THOMAS, D.D., chaplain in ordinary to his majesty, was born in London about the year 1720, and was the son of Richard Franklin, well known as the printer of an anti-ministerial paper called The Craftsman; in conducting which he received great assistance from Lord Bolingbroke, Mr Pulteney, and other excellent writers, who then opposed Sir Robert Walpole's measures. By the advice of the second of these gentlemen, young Franklin was devoted to the church, with a promise of being provided for by the patriot; who afterwards forgot his undertaking, and then entirely neglected him. He was educated at Westminster school; from whence he went to the university of Cambridge, where he became fellow of Trinity college, and was sometime Greek professor. In December 1758, he was instituted vicar of Ware and Thundridge; which, with the lectureship of St Paul, Covent Garden, and a chapel in Queen street, were all the preferments he held till he obtained the rectory of Braisted in Kent. This gentleman was possessed of no inconsiderable share of learning and poetical abilities, and was long a favourite in the literary world. His translations of Phalarus, Sophocles, and Lucian, equally evince his learning and his genius, as they are not more distinguished for fidelity in the version, than congeniality with the spirit of the admirable originals. Dr Franklin, like Mr Foote, suffered a translation from the French to be printed in his name; but the Orestes and Elektra are supposed to be all that were really by him. It was a translation of Voltaire's works, to which also Dr Smollett's name appears. His own dramatic compositions, of which the principal are the tragedies of The Earl of Warwick and Matilda, are universally known, and deservedly esteemed by the public. He died in March 1784.

Benjamin, a philosopher and a statesman of considerable eminence, was born in the year 1706, at Bolton in New England. His family derived their origin from Etton in Northamptonshire, where his ancestors had an inconsiderable freehold for many generations. The persecution of the nonconformists in the reign of Charles II. induced his father to take refuge in New England; and in the city of Bolton he followed the occupation of a soap-boiler and tallow-chandler. Franklin drew up a history of his own life from his nativity to the 25th year of his age; but as at that period he had made no very conspicuous figure in the world, it is to be lamented that we have not the assistance of his own pen to the meridian of his career. This defect we have endeavoured to supply in the subsequent narrative from the most authentic materials, avoiding as much as possible the exaggerated panegyric of friends, and the unmerited detraction of enemies.

Our author, from his very infancy, discovered the strongest propensity towards literary pursuits, which determined his father to qualify him for the ministry; but he was thwarted in his designs by a numerous and increasing family. family, and therefore Benjamin was taken from school at ten years of age, to take part in the drudgery of his father's trade. This greatly mortified the aspiring mind of young Franklin, who wished to prefer a fearing life to such an employment; but from this he was dissuaded by the influence of his father, who was a man of some knowledge, and possessed a solid understanding. He made it his chief aim to infuse his children with the love of knowledge and the principles of moral rectitude. He had few books; yet among these Benjamin selected a number of voyages and travels, as well as different histories, a species of reading for which he had a strong predilection. By going through a course of controversial divinity in this unaided manner, he greatly strengthened his argumentative powers, which was most probably all he had in view. Before upon projects, according to his own account, made such impressions upon his mind as in a great measure directed the subsequent events of his life.

He was now chosen to an employment which accorded much better with the natural bent of his mind than the business of his father's shop. A brother of his own had a printing-office in Boston, to whom Benjamin was bound apprentice at 12 years of age. With the mechanical part of the business he was soon acquainted; and the opportunities thus afforded him of procuring new books to read, were eagerly seized, and the greater part of the night frequently spent in the perusal of them. He soon became anxious to imitate the works which he most admired, and his first attempts were of a poetical nature. He composed and printed ballads, which were well received by those who love such a species of reading; yet his father had the address to convince him that nature never designed him for a poet. He therefore turned his whole attention to the cultivation of prose composition, in which he succeeded infinitely better; and he thus became superior to his brethren of the press, and raised himself to stations of public importance. As his passion for reading and writing was very strong, so he became in a short time a powerful disputant, which was strengthened by his intimacy with a young man of a similar disposition. He perused, with uncommon attention, a translation of Xenophon's Memorabilia, which enabled him either to confute or confound an adversary by a number of questions. It is also certain that he became a sceptic as to the religion in which he had been educated, and propagated his unbelief with zeal and affluence. The fatal consequences which this produced on the deportment of some of his intimate companions, at length happily convinced him that it is extremely dangerous to destroy the salutary influence of religion, without being able to substitute any thing in its place of equal importance and efficacy. He seems, however, to have continued a sceptic in his own mind, yet he still retained a love for moral rectitude, which led him to adopt honourable means in the prosecution of valuable ends. Much to his honour be it spoken, he acquired, at a very early period of life, that triumph over his sensual appetites, which is so essentially necessary to a life of dignity, usefulness, and virtue. Having read Tyron's recommendation of a vegetable diet, at 16 years of age, he abandoned the use of animal food; and on offering to his brother to support himself on half the money which was paid for his board, he was allowed to adopt his own plan, by which means he was enabled to save a considerable sum for the purchase of books. Although he relaxed considerably as to a vegetable diet, yet he thus acquired the habit of being satisfied with little, and a contempt of the gratifications of the palate was frequently of singular advantage to him through the whole of life.

