184 Carson: Franklin 



in America. At the convention of the Church in seven 

 States, held in 1785, at Christ Church, in Philadelphia, 

 Dr. Smith was chosen chairman " to consider of and 

 report such alterations in the Liturgy as shall render it 

 consistent with the American Revolution and the Con- 

 stitution of the respective States, and such other altera- 

 tions in the Liturgy as it may be advisable for this 

 Convention to recommend." 



Dr. Smith was also Chairman of the Committee which 

 revised in 1789 and printed the Book of Common 

 Prayer. The preface is his work. The convention of 

 1789 appointed him to prepare an address to the Presi- 

 dent, George Washington, who a few months before had 

 entered upon the untried duty of Chief Magistrate of 

 the United States, and it was his eloquent voice that 

 pronounced before the American Philosophical Society 

 the eulogium upon Benjamin Franklin. From that day 

 to this, the Provostship has been occupied by men of 

 rare force and unfaltering devotion to duty, but I would 

 be false to my own sense of obligation and to the rep- 

 resentative capacity which I occupy to-day if I failed 

 to say in this illustrious presence in behalf of the trus- 

 tees, the professors and alumni everywhere, of the trib- 

 ute recently paid to the University of Pennsylvania by a 

 graduate of Yale, an ex-President of Cornell, and our 

 accomplished ambassador at the Courts of Continental 

 Europe, in which he ranked her as the foremost in the 



