Kitabı oku: «Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed, Volume 2 (of 2)»

CHAPTER I
Franklin's Personal Characteristics

The precise explanation of the great concourse of friends that Franklin drew about him, at the different stages of his long journey through the world, is to be found partly in his robust, honorable character and mental gifts. The sterner virtues, which are necessarily the foundations of such esteem as he enjoyed, he possessed in an eminent degree. An uncommonly virile and resolute spirit animated the body, which was equal in youth to the task of swimming partly on and partly under water from near Chelsea to Blackfriars, and of exhibiting on the way all of Thevenot's motions and positions as well as some of its own, and which shortly afterwards even sported about the becalmed Berkshire in the Atlantic almost with the strength and ease of one of the numerous dolphins mentioned by Franklin in his Journal of his voyage on that ship from England to America. He hated cruelty, injustice, rapacity and arbitrary conduct. It was no idle or insincere compliment that Burke paid him when he spoke of his "liberal and manly way of thinking." How stoutly his spirit met its responsibilities in Pennsylvania, prior to the Declaration of Independence, we have seen. The risks incident to the adoption of that declaration it incurred with the same fearless courage. Of all the men who united in its adoption, he, perhaps, was in the best position to know, because of his long residence in England, and familiarity with the temper of the English monarch and his ministry, what the personal consequences to the signers were likely to be, if the American cause should prove unsuccessful. He had a head to lose even harder to replace than that of his friend Lavoisier, he had a fortune to be involved in flame or confiscation, the joy of living meant to him what it has meant to few men, and more than one statement in his writings affords us convincing proof that, quite apart from the collective act of all the signers in pledging their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the "glorious cause," he did not lose sight of the fact that the Gray Tower still stood upon its ancient hill with its eye upon the Traitor's Gate, and its bosom stored with instruments of savage vengeance. Indeed, it was the thought that his son had been engaged against him in a game, in which not only his fortune but his neck had been at stake, that made it so difficult for him, forgiving as he was, to keep down the bile of violated nature. But, when the time came for affixing his signature to the Declaration, he not only did it with the equanimity of the rest, but, if tradition may be believed, with a light-hearted intrepidity like that of Sir Walter Raleigh jesting on the scaffold with the edge of the axe. "We must all hang together," declared John Hancock, when pleading for unanimity. "Yes," Franklin is said to have replied, "we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

The inability of old age, partly from sheer loss of animal vigor, and partly from the desire for peace, produced by the general decline in vividness of everything in a world, that it is about to quit, to assert itself with the force of will and temper, that belongs to us in our prime, is one of the most noticeable phenomena of the later stages of human existence. But John Adams to the contrary, the evidence all tends to show that the resolution of character exhibited by Franklin in the heyday of his physical strength he exhibited to the last. He was always slow to anger. Independent of the remarkable self-control, which enabled him to preserve a countenance, while Wedderburn was traducing him, as fixed as if it had been carved out of wood, his anger was not kindled quickly, among other reasons because he was too wise and just not to know that, if we could lay aside the sensitiveness of exaggerated self-importance, there would be but little real occasion for anger in the ordinary course of human life. But when meanness, injustice or other aggravated forms of human depravity were to be rebuked, the indignation of Franklin remained deliberate, judicious, calculating and crushing to the last. One illustration of this we have already given in his letter to Captain Peter Landais. Others we shall have brought to our attention in several of his letters to Arthur Lee. Upon these occasions, angry as he was, he was apt to make out his case with very much the same cool completeness as that with which he demonstrated in a letter to the British Post Office that it would be a mistake to shift His Majesty's mails from the Western to the Eastern Post Route in New Jersey. The time never came when he was not fully as militant as the occasion required, though never more so.

