Mr. Franklin had led a very notable life during the thirty eventful years which had gone by since he made his way, a mere lad, from Boston to Philadelphia to earn his livelihood as a journeyman printer; and how shrewd a knowledge he had gained of the practical affairs of the world anybody could see for himself who would read the homely-wise maxims he had been putting forth these twenty-two years in his “Poor Richard’s” Almanacs, begun in 1732. The plan of union he suggested at Albany was, that the colonies should submit to have their common interests cared for by a congress of delegates chosen by their several assemblies, and a “president-general” appointed and paid by the crown; giving to the congress a considerable power of actual law-making and to the president-general the right to veto its acts, subject to the approval of the ministers at home. To all the delegates at Albany except those from Connecticut the plan seemed suitable and excellent; but the ministers at home rejected it because they thought it gave too much power to the proposed congress, and the colonial assemblies rejected it because they thought it gave too much power to the president-general. Mr. Franklin said that the fact that neither the assemblies nor the King’s ministers liked the plan made him suspect that it must be, after all, an excellent half-way measure, the “true medium” between extremes, effecting a particularly fair and equal distribution of power. [Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN] Then the war came, and made many things plain. The colonies did not coöperate. They contributed troops, watched their own frontiers as they could against the redskins, and freely spent both blood and money in the great struggle; but when it was all over, and the French dominion swept from the continent, it was plain that it had not been the power of the colonies but the power of England and the genius of the great Pitt that had won in the critical contest. France could send few reinforcements to Canada because England’s ships commanded the sea. The stout Canadians had had to stand out for themselves unaided, with such troops as were already in the colony. In 1759, the year Wolfe took Quebec, there were more soldiers in the English colonies threatening the St. Lawrence than there were men capable of bearing arms in all Canada,—and quite half of them were regulars, not provincials. Pitt saw to it that enough troops and supplies were sent to America to insure success, and that men capable of victory and of efficient management even in the forested wilderness were put in command of affairs in the field. He did not depend upon the colonies to do what he knew they had no plan or organization for doing, but set himself to redress the balance of power in Europe by decisive victories which should make England indisputable mistress of America. “No man ever entered Mr. Pitt’s closet who did not find himself braver when he came out than when he went in,” said a soldier who had held conference