It does not appear that Franklin ever answered this letter, in the short term of life which remained to him. But, in justice to his great name, I desire to express my conviction here, of course without argument, that this patriot philosopher never attributed to the clause, which simply provides for the surrender of fugitives from "service or labor," without the mention of _slaves_, any such meaning as it has since been made to assume. And Granville Sharp himself, in putting upon it the interpretation he did, forgot the judgment he had extorted from Lord Mansfield, affirming that any law out of which Slavery is derived must be construed _strictly_; and, stranger still, he forgot his own unanswerable argument, _that the word SLAVES is nowhere to be found in the British Constitution_. The question under the fugitive clause of our Constitution is identical with that happily settled in England. * * * * * In works and contemplations like these was the life of our philanthropist prolonged to a generous old age, cheered by the esteem of the good, informed by study, and elevated by an enthusiastic faith, which always saw the world as the footstool of God; and when, at last, in 1813, bending under the burden of seventy-seven winters, he gently sank away, it was felt that a man had died in whom was the greatness of goodness. Among the mourners at his grave stood William Wilberforce; and over the earthly remains of this child of lowly beginnings were now dropped the tears of a royal duke. The portals of that great Temple of Honor, where are treasured England's glories, swung open at the name of England's earliest Abolitionist. A simple tablet, from the chisel of Chantrey, representing an African slave on his knees in supplication, and also the lion and the lamb lying down together, with a suitable inscription, was placed in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, in close companionship with those stones which bear the names of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Goldsmith, Gray. As the Muses themselves did not disdain to watch over the grave of one who had done well on earth, so do the poets of England keep watch over the monument of Granville Sharp. Nor is his place in that goodly company without poetical title. The poet is simply _creator_; and he who was inspired to create freemen out of slaves was poet of the loftiest style. Not in the sacred Abbey only was our philanthropist commemorated. The city of London, centre of those Slave-Hunting merchants over whom his great triumph was won, now gratefully claimed part of his renown. The marble bust of England's earliest Abolitionist was installed at Guildhall, home of metropolitan justice, pomp, and hospitality, in the precise spot where once had stood the bust of Nelson, England's greatest Admiral, and beneath it was carved a simple tribute, of more perennial worth than all the trophies of Trafalgar:-- GRANVILLE SHARP,