The fittest man for this business was Franklin, and he was sent as agent of the Province of Pennsylvania to London, the Assembly granting fifteen hundred pounds to pay his expenses, which, with his own private income, enabled him to live in good style in London and set up a carriage.  He held no high diplomatic rank as yet, but was simply an accredited business agent of the Province, which position, however, secured to him an entrance into society to a limited extent, and many valuable acquaintances.  The brothers Penn, with whom his business was chiefly concerned, were cold and haughty, and evaded the matter in dispute with miserable quibbles.  Franklin then resolved to appeal to the Lords of Trade, who had the management of the American colonial affairs, and also to the King’s Privy Council.

This was in 1757, when William Pitt was at the height of his power and fame, cold, reserved, proud, but intensely patriotic, before whom even George III. was ill at ease, while his associates in the Cabinet were simply his clerks, and servilely bent before his imperious will.  To this great man Franklin had failed to gain access, not so much from the minister’s disdain of the colonial agent, as from his engrossing cares and duties.  He had no time, indeed, for anybody, not even the peers of the realm,—­no time for pleasure or relaxation,—­being devoted entirely to public interests of the greatest magnitude; for on his shoulders rested the government of the kingdom.  What was the paltry dispute of a few hundred pounds in a distant colony to the Prime Minister of England!  All that Franklin could secure was an interview with the great man’s secretaries, and they did little to help him.

But the time of the active-minded American was not wasted.  He wrote for the newspapers; he prosecuted his scientific inquiries; he became intimate with many eminent men, chiefly scientists,—­members of the Royal Society like Priestley and Price, professors of political economy like Adam Smith, historians like Hume and Robertson, original thinkers like Burke, liberal-minded lawyers like Pratt.  It does not seem that he knew Dr. Johnson, and probably he did not care to make the acquaintance of that overbearing Tory and literary dogmatist, who had little sympathy with American troubles.  Indeed his political associates among the great were few, unless they were patrons of science, who appreciated his attainments in a field comparatively new.  Among these men he seems to have been much respected, and his merits secured an honorary degree from St. Andrew’s.  His eminent social qualities favored his introduction into a society more cultivated than fashionable, and he was known as a scientific rather than a political celebrity.