My business was now continually augmenting, and my circumstances daily growing easier.  Spain having been several years at war against Great Britain, and being at length joined by France, our situation became one of great danger; our colony was defenceless, and our Assembly was composed principally of Quakers.  I therefore formed an association of citizens, numbering ten thousand, into a militia; these all furnished themselves with arms and met every week for drill, while the women provided silk colours painted with devices and mottoes which I supplied.  With the proceeds of a lottery we built a battery below the town, and borrowed eighteen cannon of the governor of New York.

Peace being concluded, and the association business therefore at an end, I turned my thoughts to the establishment of an academy.  I published a pamphlet; set on foot a subscription, not as an act of mine, but of some “public-spirited gentleman,” and the schools were opened in 1749.  They were soon moved to our largest hall; the trustees were incorporated by a charter from the governor, and thus was established the University of Pennsylvania.  The building of a hospital for the sick, and the paving, lighting, and sweeping of the streets of the city, were among the reforms in which I had a hand at this time.  In 1753 I was appointed, jointly with another, postmaster-general of America, and the following year I drew up a plan for the union of all the colonies under one government for defence and other important general purposes.  Its fate was singular; the assemblies did not adopt it, as they thought there was too much prerogative in it, and in England it was judged to be too democratic.  The Board of Trade therefore did not approve of it, but substituted another scheme for the same end.  I believe that my plan was really the true medium, and that it would have been happy for both sides of the water if it had been adopted.

When war was in a manner commenced with France, the British Government, not choosing to trust the union of the colonies with their defence, lest they should feel their own strength, sent over General Braddock in 1755 with two regiments of regular English troops for that purpose.  He landed at Alexandria and marched to Frederictown in Maryland, where he halted for carriages.  I was sent to him by the Assembly, stayed with him for several days, and had full opportunity of removing all his prejudices against the colonies by informing him of what the essemblies had done and would still do to facilitate his operations.

This general was a brave man, and might have made a figure as a good officer in some European war.  But he had too much self-confidence, too high an opinion of regular troops, and too mean a one of both Americans and Indians.  Our Indian interpreter joined him with 100 guides and scouts, who might have been of great use to him; but he slighted and neglected them and they left him.  He said to one of the Indians,