When Franklin left London at the vernal equinox of 1775 he believed he would never return. For most of eighteen years London had been his home; he knew London now better than he knew Philadelphia. But the London he left by coach to catch the Pennsylvania packet at Portsmouth was not the London he had known just a few years earlier. Corruption had always troubled its politics, yet corruption now overwhelmed all else. The placemen, the toadies, the cynics had triumphed; honest seekers after the welfare of the empire as a whole had no place. For eighteen years he had resisted returning to
...more
