
 If you had asked the good people of Philadelphia, 
 then a country village of about fifteen thousand 
 people, who and what manner of man this printer- 
 merchant was, they would have told you that he 
 had landed fifteen years before at Market Street 
 wharf a penniless and unknown lad, and they would 
 have added, with the usual complaisance with which 
 we are apt to regard the misfortunes of others, that 
 the Colonial Governor had sent the credulous lad 
 to London on a fool's errand, where he had added 
 to the stern and bitter lessons already learned in 
 that hardest and best of schools, life, and had often 
 subsisted on meals of a half an anchovy spread on 
 a single piece of bread. They would have told you 
 that after working for two years in London he had 
 returned to his adopted city, and after serving for 
 a time as a bookkeeper and journeyman printer he 
 had started a printing ofifice, where he soon pub- 
 lished the best newspaper in the colonies, a result 
 reached by patient industry, of which his neigh- 
 bors were wont to say that they found him at 
 work in the early hours of the morning before 
 the village was astir, and would still find him cut- 
 ting his type, making with grimy hands his printer's 
 ink, or stitching his almanacs, by the flickering 
 light of a tallow dip, when the darkness of the 
 night enveloped the unlighted and unpaved streets 
 of Philadelphia. If they had had more appreciation 
 of civic service, than I fear their descendants have, 
 the Philadelphians of that generation would have 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECK. ig 
 
 further informed you that no one of their number 
 was more constant in good work and more fruitful 
 of suggestion for the public good than this same 
 Benjamin Franklin; that it was he, himself self-edu- 
 cated and living in a community of unlettered people, 
 which could boast of no public and but one private 
 library, who had formed the Junto, destined to be 
 the most famous of all associations for self-improve- 
 ment and the foundation upon which the goodly and 
 noble superstructure of the American Philosophical 
 Society was to be erected; that he had founded a pub- 
 lic library with the then peculiar regulation that books 
 could be borrowed and taken by the reader to the 
 privacy of the home, and that he was known through- 
 out the colonies as the editor of the leading Ameri- 
 can newspaper and author of the most popular al- 
 manac. At every hearthstone in colonial America 
 "Poor Richard" was a welcome guest, and his 
 homely wisdom at once instructed and entertained. 
 For these and many public services he had been 
 made Justice of the Peace, Clerk of the General As- 
 sembly, and Postmaster of Philadelphia. 
 
 To this extent they doubtless appreciated him, 
 but had you been a prophet and told them that this 
 man was to become one of the intellectual giants of 
 his century, and that with each downward motion 
 of the lever of his press his strong right arm and 
 yet stronger intellect were moulding a republic, and 
 that the time would soon come when this son of a 
 tallow chandler would be sought by mighty states- 
 men, feted by proud peers, crowned by titled ladies, 
 and received in audience by the greatest monarchs 
 of the time, they would have rewarded you with a 
 smile of incredulity, for they as little saw in Franklin 
 "one of the demi-gods of humanity," as Thomas Car- 
 lyle was afterwards to call him, as did that learned 
 
20 ADDRESS OF 
 
 Council of Salamanca see in the stranger with the 
 threadbare coat the inspired pilot of Genoa. 
 
 We, with the greater wisdom of a later time, can 
 see, as they can well be pardoned for not seeing, that 
 in all the tide of time no ship or other vehicle of 
 commerce ever brought to Philadelphia so rich a 
 freight as did the little ship, from which the young 
 Franklin, over one hundred and seventy-five years 
 ago, stept to Market Street wharf, and that while 
 apparently he had nothing of value, except a silver 
 dollar and a few copper coins, in reality he had the 
 wealth of a magnificent physique, inherited from gen- 
 erations of English blacksmiths, the greater wealth 
 of a mind as exquisitely constructed as has yet been 
 vouchsafed by the Father of Lights to any child of 
 man born in the New World, and the greatest of 
 all wealth, the strength of an indomitable heart, 
 whose firm resolution no obstacle could turn aside 
 or adverse circumstance defeat. 
 
 Nothing apparently seemed more unpromising of 
 greatness than his environment. He lived in a 
 country village, which still remained as Penn de- 
 signed her, a "green country place," and was more 
 inaccessible to civilization than Honolulu or Manila 
 at the present day. Its society consisted of a few 
 families and still fewer educated men and women, 
 and the conveniences of life, as compared with those 
 of the meanest village of like size of the present day, 
 were pitiable in their poverty. The civilized world 
 could scarcely be said to know of its existence, and 
 its news of battles fought and won and treaties made 
 and broken, crept slowly across the ocean in sail- 
 ing packets, and was disseminated through the col- 
 onies through a few weekly newspapers. The people 
 of Philadelphia were still in the very childhood of 
 the race, ignorant, superstitious, and narrow-minded. 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECK. 21 
 
 White men were sold in temporary bondage and 
 African slavery existed even in the city of Pastorius. 
 Beyond the Susquehanna was an untrodden wilder- 
 ness, and the Alleghenies were regarded as the true 
 boundaries which nature had set to the progress of 
 the colonies. All of English birth still believed that 
 the three estates of King, Lords, and Commons were 
 divinely ordained. Even Benjamin Franklin would 
 have raised his hat and bowed his form in obeisance 
 at the mere mention of His Royal Highness George 
 I., that "Star of Brunswick," of whose claims to 
 their admiration an English satirist of a later cen- 
 tury was to say that 
 
 "He hated arts and despised literature, 
 But he Hked train oil on his salads 
 And gave an enlightened patronage to bad oysters ; 
 He had Walpole as a minister, 
 Consistent in his preference for every kind of corruption." 
 
 These, however, are but the superficial conditions, 
 for it is true of Franklin, as it has been true of every 
 great man, that he is the joint product of that direct 
 inspiration of the Almighty to which we give the 
 name of genius, and of extraordinary times, for as 
 Lord Macaulay has said, "Great minds do indeed 
 react on the society which has made them what they 
 are, but they only pay with interest what they have 
 received." 
 
 The century in which Franklin lived, which gave 
 Frederick to Prussia, Chatham to England, Frank- 
 lin to America, and made possible three empires, was 
 destined to be epic in the grandeur of its achieve- 
 ments, and most far-reaching in its results upon 
 the after ages. It was a period of transition. Hu- 
 man society was about to be reconstructed. Upon 
 the ruins of feudalism the better superstructure of 
 democracy was then in the slow progress of erec- 
 
22 ADDRESS OF 
 
 tion, and it was difficult to distinguish between the 
 new structure and the old. Three mighty forces 
 were engaged in this work of reconstruction, all in- 
 ter-dependent and each to some extent causing and 
 caused by the other — the dissemination of knowl- 
 edge by means of the printing press, the upraising 
 of the masses by industrial inventions, and the 
 growth of democratic ideas. Men were soon to lose 
 faith in the divine right of either a king, titled no- 
 bility, or State priesthood to ride, booted and 
 spurred, upon the backs of the masses. Entail and 
 special privilege were to be swept away. The day 
 of the people was about to dawn. A new doctrine 
 was to be preached, that all men were created equal, 
 both in rights and duty, in the eyes of the law, and 
 that the only distinction between individuals should 
 be that earned by superior service to the common 
 weal. War, never to cease until final triumph, was 
 soon to be declared and waged against every form 
 of tyranny over the mind and soul of man, while 
 to the individual, without distinction of race, class, 
 or creed, was to be offered that "career open to tal- 
 ent," that fair field and no favor, that equality of op- 
 portunity, so far as political institutions can deter- 
 mine the conditions of the competition, which is the 
 basic principle of the American Commonwealth. 
 And the very incarnation of this democratic spirit, 
 the great exemplar of the plain people, the fore- 
 most apostle of the new gospel of equal rights, was 
 to be this printer of Philadelphia, whose coming 
 kings should live to dread, and whose strong right 
 arm, ever pressing the lever of his printing press, 
 was — like the God of Thunder, Thor — to rend in 
 twain the English Empire and drive the Bourbons 
 from the throne of France. Well did Thomas Penn 
 speak of him in those early days as a "dangerous" 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECK. 23 
 
