“Every inhabitant of America is, _de facto_ as well as _de jure_, equal, in his essential, inseparable rights of the individual, to any other individual,--is, in these rights, independent of any power that any other can assume over him, over his labor, or his property. This is a principle in act and deed, and not a mere speculative theorem.”[559] This strange and striking testimony, all from one man, is enhanced by his farewell words to Franklin. As Pownall heard that the great philosopher and negotiator was about to embark for the United States, he wrote to him from Lausanne, 3d July, 1785:-- “Adieu, my dear friend. You are going to a New World, formed to exhibit a scene which the Old World never yet saw. You leave me here in the Old World, which, like myself, begins to feel, as Asia hath felt, that it is wearing out apace. We shall never meet again on this earth; but there is another world where we shall meet, and _where we shall be understood_.”[560] The correspondence was continued across the intervening ocean. In a letter to Franklin, dated at Bristol, 8th April, 1788, the same devoted reformer refers to the Congress at Albany in 1754, “when the events which have since come into fact first began to develop themselves, as ready to burst into bloom, and to bring forth the fruits of Liberty which you in America at present enjoy.” He is cheered in his old age by the proceedings in the Convention to frame a Constitution, with Franklin’s “report of a system of sovereignty founded in law, and above which law only was sovereign”; and he begins “to entertain hopes for the liberties of America, and for what will be an asylum one day or other to a remnant of mankind who wish and deserve to live with political liberty.” His disturbance at the Presidential term breaks out: “I have some fears of mischief from _the orbit of four years’ period_ which you give to the rotation of the office of President. It may become the ground of intrigue.”[561] Here friendly anxiety is elevated by hope, where America appears as the asylum of Liberty. Clearly Pownall was not understood in his time; but it is evident that he understood our country as few Englishmen since have been able to understand it. How few of his contemporaries saw America with his insight and courage! The prevailing sentiment was typified in the conduct of George the Third, so boldly arraigned in the Declaration of Independence. Individual opinions also attest the contrast, and help to glorify Pownall. Thus, Shirley, like himself a Massachusetts governor, in advising the King to strengthen Louisburg, wrote, under date of July 10, 1745:--