Franklin, on being selected, had said to Dr. Rush, "I am old and good for nothing, but, as store keepers say of their remnants of cloth, I am but a fag-end, and you may have me for what you please;"[20] but Franklin had strong personal reasons for hating England. Accused once by the solicitor-general (Wedderburn, Lord Loughborough) of stealing political letters, the latter had arraigned him and poured upon his head all the vials of ministerial wrath, branding him as a thief in the most fearful philippic ever pronounced against man.[21] "Franklin stood," says Dr. Priestly, "conspicuously erect during the harangue, and kept his countenance as immovable as wood." He was dressed in a suit of Manchester velvet, which he laid aside and never wore after the terrible lashing of Lord Loughborough; but, "Seven years afterwards, on the termination of the war, so triumphant to his own country, and so humiliating to Britain, he signed the articles of Peace, being then Ambassador at Paris, _dressed in the Manchester velvet_,"--once the garment of heaviness and humiliation, now the royal robe of triumph! [20] Parton's "Franklin," Vol. II, p. 166. [21] "Lives of the Lord Chancellors of England," by Lord Campbell, Vol. VI, pp. 110-111. He became, fortunately, a toast at the French court. The statesman who could write ballads and invent musical instruments possessed a charming versatility which attracted the French. How versatile he still could be, even in old age, is attested by the fact that poets, philosophers, and men of fashion,--Vergennes, Voltaire, Turgot,--nay, the queen herself, admired and sought him. Turgot described him in a line which afterwards adorned the snuff-boxes, medallions, and rings of the court. On these Franklin's head appeared, with this legend, _Eripuit fulmen sceptrumque tyrannus_, the dignified, old, unpowdered head, its thin hair concealed by a fur cap, which yet had wisdom to guide the hand that "tore the lightning from heaven and the sceptre from the tyrant!" It was not designed by Providence that America should fail in her contest. Rough-hewn as her methods must perforce be, they were given shape by the hand that guides our ends. Every event here, every move on the chess-board in France, tended to the same result. One of the fifteen decisive battles of the world was fought at Saratoga. "The Capitulation of General Burgoyne to Mr. Gates" (as the English in their wrath expressed it) turned the tide of affairs. It resulted immediately in the alliance with France, so long and ardently desired, without which this country might not have won independence.