 and "uneasy" man, and a "tribune of the people." 
 George III. was accurate when he described him 
 to his ministers as the "most mischievous" spirit of 
 the Revolution. Joseph II. of Austria was wise in 
 his day and generation when he refused to meet 
 Franklin, with the remark that "it was his trade 
 to reign, and he would not endanger the craft by 
 playing with Franklin's lightning," while ill-fated 
 Marie Antoinette, in whose proud court Franklin 
 had stood in his plain garb as the very incarnation 
 of that democracy which was to be her Nemesis, 
 was to sadly say : "The time of illusions is past, and 
 to-day we pay dear for our infatuation and enthusi- 
 asm for the American war." In this mighty social 
 movement, the greatest since the growth of the 
 Christian Church, Franklin was to direct and typify 
 that fourth estate, the printing press, whose influ- 
 ence was even then beginning to create the now all- 
 governing force of public opinion. He was destined 
 to enjoy a career which, in the extent and variety 
 of its usefulness, is wholly without a parallel in the 
 history of democratic America. The sometime tal- 
 low chandler was to become, despite the prejudices 
 of royal caste which had prevailed for a thousand 
 years, the honored guest of four kings, to be crowned 
 with laurel wreaths by titled ladies of the proud- 
 est courts in Christendom, and applauded to the 
 echo by the very aristocracy which he came to de- 
 stroy. The self-educated printer, whose education 
 was chiefly gained in the hours of the night with 
 borrowed books and by the flickering light of a tal- 
 low dip, was to found one college and one uni- 
 versity, to be given the degrees of the great Uni- 
 versities of Oxford, Cambridge, and St. Andrews and 
 the younger colleges of Yale and Harvard, and 
 gladly welcomed to the fellowship of all the learned 
 
24 ADDRESS OF 
 
 societies of the world. The man who bought rags 
 for ready money, and who had no hbrary or philo- 
 sophical apparatus except of the simplest description, 
 was to captivate the imagination and chain the ad- 
 miration of the world for all time by a series of sci- 
 entific experiments so noble in conception and far- 
 reaching in results as to rank his name forever with 
 Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Leibnitz. Like 
 CEdipus, he was to solve the enigma of the skies. 
 The greatest statesman of his time, whose towering 
 genius had constructed the British Empire, the elder 
 Chatham, was to seek the advice and information 
 of this plain justice of the peace of Philadelphia, who, 
 without title, wealth, star, or ribbon, engaged the 
 ablest diplomats of Europe in a chess game of na- 
 tions, in which, with a skill worthy of all admira- 
 tion, he checkmated mighty kings and swept power- 
 ful statesmen as mere pawns from the chess board. 
 Indeed, his career is not inaptly, nor with undue ex- 
 aggeration, embodied in the famous epigram of 
 Turgot: — 
 
 "Eripuit Coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis." 
 Franklin seems to me the most typical and in- 
 tellectually the greatest of Americans. He was 
 the first to attract and hold the attention of the 
 world, and he typifies, as none other, that product 
 of our institutions, the self-made man. He was in- 
 carnate democracy. He was a man of the people, 
 simple in his tastes, companionable to high and 
 low, and with scant regard for the prejudices of 
 class and condition. When loaded down with hon- 
 ors received at royal and titled hands, he could still 
 proudly remember his modest beginning and the 
 days of his early married life when he was clad from 
 head to foot in homespun of his wife's spinning, and 
 when in his later vears he had ceased for nearly 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECK. 2$ 
 
 forty years to be a printer by occupation, he still 
 wrote himself down in his will for all time as "Ben- 
 jamin Franklin, printer." The two Americans who 
 seem to come most directly from the very heart of 
 the masses, and who best typify the average of Amer- 
 ican character, are Franklin and Lincoln, and both 
 united in their personalities the qualities of good hu- 
 mor, genial fellowship, generous optimism, originality 
 of thought, simplicity of ideas, inventive genius, un- 
 wearying industry, inquisitive acquisitiveness, and 
 love of freedom, which are the peculiar character- 
 istics of our people. 
 
 Some may challenge my statement that Franklin 
 is in intellect the greatest of Americans, and give 
 preference to his great contemporary, Washington. 
 There is a moral grandeur and dramatic interest in 
 the deeds of the Lion of Trenton, which w^ill ever 
 place him first in the hearts of Americans. His 
 services on the field of battle appeal most to the 
 imagination of men, and his inestimable influence as 
 the first President of the Republic will ever give him 
 preeminence in its history. The man on horseback 
 casts a longer shadow than he who walks upon the 
 ground, and in the epic of our independence, Nestor 
 must give place to our "king of men." But in yield- 
 ing the willing tribute of our admiration to Aga- 
 memnon, let us not withhold the due meed of praise 
 to him, who was at once Nestor and Ulysses. When 
 Washington, an unknown lad of sixteen years, was 
 surveying the Fairfax estate, and before Hamilton, 
 Madison, Jay, Warren, John Paul Jones, Knox, and 
 Marshall were even born, Franklin had become fa- 
 mous throughout the world by his discovery of the 
 nature of lightning. He was a power in the col- 
 onies and was influencing their thought when Sam 
 Adams was leaving Harvard, and Jefferson, Han- 
 
26 ADDRESS OF 
 
 cock, Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee were 
 children. He had submitted to the Council of Al- 
 bany the lirst formal draft for a union of the col- 
 onies, and was urging its necessity as the delegate 
 of Pennsylvania, when Washington was making his 
 tirst and last surrender at Fort Necessity. Indeed, 
 the length and variety of Franklin's public services 
 have never been surpassed, to my knowledge, and 
 rarely equalled. For sixty-eight years he served 
 his country and mankind. His services commenced 
 when, as a mere lad of sixteen, he fought for liberty 
 of the press in Boston, and continued without in- 
 terruption to his eighty-fourth year, when from his 
 sick bed he advised with reference to important pub- 
 lic measures. 
 
 He was the mentor of his countrymen. He pre- 
 pared them for their long struggle with England 
 by inculcating lessons of thrift and independence, 
 by his homely and epigrammatic wisdom, which, 
 while it may seem pennywise to us in these days of 
 opulence, yet was in that day of little wealth and 
 small beginnings essential to the well-being of Amer- 
 ica. He advocated the necessity of union and as early 
 as 1754 drew the first plan to secure it. In Eng- 
 land he was the champion and defender of the col- 
 onies, and rendered them two services, which were 
 indispensable to American independence. The first 
 was the repeal of the Stamp Act, which postponed 
 the struggle until the colonists were strong enough 
 to defend themselves, and the other and more im- 
 portant was the series of effective pamphlets and 
 satirical polemics, not inferior in biting satire to 
 those of Swift, by which he divided public senti- 
 ment in England and secured for America the sym- 
 pathy of such men as the elder Chatham, Burke, 
 Fox, Shelburne, the Marquis of Rockingham, Doc- 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECK. 
 
 27 
 
 tor Priestley, and many others. For thirty years 
 he led the Liberal Party of Pennsylvania in its long 
 assault on the hereditary privileges of the Penns 
 and the visionary idealism of the Quakers, which 
 was unsuited to those times "that tried men's souls." 
 W^ould the triumph of Washington have been pos- 
 sible without the formal treaty of alliance with 
 France, and the fleets and armies which were sent 
 by that generous ally to America? To whom more 
 than to Franklin do we owe this alliance? The man 
 whose name alone of all Americans is to be found 
 appended to the four greatest documents of the 
 period, the Declaration of Independence, the treaty 
 of alliance with France, the treaty of peace with 
 England, and the Constitution of the United States, 
 need not yield in all the elements of greatness even 
 to the courageous soldier and masterful President. 
 No American who has ever lived, and indeed few 
 of any race or time, ever shone so resplendently in 
 so many different ways. The traditional versatility 
 of the present hero of dramatic literature, Cyrano 
 de Bergerac, is fairly shamed by one who was suc- 
 cessively a tallow wick cutter, printer's devil, printer, 
 merchant, justice of the peace, alderman, postmaster, 
 Postmaster-General, private soldier, colonel, gen- 
 eral, editor, author, humorist, musician, scientist, 
 philosopher, diplomat, statesman, and philanthro- 
 pist. In himself he combined many of the qualities 
 and achievements of Newton, Talleyrand, Addison, 
 Swift, Voltaire, Chatham, Wilberforce, Greeley, and 
 Defoe. One can sum up this extraordinary man 
 with the simple statement that, "tried by the ardu- 
 ous greatness of things done," he thought more, 
 said more, wrote more, and did more that was of en- 
 during value than any man yet born of woman under 
 the skies of free America. 
 