And his integrity was as marked as his courage. "Splashes of Dirt thrown upon my Character, I suffered while fresh to remain," he once said. "I did not chuse to spread by endeavouring to remove them, but rely'd on the vulgar Adage that they would all rub off when they were dry." And such was his reputation for uprightness that, as a rule, he could neglect attacks upon his character with impunity. The one vaunt of his life, if such it can be called, was his statement to John Jay that no person could truthfully declare that Benjamin Franklin had wronged him. A statement of that kind, uttered by an even better man than Franklin, might well be answered in the spirit that prompted Henry IV of France, when his attention was called to a memorial inscription, which asserted that its subject never knew fear, to remark, "Then he never snuffed a candle with his fingers." But that Franklin was a man of sterling probity is unquestionable.¹ "We ought always to do what appears best to be done without much regarding what others may think of it," he wrote to William Carmichael, and, at more than one trying crisis of his career, he rose without difficulty to the requirements of his maxim. Lord North had little love for him, but he is credited with the remarkable statement, during the American War, that, in his belief, Franklin was the only man in France whose hands were not stained with stock jobbery. When the false charge was made that Franklin had never accounted for one of the many millions of livres entrusted to him by our French ally, no pride could suffer more acutely than did his from its inability to disprove the charge immediately. When enemies, to whom he had never given any just cause of offence whatever, were calumniating him towards the close of his life, his desire to leave the reputation of an honest man behind him became the strongest of his motives. The flattering language of great men, he said in his Journal of the Negotiation for Peace with Great Britain, did not mean so much to him when he found himself so near the end of life as to esteem lightly all personal interests and concerns except that of maintaining to the last, and leaving behind him the tolerably good character that he had previously supported. Still later he wrote to Henry Laurens, accepting the offer of that true patriot and gentleman to refute the slanders with regard to his career in France, and saying:

I apprehend that the violent Antipathy of a certain person to me may have produced some Calumnies, which, what you have seen and heard here may enable you easily to refute. You will thereby exceedingly oblige one, who has lived beyond all other Ambition, than that of dying with the fair Character he has long endeavoured to deserve.²

When the negotiations for peace between Great Britain and the United States began, Richard Oswald, the envoy of Lord Shelburne, told Franklin that a part of the confidence felt in him by the English Ministry was inspired by his repute for open, honest dealing. This was not a mere diplomatic douceur, but a just recognition of his candid, straightforward conduct in his commerce with men. He was very resourceful and dexterous, if need were, and, in his early life, when he was promoting his own, or the public interests, he exhibited at times a finesse that bordered upon craftiness; but, when Wedderburn taxed him with duplicity, he imputed to Franklin's nature a vice incompatible with his frank, courageous disposition. It was his outspoken sincerity of character that enabled him, during the American War, to retain the attachment of his English friends even when he was holding up their land as one too wicked for them to dwell in.

His intellectual traits, too, were of a nature to win social fame. In his graphic description of Franklin in extreme old age, Doctor Manasseh Cutler, of Massachusetts, brings him before us with these telling strokes of his pencil:

I was highly delighted with the extensive knowledge he appeared to have of every subject, the brightness of his memory, and clearness and vivacity of all his mental faculties, notwithstanding his age. His manners are perfectly easy, and everything about him seems to diffuse an unrestrained freedom and happiness. He has an incessant vein of humour, accompanied with an uncommon vivacity, which seems as natural and involuntary as his breathing.

In other words, whatever knowledge Franklin had was readily available for social purposes, and suffused with the gaiety and humor which are so ingratiating, when accompanied, as they were in his case, by the desire to please and do good.³ "He had wit at will," is the testimony of an unfriendly but honest witness, John Adams. His humor it would be difficult to over-emphasize. It ranged from punning, trifling, smutty jests and horse laughter to the sly, graceful merriment of Addison and the bitter realism of Swift. It irradiated his conversation, his letters, his writings, his passing memoranda, at times even his scientific essays and political papers. "Iron is always sweet, and every way taken is wholesome and friendly to the human Body," he states in his Account of the New-Invented Pennsylvanian Fireplaces; but his waggish propensity is too much for him, and he adds, "except in Weapons." Jefferson said that Franklin was not allowed to draft the Declaration of Independence for fear that he would insert a joke in it. So far as his humor assumed literary forms, we shall speak of it in another place. We are concerned with it now only so far as it influenced his conversation. In the Autobiography he tells us that his reputation among his fellow-printers at Watts's Printing House in London as "a pretty good riggite, that is, a jocular verbal satirist," helped to support his consequence in the society. In the same book, he also tells us that later, wishing to break a habit that he was getting into of prattling, punning and joking, which made him acceptable to trifling company only, he gave Silence the second place in his little Book of Virtues. "What new story have you lately heard agreeable for telling in conversation?" was one of the standing questions, of his conception, which were to be answered by the members of the Junto at each of its meetings. And, even when he was in his eighty-third year, he could say to Elizabeth Partridge that, notwithstanding the gout, the stone and old age, he enjoyed many comfortable intervals, in which he forgot all his ills, and amused himself in reading or writing, or in conversation with friends, joking, laughing and telling merry stories, as when she first knew him a young man about fifty. His puns at times were as flat as puns usually are, and some of his stories could hardly have prospered in the ear that heard them, if they had not been set off by high animal spirits and contagious good humor. But some of those that crept into his letters, whether original or borrowed, are good enough for repetition. He seems to have had one for every possible combination of circumstances. "The Doctor," Miss Adams observes, "is always silent unless he has some diverting story to tell, of which he has a great collection." The mutinous and quarrelsome temper of his soldiers at Gnadenhutten, when they were idle, put him in mind of the sea-captain, who made it a rule to always keep his men at work, and who exclaimed, upon being told by his mate, that there was nothing more to employ them about, "Oh, make them scour the anchor." His absent-mindedness, when electrocuting a turkey, in setting up an electric circuit through his own body, which cost him the loss of his consciousness, and a numbness in his arms and the back of his neck, which did not wear off until the next morning, put him in mind of the blunderer who, "being about to steal powder, made a hole in the cask with a hot iron." At times, there was a subjective quality about his stories which lifted them above the level of mere jests. When the suggestion was made that, in view of the favor conferred upon America by the repeal of the Stamp Act by Parliament, America could not, with any face of decency, refuse to defray the expense incurred by Great Britain in stamping so much paper and parchment, Franklin did not lack an apposite story in which a hot iron was again made to figure.

