Channelling Ben Franklin

by Thomas Fleming

“I’ve been told by my friend Washington that you want to talk to me.” “Dr. Franklin! I didn’t really think you’d respond. Mr. Washington told me you only express occasional interest in American affairs.”“I summed up my attitude at the Constitutional Convention. I told them we’d created a republic -- if they can keep it. That says it all -- or at least quite a lot of what I thought -- and still think.”“Without you, they might not have reached an agreement.”“True enough. I saw the antagonisms boiling between perfectionists and realists and for a while wondered if I should have stayed home. It was no place for an eighty-one-year-old man with bladder stones that made it uncomfortable to stand up.”