though "the darkness of old age" had now begun to invade him, and his concerns were both various and extensive, he should have carried himself and them successfully against the rivalry and interests of Benjamin Franklin. Through the whole term of Franklin's connection with the press in Philadelphia, the elder Bradford and his son or grandson conducted their journals with an ability which perfectly sustained them; and against the efforts, not very scrupulous ones either, of this celebrated man—to whom through four generations of their own families, they were constantly opposed, alike on concerns of business which touched very sharply the pecuniary interests of the great "economist and calculator"; on the exciting feuds of provincial politics, and finally, on the great questions of the Stamp Act,—to which the Bradfords were actively opposed—and the course of the Colonies in the early stages of the Revolution, wherein these persons were bold and confident—managed the concerns of their ofiices generally with steady success and honorable liberality. Franklin, with all his address and all his power, and an animosity difficult to understand in a temper so apparently placid as his, but equal to either, was never able to break them down. And in this country of quick changing names and scenes, it deserves a record, that long after the great philosopher and his successful rival in the business of printing, Andrew Bradford (son of that William whom we now commemorate) were moldering in the dust beside each other in the quiet graveyard of Christ Church, in that same place where more than a century before, the king of printers' had been received and entertained a friendless boy by a son of the aged colonist[1]—there yet stood, in a fifth generation—one hundred and forty years, at least, from the time it had been planted on that soil—pursuing still its labor, and bearing still its ancient and proprietary name, "The Printing Press of William Bradford."[2]
- ↑ Franklin mentions in his Autobiography that when he first went to Philadelphia, in his seventeenth year, he dressed himself as neat as he could and went to Andrew Bradford, the Printer. "He received me civilly, gave me a breakfast; told me 'I should be welcome to lodge at his house and he would give me a little work to do now and then till fuller business should offer.'"
- ↑ It appears, from the imprint of many books yet to be seen, that
