Number of words: 161

In conversation after supper he told us jokingly that he much admired the idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him a government, requested it be a government of blacks, as then, if you could not agree with this people, he might sell them. One of his friends, who sat next to me, says, “Franklin, why do you continue to side with these damned Quakers? Had you not you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price.”

“The governor”, says I, “Has not yet blacked them enough. He, indeed, had laboured hard to black the assembly in all his messages, but they wiped off his colouring as fast as he had laid it on and placed it on return thick upon his own face; so that finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he as well as Mr Hamilton grew tired of the contest and quitted the government.

Excerpted from Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography