** "Every man in this assembly," wrote John Adams to his wife, "is a great man, an orator, a critic, a statesman; and therefore every man, upon every question, must show his oratory, his criticism, his political abilities. The consequence is, that business is spun out to an immeasurable length." *** Joseph Galloway was one of the most popular of the leaders in Pennsylvania when the war of the Revolution broke out. He was once the confidential friend of Franklin, and had worked shoulder to shoulder with him against the proprietaries. He was elected a delegate to the first Continental Congress. In that body he submitted a plan, as a measure of accommodation, which seemed quite feasible. It proposed a union of the colonies, with a grand council authorized to regulate colonial affairs jointly with the British Parliament, each to have a mutual negation on each other. * This plan was favorably received, and on the question of its adoption it was rejected by a majority of only one. The debates were very warm, and it was on this occasion that Samuel Adams, regarding the proposition as a concession to tyranny, exclaimed, "I should advise persisting in our struggle for liberty, though it were revealed from heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine were to perish, and only one of a thousand were to survive and retain his liberty! One such freeman must possess more virtue and enjoy more happiness than a thousand slaves; and let him propagate his like, and transmit to them what he has so nobly preserved." * Before the meeting of the next Congress, Galloway manifested lukewarmness; and in 1776 he abandoned the Whigs, and became the most virulent and proscriptive Loyalist of the time. He joined the royal army in New York, where he continued until 1778, when, accompanied by his only daughter, he went to England. There he remained until his death in September, 1803, at the age of seventy-three years. His pen, for many years, was continually employed in correspondence with Loyalists in America, and upon subjects connected with the war. The prominent position which he at first held among the Whigs, and his virulence against them after his defection, made him the target for many an arrow of indignant wit. Trumbull, in his M'Fingall, gave him some hard hits; and a writer in the Pennsylvania Journal of February 5, 1777, thus castigates him with some lines, after saying to the printer,