Returning home after the war, he was elected president of Pennsylvania
for three successive years, at a salary of two thousand pounds a year.
But by this time he had become convinced that offices of honor, such as
the governorship of a State, ought not to have any salary attached to
them. He thought they should be filled by persons of independent income,
willing to serve their fellow-citizens from benevolence, or for the
honor of it. So thinking, he at first determined not to receive any
salary; but this being objected to, he devoted the whole of the salary
for three years--six thousand pounds--to the furtherance of public
objects. Part of it he gave to a college, and part was set aside for the
improvement of the Schuylkill River.

Never was an eminent man more thoughtful of people who were the
companions of his poverty. Dr. Franklin, from amidst the splendors of
the French court, and when he was the most famous and admired person in
Europe, forgot not his poor old sister, Jane, who was in fact dependent
on his bounty. He gave her a house in Boston, and sent her every
September the money to lay in her Winter's fuel and provisions. He wrote
her the kindest, wittiest, pleasantest letters. "Believe me, dear
brother," she writes, "your writing to me gives me so much pleasure that
the great, the very great, presents you have sent me give me but a
secondary joy."

How exceedingly absurd to call such a man "hard" and miserly, because he
recommended people not to waste their money! Let me tell you, reader,
that if a man means to be liberal and generous, he _must_ be economical.
No people are so mean as the extravagant, because, spending all they
have upon themselves, they have nothing left for others. Benjamin
Franklin was the most consistently generous man of whom I have any
knowledge.