28 ADDRESS OF 
 
 That I may not be accused of placing an exag- 
 gerated emphasis upon Franklin's career, let me 
 brieiiy refer to the estimate placed upon him by 
 men who, by their very prominence in literature, 
 science, or politics, can be said to speak ex cathedra. 
 Lord Jeffries speaks of him as the most rational of 
 all philosophers, and adds that "no individual, per- 
 haps, ever possessed a juster understanding." Sir 
 James jMackintosh regarded him as the ''American 
 Socrates," and the philosopher Kant spoke of him 
 as the "Prometheus, who brought fire from heaven." 
 Brougham says of him that he was "one of the most 
 remarkable men of our times as a politician, or of 
 any age as a philosopher," and he adds that Frank- 
 lin "stands alone in combining together these two 
 characters, the greatest that man can sustain, in 
 this, that having borne the first part in enlarging 
 science by one of the greatest discoveries ever made, 
 he bore the second part in founding one of the 
 greatest empires of the world." "The philosopher, 
 the friend and the lover of his species," says Ed- 
 mund Burke. It was he who said of Franklin's ex- 
 amination at the bar of the Commons, that it re- 
 minded him of a lot of schoolboys examining a 
 master. Speaking of his scientific writings. Sir 
 Humphrey Davy says, "A singular felicity of induc- 
 tion guided all Franklin's researches, and by very 
 small means he established very grand truths. He 
 has written equally for the uninitiated and for the 
 philosopher, and has rendered his details amusing 
 as well as perspicuous, elegant as well as simple." 
 One of the greatest of English judges. Sir Samuel 
 Romilly, pays this remarkable tribute: "Of all the 
 celebrated persons whom in my life I have chanced 
 to see, Dr. Franklin, both from his appearance and 
 conversation, seemed to me the most remarkable. 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECIC. 29 
 
 His venerable, patriarchal appearance, the simplic- 
 ity of his manner and language, and the novelty of 
 his observations, impressed me as one of the most 
 extraordinary men that ever existed." Brissot, the 
 leader of the Girondins, said that he had "found in 
 America a great number of enlightened politicians 
 and virtuous men, but none who appear to possess 
 in so high a degree as Franklin the characteristics 
 of a real philosopher." The lofty and noble Mad- 
 ison, in announcing his death on the floor of Con- 
 gress, spoke of him as "an illustrious character, 
 whose native genius has rendered distinguished 
 services to the cause of science and mankind, and 
 whose patriotic exertions have contributed in a 
 high degree to the independence and prosperity of 
 this country," while Jefferson said that men could 
 "succeed, but none replace him." Horace Greeley 
 regards him as the greatest self-made man in the 
 history of the world, and places him above Wash- 
 ington, "as the consummate type and flowering of 
 human nature under the skies of Colonial America." 
 "I have no patience with anybody who cannot ad- 
 mire everything that Franklin wrote," said Sydney 
 Smith. Voltaire, his great contemporary, with 
 whom he shared the honors of the French Academy, 
 spoke of him as "the sage and illustrious Franklin, 
 the most respectable man of America." Even John 
 Adams says of Franklin's reputation in Europe that 
 it was "more universal than that of Leibnitz or 
 Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and his character 
 more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them. 
 His name was familiar to government and people, 
 to kings, courtiers, nobility, clergy, and philoso- 
 phers, as well as plebians, to such a degree that 
 there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a valet de 
 chambre, coachman or footman, a lady's chamber- 
 
30 ADDRESS OF 
 
 maid or a scullion in the kitchen who was not fa- 
 miliar with it, and who did not consider him a friend 
 of mankind." 
 
 When his death was announced in the National 
 Assembly of France, that body paid a rare tribute 
 to any foreigner, by resolving, on motion of Mira- 
 beau, which was seconded by Rochefoucald and La- 
 fayette, that mourning be worn for three days in his 
 memory. The orator and giant of the French de- 
 mocracy delivered the eulogium, in which he said: 
 "Franklin is dead. The genius that freed America 
 and poured a flood of light over Europe has re- 
 turned to the bosom of the divinity. The sage 
 whom two worlds claim as their own, the man for 
 whom the history of science and the history of em- 
 pires contend with each other, held without doubt 
 a high rank in the human race. * * * Antiquity 
 would have raised altars to this mighty genius, who, 
 to the advantage of mankind, compassing in his 
 mind the heavens and the earth, was able to restrain 
 alike thunderbolts and tyrants. Europe, enlight- 
 ened and free, owes at least a token of remembrance 
 and regret to one of the greatest men who have 
 ever been engaged in the service of philosophy and 
 of liberty." 
 
 But the tribute to Franklin which will most im- 
 press an American is that of his great and noble 
 contemporary, Washington, who in the last letter 
 that he ever wrote to Dr. Franklin, when the latter 
 was lying on a bed of illness, said, 'Tf to be vener- 
 ated for benevolence, if to be admired for talents, 
 if to be esteemed for patriotism, if to be beloved for 
 philanthropy, can gratify the human mind, you must 
 have the present consolation to know that you have 
 not lived in vain. And I flatter myself that it will 
 not be ranked among the least grateful occurrences 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECK. 31 
 
 of your life to be assured that so long- as I retain 
 my memory you will be recollected with respect, ven- 
 eration, and affection by your sincere friend. Georo-e 
 Washington." ^ 
 
 His greatness can be measured in still other ways, 
 and by facts which speak with more eloquence than 
 mere words. No little mind or narrow soul could 
 ever have enjoyed the exalted friendships which, 
 above every other American, were the privilege of 
 Franklin. He seemed to charm almost all with whom 
 he came in contact, and the friends he made he al- 
 most never lost. Even his friends in England re- 
 mained such after Lexington, and the tie was never 
 broken by the coming of a revolution, which divided 
 father from son and brother from brother. Much 
 of this must have been due to the exquisite charm of 
 his conversation. While he listened well and spoke 
 httle, yet when he conversed, his auditor enjoyed 
 the great and rare privilege of communion with an 
 mtellect of the first order. Conversations often rep- 
 resent the spontaneous flow of man's thought 
 and feeling, and are often more valuable than the 
 labored efforts of the pen, and it seems an infinite 
 pity that the conversation of such intellects as 
 William Shakespeare and Benjamin Franklin have 
 been almost wholly lost to the world. In the circles 
 of friends which he enjoyed in Philadelphia, London, 
 and Paris, he was another Dr. Johnson, with more 
 savoir faire, however, than characterized the opin- 
 ionated and brusque pedant of Fleet Street. Ah. 
 had there been but a Boswell for this greater than 
 Johnson ! We can faintly grasp what the charm of 
 his acquaintance must have been by the eagerness 
 with which the greatest men of the age sought his 
 friendship. Apart from the great Americans of the 
 day, he enjoyed the friendship in England of Peter 
 
J-^ 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 
 Collinson, Dr. Fothergill, Mr. Strahan, Lord Shel- 
 burne, Lord Stanhope, both the elder and the 
 younger Pitt, the first of whom sought him on a 
 number of occasions for advice and counsel with re- 
 gard to the colonies, and the latter, when a young 
 man, visited him at Passy; Edmund Burke, Dr. 
 Jonathan Shipley, the Bishop of St. Asaph's, Adam 
 Smith, who submitted to him the unpublished manu- 
 script of his "Wealth of Nations"; Hume, Dr. 
 Priestley, Lord Camden, Dr. Hadly, of Cambridge; 
 Robertson, Lord Kames, Dr. Price, Lord Bute, the 
 Rev. George Whitefield, Benjamin West, Sir John 
 Pringle, the Marquis of Rockingham, Lord De- 
 Spencer, Lord Bathurst, the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, Jeremy Bentham, the Bishop of Derry, Charles 
 James Fox, and even the genial but pliant Lord 
 North. In France his acquaintance included De 
 Vergennes, Turgot, the Abbe Reynal, Buffon, Con- 
 dorcet, Mirabeau, Malesherbes, and Voltaire. 
 
