A few weeks after Henley first took his place as presiding officer, Franklin arrived in London for the second time, and continued there, a busy observer, until after the Judge was created a peer. Even if he had been ignorant of parliamentary usage, or had forgotten what passed at the trial of Lord Macclesfield, he could not have failed to note that the House of Lords had for its presiding officer an eminent judge, who, not being a member, could take no part in its proceedings beyond putting the question. Afterward, in 1770, there was a different arrangement. Owing to difficulty in finding a proper person as Chancellor, the Great Seal was put in commission, and Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of England, was persuaded to act as presiding officer. Curiously enough, Franklin was again in England, on his third visit, and remained through the service of Lord Mansfield in this capacity. Thus this illustrious American, afterward a member of the Convention that framed the National Constitution, had at two different times seen the House of Lords with a presiding officer who, not being a member of the body, could only put the question, and then again with another presiding officer who, being a member of the body, could vote and speak, as well as put the question. But Franklin was not the only member of the National Convention to whom these precedents were known. One or more had been educated at the Temple; others were accomplished lawyers, familiar with the courts of the mother country. I have already mentioned that Blackstone’s Commentaries, where the general rule is clearly stated, was as well known in the Colonies as in the mother country. Besides, our fathers were not ignorant of the history of England, which, down to the Declaration of Independence, had been their history. The English law was also theirs. Not a case in its books which did not belong to them as well as to the frequenters of Westminster Hall. The State Trials, involving principles of Constitutional Law, and embodying these very precedents, were all known. At least four editions had appeared several years before the adoption of the National Constitution. I cannot err in supposing that all these were authoritative guides at the time, and that the National Constitution was fashioned in all the various lights, historical and judicial, which they furnished.