Franklin aided the government zealously in the French war. He slyly extorted appropriations for military purposes from the Quakers in the Pennsylvania assembly. He helped General Braddock to get wagons from the Pennsylvania farmers upon Poor Richard's bond. After Braddock's defeat he himself took the field against hostile Indians and came near being made a general with an independent command.
But his destiny sent him to other fields of usefulness. The Pennsylvanians were constantly wrangling with their proprietaries, William Penn's sons. One of these was a miser, the other a spendthrift; both were blockheads and both bent upon squeezing as much money out of the colony as possible. To represent the interests of the colony near the home government Franklin was sent to England as the agent of Pennsylvania. Thus began his illustrious diplomatic career.
He was then fifty-one years old. Look at his past life. He had been a journeyman printer, a merchant's clerk, a boss printer, a journalist and an almanac maker, a fireman, the inventor of a stove, clerk of the general assembly, member of the same, alderman, justice of the peace, postmaster, militia colonel in active service, Postmaster-General, member and trustee of various boards and institutions, experimenter and discoverer in electricity, and inventor of the lightning-rod. He had achieved a great name in the world of science; he had in the meantime by industry and prudent management accumulated an independent fortune. Now he was a diplomat. A truly American career, and such it remained to the end.
Franklin had no training as a diplomat, just as he had no training as a man of science; but, as he had the scientific instinct, so he had the diplomatic instinct to perfection. True diplomacy is not, as some have said, the art of lying. It is the art of making truth pleasant; of combin-
