It was on the 12th of July 1785 that, accompanied by some members of his family and most intimate friends, he set out for Havre on his return to America. In view of his infirmities, the queen had placed one of her litters at his disposal; the next day he was constrained by a most pressing invitation to accept the hospitality of Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld at Gaillon. At Rouen, he was waited upon by a deputation of the Academy of that city. At Portsmouth, where the party joined the vessel that was to take them home, the bishop of St Asaph's, "the good bishop," as Franklin used to style him, an old friend and correspondent, came down with his family to see him, and remained with him for the two or three days before they sailed. On the 13th of September Franklin, who had become by far the most widely known and the most eminent of Americans, disembarked again at the very wharf in Philadelphia on which, sixty-two years before, he had landed a homeless, homeless, friendless, and substantially penniless runaway apprentice of seventeen. The day succeeding his arrival, the assembly of Pennsylvania voted him a congratulatory address; the public bodies very generally waited upon him, and General Washington, by letter, asked to join in the public gratulations upon his safe return to America, and upon the many eminent services he had rendered. Sensible as his countrymen were of the magnitude of their obligations to him, and of his increasing infirmities, it never seems to have occurred to them that they could dispense with his services. In the month succeeding his arrival he was chosen a member of the municipal council of Philadelphia, of which he was also unanimously elected chairman. He was soon after elected by the executive council and assembly president of Pennsylvania, by seventy-six out of the seventy-seven votes cast. "I have not firmness enough," he wrote to an old friend, "to resist the unanimous desire of my country folks, and I find myself harnessed again to their service another year. They engrossed the prime of my life. They have, eaten my flesh, and seem resolved now to pick my bones." At the expiration of his term in 1786, he was unanimously re-elected, and again unanimously in 1787. He was also chosen a member of the national convention, of which Washington was a member and president, which met on the second Monday of May 1787, to frame a constitution for the new confederacy. To the joint influence of Franklin and Washington probably should be ascribed the final adoption of the constitution which this convention framed, and which continues to be the fundamental law of the United States. The most original, if not the most ingenious, and perhaps, in view of the grave difficulties it disposed of, the most important feature of the constitution they constructed--that which gave the States equal representation in the upper house or senate and in the lower house representation according to population--was the device of Franklin. For