THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 169 



remarkable, to the mother-country. When the news of the great fire 

 in London, in 1666, reached Massachuselts, subscriptions of money 

 were made throughout the colony for the rehef of the sufferers. 



It appears, too, both from documentary history and from private cor- 

 respondence, how limited was the intercourse between the inhabitants 

 of the different colonies. In the biographies of men whose movements 

 are of sufficient consequence to be traced and recorded, but few in- 

 stances of the kind can be collected. Washington, in 1756, travelled 

 as far eastward as Boston, and in the next year he visited Philadelphia; 

 but both these visits were occasioned by peculiar demands of a public 

 nature connected with the old French war — the first, tor the purpose 

 of a personal interview with the commander-in chief. General Shirley; 

 the second, to attend a conference of governors and officers, summoned 

 by Lord Loudoun. These are, I believe, the only occasions,* before 

 the beginning of the Revolution, when he attended the Congress of 1774, 

 that Washington went to the northern or middle provinces. Mr. Quin- 

 cy's visit to the middle and southern colonies, immediatel\^ bell )re the 

 Revolution, was (as is obvious from the record of it) an undertaking of 

 quite an unusual character; in 1773, writing home Irom Charleston, he 

 speaks of "this distant shorey No other instance occurs now to my 

 recollection, except a visit to Boston of two of the Philadelphia 

 patriots — John Dickinson and Joseph Reed — a few years before the 

 war of independence. Even as late as the meeting of the first general 

 Congress — that, I mean, of 1774 — there is much, it appears to me, in 

 the private letters and other contemporary evidence of tliat period which 

 shows that when the delegates to that Congress assembled they came 

 together very much as strangers to each other personall}^ and repre- 

 senting, too, communities strange to each other but finding more con- 

 geniality than they had anticipated. 



[n thus noticing individual intercourse, as illustrative of the times, 

 there is one case, indeed, which I have not spoken of, because it is 

 clearly exceptional, and must so be considered in judging of the per- 

 gonal intercommunication during the colonial period. I refer to the 

 case of Dr. Franklin. Boston-born and Philadelphia-bred he had, no 

 doubt, in consequence a less provincial feeling, a more expanded sense 

 of citizenship, which was favored too by the course and opportunities 

 of his remarkable career, his personal activity, and his official posi- 

 tions. No man had so much to do with various colonies; for, not to 

 speak of his wanderings in bo^^hood, we find him, under his appoint- 

 ment in 1753 as Postmaster General for America, travellins; in his one- 

 horse wagon from Pennsylvania into New England. Again, in con- 

 ference with delegates from seven of the colonies at the Albany Con- 

 gress of 1754, busy at Boston with Governor Shirle}^ at Philadelphia 

 with a Massachusetts commissioner, and all in quick succession ; in 

 Maryland acting as a sort of unofficial quartermaster for General 

 Braddock; at a later period of colonial history, in England, uniting 

 the agencies of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Georgia. Now, al- 

 though undoubtedl}^ the formation of the Union is to be traced to causes 

 of deeper import than any mdividual influences, I cannot but think that 

 such various and extended intercourse as Dr. Franklin's must have 

 aided in no small degree in bringing about that community of civic 



