Woodbridge, spent his time more uselessly than ever he
remembered, was duly credited to the perversity of the British
General. But at last they were off, and on the 26th of July,
three and a half months after leaving Philadelphia, Franklin
arrived in London to take up the work of his mission; and there
he remained, always expecting to return shortly, but always
delayed, for something more than five years.

These were glorious days in the history of Old England, the most
heroic since the reign of Good Queen Bess. When the provincial
printer arrived in London, the King and the politicians had
already been forced, through multiplied reverses in every part of
the world, to confer power upon William Pitt, a disagreeable man
indeed, but still a great genius and War Lord, who soon turned
defeat into victory. It was the privilege of Franklin, here in
the capital of the Empire, to share the exaltation engendered by
those successive conquests that gave India and America to the
little island kingdom, and made Englishmen, in Horace Walpole's
phrase, "heirs apparent of the Romans." No Briton rejoiced more
sincerely than this provincial American in the extension of the
Empire. He labored with good will and good humor, and doubtless
with good effect, to remove popular prejudice against his
countrymen; and he wrote a masterly pamphlet to prove the wisdom
of retaining Canada rather than Guadaloupe at the close of the
war, confidently assuring his readers that the colonies would
never, even when once the French danger was removed, "unite
against their own nation, which protects and encourages them,
with which they have so many connections and ties of blood,
interest, and affection, and which 'tis well known they all love
much more than they love one another." Franklin, at least, loved