Benjamin Franklin: “We cannot all fly with our families; and if we could, how shall we subsist?”

Yet had I gone at 70, it would have cut off 12 of the most active years of my life, employed too in matters of the greatest importance; but whether I have been doing good or mischief, is for time to discover.

Franklin's hand, in conjunction with his brethren of the learned committee, that compound of fraud and folly was unveiled, and received its death-wound.

If the treaty cannot be made as much to your advantage as to ours, don't make it.

With these sentiments he left England; but when, on his arrival in America, he found the war begun, and that there was no receding, no man entered more warmly into the interests of what he then considered as his country, in opposition to…