Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/366

332 bearing equal burdens, a confederation upon such iniquitous principles would never last long. Indeed, it did not last long. Ten years later every sensible man knew that the old philosopher was right, and the Constitution of the United States did justice to his foresight.

In the same debate he threw a flashing ray of intelligence upon the future with regard to slavery. A Southern man spoke of slaves and sheep as equally liable to taxation. “Slaves,” said Franklin, “rather weaken than strengthen the state. There is some difference between slaves and sheep; sheep will never make any insurrection.”

But as if all this had not been occupation enough, he was in addition made president of the convention called for giving Pennsylvania a new constitution; and finally, after having served on a committee of Congress in a last attempt at negotiation with the British Admiral Howe, he was sent once more abroad to invoke aid for the struggling young republic. This was his famous embassy to France. He arrived at Paris in December, 1776. France was then surreptitiously aiding the American cause. The government did it to weaken and humiliate England. French society favored it from an impulse of sentiment. Society was then in that strange intellectual and moral ferment which foreshadowed the great revolution. The ostentatious and exhausting despotism of Louis XIV., the scandals of the Regency and the putrid corruption of Louis XV.'s reign had left behind them among all classes of men a vague presentiment that some great change was coming. All the traditional beliefs and ideas of the past had been shaken. Montesquieu in his Persian Letters had riddled all social, political and clerical institutions with caustic criticism, and preached in his Spirit of the Laws the gospel of constitutional government. The Encyclopedists under the lead of Diderot and d'Alembert had exhausted the armory of