CHAP, xxv A CONGENIAL FRIENDSHIP 315 



succeeded in obtaining from the British government a 

 decision that the rich estates of the Penns should share 

 in the general taxation of the colony. Two years longer 

 Franklin remained in London, engaged on other colonial 

 business, writing many pamphlets and articles, and often 

 in conference with the British Ministers on matters of 

 imperial policy. During these five years he lived in 

 lodgings in Craven Street, Strand, where he was attended 

 by Dr. Fothergill on occasions of illness. 1 



A friendship grew up between Franklin and Fothergill. 

 There was much in the characters of these two men to 

 make them congenial. They were nearly of an age ; both 

 were men of uncommon industry, pursuing lives to 

 unselfish ends. Both possessed a keen insight into 

 human nature, and a power of dealing with their fellows, 

 which brought them extraordinary success in their own 

 lines of action. Both were by temperament prudent and 

 patient men, wary in action and in speech. In each the 

 love of liberty was deeply set ; and their outlook upon 

 the world was benevolent in the truest sense, so that they 

 were social reformers, in whom the power to see the needs 

 of the community around them was allied with a ready 

 will to apply the remedy. Both, again, were lovers of 

 nature and keen students of physical science. They were 

 both religious, in that a trust in God was the basis of 

 character in each, but its outcome was strict and scrupu- 

 lous conviction in the case of Fothergill, whilst Franklin's 

 faith was neither rigorous nor dogmatic. 2 Franklin was 



1 The house was numbered 7 (now No. 36) in a row of modest brick houses, 

 which must then have been new, in this small street leading down from the 

 Strand to the river. In Oct. 1757, Franklin suffered from vertigo, a humming 

 tinnitus, and vision of faint twinkling lights. Letter to Fothergill, Amer. Phil. 

 Soc. Calendar, xlvi. 18. 



2 Franklin had written some years earlier : " I have not the vanity to 

 think I deserve [Heaven], the folly to expect it, nor the ambition to desire it ; 

 but content myself in submitting to the will and disposal of that God who 

 made me, who has hitherto preserved and blessed me, and in whose fatherly 

 goodness I may well confide, that he will never make me miserable, and that 

 even the afflictions I may at any time suffer shall tend to my benefit." Works 

 of kindness, mercy and public spirit were better, he added, than holiday- 

 keeping, sermon-hearing, or ceremonies. Letter to Joseph Huey, 1753, Smyth, 

 iii. 143. The liberal Priestley, who was intimate with Franklin, laments that 

 he was an unbeliever in Christianity. Mem. Priestley, 1904, p. 58. When the 

 Convention was framing the constitution of the United States in 1787, and 