The whole Proceeding [he said] would put one in Mind of the Frenchman that used to accost English and other Strangers on the Pont-Neuf, with many Compliments, and a red hot Iron in his Hand; Pray Monsieur Anglois, says he, Do me the Favour to let me have the Honour of thrusting this hot Iron into your Backside? Zoons, what does the Fellow mean! Begone with your Iron or I'll break your Head! Nay Monsieur, replies he, if you do not chuse it, I do not insist upon it. But at least, you will in Justice have the Goodness to pay me something for the heating of my Iron.

This story was too good not to have a sequel.

As you observe [he wrote to his sister Jane] there was no swearing in the story of the poker, when I told it. The late new dresser of it was, probably, the same, or perhaps akin to him, who, in relating a dispute that happened between Queen Anne and the Archbishop of Canterbury, concerning a vacant mitre, which the Queen was for bestowing on a person the Archbishop thought unworthy, made both the Queen and the Archbishop swear three or four thumping oaths in every sentence of the discussion, and the Archbishop at last gained his point. One present at this tale, being surprised, said, "But did the Queen and the Archbishop swear so at one another?" "O no, no," says the relator; "that is only my way of telling the story."

Another rather elaborate story was prompted by Franklin's disapproval of the Society of the Cincinnati.

The States [he said in his famous letter to his daughter] should not only restore to them the Omnia of their first Motto (omnia reliquit servare rempublicam) which many of them have left and lost, but pay them justly, and reward them generously. They should not be suffered to remain, with (all) their new-created Chivalry, entirely in the Situation of the Gentleman in the Story, which their omnia reliquit reminds me of… He had built a very fine House, and thereby much impair'd his Fortune. He had a Pride, however, in showing it to his Acquaintance. One of them, after viewing it all, remark'd a Motto over the Door "**[=O]IA VANITAS." "What," says he, "is the Meaning of this **[=O]IA? It is a word I don't understand." "I will tell you," said the Gentleman; "I had a mind to have the Motto cut on a Piece of smooth Marble, but there was not room for it between the Ornaments, to be put in Characters large enough to be read. I therefore made use of a Contraction antiently very common in Latin Manuscripts, by which the m's and n's in Words are omitted, and the Omissions noted by a little Dash above, which you may see there; so that the Word is omnia, OMNIA VANITAS." "O," says his Friend, "I now comprehend the Meaning of your motto, it relates to your Edifice; and signifies, that, if you have abridged your Omnia, you have, nevertheless, left your VANITAS legible at full length."

The determination of the enemies of America after the Revolution to have it that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, America was going from bad to worse, brought out still another story:

They are angry with us and hate us, and speak all manner of evil of us; but we flourish, notwithstanding [he wrote to his grandnephew, Jonathan Williams]. They put me in mind of a violent High Church Factor, resident some time in Boston, when I was a Boy. He had bought upon Speculation a Connecticut Cargo of Onions, which he flatter'd himself he might sell again to great Profit, but the Price fell, and they lay upon hand. He was heartily vex'd with his Bargain, especially when he observ'd they began to grow in the Store he had fill'd with them. He show'd them one Day to a Friend. "Here they are," says he, "and they are growing too! I damn 'em every day; but I think they are like the Presbyterians; the more I curse 'em, the more they grow."