When his brother began a newspaper, Benjamin sent a number of pieces on various topics to be inserted, which met with the approbation of the most competent judges—a satisfaction he enjoyed without being known, as they were all anonymous. His brother treated him with the harshness of a master, which he bore with the utmost patience, as the public had already pronounced him to be possessed of merit. The states of America having prohibited James Franklin from publishing this paper, on account of some political offence, the name of Benjamin was employed as publisher, in consequence of which he procured his indentures, although he agreed privately with his brother to serve out his time. But as he did not deem this agreement obligatory, he went to New York by sea, and from that place to Philadelphia, in the seventeenth year of his age. He himself acknowledges this to have been a fault, and therefore has avowed that censure which he would otherwise have deserved. At Philadelphia he engaged with a printer of the name of Keimer, whose affairs he soon placed on a more respectable footing; and here also he became acquainted with several young men of a literary turn of mind, by whose company his taste for knowledge was greatly improved.

He soon after became acquainted with Sir William Keith the governor of that province, who powerfully recommended it to him to commence business on his own account, and promised to give him all the encouragement in his power. Encouraged by this gentleman to adopt such a plan, he set out for Boston on a visit to his parents, in order to procure from them some pecuniary aid; but a welcome reception was all he could obtain. Having returned to Philadelphia, Sir William generously offered to take the whole burden upon himself, and advised Franklin to make a voyage to England, in order to procure every thing necessary for a printing-office. He set sail in the year 1725, and took with him his intimate companion Ralph, whose name has been rendered memorable by being celebrated in the Dunciad. Unfortunately for Franklin, Sir William Keith, on whose letters of recommendation and credit he entirely relied, basely deceived him, and he was obliged to work as a journeyman in London for his immediate subsistence. His friend Ralph could only live by his head, and his income of consequence was extremely circumscribed, as well as precarious, which made him a heavy burden on the pocket of Benjamin. In that dilolute metropolis the one forgot his wife and child in America, and the other the solemn promises of fidelity which he had made to a Miss Read, prior to his departure—another step of his conduct which he himself severely censures. By a dissertation on liberty and necessity, pleasure and pain, he acquired considerable reputation, and it was the means of introducing him to the celebrated Dr Mandeville, author of the Fable of the Bees. In the second printing-office in which he worked, he laboured incessantly to convince his fellow workmen that a pint of porter does not contain half half so much nourishment as a penny roll, for which he obtained the ludicrous epithet of the American aquatic; yet he was finally enabled to make many converts to his doctrine—a proof that he possessed strong persuasive powers, when we consider the deep-rooted attachment of those with whom he had to treat to their favourite libation.

After eighteen months residence in London, he returned to Philadelphia in the year 1726, and became clerk to Mr Denham, a man of respectability, who had opened a warehouse in that city. He soon became acquainted with the principles of commerce, and led a very happy life in this new situation, till the connection was dissolved by the death of Mr Denham, which happened the following year. This again obliged him to become journeyman printer, and he was afterwards overleer in the office of Keimer, whom we have already mentioned. Here he acquired great esteem, and at length conceived the idea of setting up for himself, which he accomplished by entering into partnership with one Meredith, a fellow workman, whose father was in circumstances to enable him to advance them some money. His industry was habitual, but the idea that he was now working for himself, gave it additional energy. He was chiefly instrumental in the institution of a club which went by the name of the junto, and which was highly conducive to the intellectual improvement of its members. Before the admission of a candidate, the following questions were put to him:

"Do you sincerely declare that you love mankind in general, of what profession or religion soever? Do you think any person ought to be harmed in his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions, or his external way of worship? Do you love truth for truth's sake; and will you endeavour impartially to find and receive it yourself, and communicate it to others?"

