84 Choate: Franklin 



form." He was a true imperialist in the broadest sense 

 of the term and dreamed of the future prowess of the 

 English race united all around the globe; and nobody 

 would have rejoiced more proudly than he, if he could 

 have looked across the gulf of time to our day to see 

 that race, divided into two great branches, but united 

 more truly and securely than in his day, standing together 

 with double power, with the common object of promot- 

 ing liberty and order and peace, not only in their own 

 dominions but the world over, which to him was always 

 an object so dear. 



Why need I dwell on the details of Franklin's subse- 

 quent political career, which have been made so familiar 

 to everybody in connection with the celebration of the 

 two hundredth anniversary of his birth? 



When he went again to England in 1764, in the vain 

 hope of preventing the passage of the Stamp Act, he 

 little dreamed that he would be detained there ten years 

 in the brave and constant struggle to maintain the rights 

 of the colonists, to keep the peace between them and the 

 mother country, and to preserve unbroken the union of 

 the race on which he had set his heart; that in the course 

 of this struggle he would incur by turns the hostility and 

 condemnation of both branches of the Empire, and that 

 it would end at last in the temporary defeat of all his 

 hopes and aspirations. 



He arrived too late to prevent the enactment of that 



