When Franklin arrived at Philadelphia, May 5th, he found himself at once a member and a leader in a body of men who, without any legal mandate, were called upon to create, to organize, and to defend the United States. The day after Franklin’s arrival in America he was designated by Pennsylvania as a member of the Continental Congress which was to meet shortly. A few days later he was elected a member of the Pennsylvania Colonial Assembly. The next year he was chosen member and president of the State Constitutional Convention; and in 1776, he was appointed envoy of the United States to France. Besides these dignities, in that year and a half, he was one of the half dozen men who designated the framework of the future state and national governments of America. [Illustration: THREE PLATES BEARING PORTRAITS OF FRANKLIN Made by Veuve Perrin, Marseilles, France, late in the eighteenth century. Metropolitan Museum of Art] July 21, 1775, Franklin formally presented to Congress a skilful plan for a federal government, which was the foundation stone of the present Federal Constitution. It contains some things out of the Albany plan of 1754; and had it been adopted as it stood, would have been a better instrument of government than was later drawn up by Congress. Franklin proposed and urged a strong, vigorous and well-knit union. He was also a member of the committee to draw up the Declaration of Independence in 1776. His principal contribution to the discussion was his famous retort when somebody said, “We must all hang together”--“Yes, we must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately.” Franklin took an honorable part in the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1776, and to him was due the fine phrase in the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights, “That all men have a natural and inalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences and understanding.” [Illustration: HEAD OF FRANKLIN Nineteenth-century, French tortoise-shell snuff-box. Metropolitan Museum of Art] _Franklin as a Diplomat_ Benjamin Franklin was now seventy years old, and said of himself to a fellow member of Congress, “I am old and good for nothing; but as the storekeepers say of their remnants of cloth, I am but a fag end, and you may have me for what you please to give.” Yet he accepted the most important post of his life when in September, 1776, he was elected commissioner to France. There for nine years he served his country as the most popular, most sagacious, and most successful foreign minister ever appointed by the United States. [Illustration: ONE OF FRANKLIN’S INGENIOUS DEVICES FOR TEACHING THE LESSONS OF PRACTICAL WISDOM] [Illustration: FRANKLIN TEARS THE LIGHTNING FROM THE SKY AND THE SCEPTER FROM THE TYRANTS Seated beside him is the figure of America. From a sepia drawing by Fragonard, owned by Clarence S. Bement, Philadelphia]