Kitabı oku: «The True Benjamin Franklin», sayfa 10

He seems to have studied music with great care as a science, just as he studied the whirlwinds, the smoke, and the lightning; but he was unalterably opposed to the so-called modern music then becoming fashionable, and which is still to a great extent the music of our time. The pleasure derived from it was, he said, not the natural pleasure caused by harmony of sounds, but rather that felt on seeing the surprising feats of tumblers and rope-dancers.

“Many pieces of it are mere compositions of tricks. I have sometimes, at a concert, attended by a common audience, placed myself so as to see all their faces, and observed no signs of pleasure in them during the performance of a great part that was admired by the performers themselves; while a plain old Scotch tune, which they disdained, and could scarcely be prevailed upon to play, gave manifest and general delight.”

In a letter to Lord Kames which has been often quoted he explained at length, and for the most part in very technical language, the reasons for the superiority of the Scotch tunes.

“Farther, when we consider by whom these ancient tunes were composed and how they were first performed we shall see that such harmonical successions of sounds were natural and even necessary in their construction. They were composed by the minstrels of those days to be played on the harp accompanied by the voice. The harp was strung with wire, which gives a sound of long continuance and had no contrivance like that in the modern harpsichord, by which the sound of the preceding could be stopped the moment a succeeding note began. To avoid actual discord, it was therefore necessary that the succeeding emphatic note should be a chord with the preceding, as their sounds must exist at the same time. Hence arose that beauty in those tunes that has so long pleased, and will please forever, though men scarce know why.”

Franklin’s numerous voyages naturally turned his mind to problems of the sea. He pondered much on the question whether the daily motion of the earth from west to east would increase the speed of a ship sailing eastward and retard it on a westward passage. He was not quite sure that the earth’s motion would have such an effect, but he thought it possible.

“I wish I had mathematics enough to satisfy myself whether the much shorter voyages made by ships bound hence to England, than by those from England hither, are not in some degree owing to the diurnal motion of the earth, and if so in what degree. It is a notion that has lately entered my mind; I know not if ever any other’s.” (Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. ii. p. 14.)

He referred to the subject again soon after, and finally a few years before his death,²⁰ but always as an unsettled question. The idea seems never to have got beyond the stage of investigation with him, but Parton has built up out of it a wonderful discovery.

“He conceived an idea still more practically useful, which has since given rise to a little library of nautical works, and conferred unmerited honor upon a naval charlatan – Maury. This idea was that by studying the form and motions of the earth and directing a ship’s course so that it shall partake of the earth’s diurnal motion a voyage may be materially shortened.” (Parton’s “Life of Franklin,” vol. ii. p. 72.)

This is certainly a most extraordinary statement to be made by a writer like Parton, who has given the main facts of Franklin’s life with considerable fidelity. He refers to it again in another passage, in which he says that this method of navigation is now used by all intelligent seamen. But there is no evidence that it was ever so used. He may have confused it with great circle sailing. The theory is an exploded one. There is no library of nautical works on the subject, and I think that the officers of the United States navy, the captains of the great ocean liners, and thousands of sailors all over the world would be very much surprised to hear Maury called a charlatan.

Maury’s wonderful investigations were not in the line of sailing a ship so as to take advantage of the earth’s diurnal motion, and could not have been suggested by such an idea. He explored the physical geography of the sea, and particularly the currents, trade-winds, and zones of calm. It was he who first worked out the shortest routes from place to place, which are still used. Although he never made a picturesque and brilliant discovery about lightning, and had not Franklin’s exquisite power of expression, he was a much more remarkable man of science.

In a long letter to Alphonsus Le Roy, of Paris, written in 1785, on his voyage home from France with Captain Truxton, Franklin summed up all his maritime observations, including what he knew of the Gulf Stream. This letter is full of most curious suggestions for the navigation of ships, and was accompanied by a plate of carefully drawn figures, which has been reproduced in most editions of his works.

So much attention had been given, he said, to shaping the hull of a vessel so as to offer the least resistance to the water, that it was time the sails were shaped so as to offer the least resistance to the air. He proposed to do this by making the sails smaller and increasing their number, and contrived a most curious rig (Fig. 4) which he thought would offer the least resistance both in sailing free and in beating to windward.

Figs. 5, 6, and 7 show why, in those days of rope cables, a ship was always breaking the cable where it bent at right angles just outside the hawse-hole. All the strain was on the outer strands of the rope at a b c, Fig. 7, and as they broke the others followed one by one. His remedy for this was to have a large wheel or pulley in the hawse-hole.