 We can measure the greatness of the man in an 
 even more practical way by a mere statement of 
 the many positions of public trust and honor which 
 were often thrust upon him. His principle was 
 never to ask for, refuse, or resign an of^ce, and fre- 
 quently he served simultaneously in at least three 
 positions of great responsibility. Among the ofifices 
 held by him in the earlier part of his public life 
 can be mentioned justice of the peace, alderman, 
 member of the Assembly, Postmaster of Philadel- 
 phia, Postmaster of America under the Crown, 
 first Postmaster-General of America under the Con- 
 federation, Commissioner to make an Indian treaty, 
 deputy to the Congress at Albany, agent for Penn- 
 sylvania and later for Georgia, New Jersey, and 
 Massachusetts, colonel of the first military company, 
 general for a brief period of the provincial militia, 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECK. 33 
 
 director of the rcnnsylvania Hospital, the Union 
 Fire Company, and of the Philadelphia Library, and 
 President of the American Philosophical Society. 
 As a member of the Assembly he was appointed to 
 answer the communication of the Colonial Governor 
 with reference to the taxation of the proprietary 
 estates, to visit General Braddock's camp, to secure 
 the necessary supplies for his army, to raise and 
 expend money to arm Pennsylvania in the Fall of 
 1 75 5' when conflagration and massacre raged on its 
 borders. He became Speaker of the Assembly of 
 Pennsylvania, agent of Pennsylvania to protest 
 against the Stamp Act, and while in London was 
 appointed by the English Government to devise light- 
 ning rods for St. Paul's Cathedral and draw up a 
 plan for the protection of the principal powder mag- 
 azines, as later the French Government appointed 
 hrni to investigate Mesmer. When he had returned 
 from England, and the revolution had commenced 
 the work of Franklin, then an old man of seventy' 
 borders on the incredible. He at once threw him- 
 self mto the internal struggle which was to determine 
 whether Pennsylvania would follow independence or 
 would be a fatal obstacle to it, and became the leader 
 of the liberal party. He was elected deputy for Penn- 
 sylvania to the Continental Congress, and as a mem- 
 ber of more than ten of its committees rendered 
 valuable service and helped to establish a postal 
 system throughout the continent, draw up a declara- 
 tion to be published by Washington on taking com- 
 mand of the army, investigate the sources of salt- 
 petre, negotiate a treaty with the Indians, attend to 
 the designing and engraving of the Continental 
 money, secure salt and lead, and report a plan for 
 regulating and protecting the commerce of the col- 
 onies. Late in July, 1776, he prepared a plan for the 
 
34 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 
 permanent union and efficient government of the col- 
 onies. He served as chairman of the Pennsylvania 
 Committee of Safety, which at that time ruled the 
 Commonwealth, and prepared plans to fortify the 
 Delaware and arm the city and State. He arranged 
 the system of posts and expresses for the safe con- 
 veyance of dispatches, formed a line of packet ves- 
 sels to sail between Europe and America, helped 
 to promote the circulation of Continental money, 
 and drafted instructions for the generals in the field. 
 In October he was elected a member of the new 
 Assembly of Pennsylvania, and as one of a commit- 
 tee of three visited Washington, then in camp at 
 Cambridge, and conferred with him as to the all- 
 important work of raising and supplying the army. 
 After an absence of six weeks he returned to Phila- 
 delphia and drew up resolutions to shut up the Brit- 
 ish customs houses and open the ports of America 
 to the commerce of the world, except Great Britain. 
 He was one of the committee, which met the un- 
 known Frenchman, who brought the unofficial ten- 
 der of help from France, and was appointed a mem- 
 ber of the committee to correspond secretly with 
 friends in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of 
 the world, and upon him fell the greater portion of 
 this arduous and most delicate labor. When Silas 
 Deane was sent as secret agent to Paris it was Frank- 
 lin who prepared a letter of instructions for him, 
 and when the news reached Philadelphia of disasters 
 to the American army in Canada, it was again the 
 aged Franklin, who was appointed on a committee 
 to confer with General Arnold, and although the 
 Winter had not passed, this grand old man, nothing 
 daunted by age or the evident dangers of the jour- 
 ney, left Philadelphia, journeyed to IMontreal, and 
 conferred with the generals in camp. He had hardly 
 
HON. JAMES M. DECK. ,, 
 
 returned to Philadelphia before he >vas elected to 
 a Constitutional Convention to frame a Constitution 
 for the province, ot which convention he was unani- 
 mously chosen president. Not least in honor he 
 w-as appointed by Congress one of the Committee 
 of Five to draft the Declaration of Independence 
 These were the labors of Hercules, and it is not sur- 
 prising that we find him writing to Dr. Priestley 
 hat they commenced at six in the morning with the 
 Committee of Safety, where he worked tmtil nine 
 when he went to Congress, which was in session 
 until four o clock m the afternoon, while the re- 
 "lamder of the day until far in the night was spent 
 in conferring with the various committtes and s ipe 
 vising with his marvelous knowledge of detail and 
 executive capacity the intricate and arduous work 
 ernn'enr '°'"'^"^""S '^-' defending a new Gov- 
 
 i- ranee he was unanimously elected. It was no 
 small or easy task for him at his time of lire with 
 Hng ish privateers guarding the ocean, to ac«p 
 
 hesnation or fear of consequences he at once said 
 to Dr Rush, who sat next to him, "I am old and 
 good for nothing, but, as the sto;ekeepers ay of 
 their remnants of cloth, <I am but a fag end vot 
 may have me for what you please.' " ^ When he 
 reached Pans the afjairs of America were desperate 
 but he soon procured substantial assistance in 
 
 of a L'ce 'T-rV'T "" ■^"-'■-P-tant trea" 
 o alhance. He finally became the sole Minister 
 
 a a""sin:;i'"7 I" rr''] """' ™"^ ^'^ ^-"^sl 
 as a single clerk did work which has rarely been 
 
 st^rpassed either in importance or difficulty ^n the 
 
 whole annals of diplomacy. His duties were far 
 
36 ADDRESS OF 
 
 more than those of a diplomat. They became those 
 of the treasurer of the United States, for when re- 
 sources were exhausted and credit gone, and Robert 
 Morris was begging from door to door on his per- 
 sonal credit the means to keep Washington's army- 
 together and prevent its disintegration, Congress, 
 in its last bitter extremity, had recourse to draw- 
 ing bills on Dr. Franklin, with a sublime faith that 
 in some way the genius of the old man would enable 
 him to meet them. He wrote to Mr. Jay, "The 
 stream of bills which I found coming upon us both 
 has terrified and vexed me to such a degree that I 
 have been deprived of sleep, and so much indisposed 
 by continual anxiety as to be rendered almost in- 
 capable of writing." Washington wrote to Frank- 
 lin, showing the desperate nature of the crisis, "We 
 must have one of two things — peace or money from 
 France," and to the same import came letters from 
 Robert Morris and other members of Congress. 
 Franklin wrote a letter to De Vergennes, wdiich ap- 
 pealed so strongly both to the chivalry and interest 
 of France that he obtained six million francs for 
 immediate transmission to America, a gift the more 
 remarkable when we consider that France was her- 
 self at war, and in sore need of its sinews. 
 