It was impossible for such an irrational thing as the duel to escape Franklin's humorous insight, and a story like the following tended far more effectively to end the superstition upon which it throve than any pains or penalties that law could devise:

A Man [wrote Franklin from Passy to Thomas Percival] says something, which another tells him is a Lie. They fight; but, whichever is killed, the Point in dispute remains unsettled. To this purpose they have a pleasant little Story here. A Gentleman in a Coffee-house desired another to sit farther from him. "Why so?" "Because, Sir, you stink." "That is an Affront, and you must fight me." "I will fight you, if you insist upon it; but I do not see how that will mend the Matter. For if you kill me, I shall stink too; and if I kill you, (you) will stink, if possible, worse than you do at present."

This is one of those stories which make their own application, but the grave reflections, by which it was followed, are well worthy of quotation too.

How can such miserable Sinners as we are [added Franklin] entertain so much Pride, as to conceit that every Offence against our imagined Honour merits Death? These petty Princes in their own Opinion would call that Sovereign a Tyrant, who should put one of them to death for a little uncivil Language, tho' pointed at his sacred Person; yet every one of them makes himself Judge in his own Cause, condemns the offender without a Jury, and undertakes himself to be the Executioner.

Some bon mots, too, of Franklin have come down to us with his stories. When a neighbor of his in Philadelphia consulted him as to how he could keep trespassers from coming into his back yard, and stealing small beer from a keg, which he kept there, he replied, "Put a pipe of Madeira alongside of it." When Lord Stormont, the British Ambassador to France, hatched the report that a large part of Washington's army had surrendered, Franklin was asked whether it was true. "No sir," he said, "it is not a truth, it is only a stormont." The result was that for some time no lies were told in Paris but only "stormonts." It was not often that the wit of Franklin was barbed with malice, but there were good reasons why the malice in this instance should never have cost him any regret. When the American Commissioners proposed an exchange of prisoners to Lord Stormont, he did not deign to reply, but when they followed up their proposition with another letter, he returned a communication to them without date or signature in these insolent words: "The King's Ambassador receives no letters from rebels but when they come to implore his Majesty's mercy." The American Commissioners, with Franklin doubtless as their scrivener, were quite equal to the occasion. "In answer to a letter which concerns some of the most material interests of humanity, and of the two nations, Great Britain and the United States of America, now at war," they retorted, "we received the inclosed indecent paper, as coming from your lordship, which we return, for your lordship's more mature consideration." Between Franklin and the vivacity of the Parisians, Lord Stormont found it not a little difficult to maintain his position of frigid and relentless dignity. Commenting in a letter to John Lovell, after Lord Stormont had left France, upon the expense entailed upon the United States by supernumerary commissioners, Franklin takes this parting shot at the Ambassador; we reduce such of his words as were in French to English:

I imagine every one of us spends nearly as much as Lord Stormont did. It is true, he left behind him the character of a niggard; and, when the advertisement appeared for the sale of his household goods, all Paris laughed at an article of it, perhaps very innocently expressed, "a great quantity of table linen, which has never been used." "That is very true," say they, "for he has never given any one anything to eat."⁴

Another bon mot of Franklin was his reply when he was told that Howe had taken Philadelphia. "No," he said, "Philadelphia has taken Howe"; and so it proved. Still another owed its origin to the balloon in its infancy. "Of what use is a balloon?" someone asked in Franklin's presence. "Of what use," he answered, "is a new-born baby?"

But to form a correct impression of Franklin's humor we should think of it, to use Dr. Cutler's comparison, as something as natural to him as the rise and fall of his chest in breathing. It played like an iris over the commonest transactions of his life. If it was only a lost prayer book of his wife that he was advertising for in his Gazette, he did it in such terms as these:

Taken out of a Pew in the Church some months since, a Common Prayer-Book, bound in Red, gilt, and letter'd D. F. on each corner. The Person who took it is desir'd to open it, and read the Eighth Commandment, and afterwards return it to the same Pew again; upon which no further Notice will be taken.