Franklin and his copartner began a newspaper, which the labours and talents of the former brought into repute, and by them the votes and laws of the assembly came afterwards to be printed. The partnership being dissolved by the departure of Meredith, Franklin, by the generous aid of friends, was enabled to take the whole business upon himself, to which he added the business of a stationer. When the increase of paper money engaged the attention of the American government, Franklin wrote an anonymous pamphlet in defence of the measure, by which he acquired considerable reputation, the countenance of men in power, and it placed his prosperity on a permanent basis.

About this time he kept up a criminal correspondence with different females, chiefly owing, perhaps, to the disappointment he met with in the first object of his love, Miss Read, who by this time was married to another in consequence of his neglect. But we forget the faults of the man in the ingenuous confession of the penitent. A report prevailing that Miss Read's husband was married to another woman, he retired to the West Indies where he died, and Franklin married the object of his first love in the month of September 1736, being then about 24 years of age. She proved a valuable wife, and in every sense of the word, an "help meet for him."

To him we are to ascribe the establishment of a public library at Philadelphia, which he accomplished in the year 1731, and had the satisfaction of seeing it arrive at that flourishing condition which it has long since attained. His "Poor Richard's Almanac," was begun in 1732, and became remarkable for the many prudential maxims with which it abounded; and the proverbial manner in which they were expressed made them take fast hold of the memory. His political career commenced in 1736, when he was chosen clerk to the general assembly of Pennsylvania, to which he was re-elected for several years, and at last became a representative. In 1737, he was made postmaster of Philadelphia, and in the subsequent year he greatly improved the police of the city, by the formation of a fire-company, and afterwards an insurance-company against losses by fire. In the war with France, which broke out in 1744, when the best means of defending the province against the inroads of the enemy, and when the militia bill was thrown aside from its being obnoxious to the people, Franklin suggested the idea of a voluntary association for their mutual defense, which was instantly signed by 1200 persons, and 10,000 subscriptions were obtained in a short time by circulating it through the province. By this and similar means America had an opportunity of ascertaining her own strength, and how to make use of it with advantage in cases of emergency.

About this time he began his interesting experiments on electricity, by the result of which he justly acquired a distinguished reputation. The Library Society of Philadelphia having received from Mr Peter Collinson in the year 1745, an account of the facts respecting electricity which at that time engrossed the attention of philosophers in Europe, Franklin set about studying the subject with the greatest assiduity. He gave the account of his researches, the title of "New experiments and observations in electricity, made at Philadelphia in America," and addressed to Mr Collinson in the form of letters, bearing date from 1747 to 1754. They were everywhere read with avidity, and universally admired; Dr Priestley speaks of them in the following terms, "It is not easy to say whether we are most pleased with the simplicity and perspicuity with which the author proposes every hypothesis of his own, or the noble frankness with which he relates his mistakes, when they were corrected by subsequent experiments." Not to swell this article with a detailed account of all his discoveries on this subject, we shall content ourselves with mentioning that most interesting of the whole, his grand discovery that lightning and electric fire are identically the same. This identity had begun to be suspected, and experiments had been made in France to ascertain the fact; but it was referred to Franklin to demonstrate this fact by his own experiments. He obtained his first decisive proof of this in the month of June 1752, by setting up a silk kite into the air with a point of iron, and a key fastened to the end of the hempen string by which he held it. In this manner he drew down from a thunder cloud a sufficient quantity of electric fire to emit sensible sparks from the key. By means of an inflated iron rod which he fixed upon his house, he drew down the lightning, and was thus furnished with an opportunity of discovering whether it was positive or negative. As he firmly believed that philosophical discoveries were only valuable in so far as they could be productive of benefit to man, he made them subservient to the protection of buildings from the effects... Franklin effects of lightning, which are truly alarming in North America. He applied physics to the purposes of common life, and in 1745 invented his Pennsylvania fireplaces, in which the qualities of an open grate were combined with that of a stove.

He turned his attention very much to the subject of politics, which was extremely natural for a man of a public spirit living under a popular government. He was chosen a representative of the city of Philadelphia for the provincial assembly in 1747. At this time a contest subsisted between the assembly and the proprietaries, as to the claim of the latter to be exempted from public burdens. Franklin took the popular side of the question, by which he acquired great influence, and was regarded as the head of the opposition. This was not the offspring of eloquence, for he seldom spoke, and never in the form of a harangue; but his pointed observations, his unadorned good sense, frequently destroyed the effect of the most elaborate orations.

