Later Franklin wrote to Galloway that it was thought that near two million pounds would be spent in the Parliamentary election then pending, but that it was computed that the Crown had _two millions a year in places and pensions to dispose of_. On the same day, he wrote to his son, "In short, this whole venal nation is now at market, will be sold for about two millions, and might be bought out of the hands of the present bidders (if he would offer half a million more) by the very Devil himself." To Thomas Cushing he wrote that luxury brought most of the Commons as well as Lords to market, and that, if America would save for three or four years the money she spent in the fashions and fineries and fopperies of England, she might buy the whole Parliament, minister and all. Over against these depraved electoral conditions he was in the habit of placing the simpler and purer conditions of his native land. In most of the Colonies, he declared in his _Rise and Progress of the Differences between Great_ _Britain and her American Colonies_, there was no such thing as standing candidate for election. There was neither treating nor bribing. No man expressed the least inclination to be chosen. Instead of humble advertisements, entreating votes and interest, one saw before every new election requests of former members, acknowledging the honor done them by preceding elections, but setting forth their long service and attendance on the public business in that station, and praying that in consideration thereof some other person might be chosen in their room. After a dissolution, the same representatives might be and usually were re-elected without asking a vote or giving even a glass of cider to an elector. On the eve of his return to America in 1775, the contrast between the extreme corruption prevalent in the old rotten state and the glorious public virtue, so predominant in rising America, as he expressed it, assumed a still more aggravated form. After mentioning in his last letter to his friend Galloway the "Numberless and needless Places, enormous Salaries, Pensions, Perquisites, Bribes, groundless Quarrels, foolish Expeditions, false Accounts or no Accounts, Contracts and Jobbs," which in England devoured all revenue, and produced continual necessity in the midst of natural plenty, he said: I apprehend, therefore, that to unite us intimately will only be to corrupt and poison us also. It seems like Mezentius's coupling and binding together the dead and the living. "Tormenti genus, et sanie taboque fluentes, Complexu in misero, longâ sic morte necabat." However [he added with his readily re-awakened loyalty to the mother country], I would try anything, and bear anything that can be borne with Safety to our just Liberties, rather than engage in a War with such near relations, unless compelled to it by dire Necessity in our own Defence.