86 Choate: Franklin 



of Commons a Bill to Repeal, which was carried. The 

 Bill took its third reading in that House on the fifth of 

 March. It passed the House of Lords on the seventeenth 

 and on the eighteenth, five weeks after Franklin had 

 been heard, the King signed the Bill. Franklin cele- 

 brated the happy event in his own simple and charac- 

 teristic way by sending his wife a new gown, and wrote 

 her, "As the Stamp Act is at length repealed, I am will- 

 ing you should have a new gown, which you may sup- 

 pose I did not send sooner, as I knew you would not like 

 to be finer than your neighbors unless in a gown of your 

 own spinning." 



In the ten years that followed he labored incessantly 

 and ardently to maintain the cause of union; he exercised 

 a powerful influence on the great men of the nation, 

 which was afterwards reflected in the speeches and con- 

 duct of such noble advocates of the American cause as 

 Burke and Chatham and Fox and Conway, in whose 

 favor history has happily reversed contemporary opin- 

 ion, and brought all Englishmen to accept their veiws. 



But labor as he would and hope as he did, it became 

 impossible at last to stem the tide of discord that was 

 sweeping both nations into the irrepressible and inevi- 

 table conflict, which was to separate them for the time 

 being, only to bring them after the lapse of four genera- 

 tions into newer and better harmony and union. 



As the prolonged contest waxed hotter and fiercer. 



