Thus through more than a year he toiled, lashed forward by his own determination, until at length he began to see some of the beautiful first principles of the law--that law, once noble and beneficent, now degraded and debased; once designed for the protection of the individual, now used by society as the instrument for the individual's extermination.

So in his second year Franklin fared somewhat beyond principles merely, and got into notes and bills, torts, contracts, and remedies.

He learned with a shiver how a promise might legally be broken, how a gift should be regarded with suspicion, how a sacred legacy might be set aside.

He read these things again and again, and forced them into his brain, so that they might never be forgotten; yet this part of the law he loved not so much as its grand first principles of truth and justice.
One morning, after Franklin had finished his task of sweeping down the stairs, he sat him down by the window with Battersleigh's letter in his hand; for this was now the third day since he had received this letter, and it had been in his mind more vividly present than the pages of the work on contracts with which he was then occupied.

It was a bright, fresh morning in the early spring.