Figs. 8 and 9 show how a vessel with a leak at first fills very rapidly, so that the crew, finding they cannot gain on the water with the pumps, take to their boats. But if they would remain they would find after a while that the quantity entering would be less as the surfaces without and within became more nearly equal, and that the pumps would now be able to prevent it from rising higher. The water would also begin to reach light wooden work, empty chests, and water-casks, which would give buoyancy, and thus the ship could be kept afloat longer than the crew at first expected. In this connection he calls attention to the Chinese method of water-tight compartments which Mr. Le Roy had already adopted in his boat on the Seine.

Fig. 12 is intended to show the loss of power in a paddle-wheel because the stroke from A to B is downward and from D to X upward, and the only effective stroke is from B to D. A better method of propulsion, he thinks, is by pumping water out through the stern, as shown in Figs. 13 and 14.

Figs. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22 illustrate methods of making floating sea anchors by which to lay a vessel to in a gale. Fig. 24 shows how a heavy boat may be drawn ashore by bending the rope from C to D. Fig. 23 represents a new way of planking ships to secure greater strength, and Figs. 26 and 27 are soup-dishes which will not spill in a heavy sea. But this delightful letter is published in all of the editions of his works, and should be read in order to render his ingenious contrivances intelligible.

Among the few of Franklin’s writings on scientific subjects which are not in the form of letters is an essay, entitled “Peopling of Countries,” supposed to have been written in 1751. It is in part intended to show that Great Britain was not injured by the immigration to America; the gap was soon filled up; and the colonies, by consuming British manufactures, increased the resources of the mother country. The essay is full of reflections on political economy, which had not then become a science, and the twenty-second section contains the statement that there is no bound to the productiveness of plants and animals other than that occasioned by their crowding and interfering with one another’s means of subsistence. This statement supplied Malthus with the foundation for his famous theory that the population of the earth increased in a geometrical ratio, while the means of subsistence increased only in an arithmetical ratio, and some of those who opposed this theory devoted themselves to showing error in Franklin’s twenty-second section rather than to disputing the conclusions of Malthus, which they believed would fall if Franklin could be shown to be in the wrong.

He investigated the new field of political economy with the same thoroughness as the other departments of science, and wrote on national wealth, the price of corn, free trade, the effects of luxury, idleness, and industry, the slave-trade, and peace and war. The humor and imagination in one of his letters to Dr. Priestley on war justify the quoting of a part of it:

“A young angel of distinction being sent down to this world on some business, for the first time, had an old courier-spirit assigned him as a guide. They arrived over the seas of Martinico, in the middle of the long day of obstinate fight between the fleets of Rodney and De Grasse. When through the clouds of smoke he saw the fire of the guns, the decks covered with mangled limbs and bodies dead and dying, or blown into the air, and the quantity of pain, misery, and destruction the crews yet alive were thus with so much eagerness dealing round to one another, he turned angrily to his guide and said, ‘You blundering blockhead, you are ignorant of your business; you undertook to conduct me to the earth and you have brought me into hell!’ ‘No, sir,’ says the guide, ‘I have made no mistake; this is really the earth, and these are men. Devils never treat one another in this cruel manner; they have more sense, and more of what men (vainly) call humanity.’” (Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. vii. p. 465.)

VI
THE PENNSYLVANIA POLITICIAN

While Franklin kept his little stationery shop and printing-office, sent out his almanacs every year, read and studied, experimented in science, and hoped for an assured income which would give larger leisure for study and experiment, he was all the time drifting more and more into public life. In a certain sense he had been accustomed to dealing with living public questions from boyhood. When an apprentice in his teens, he had written articles for his brother’s newspaper attacking the established religious and political system of Massachusetts, and during his brother’s imprisonment the newspaper had been published in the apprentice’s name. In Pennsylvania his own newspaper, the Gazette, which he established when he was but twenty-three years old, made him something of a public man; and his pamphlet in favor of paper money, which appeared at about the same period, showed how strongly his mind inclined towards the large questions of government.

When he reached manhood he also developed a strong inclination to assist in public improvements, in the encouragement of thrift and comfort, and in the relief of suffering, subjects which are now included under the heads of philanthropy and reform. He had in full measure the social and public spirit of the Anglo-Saxon, the spirit which instinctively builds up the community while at the same time it is deeply devoted to its own concerns. The only one of his ancestors that had risen above humble conditions was of this sort, and had been a leader in the public affairs of a village.

His natural disposition towards benevolent enterprises was much stimulated, he tells us, by a book called “Essays to do Good,” by the eminent Massachusetts divine, Cotton Mather, of witchcraft fame. He also read about the same time De Foe’s “Essay upon Projects,” a volume recommending asylums for the insane, technical schools, mutual benefit societies, improved roads, better banking, bankrupt laws, and other things which have now become the commonplace characteristics of our age.

