Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/405

Rh integrity of Dr. Franklin's electrical experiments, and which must have been accepted by the latter, when it came to his knowledge, as an unfriendly act, for it was recorded during his first absence abroad. In the American Magazine, already quoted from as under Dr. Smith's editorship, the latter in his Account of the College and Academy in its last number includes the names of the Professors and gives some statement of their respective abilities and reputation ; and in speaking of Mr. Kinnersley he uses this language : He is well qualified for his position ; and has moreover great merit with the learned world in being the chief inventor (as already mentioned) of the Electric apparatus, as well as author of a considerable part of those discoveries in Electricity published by Mr Franklin to whom he commu- nicated them. Indeed Mr Franklin himself mentions his name with honor, tho' he has not been careful enough to distinguish between their particular discoveries. This, perhaps, he may have thought needless, as they were known to act in concert But tho' that circumstance was known here, it was not so in the remote parts of the world to which the fame of these discoveries have extended. Allusion has before this been made in these pages to charges of Franklin's plagiarism in electrical experiments, that some of his opponents maintained, which however were not sup- ported by any statements of Kinnersley himself; but this is no place to discuss their merits ; and the fact remains that when preferred in this public manner, and in Franklin's absence abroad by a well-known writer and one who had been intimately associated with him in the management of the College, they could not but be accepted by their object other than as an act of extreme unkindness and unfriendliness, and memory would retain their sting for a long time. Franklin could not but recall those earlier years of constant communion with him in the con- cerns of the young Academy, and of his own particular efforts to secure the young Scotch tutor to its aid at the outset. But Dr. Smith's, "our dear Franklin 14 ," of 1754, was no more, and Franklin had now recorded in his quotation above given the withdrawal of his friendship and confidence from Dr. Smith. 14 Smith, i. 51.