 His labors became so arduous that when the crisis 
 was passed he requested to be relieved. The only 
 reply was to add to his heavy burdens by appoint- 
 ing him commissioner with Adams and Jay to con- 
 sider the tenders of peace, and, undaunted by the 
 immensity of his labors and by his unbroken fifty 
 years of public service, he proceeded to conduct and 
 supervise these negotiations with both England and 
 France. On his return from France, after nine 
 years of absence and arduous toil, he might well 
 have pleaded exemption from further service. He 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECK. 37 
 
 was then seventy-nine years of age, sufifering from 
 an incurable malady, which made any motion on his 
 part painful to the verge of torture, and yet he had 
 hardly returned to America before he was elected 
 the first President of Pennsylvania and a member 
 of the Federal Convention to frame the Constitu- 
 tion. Well could he say with his usual good nature, 
 "I have not firmness enough to resist a unanimous 
 desire of my country folk, and I find myself har- 
 nessed again in their service for another year. They 
 engrossed the prime of my life, they have eaten my 
 flesh, and seem resolved now to pick my bones." 
 Twice he was reelected President of the State, and 
 served as its chief executive, although sick and in- 
 firm in health and past his eightieth year. 
 
 Elected to the Constitutional Convention, he sat 
 as a member for nearly four months, and his services 
 on the floor were invaluable. It was he — the so- 
 called atheist — who proposed at a critical time that 
 the help of God should be invoked by prayer to 
 solve difTficulties which seemed insuperable, and in 
 which he uttered the well-known sentence, which — 
 "lest we forget" — should be written in letters of 
 gold upon the Capitol of our country: — 
 
 "I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I 
 live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, 
 that God governs in the affairs of men, and if a 
 sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His 
 notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without 
 his aid?" 
 
 When disagreement with consequent disruption 
 of the Confederation seemed inevitable on the ques- 
 tion of representation, it was Franklin who pro- 
 posed the happy expedient which solved the dif^- 
 culty, of an equal representation of all the States 
 in the Senate and a proportionate representation in 
 
38 ADDRESS OF 
 
 the House, and it is within the bounds of sober 
 statement to say that this happy compromise saved 
 the Constitution and with it the nation. When, 
 their arduous labors ended, the members voted for 
 the Constitution, it was again the sage old doctor 
 who gained the formal approval to the instrument 
 of a considerable minority by one of his most tact- 
 ful and witty speeches, but for which unanimity, 
 adoption by the States might have been impossible. 
 It was he, prophet and sage as well as statesman, 
 who, when the members were signing the immortal 
 instrument, looked "towards the President's chair, 
 at the back of which a rising sun happened to be 
 painted, and observed to the few members near him 
 that painters had found it difficult to distinguish 
 in their art a rising from a setting sun," and there- 
 upon this old man, who knew that he could not live 
 to see the prosperity and greatness of his beloved 
 country, to whose construction he had given the 
 mighty labors of his life, and who knew, that like 
 Moses from Pisgah's height, he could only view 
 from afar the promised land, but not enter, said, "I 
 have often and often in the course of this session 
 and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to 
 its issue, looked behind the President without being 
 able to tell whether it was rising or setting, and 
 now at length I have the happiness to know that it 
 is a rising and not a setting sun." 
 
 These varied positions of trust and honor were the 
 estimate placed upon Franklin by those who knew 
 him in his life, and it cannot be that posterity will 
 be content to value less public services so unequaled 
 in extent, variety, and importance. Indeed, the best 
 tribute to Franklin may have been that of a revolu- 
 tionary club in Paris, which in celebrating his death 
 placed his bust, crowned with oak leaves, on a ped- 
 
HON. JAMKS M. iJECK. 30 
 
 estal, upon which was written the single word "Vir." 
 It expresses the whole truth. In the vigor of his 
 Ijody, strength of his mind, and magnificent cour- 
 age of his heart, he was preeminently a man, of 
 \\hom one can say, in the sublime words of the 
 greatest of his race, "What a piece of work is man! 
 how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in 
 form and moving, how express and admirable! in 
 action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like 
 a god!" 
 
 Such is the man in whose honor we are met to- 
 day. We are assembled to accept at the hands of 
 one of the most public spirited of our townsmen a 
 noble statue of Philadelphia's greatest citizen, and 
 1 would fail to voice your sentiments or my own, 
 did I not express to the generous donor of this 
 statue our appreciation as a community of a gift, 
 which will not only serve for centuries to come to 
 adorn one of our leading thoroughfares, but will call 
 to the mind of generations yet unborn the incom- 
 parable achievements of the printer of Philadelphia. 
 It is also a source of gratification that this noble 
 work of art is itself the product of a Philadelphia 
 sculptor, for whom as yet there has been, after our 
 manner as a community, but too scant recognition, 
 to whom we also extend our cordial congratulations. 
 The location of the statue is most appropriate. 
 Situated in front of the Federal Building, it will 
 call to mind the imposing part which Franklin 
 played in the founding of the Republic. Standing 
 upon the former site of the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania, it will serve to remind our people of that 
 great institution of learning, which Franklin did so 
 much to develop, and whose advancement should 
 be the object of our earnest solicitude. 
 
 More than this, the statue should serve to call 
 
40 ADDRESS OF 
 
 to our minds, even though it result in our humih- 
 ation, our neglect of his memory. Indeed, the very 
 suggestion of this statue came from the strange in- 
 difference of Philadelphia to the memory of her 
 greatest son. The generous donor of this statue at- 
 tended a dinner several years ago with one, who, 
 if I believed in the transmigration of souls, I would 
 think was Franklin re-incarnated, for I know of no 
 one of this generation who in the versatility of his 
 accomplishments, vigor of mind, never-tiring indus- 
 try and loyal devotion to the public good, more re- 
 sembled Franklin than the late Dr. William Pepper. 
 At this dinner Dr. Pepper commented upon the fact 
 that although Franklin was dead for more than a 
 century, Philadelphia had failed to commemorate 
 his incomparable services to his city, his country, 
 and mankind by any fitting or adequate memorial. 
 Inspired by this suggestion, Mr. Justus C. Straw- 
 bridge has added another to his long list of useful 
 and for the most part unknown benefactions. 
 
 Philadelphia is slow — in self-appreciation. She 
 does not, like the mother of the Gracchi, say to her 
 talented children, "These are my jewels," but on the 
 contrary seems strangely indififerent to her offspring. 
 For her noble founder, one of the loftiest spirits of 
 his century, she has no adequate memorial, unless 
 we accept the bronze monstrosity on the tower of 
 the City Hall. She has permitted the mortal re- 
 mains of Franklin to rest in a neglected corner of 
 an abandoned cemetery, and his very dwelling to be 
 destroyed. The heroic devotion of her great finan- 
 cier, Robert Morris, she gratefully rewarded with 
 imprisonment in a debtor's jail, and to this hour no 
 statue exists to commemorate his services. She 
 maligned Girard after he had risked his life to save 
 her people from the deadly scourge of the yellow 
 
HON. JAMES M. HIXK. 4I 
 
 fever, and when he had made her the legatee of an 
 imperial fortune, it was not until sixty-six years after 
 his death that Philadelphia honored him with a pulj- 
 lic statue. For Rittenhouse, Bartram, Wilson, 
 Kane, Rush, Gross, Leidy, and Pepper she has not 
 as yet placed so much as one stone upon another to 
 commemorate their services to learning and man- 
 kind. Florence has a single street, upon w'hich, as 
 an evidence of civic pride, are statues of her mighty 
 sons, of Petrarch, Giotto, Michael Angelo, Machia- 
 velli, Boccacio, Dante, Cellini, and Savonarola. Phil- 
 adelphia, far from honoring until to-day its one great 
 citizen of cosmopolitan rank and dignity, has pre- 
 ferred to disparage his memory, and when a few 
 months ago an English lecturer, Mr. Hudson Shaw, 
 in the course of a lecture upon the American Revo- 
 lution, threw the face of Franklin upon a screen, 
 a portion of the audience deliberately hissed it. And 
 yet, if there w^ere one whose tireless industry shaped 
 and mouldcfl Philadelphia, to whom we are indebted 
 for the foundation of most that is good in our pub- 
 lic life, who from the time that he retired from busi- 
 ness to give his life to the public good, labored un- 
 ceasingly to advance his city and country, w^ho has 
 made her name famous through the civilized world, 
 and w^ho never had for the city of his adoption other 
 than a helpful and kindly word, that man was Dr. 
 Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 I am not unaware of the witticism that the great- 
 est of Philadelphians was a Bostonian, or, as Dr. 
 Holmes has paraphrased it, that Franklin was a "citi- 
 zen of Boston who dwelt for a little while in Phila- 
 delphia." The mot may be witty, but is lacking in 
 truth. The two greatest factors in human develop- 
 ment are heredity and environment. So far as the 
 former is concerned Franklin is not the product of 
 