His club, the Junto, was the first important fruit of this benevolent disposition. At first its members kept all their books at its rooms for the common benefit; but some of the books having been injured, all were taken back by the owners, and this loss suggested to Franklin the idea of a circulating library supported by subscriptions. He drew up a plan and went about soliciting money in 1731, but it took him more than a year to collect forty-five pounds. James Logan, the secretary of the province, gave advice as to what books to buy, and the money was sent to London to be expended by Mr. Peter Collinson, to whom Franklin’s famous letters on electricity were afterwards written.

Mr. Collinson was the literary and philosophic agent of Pennsylvania in those days. To him John Bartram, the first American botanist, sent the plants that he collected in the New World, and Mr. Collinson obtained for him the money with which to pursue his studies. Collinson encouraged the new library in every way. For thirty years he made for it the annual purchase of books, always adding one or two volumes as a present, and it will be remembered that it was through him that Franklin obtained the electrical tube which started him on his remarkable discoveries.

The library began its existence at the Junto’s rooms and grew steadily. Influential people gradually became interested in it and added their gifts. For half a century it occupied rooms in various buildings, – at one time in the State-House, and during the Revolution in Carpenters’ Hall, – until in 1790, the year of Franklin’s death, it erected a pretty building on Fifth Street, opposite Independence square. During the period from 1731 to 1790 similar libraries were established in the town, which it absorbed one by one: in 1769 the Union Library, in 1771 the Association Library Company and Amicable Library Company, and, finally, in 1790 the Loganian Library, which James Logan had established by his will. Before the Revolution the number of books increased but slowly, and in 1785 was only 5487. They now number 190,000.

Franklin says that it was the mother of subscription libraries in North America, and that in a few years the colonists became more of a reading people, and the common tradesmen and farmers were as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries. This statement seems to be justified; for within a few years libraries sprang up in New England and the South, and they may have been suggested by the Philadelphia Library which Franklin founded.

I have already shown how Franklin established the academy which soon became the College of Philadelphia, but this was some twenty years after he founded the library. Almost immediately after the academy was started Dr. Thomas Bond sought his assistance in establishing a hospital. Pennsylvania was receiving at that time great numbers of German immigrants, who arrived in crowded ships after a voyage of months, in a terrible state of dirt and disease. There was no proper place provided for them, and they were a source of danger to the rest of the people. A hospital was needed, and Dr. Bond, at first meeting with but little success, finally accomplished his object with the assistance of Franklin, who obtained for him a grant of two thousand pounds from the Assembly, and helped to stir up subscribers.

This was the first hospital in America, and it still fulfils its mission in the beautiful old colonial buildings which were originally erected for it. Additional buildings have been since added, fortunately, in the same style of architecture. For the corner-stone Franklin wrote an inscription matchless for its originality and appropriateness:

“In the year of Christ MDCCLV George the Second happily reigning (for he sought the happiness of his people), Philadelphia flourishing (for its inhabitants were public spirited), this building, by the bounty of the government, and of many private persons, was piously founded for the relief of the sick and miserable. May the God of Merciesbless the undertaking.”

In the same spirit Franklin secured by a little agitation the paving of the street round the market, and afterwards started subscriptions to keep this pavement clean. At that time the streets of Philadelphia, like those of most of the colonial towns, were merely earth roads, and it was not until some years after Franklin’s first efforts at the market that there was any general paving done. He also secured a well-regulated night watch for the city in place of the disorderly, drunken heelers of the constables, who had long made a farce of the duty; and he established a volunteer fire company which was the foundation of the system that prevailed in Philadelphia until the paid department was introduced after the civil war.

The American Philosophical Society, which was also originated by him, might seem to be more entitled to mention in the chapter on science. But it was really a benevolent enterprise, intended to propagate useful knowledge, to encourage agriculture, trade, and the mechanic arts, and to multiply the conveniences and pleasures of life. He first suggested it in 1743, in which year he prepared a plan for a society for promoting useful knowledge, and one appears to have been organized which led a languishing existence until 1769, when it was joined by another organization, called “The American Society held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge,” and from this union resulted the American Philosophical Society, which still exists. Franklin was for a long time its president, and was succeeded by Rittenhouse. It was the first society in America devoted to science. Thomas Jefferson and other prominent persons throughout the colonies were members of it, and during the colonial period and long afterwards it held a very important position.

