He was unanimously re-elected to this dignity for the two succeeding years, and while holding that office was chosen a member of the convention which met in May 1787 to frame the Constitution under which the people of the United States are still living.
With the adoption of that instrument, to which he probably contributed as much as any other individual, he retired from official life; though not from the service of the public, to which for the remaining years of his stay on earth his genius and his talents were faithfully consecrated.
Among the fruits of that unfamiliar leisure, always to be remembered among the noblest achievements of his illustrious career, was the part he had in organizing the first anti-slavery society in the world; and as its president, writing and signing the first remonstrance against slavery ever addressed to the Congress of the United States.
In surveying the life of Dr. Franklin as a whole, the thing that most impresses one is his constant study and singleness of purpose to promote the welfare of human society. It was his daily theme as a journalist, and his yearly theme as an almanac-maker. It is that which first occurs to us when we recall his career as a member of the Colonial Assembly; as an agent of the provinces in England; as a diplomatist in France; and as a member of the conventions which crowned the consistent labors of his long life. Nor are there any now so bold as to affirm that there was any other person who could have been depended upon to accomplish for his country or the world, what Franklin did in any of the several stages of his versatile career.
Though holding office for more than half of his life, the office always sought Franklin, not Franklin the office. When sent to England as the agent of the colony, he withdrew from business with a modest competence judiciously invested mostly in real estate. He never seems to have given a thought to its increase. Frugal in his habits, simple in his tastes, wise in his indulgences, he died with a fortune neither too large nor too small for his fame as a citizen or a patriot. For teaching frugality and economy to the colonists, when frugality and economy were indispensable to the conservation of their independence and manhood, he has been sneered at as the teacher of a "candle-end-saving philosophy," and his 'Poor Richard' as a "collection of receipts for laying up treasures on earth rather than in heaven." Franklin never taught, either by precept or example, to lay up treasures on earth. He taught the virtues of industry, thrift, and economy, as the virtues supremely important in his time, to keep people out of debt and to provide the means of educating and dignifying society. He never countenanced the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, but for its uses,--its prompt convertibility into social comforts and refinements. It would be difficult to name another man of any age to whom an ambition to accumulate wealth as an end could be imputed with less propriety. Though probably the most inventive genius of his age, and thus indirectly the founder of many fortunes, he never asked a patent for any of his inventions or discoveries. Though one of the best writers of the English language that his country has yet produced, he never wrote a line for money after he withdrew from the calling by which he made a modest provision for his family.