BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 547 



wards another French privateer sailed up the Delaware, and 

 within a fortnight Spanish privateers followed. The city 

 was terror-stricken, but the assembly remained obdurate 

 and would provide neither men nor money, arms nor forts. 

 The result was that Franklin stopped making electrical 

 experiments, wrote "Plain Truth," a pamphlet which de- 

 picted the horrors of war in a way that mightily stirred up 

 the people; raised money; built a battery and organized a 

 regiment. Fortunately no occasion rose for testing the 

 efficiency of the safeguards, for the war was ended by the 

 treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in October, 1748. 



Franklin now definitely determined to retire from busi- 

 ness and devote himself to the study of electricity. He 

 sold his newspaper, almanac and printing-house to David 

 Hall. The sum thus realized, added to the fortune which 

 he had amassed, and the revenue derived from places 

 which he held under the crown and the colony, gave him 

 abundant resources to enable him to live the life he most 

 desired, and which he described as "leisure to read, study, 

 make experiments and converse at large with such ingen- 

 ious and worthy men as are pleased to honor me with their 

 friendship or acquaintance." Meanwhile he had pur- 

 chased the apparatus which Dr. Spence had imported, and 

 had added some better instruments which the Proprietaries 

 had sent over from London. Thus well equipped and 

 relieved from all pressing cares, Franklin renewed his 

 researches; and at this task I leave him, in order to note 

 the progress which in the interim the European philoso- 

 phers had made, and the reception which his plus and 

 minus theory encountered in England. 



Watson's hypothesis prevailed in Great Britain. On the 

 continent, where international animosities had full play, 

 there was confusion. "As the French say," writes a 

 member of the Royal Society in the fall of I746, 1 "there 



J Phil. Trans., No. 481, p. 247. 