Franklin was by nature a public man; but the beginning of his life as an office-holder may be said to have dated from his appointment as clerk of the Assembly. This took place in 1736, when he had been in business for himself for some years, and his newspaper and “Poor Richard” were well under way. It was a tiresome task to sit for hours listening to buncombe speeches, and drawing magic squares and circles to while away the time. But he valued the appointment because it gave him influence with the members and a hold on the public printing.

The second year his election to the office was opposed; an influential member wanted the place for a friend, and Franklin had a chance to show a philosopher’s skill in practical politics.

“Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return’d it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met, in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends and our friendship continued to his death. This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says ‘He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.’” (Bigelow’s Franklin from his own Writings, vol. i. p. 260.)

Some people have professed to be very much shocked at this disingenuous trick, as they call it, although perhaps capable of far more discreditable ones themselves. It would be well if no worse could be said of modern practical politics.

Franklin held his clerkship nearly fifteen years. During this period he was also postmaster of Philadelphia, and these two offices, with the benevolent enterprises of the library, the hospital, the Philosophical Society, and the academy and college, made him very much of a public man in the best sense of the word long before he was engaged in regular politics.

In the year 1747 he performed an important public service by organizing the militia. War had been declared by England against both France and Spain, and the colonies were called upon to help the mother country. Great difficulty was experienced in recruiting troops in Quaker Pennsylvania, although the Quakers would indirectly consent to it when given a reasonable excuse. They would vote money for the king’s use, and the king’s officials might take the responsibility of using it for war; they would supply provisions to the army, for that was charity; and on one occasion they voted four thousand pounds for the purchase of beef, pork, flour, wheat, or other grain; and as powder was grain, the money was used in supplying it.

But the actual recruiting of troops was more difficult, and it was to further this object that Franklin exerted himself. He wrote one of his clever pamphlets showing the danger of a French invasion, and supplied biblical texts in favor of defensive war. Then calling a mass-meeting in the large building afterwards used for the college, he urged the people to form an association for defence. Papers were distributed among them, and in a few minutes he had twelve hundred signatures. These citizen soldiers were called “Associators,” – a name used down to the time of the Revolution to describe the Pennsylvania militia. In a few days he had enrolled ten thousand volunteers, which shows how large the combatant portion of the population was in spite of Quaker doctrine.

In 1748 he retired from active business with the purpose of devoting himself to science. It was the custom at that time to give retired men of business the more important public offices; and in 1752, about the time of his discovery of the nature of lightning, he was elected to the Assembly as one of the members to represent Philadelphia. In the same year he was also elected a justice of the peace and a member of the City Councils.

At this time France and England were temporarily at peace. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 had resulted in a sort of cessation of hostilities, which France was using to push more actively her advantages on the Ohio River and in the Mississippi Valley. She intended to get behind all the colonies and occupy the continent to the Pacific Ocean. The efforts of Great Britain to check these designs, including the expeditions of the youthful Washington to the Ohio, need not be given here.²¹ England broke the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and what is known as the Seven Years’ War began with the memorable defeat of Braddock.

Franklin was sent by the Pennsylvania Assembly to Braddock’s head-quarters in Virginia to give any assistance he could and to prevent Braddock from making a raid into Pennsylvania to procure wagons, as he had threatened. The journey was made on horseback in company with the governors of New York and Massachusetts, and on the way Franklin had an opportunity to observe the action of a small whirlwind, which he reported in a pleasant letter to Mr. Collinson. It was while on this visit that Franklin appears in Thackeray’s “Virginians,” in which he is strangely described as a shrewd, bright little man who would drink only water.

He told Braddock that there were plenty of wagons in Pennsylvania, and he was accordingly commissioned to procure them. He returned to Philadelphia, and within two weeks had delivered one hundred and fifty wagons and two hundred and fifty pack-horses. He had received only eight hundred pounds from Braddock, and was obliged to advance two hundred pounds himself and give bond to indemnify the owners of such horses as should be lost in the service. Claims to the amount of twenty thousand pounds were afterwards made against him, and he would have been ruined if the government, after long delay, had not come to his rescue. Such disinterested service was not forgotten, and his popularity was greatly increased.

He had the year before been one of the representatives of Pennsylvania in the convention at Albany, where he had offered a plan for the union of all the colonies, which was generally approved, and I shall consider this plan more fully in another chapter. It was intended, of course, primarily to enable the colonies to make more effective resistance against the French and Indians, and as an additional assistance he suggested that a new colony be planted on the Ohio River. The establishment of this colony was a favorite scheme with him, and he urged it again many years afterwards while in England.

