cument, addressing the assembly with the statement: We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. In September of the same year, he was chosen, with two other Americans, Arthur Lee and Silas Deane, to seek economic assistance in France. His scientific reputation, his integrity of character, and his wit and gracious manner made him extremely popular in French political, literary, and social circles, and his wisdom and ingenuity secured for the U.S. aid and concessions that perhaps no other man could have obtained. Against the opposition of the French minister of finance, Jacques Necker, and despite the jealousy of his coldly formal American colleagues, he managed to obtain liberal grants and loans from Louis XVI of France. In 1781 Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay were appointed to conclude a treaty of peace with Great Britain. The final treaty was signed Versailles on September 3, 1783. During the rest of his stay in France, Franklin received many honorary distinctions for his notable and diversified accomplishments. As a dignitary of one of the most distinguished Freemasons lodges in France, Franklin had the opportunity of meeting and speaking with a number of philosophers and leading figures of the French Revolution (1789-1799), upon whose political thinking he exerted a profound influence. Although in favor of a liberalization of the French government, he opposed change through violent revolution. In March 1785, Franklin, at his own request, left his duties in France and returned to Philadelphia, where he was immediately chosen president of the Pennsylvania executive council (1785-1787). In 1787 he was elected a delegate to the convention that drew up the U.S. Constitution. Franklin was deeply interested in philanthropic projects, and one of his last public acts was to sign a petition to the U.S. Congress, on February 12, 1790, as president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, urging the...
