Yet Franklin doubted England really had learned anything from the war. Her “great disease,” he said, was the large number and emoluments of her political offices; her downfall the “avarice and passion” these aroused in her public officials. “They hurry men headlong into factions and contentions, destructive of all good government.” As long as riches attached to office, Britain would suffer. “Your Parliament will be a stormy sea, and your public councils confounded by private interests.”
