2 Benjamin Franklin [1781
to become the terror of Europe,* and to exercise with
impunity that insolence which is so natural to their
nation, and which will increase enormously with the
increase of their power. I am, with great respect,
your Excellency’s, etc.,
B. FRANKLIN,
1 At a dinner given in Paris by the late Sir Henry Bulwer a few days
after the news reached Europe of the surrender of Lee in 1865, Sir
Henry’s brother, the late Lord Lytton, confessed to considerable
disappointment that the war had terminated without a dismemberment
 of the Union. He had hoped, he said, that it would have left
two or three nations instead of one, for, he added, ‘by the close of the
century you will number near a hundred million, and you will be a
terror to Europe,” using singularly enough the very expression employed
here by Franklin in forecasting the danger to the Old World of allowing
the colonies to remain dependencies of England.

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