[19] The view that Franklin took of the constitutional tie between Great Britain and America was expressed in many different forms. One of the concisest is to be found in a letter to his grandnephew Jonathan Williams, dated Feb. 12, 1786, and, therefore, written after the tie, whatever its exact nature was, had become a subject for the historian rather than the politician. Speaking of a controversy in which Williams had been involved, he says: "It seems to me that instead of discussing _When_ we ceas'd to be British Subjects you should have deny'd our _ever having been such_. We were Subjects to the King of G. Britain, as were also the Irish, the Jersey and Guernsey People and the Hanoverians, but we were American Subjects as they were Irish, Jersey and Hanoverian Subjects. None are British Subjects but those under the Parliament of Britain." [20] "Your medallion is in good company; it is placed with those of Lord Chatham, Lord Camden, Marquis of Rockingham, Sir George Saville, and some others, who honoured me with a show of friendly regard, when in England." (Letter from Franklin to Geo. Whatley, May 18, 1787.) [21] This idea is advanced also in _The Mother Country_, _A Song_, which Jared Sparks thought was probably written by Franklin about the time of the Stamp Act or a little later: "We have an old mother that peevish is grown; She snubs us like children that scarce walk alone; She forgets we're grown up and have sense of our own; Which nobody can deny, deny, Which nobody can deny. If we don't obey orders, whatever the case, She frowns, and she chides and she loses all pati- Ence, and sometimes she hits us a slap in the face, Which nobody can deny, etc. Her orders so odd are, we often suspect That age has impaired her sound intellect. But still an old mother should have due respect, Which nobody can deny, etc. Let's bear with her humors as well as we can; But why should we bear the abuse of her man? When servants make mischief, they earn the rattan, Which nobody should deny, etc. Know too, ye bad neighbours, who aim to divide The sons from the mother, that still she's our pride; And if ye attack her we're all of her side, Which nobody can deny, etc. We'll join in her lawsuits, to baffle all those, Who, to get what she has, will be often her foes; For we know it must all be our own, when she goes, Which nobody can deny, deny, Which nobody can deny." [22] "But there can hardly be a doubt, as between the America and the England of the future, that the daughter, at some no very distant time, will, whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than the mother. "'O matre forti filia fortior.'" _Kin Beyond Sea_, by William E. Gladstone.