INTRODUCTION
Benjamin Franklin has been called the ‘Typical
American”; but it would be more accurate to say
that he was the only American whose personality
filled out the requirements of the Franklin type. No
other American, and no other man on either side of
the Atlantic, possessed anything approaching Franklin’s
 range of knowledge in so many channels, or the
standard of his practical wisdom, his experience, his
humor, and his common sense.
Franklin's career, comprising in all eighty-four
years, covered experience and service as a printer,
an essayist, a man of science, a teacher, a diplomatist
of very high order, a philosopher, and a publicspirited
 citizen who did much to further the development
 of his generation.
Under various emergencies and demands, Franklin
gave evidence of courage of a very high type. The
record of Franklin's action in presenting to the British
Parliament the just demands of Americans who were
claiming equal rights with other English-speaking
citizens of the great British Commonwealth, and the
picture of Franklin standing before that same Parliament
 as representative of these transatlantic Englishspeaking
 peoples, and accepting with unperturbed
countenance the stream of abusive invective that

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