42 ADDRESS OF 
 
 Boston. If heredity be alone considered, it should 
 be Dr. Benjamin Franklin of England, for not only 
 his ancestry but his immediate parents were English. 
 Boston exercised but little influence in the moulding 
 of Franklin's character, for he spent but few of his 
 conscious, intelligent years in its streets. With the 
 noble Boston of our day, the Boston of Emerson, 
 Longfellow, Dr. Holmes, Garrison, Wendell Phillips, 
 Agazzis, and Dr. Gray, Franklin would have been in 
 entire sympathy, but with the Boston which cut off 
 ears, bored tongues, branded faces, slit noses, and 
 whipped women for the expression of harmless opin- 
 ions, he could have no fellowship. Philadelphia, 
 alone of American communities, had at that time a 
 spirit sufficiently cosmopolitan and tolerant of opin- 
 ion to allow the great soul of Franklin to grow, and 
 he is as much a part of her as the oak is a part of 
 the ground from which it derives its sustenance. So 
 great a personality as Franklin's cannot, however, 
 be "cribbed, cabined, and confined" within any one 
 community. Unquestionably Paris and Eondon, as 
 well as Philadelphia and Boston, helped to mould his 
 character, and, rightly considered, it is Benjamin 
 Franklin, not of Philadelphia alone, nor of America, 
 but Benjamin Franklin of the world, one of the 
 greatest of the noble order of cosmopolites. Never- 
 theless, so far as he had any local habitation, it was 
 Philadelphia, and it was with no unmeaning phrase 
 that at the end of his life he wrote himself down for 
 all time as "Benjamin FrankHn, of Philadelphia, 
 printer." In so doing he conferred upon his adopted 
 city a lasting honor, for to be the city of Franklin is 
 to be forever "no mean city." 
 
 Why has our city failed to fully recognize the 
 honor done her, or to show her pride in the achieve- 
 ments of her mighty son? Certain hereditary prej- 
 
HON. JAMES M. lilXK. 43 
 
 udices, which should have died more than a century 
 ago, still continue, by a mysterious kind of atavism, 
 to affect a portion of our people. There were Phila- 
 delphians in his time who disliked him, partly be- 
 cause he was a noviis homo, or self-made man, partly 
 because of his religious convictions which were heter- 
 odox, partly because of the envy which success al- 
 ways inspires, but chiefly because in his long assault 
 on the selfish privileges of the Penns and his constant 
 assertion of democratic principles, he had incurred 
 the dislike and opposition of the select few, who 
 formed what was then called society. Time was 
 when in Philadelphia it was not "fashionable" to 
 visit Franklin. Time is when in a small and ever 
 decreasing circle it is not fashionable to praise him. 
 He had his failings and errors and was human. 
 Of these errata he frankly speaks. His morality was 
 that of his age — an age which still applauded Con- 
 greve, and whose heroes of fiction were "Tom Jones" 
 and "Peregrine Pickle," and in which a minister 
 could write "Tristam Shandy." Franklin was better 
 than his age in this, that he did not pay to virtue, 
 as others did, the crowning insult of hypocrisy. The 
 worst we know of him we know from his own pen, 
 and to me there is a moral heroism in the fact that 
 when this old man, honored with the esteem of the 
 great and good of three nations, wrote his auto- 
 biography, he freely and without extenuation for the 
 welfare of the American youth and in expiation, 
 called attention to the errors of his life. To me this 
 was as heroic as was the conduct of Dr. Johnson, 
 when at the height of his fame he remembered that 
 as a boy he had refused to sell books in a market 
 stall for his father, and went to the market place 
 and stood with bared head in the presence of a curi- 
 ous crowd in penance for his wrong of many years 
 before. 
 
44 addrf:ss of 
 
 It is said that he was a time-serving opportunist, 
 but surely no charge can have less justilication. 
 From the time when as a boy of seventeen he bat- 
 tled for the liberty of the press by taking his 
 brother's place as editor of the New England Courant, 
 when the latter was thrown into a loathsome prison, 
 to his last year, when, within twenty-four days of his 
 death, he wrote his noble protest against slavery, 
 Franklin's life was one long, manly, continuous, and 
 courageous protest against wrong. His whole pub- 
 lic career was a protest against existing abuses. 
 When even Christian ministers were defendinfr from 
 their pulpits the massacre of Christianized Indians, 
 it was Franklin who in the very teeth of popular sen- 
 timent called murder murder, and went forth to 
 meet the bloodthirsty rioters and turned them from 
 their murderous intent. True, he was not a vision- 
 ary idealist. Recognizing that all progress is an 
 evolution, he was content to take one step at a time. 
 He fought vigorously against the Stamp Act, but 
 when it was passed he advised his countrymen to 
 avoid any violence, for he believed with Washington 
 and Jefferson that the colonies were not yet ready 
 to resist by force the demands of Great Britain, and 
 like them he believed in and sought to preserve as 
 long as possible the unity of the English empire. 
 He was intensely practical and was never carried 
 away with the hysteria of tea parties or other violent 
 outbreaks. But when the embattled farmers fired 
 the first shot Franklin threw himself into the con- 
 flict with all the ardor of his mighty heart, and was 
 so radical that he joined hands with Sam Adams in 
 the proposition that if all of the colonies would not 
 join in the Declaration of Independence it should 
 be the act of such as would. When he learned that 
 it was proposed to re-enact the Stamp Act he wrote, 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECK. 45 
 
 "I have some little property in America. I will 
 freely spend nineteen shillings in the pound to de- 
 fend my right of giving or refusing the other shilling, 
 and, after all, if 1 cannot defend that right I can re- 
 tire cheerfully with my little family into the bound- 
 less woods of America, which are sure to afford free- 
 dom and subsistence to any man who can bait a 
 hook or pull a trigger." In the first days of the 
 Revolution he remained in London when it was no 
 longer safe for him to do so, and when he was under 
 the imminent peril of arrest and confinement, and 
 when later, in Paris, the agents of the English Em- 
 bassy sought to bribe him with the promise of a life- 
 long pension and a peerage, Franklin scornfully re- 
 plied, "These propositions of delivering ourselves 
 bound and gagged, ready for hanging, without even 
 the right to complain, without a friend to be found 
 afterward among all mankind, you would have us 
 embrace upon the faith of an Act of Parliament. 
 Good God, an Act of your Parliament! This dem- 
 onstrates you do not yet know us, and you fancy 
 we do not know you, but it is not merely this flimsy 
 faith we are to act upon. You offer us hope, the 
 hope of places, pensions, and peerages. These, judg- 
 ing from yourselves, you think are motives irresisti- 
 ble. We consider it as a sort of tar and feather 
 honor, or a mixture of foulness and folly, which every 
 man among us, who should accept it from your 
 king, would be obliged to renounce or exchange for 
 that conferred by the mobs of their own country, or 
 wear it with everlasting infamy." 
 
