The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Yet if France survived the tumults, it—and the world—would benefit in the end. “I hope the fire of liberty, which you mention as spreading itself over Europe,” he wrote an English friend, “will act upon the inestimable rights of man, as common fire does upon gold: purify without destroying them; so that a lover of liberty may find a country in any part of Christendom.” To David Hartley he wrote, “The convulsions in France are attended with some disagreeable circumstances, but if by the struggle she obtains and secures for the nation its future liberty and a good constitution, a few years’ enjoyment of those blessings will amply repair all the damages their acquisition may have occasioned. God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the Earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say, ‘This is my country.’”