Lord Chatham expressed in courteous compliments the gratification which this visit afforded him. Not long afterward he came gallantly to the defense of Franklin in the House of Lords. It was one day in February, 1775; Franklin was standing in full view, leaning on a rail; Lord Sandwich was speaking against a measure of conciliation or agreement just introduced by Chatham. He said that it deserved "only contempt," and "ought to be immediately rejected. I can never believe it to be the production of any British peer. It appears to me rather the work of some American. I fancy I have in my eye the person who drew it up, one of the bitterest and most mischievous enemies this country has ever known." Speaking thus, he looked full at Franklin, and drew upon him the general attention. But Chatham hastened to defend the defenseless one. "The plan is entirely my own," he said; "but if I were the first minister, and had the care of settling this momentous business, I should not be ashamed of calling to my assistance a person so perfectly acquainted with the whole of American affairs, one whom all Europe ranks with our Boyles and Newtons, as an honor not to the English nation only but to human nature." This was spirited and friendly; Franklin had a way of making warm and loyal friends. Most men would have rejoiced to be so abused by Sandwich in order to be so complimented by Chatham.[35] [Note 35: Bancroft, _Hist. U. S._ v. 220.] Yet, in spite of the high esteem in which so many Englishmen still held Franklin, an incident occurred at this time which showed very plainly that the term of his full usefulness was indeed over, though not altogether for the reasons which had led him to think so. The fact was that the proverbial last feather which breaks the back had been laid upon him. His endurance had been over-taxed, and he was at last in that temper and frame of mind in which the wisest men are liable to make grave mistakes. He was one day present at a debate in the House of Commons, and found himself, as he says, "much disgusted, from the ministerial side, by many base reflections on American courage, religion, understanding, etc., in which we were treated with the utmost contempt, as the lowest of mankind, and almost of a different species from the English of Britain; but particularly the American honesty was abused by some of the lords, who asserted that we were all knaves, etc." Franklin went home "somewhat irritated and heated," and before he had cooled he wrote a paper which he hastened to show to his friend Mr. Thomas Walpole, a member of the House of Commons. Mr. Walpole "looked at it and at me several times alternately, as if he apprehended me a little out of my senses." Nor would Mr. Walpole have been altogether without reason, if in fact he entertained such a suspicion. The paper was the memorial of Benjamin Franklin to the Earl of Dartmouth, secretary of state. In its first clause it demanded "reparation" for the injury done