[i-332] Hale and Hale, _op. cit._, I, 70; see also 75.
[i-334] Cited in J. B. Perkins, _France in the American Revolution_, 140.
[i-336] See D. J. Hill, "A Missing Chapter of Franco-American History," _American Historical Review_, XXI, 709-19, (July, 1916).
[i-338] _Writings_, IX, 132. The Due de la Rochefoucauld translated them into French (IX, 71). Franklin thought they would induce emigration to the colonies. See the scores of requests (on the part of notable Frenchmen) and thanks for copies of the constitutions of the United States listed in _Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in the Library of the American Philosophical Society_.
[i-339] J. S. Schapiro, _Condorcet and the Rise of Liberalism_, 79-81 and _passim_.
[i-341] Cited in W. T. Franklin's edition, I, 303-4. E. P. Oberholtzer, essentially hostile to Franklin, is obliged to admit that Franklin "seems not to have had more than an advisory part" in making the Constitution of 1776. He adds that if Franklin did not form it, "he was at any rate a loyal defender of its principles," and that he seems to have allowed the French to think that the Constitution was his own (_The Referendum in America_, New York, 1900, 26-42). For Franklin's later defenses of unicameralism, see _Writings_, IX, 645, 674; X; 56-8.
[i-342] Cited in B. Faÿ, _The Revolutionary Spirit In France and America_, 289. Faÿ shows that in France the "revolutionary leaders" who took lessons from Franklin regarded him as "the prophet and saint of a new religion," as the "high priest of Philosophy." See also E. J. Lowell, _The Eve of the French Revolution_ (Boston, 1892), chaps. XVI and XVIII.
[i-343] B. Faÿ, _The Revolutionary Spirit in France and America_, 302.
[i-345] _Ibid._, VIII, 452; June 7, 1782 (to Joseph Priestley).
[i-348] _Ibid._, IX, 521; see also IX, 489.
[i-349] Although the preponderance of evidence bears out the trustworthiness of this assertion, one can not idly dismiss his _Some Good Whig Principles_ or disregard his expressed belief that the people "seldom continue long in the wrong" and if misled they "come right again, and double their former affections" (cited in W. C. Bruce, _Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed_, II, 100; also see _Writings_, X, 130). There is a clearly evident polarity in Franklin's mind between ultra-democratic faith and a rigorous observation that if "people" are so constituted, many men are utter rascals. One almost senses a dichotomy between Franklin the politician and Franklin the man and moralist.