 It is claimed that he w^as selfish, grasping, and 
 avaricious, but to this criticism his whole life is a 
 consistent denial. From the time that he landed in 
 Philadelphia, when he shared his last dollar with a 
 poor woman, to the time when he gave to his city 
 
46 ADDRESS OF 
 
 a considerable portion of his fortune in the hope, pa- 
 thetically expressed, that he could be "useful even 
 after my death," his life was a constant benefaction. 
 It was no niggard who at forty-two gave up a lucra- 
 tive business to give his life to public services, who 
 taught the political doctrine that public officials 
 should not be compensated, who, having invented 
 an object of great utility, the Franklin stove, de- 
 clined a patent and preferred to share its usefulness 
 with the rest of mankind without any profit to him- 
 self, and who on the eve of his departure to Paris 
 gathered together all available funds, at the time 
 when the cause of the Republic seemed darkest, and 
 gave its use to the Continental Congress, and who 
 finally gave to both the cities of Boston and Phila- 
 delphia public bequests, of which we are even now 
 reaping the benefit. Few men have ever made a 
 freer or more generous use for the public good, not 
 only of his pecuniary means but of the abilities with 
 which he had been endowed by God. 
 
 Franklin is worthy of our admiration. As modern 
 life becomes more complex the race grows, the in- 
 dividual wanes, and it can be fairly questioned 
 whether, taking him for all in all, we will ever look 
 upon his like again. Detraction cannot lessen his 
 greatness, for, as Poor Richard says: "Act uprightly 
 and despise calumny; dirt may stick to a mud wall 
 but not to polished marble." 
 
 You will pardon me a final thought. Franklin 
 cared little for mere rhetoric as rhetoric. Unless it 
 served a useful purpose, it was to him as "sounding 
 brass and a tinkling cymbal," and I cannot there- 
 fore imitate his spirit better than in venturing to 
 submit in conclusion some practical suggestions as 
 to how we can redeem our neglect of this great 
 man. I venture to make the following suggestions 
 
HON. JAMES M. BECK. 
 
 Which Philadelphia could and should carry out to 
 honor l^ranklin, and all of them would he less than 
 IS merited by his incomparable public services 
 
 His remams rest in a neglected and abandoned 
 cemetery. We should reverently exhume th m to 
 gether ..th those of his wife, and give them fit'tin^ 
 sepulture m that sacred edifice, which once echoed 
 to his footsteps, and within whose walls he did his 
 greatest work. In a sarcophagus of polished granit 
 not inferior in its natural beauty to that of the greai 
 Napoleon, and placed m the hallway of Independence 
 Ha 1 hjs remams should rest, so that the generations 
 whch in coming centuries shall pass through this 
 birthplace of American liberty, can see the la!t resl 
 mg place of the great philosopher, and know that 
 Philadelphia fitly honors her greatest son 
 
 tinn\' -^ll^^'^^/'^^-^'tP ^"^ advance the great institu- 
 tions which he either founded or which bear his 
 name^ With the abundant wealth of Philadelphia 
 and Pennsylvania we can make the University of 
 Pennsylvania in the coming century the greatest in 
 he western hemisphere, and our Commonwealth 
 should do this, m recognition of the services to the 
 cause of higher education, of its first President 
 Benjamin Franklin. Philadelphia should provide 
 or the further development of the new public 
 library, which might well be called the Franklin 
 Library, and of the Franklin Institute, which, while 
 It was not founded by him, yet in view of its es- 
 pecial objects fittingly bears his name. Indeed the 
 city of Philadelphia should condemn for the purposes 
 of a public plaza the plot of ground between Broad 
 and Fifteenth and Filbert and Arch, and then give 
 permission both to the Franklin Institute and the 
 Philadelphia Library to erect noble temples on the 
 
48 ADDRESS OF 
 
 eastern and western fronts, and the plaza, which 
 would thus be between the institute and the library, 
 could fittingly be called the Franklin Plaza. 
 
 To that France, which welcomed him and which 
 sent to us its knightly Lafayette, we owe an especial 
 debt. In her queenly city by the Seine Franklin 
 lived and worked for nine years. Passy is now a part 
 of Paris, and upon it is in part the site of the next 
 great Exposition. To Philadelphia, in its Centennial 
 year, Paris made a noble gift. Let us before another 
 year and on the occasion of the coming Exposition 
 send to Paris a replica of this noble statue, in memory 
 of Franklin and as a reciprocal pledge of our lasting 
 friendship and good-will. 
 
 The truest monument to Franklin is Philadelphia 
 herself, and we can best honor his memory by giving 
 to the city which he so dearly loved the best labor 
 and service, of which our hands and minds are capa- 
 ble. To do this we must have the enlightened 
 spirit of a city of cosmopolitan rank and dignity. 
 We must make Philadelphia as Franklin sought to 
 make her, beautiful. Philadelphia is the one city, 
 which in its very name recalls that little nation of 
 antiquity, whose glorious achievements in peace and 
 war, in literature and art, still make her fame un- 
 diminished and imperishable. America is young and 
 the long centures are before her. The race for civic 
 supremacy is still to be run. Let Philadelphia but 
 have the spirit of her Franklin, let each of her peo- 
 ple but give to her, as he did, the best service of 
 his hand and brain, and it will come to pass that on 
 the banks of the Delaware, and in a republic grander 
 than was Greece, there will rise a new Athens, and 
 a more perfect "City of the violet crown." 
 
HON. JOSIAH QUINCY. ^g 
 
 Hon. Josiah Quincy, Mayor of Boston, was then 
 introduced by Mr. Eugene Ellicott. 
 
 ADDRESS OF HON. JOSIAH QUINCY, 
 
 Mayor of Boston. 
 
 When I received the kind invitation of the dis- 
 tinguished body under whose auspices these exer- 
 cises are held to-day, I was highly gratified, as it 
 seemed to me that the city of Boston had to be rep- 
 resented on this occasion. 
 
 The orator of the day has just spoken of Frank- 
 lin's connection with Boston, and has claimed him 
 for Philadelphia. I think that both cities can equally 
 well claim him. Boston's claim to Franklin is that 
 he was born there; that he lived there for fifteen 
 years; that he came from Boston parents, and that 
 at the close of his life he retained enough recollection 
 of Boston, the city of his birth, to make to it, with 
 Philadelphia, a unique bequest, which would reach 
 maturity one hundred years after his death. The 
 city of Boston thus holds to-day a fund of over 
 $300,000, which is being put to a use that will well 
 perpetuate his memory and will carry out a project 
 which was dear to the heart of Franklin. 
 
 Is there any doubt that there was no statesman 
 of his time in the United States save he who could 
 h.ave brought about the alliance between this country 
 and the powerful French nation? He was so great 
 that no locality can call him wholly its own. Bos- 
 ton, Philadelphia, and the entire country can rejoice 
 that Benjamin Franklin was an American. 
 
 From the window of my official office in the City 
 Hall, in Boston, I can look out and see a bronze 
 statue erected to the memory of Franklin, and this 
 is meet, because within a stone's throw of that same 
 
50 ADDRESS OF HON. JOSIAH QUINCY. 
 
 City Hall the parents of Franklin lived and that 
 great genius was born. 
 
 When we in Boston, some years ago, sought for 
 a name to give our greatest park, we chose that of 
 Franklin. While, indeed, most of his career was 
 associated with Philadelphia, we of Boston also hold 
 him in as deep and grateful remembrance as the 
 city wherein to-day a statue is dedicated to him. 
 
 It is a pleasing and proper thing that Philadelphia 
 recognizes her great obligation to her famous son 
 by the erection and completion of a splendid monu- 
 ment. 
 
 Franklin accomplished his great work by his early 
 determination to educate himself, and to make him- 
 self a master of the English language, and his fixity 
 of purpose to so know his mother tongue that he 
 could express in it his most subtle thoughts. He 
 above all others of his early days, helped lay the 
 foundation of American independence, and in the 
 unveiling of his monument to-day Philadelphia does 
 honor to one of her greatest citizens. 
 
Ube Ceremonies in J^ront of tbe 
 Ipost ©ffice 
 
Cbe Ccremoniee In ifront ot the [Post Cttice 
 
 At the conclusion of Mayor Quincy's remarks the 
 audience adjourned to the plaza on the south side 
 of the Post Office Building-, where the statue of 
 Franklin had been erected. A large number of citi- 
 zens were assembled, and Postmaster-General Smith 
 made the following presentation speech in behalf of 
 the donor, Mr. Justus C. Strawbridge. At the con- 
 clusion of his address the statue was unv^iiJed by Miss 
 Margaret Hartman Bache, a descendant of Franklin. 
 