He drew up the plan of an academy to be founded at Philadelphia, from a conviction that education in a free state is of the utmost importance. It was carried into effect in the year 1750, by virtue of a subscription, to which the proprietors afterwards liberally contributed. He discharged the duties of his office as postmaster of Philadelphia with so much punctuality, that he was appointed deputy postmaster general for the British colonies in 1753, and the revenue was soon bettered by his unwearied exertions. A plan for conciliating the Indians, and forming an alliance with them, was drawn up by Franklin in 1754, to which the commissioners at Albany agreed, and a copy of it was transmitted to the British privy council. It is a singular circumstance, that this plan was rejected by the assemblies as giving too much power to the crown, while the British ministry declared that it gave too much influence to the representatives of the people. In the year 1757, Franklin set sail for London, as agent for Pennsylvania, the assembly of that province being involved in disputes with the proprietary. It was agreed on by the privy council, that landholders should pay their share of the public burdens, on condition Franklin would engage that they should be fairly proportioned. He continued at the British court as agent for his province, and acquired so great reputation, that the same trust was reposed in him for Massachusetts, Maryland, and Georgia. His merit as a philosopher was now justly appreciated in Europe, and he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of London. The degree of L. L. D. was also conferred upon him at St Andrews, Edinburgh, and Oxford.

In the year 1762 he returned to America, where he received the thanks of the assembly of Pennsylvania, and a handsome recompense in money for his important services. When the stamp act occasioned so much disturbance in America, Dr Franklin was summoned to the bar of the house of commons, to give evidence respecting the dispositions of the people, whether he thought they could be induced to submit to it; and the energy and clearness of his representations were instrumental in procuring the repeal of that obnoxious measure.

On the commencement of hostilities between Great Britain and the colonies in 1775, he returned to America, and was chosen a delegate to congress by the legislature of Pennsylvania. In 1776 he treated with Lord Howe on the subject of a reconciliation, and in one of his letters expressed in strong terms the temper of the British nation, to which he imputed the fatal extremity then arrived. When the question of independence came to be discussed, he was decidedly in favour of the measure, and was highly instrumental in bringing over the public mind to the same opinion. When a negotiation with France was opened, Dr Franklin was chosen one of the personages to reside at that court. His political abilities eminently qualified him for such a station, and his character as a philosopher gained him great esteem in a country where knowledge is revered. He brought about a treaty with France of an offensive and defensive nature in 1778, the immediate consequence of which was a war with Britain. He was one of those who signed the provisional treaty the year following. Prior to his leaving Europe he concluded a treaty with Sweden and Prussia. He was recalled from that active station in 1785, which he had filled with so much ability, and chosen president of the supreme executive council. He was chosen president of a society for alleviating the miseries of prisons, and abolishing slavery. His increasing infirmities made him withdraw from all public business in 1788; and on April the 17th 1790, he terminated his active and useful life, in the 85th year of his age.

Perhaps no man ever exceeded Dr Franklin in that fold practical wisdom which consists in pursuing valuable ends by the most appropriate means. His cool temper and sound judgment secured him from erroneous expectations. He saw things in their true light, and predicted consequences with nearly a prophetic spirit. He said of himself "I have always set a greater value on the character of a doer of good, than any other kind of reputation." In 1779, his "Political, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical pieces," were published in 4to and 8vo. His essays, humorous, moral, and literary, were published after his death, in two small volumes.

He was by no means inattentive to his own interest, of which his rapid advancement in life furnishes an ample proof; yet he never neglected the interest of society, or the good of mankind in general. The delicate situations in which he frequently stood, unavoidably exposed him to the censure of his enemies; yet his general conduct has long ago received the approbation of his countrymen, by whom he was considered as the best and most valuable of citizens. When we view him as a philosopher, we must ascribe his chief merit to his electrical discoveries, yet on many other topics, such as meteorology and mechanics, he evinced himself a man of considerable penetration. As a political writer, his great merit is clearness, energy, and simplicity; and as a miscellaneous author he possesses a fund of humour which cannot fail to be at once both entertaining and impressive.

the name of several counties in America, such as Franklin county in Pennsylvania, computed to contain 800 square miles, or 512,000 acres. It contains 11 townships, and 15,655 inhabitants. Franklin, a county in Kentucky; the name of one in Halifax, of one in Virginia, and of another in Georgia, which contains 1041 inhabitants, including 156 slaves. It is also the name of a township in Massachusetts; of one in Pennsylvania, another in New York, and of another in Connecticut. Connecticut, as well as of a small isle at the mouth of St George's river.