Franklin appointed Indian commissioner--Effects of Rum--Indian logic--Accumulating honors--Benevolent enterprises--Franklin's counsel to Tennent--Efforts for city improvement--Anecdotes--Franklin appointed postmaster--Rumors of War--England enlists the Six Nations in her cause--Franklin plans a Confederacy of States--Plans rejected--Electrical experiments--Franklin's increase of income--Fearful experiments--The kite--New honors--Views of the French philosopher--Franklin's Religious views--His counsel to a young pleader--Post-office Reforms. In the year 1740, Franklin, then forty-four years of age, was appointed on a commission to form a treaty with the Indians at Carlisle. Franklin, knowing the frenzy to which the savages were plunged by intoxication, promised them that, if they would keep entirely sober until the treaty was concluded, they should then have an ample supply of rum. The agreement was made and faithfully kept. "They then," writes Franklin, "claimed and received the rum. This was in the afternoon. They were near one hundred men, women and children, and were lodged in temporary cabins, built in the form of a square, just without the town. In the evening, hearing a great noise among them, the commissioners walked to see what was the matter. "We found that they had made a great bonfire in the middle of the square; that they were all drunk, men and women quarreling and fighting. Their dark-colored bodies, half-naked, seen only by the gloomy light of the bonfire, running after and beating one another with firebrands, accompanied by their horrid yellings, formed a scene the most resembling our ideas of hell, that could well be imagined. There was no appeasing the tumult, and we returned to our lodgings. At midnight a number of them came thundering at our door demanding more rum, of which we took no notice. "The next morning they all seemed very much ashamed of the disgraceful orgies in which they had indulged. There was a law written in their own hearts, which told them that they had done wrong. Three chiefs were appointed to call upon the commissioners with an humble apology. With downcast looks they confessed their fault, and then with logic which more intelligent men sometimes use, endeavored to throw the blame upon God. In remarkable speech one of them said, "'The Great Spirit, who made all things, made everything for some use. Whatever use he designed anything for, that use it should be always put to. Now, when he made rum, he said, "Let this be for the Indians to get drunk with! and it must be so."'"