 ADDRFSS OF HON. CIJARLES EMORY SMITH, 
 
 Postmaster-Genera] of the United States. 
 
 Mr. Mayor and F£llow-Citizen.s: — The high 
 public spirit and the generous munificence of a pri- 
 vate citizen always modest, but ever active and dis- 
 tinguished for his good works, give to Philadelphia 
 this noble statue of her most illustrious representa- 
 tive. 
 
 Not only is Benjamin Franklin the preeminent 
 and unrivaled name in more than two hundred years 
 of civic history, but he remains the typical Philadel- 
 phian. In his consummate moral and mental struc- 
 ture, with its rare union of sense, sobriety, wisdom, 
 and quiet power, were concentrated and sublimated 
 the essence and the attributes of the city and the 
 people which he did so much to mould and upon 
 which he conferred so much lustre. 
 
 ^53) 
 
54 ADDRESS OF 
 
 He was, indeed, far more than the first Roman of 
 his Rome. He was a founder of the nation and a 
 citizen of the globe. Among ah the masters even of 
 the creative period of our history, only Washington 
 shared his world-wide fame. In many-sided great- 
 ness Franklin was foremost of all. But wide as was 
 his reach and deep as was his impress, to us he 
 remains the matchless representative of our special 
 heritage in whom our pride is centred and to whom 
 our never-ceasing homage is offered. 
 
 Other memorials of Franklin rise in this city of 
 his home. The University, advancing its ever-broad- 
 ening sphere, stands as his sentient and enduring 
 monument. The Philosophical Society, with its 
 scholarly traditions, perpetuates his scientific side. 
 The many institutions, equally of learning and of 
 philanthropy, illustrate and commemorate his com- 
 prehensive thought and activity. Above all, that 
 fame which is universal and immortal, which springs 
 from deathless deeds and is part of the world's prog- 
 ress, erects and preserves his shrine in every mind 
 and heart. The walls of St. Paul's Cathedral point 
 to the memorial of its great architect in the legend: 
 'Tf you would see his monument, look about you." 
 If you would see the monument of Franklin, look 
 wherever American greatness spreads its influence 
 and wherever conspicuous service to mankind is re- 
 membered. 
 
 But it is peculiarly fit that this distinct commem- 
 orative work, rich and strong in the grace and glory 
 of art, the gift of a Philadelphia donor and the crea- 
 tion of a Philadelphia sculptor, should rise on this 
 spot. There is a singular felicity in its suggestion 
 and its environment. Franklin was the first Post- 
 master-General of the United American Colonies, 
 and his benignant figure is here to signalize and em- 
 
HON. CHARLES EMORY SMITH, cc 
 
 hellish this great Post Office, which illustrates the 
 present magnitude of the service he began. He was 
 the founder of the University, and here is its ancient 
 site. He was the foremost journalist of the Colo- 
 nies, and the statue of the typical printer appropri- 
 ately stands here as an enduring emblem and model 
 on the line of what has become Newspaper Row. 
 He was preeminently the man of the people, voic- 
 ing their daily thought and mingling in their daily 
 work, and here, where he himself in his living form 
 trod the street, is the focus of their daily exchange. 
 Place, theme, symbol, association, and artistic treat- 
 ment, all blend in harmonious and significant union 
 in this worthy memorial. 
 
 The lofty tower on yonder City Hall is crowned 
 w^ith the colossal statue of William Penn. It is fit 
 that from his serene and commanding height the 
 Pioneer should overlook the city he founded. But 
 more directly interwoven with the career and im- 
 pulse of the growing community, actually spanning 
 one-third of the city's entire life and guiding it 
 through its critical history, it is no less fit that the 
 master printer, postmaster, and leader, the peerless 
 philosopher, diplomatist, and statesman, should for- 
 ever look out upon this scene in the midst of the 
 surging throng and in the centre of all the currents 
 of activity. 
 
 And now. on behalf of Mr. Justus C. Strawbridge, 
 who presents this statue of Benjamin Franklin to the 
 city of Philadelphia, I commit it, Mr. Mayor, to 
 your keeping, to be reverently guarded and cherished 
 through all the coming years as a constant exemplar 
 and a perpetual inspiration for the people. 
 
56 ADDRESS OF 
 
 Postmaster-General Smith's presentation speech 
 was followed by an address by the Mayor of Philadel- 
 phia, who, as the representative of the city, formally 
 accepted the statue. His speech ended the cere- 
 monies of the day. 
 
 ADDRESS OF HON. SAMUEL H. ASHBRIDGE, 
 Mayor of Philadelphia. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : — On behalf of the city 
 of Philadelphia, whose chief executive officer I have 
 the honor to be, I gladly accept this beautiful statue. 
 It is a lasting and appropriate monument which 
 justly celebrates a great man. The memory of 
 Franklin has ever been dear to the hearts of Philadel- 
 phians. He was one of its most honored citizens, 
 and his achievements brought fame not alone to him, 
 but to the municipality and to the nation. He was 
 great in his inventive genius, great in his diplomacy 
 and statesmanship, and great in his philanthropy. 
 
 His career through life was typical of the push 
 aijd energy of American youth. He began in Phila- 
 delphia with his single loaf of bread, and advanced 
 step by step through energy and self-sacrifice, 
 through perseverance and ability, until he became a 
 recognized authority, not only in the arts and 
 sciences, not only in education and scholarship, but 
 in the nobler attributes of patriotism and right living. 
 He was a domestic man who did not forget the 
 small things of life nor the encouragement due the 
 weak by the strong. He was an artisan himself. 
 He was at once the printer's apprentice and the 
 patron saint of the "Art Preservative." He was a 
 moulder of stoves and the philosopher who reasoned 
 
HON. SAMUEL H. ASH BRIDGE. ry 
 
 with the elements. He was the modest and lowly 
 husband and father, living unostentatiously among 
 his neighbors at home, and at the same time was 
 the pride and flower of diplomacy and learning in the 
 tinseled courts of Europe. 
 
 In all things he was intensely American. In all 
 things he was for Philadelphia. His handiwork is 
 seen in history's pages in the municipal development 
 of our city. He dealt with the questions which con- 
 front us to-day. He was a soldier enlisted to pro- 
 tect the homes of Philadelphians. He was a citizen 
 who contended with the problems of water and 
 highways and municipal conveniences, even as we 
 contend with them. 
 
 The city has reason to be proud of the great men 
 who have gone, and Benjamin Franklin is one whose 
 memory comes closer to the hearts of those who ad- 
 mire the Philadelphia type of man more than any 
 other. 
 
 The memory of Franklin has never been forgotten. 
 It never can be. The work achieved by him was as 
 lasting as the bronze statue unveiled in his honor to- 
 day. In their patriotism and in their pride, the citi- 
 zens have not forgotten to honor Franklin and do 
 justice to his memory. They have been lax only in 
 outward demonstration. Happily for them, there 
 has arisen one citizen keenly alive to that chord of 
 sympathy which finds an echo to-day in every Phila-. 
 delphia heart. It has been left for Mr. Justus C. 
 Strawbridge to erect this monument and to remove 
 forever a suggestion of neglect with which our citi- 
 zens are sometimes charged. No Philadelphian will 
 regret the work that has been done; none will deny 
 to Mr. Strawbridge the praise and honor which are 
 so properly his, and which he so diffidently accepts. 
 He has merely given voice to the expression of the 
 
$8 ADDRESS OF HON. SAMUEL H. ASIIBRIDGE. 
 
 love and esteem of all the people for one of the 
 great men in the history of Philadelphia and in the 
 annals of the nation. 
 
 For the city of Philadelphia, I accept this statue 
 as the voluntary gift of Mr. Strawbridge, and extend 
 to him my congratulations upon the unanimity with 
 which the people approve his generous act. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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