As a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly he joined the Quaker majority in that body and became one of its leaders. This majority was in continual conflict with the governor appointed by William Penn’s sons, who were the proprietors of the province. The government of the colony was divided in a curious way. The proprietors had the right to appoint the governor, judges, and sheriffs, or, in other words, had absolute control of the executive offices, while the colonists controlled the Legislature, or Assembly, as it was called, and in this Assembly the Quakers exercised the strongest influence.

During the seventy years that the colony had been founded the Assembly had built up by slow degrees a body of popular rights. It paid the governor his salary, and this gave it a vast control over him; for if he vetoed any favorite law it could retaliate by cutting off his means of subsistence. This right to withhold the governor’s salary constituted the most important principle of colonial constitutional law, and by it not only Pennsylvania but the other colonies maintained what liberty they possessed and saved themselves from the oppression of royal or proprietary governors.

Another right for which the Pennsylvania Assembly always strenuously contended was that any bill passed by it for raising money for the crown must be simply accepted or rejected by the governor. He was not to attempt to force its amendment by threats of rejection, or to interfere in any way with the manner of raising the money, and was to have no control over its disbursement. The king had a right to ask for aid, but the colony reserved the right to use its own methods in furnishing it.

These rights the proprietors were constantly trying to break down by instructing their governors to assent to money and other bills only on certain conditions, among which was the stipulation that they should not go into effect until the king’s pleasure was known. They sent out their governors with secret instructions, and compelled them to give bonds for their faithful performance. When the governors declined to reveal these instructions, the Assembly thought it had another grievance, for it had always refused to be governed in this manner; and was now more determined than ever to maintain this point because several bills had been introduced in Parliament for the purpose of making royal instructions to governors binding on all the colonial assemblies without regard to their charters or constitutions.

These were all very serious designs on liberty, and the proprietors took advantage of the war necessities and Braddock’s defeat to carry them out in the most extreme form. The home government was calling on all the colonies for war supplies, and Pennsylvania must comply not only to secure her own safety but under fear of displeasing the Parliament and king. If under such pressure she could be induced to pass some of the supply bills at the dictation of the governor, or with an admission of the validity of his secret instructions, a precedent would be established and the proprietary hold on the province greatly strengthened.

The Quakers, especially those comprising the majority in the Assembly, were not at heart opposed to war or to granting war supplies. As they expressed it in the preamble to one of their laws, they had no objection to others bearing arms, but were themselves principled against it. If the others wished to fight, or if it was necessary for the province to fight, they, as the governing body, would furnish the means. Franklin relates how, when he was organizing the Associators, it was proposed in the Union Fire Company that sixty pounds should be expended in buying tickets in a lottery, the object of which was to raise money for the purchase of cannon. There were twenty-two Quakers in the fire company and eight others; but the twenty-two, by purposely absenting themselves, allowed the proposition to be carried.

The Quaker Assembly voted money for war supplies as liberally and as loyally as the Assembly of any other colony; but at every step it was met by the designs of the governor to force upon it those conditions which would be equivalent to a surrender of the liberties of the colony. Thus, in 1754 it voted a war supply of twenty thousand pounds, which was the same amount as Virginia, the most active of the colonies against the French, had just subscribed, and was much more than other colonies gave. New York gave only five thousand pounds, Maryland six thousand pounds, and New Jersey nothing. But the governor refused his assent to the bill unless a clause was inserted suspending it until the approval of the king had been obtained, and this condition the Assembly felt bound to reject.

During the whole seven years of the war these contests with the governor continued; and the members of the Assembly, to show their zeal for the war, were obliged at times to raise the money on their own credit without submitting their bill to the governor for his approval. In these struggles Franklin bore a prominent part, drafting the replies which the Assembly made to the governor’s messages, and acquiring a most thorough knowledge of all the principles of colonial liberty. At the same time he continued to enjoy jovial personal relations with the governors whom he resisted so vigorously in the Assembly, and was often invited to dine with them, when they would joke with him about his support of the Quakers.

The disputes were increased about the time of Braddock’s defeat by a new subject of controversy. As the Assembly was passing bills for war supplies which had to be raised by taxation, it was thought to be no more than right that the proprietary estates should also bear their share of the tax. The proprietors owned vast tracts of land which they had not yet sold to the people, and as the war was being waged for the defence of these as well as all the other property of the country, the Assembly and the people in general were naturally very indignant when the governor refused his consent to any bill which did not expressly exempt these lands from taxation. The amount assessed on the proprietary land was trifling, – only five hundred pounds; but both parties felt that they were contending for a principle, and when some gentlemen offered to pay the whole amount in order to stop the dispute, it was rejected.