76 Choate: Franklin 



great affairs, in the very prime of life, known and hon- 

 ored by all men in all civilized lands, he was to enter 

 upon forty years of continuous public service of the 

 highest character and dignity. 



It is the ordinary fate of public men to leave no indel- 

 ible marks of their service to impress their memory upon 

 future generations. Most of them make a great impres- 

 sion upon their own time by their speeches. But the 

 published speeches of even great orators fill the shelves 

 of public libraries, unread and unopened, when their 

 contemporaries have passed away. I know of but two 

 in the English language, one upon either side of the 

 water — Burke and Webster — who continue to be gener- 

 ally read and studied by later generations. And Frank- 

 lin made no speeches. Like Washington, he is said 

 never to have spoken more than fifteen minutes at a 

 time on any subject. 



It was his peculiar felicity to have been concerned in 

 great actions, which speak, even to posterity, so much 

 louder than words, and which preserve to remote ages 

 the memory of the chief actors in them. To have stood 

 as the responsible representative of America for fifteen 

 years in England and for ten years in France, in periods 

 most critical for those countries and his own, and so to 

 have lived history at its best and most interesting points 

 of time; to have been the author of the first plan of 

 Union of the American colonies, which was the germ 