At times, the humor is mere waggishness. When he was the Colonial Deputy Postmaster-General, he indorsed his letters, "Free, B. Franklin," but, after he became the Postmaster-General of the United States, out of deference for the American struggle for liberty, he changed the indorsement to "B. Free Franklin." Even in his brief memoranda on the backs of letters, there are gleams of the same overflowing vivacity. Upon the manuscript of a long poem, received by him, when in France, he jotted down the words: "From M. de Raudiere, a poor Poet, who craves assistance to enable him to finish an epic poem which he is writing against the English. He thinks General Howe will be off as soon as the poem appears." When a Benedictine monk, the prior for a time of the Abbey of St. Pierre de Chalon, lost money at cards, and wrote to him for his aid, he made this endorsement upon the letter: "Dom Bernard, Benedictine, wants me to pay his Gaming Debts – and he will pray for success to our Cause!"

The humor of Franklin was too broad at times not to find expression occasionally in practical jokes. When in England, during his maturer years, he was in the habit of pretending to read his Parable against Persecution, which he had learnt by heart, and in which the manner of the Old Testament is skilfully imitated, out of his Bible, as the fifty-first Chapter of the Book of Genesis. The remarks of the Scripturians on it, he said in a letter written by him a year before his death, were sometimes very diverting. On one occasion, he wrote to the famous English printer, John Baskerville, that, to test the acumen of a connoisseur, who had asserted that Baskerville would blind all the readers of the nation by the thin and narrow strokes of his letters, he submitted to the inspection of the gentleman, as a specimen of Baskerville's printing, what was in reality a fragment of a page printed by Caslon. Franklin protested that he could not for his life see in what respects the print merited the gentleman's criticism. The gentleman saw in it everywhere illustrations of the justice of this criticism and declared that he could not even then read the specimen without pain in his eyes.

I spared him that Time [said Franklin] the Confusion of being told, that these were the Types he had been reading all his life, with so much Ease to his Eyes; the Types his adored Newton is printed with, on which he has pored not a little; nay, the very Types his own Book is printed with, (for he is himself an Author) and yet never discovered this painful Disproportion in them, till he thought they were yours.⁵

Associated with these moral and intellectual traits was a total lack of all anti-social characteristics or habits. When Franklin was in his twenty-first year, he made this sage entry in his Journal of his voyage from London to Philadelphia:

Man is a sociable being, and it is, for aught I know, one of the worst of punishments to be excluded from Society. I have read abundance of fine things on the subject of solitude, and I know 'tis a common boast in the mouths of those that affect to be thought wise, that they are never less alone than when alone. I acknowledge solitude an agreeable refreshment to a busy mind; but were these thinking people obliged to be always alone, I am apt to think they would quickly find their very being insupportable to them.

In his youth he adopted the Socratic method of argument, and grew, he tells us in the Autobiography, very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither he nor his cause always deserved. But, in a few years, he discovered that these victories were Pyrrhic victories, and he gradually left off this doubtful kind of dialectics, retaining only the habit of expressing himself in terms of modest diffidence, never using when he advanced anything, that might possibly be disputed, the words "certainly," "undoubtedly" or any others that gave the air of positiveness to an opinion, but rather saying "I conceive" or "apprehend" a thing to be so and so; "it appears to me," or "I should think it is so or so" for such and such reasons; or "I imagine it to be so," or "it is so if I am not mistaken."

As the chief ends of conversation [he declared] are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure.

And that Franklin completely succeeded in rooting out the last vestige of dogmatism in his nature we not only have his testimony but that of Jefferson, who was not even born when he resolved to do it. "It was one of the rules which, above all others, made Dr. Franklin the most amiable of men in society," he said, "never to contradict anybody." Long before this, when Franklin was only in his forty-fifth year, James Logan wrote of him to Peter Collinson in these words: "Our Benjamin Franklin is certainly an extraordinary man, one of a singular good judgment, but of equal modesty."

How noble was his capacity for self-effacement in the investigation of truth we shall see later on. In this place, it is enough to say that even the adulation poured out upon him in France did not in the slightest degree turn his head. He accepted it with the ingenuous pleasure with which he accepted everything that tended to confirm his impression that life was a game fully worth the candle, but, much as he loved France and the French, ready as he was to take a sip of everything that Paris pronounced exquisite, celestial or divine, it is manifest enough that he regarded with no little amusement the effort of French hyperbole to assign to him the rôle of Jupiter Tonans. When Felix Nogaret submitted to him his French version of Turgot's epigram, "Eripuit cælo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis," Franklin, after acknowledging the flood of compliments that he could never hope to merit, with which the writer had overwhelmed him in his letter, added, "I will only call your attention to two inaccuracies in the original line. In spite of my electrical experiments, the lightning descends just the same before my very nose and beard, and, as to tyrants, there have been more than a million of us engaged in snatching his sceptre from him." His pen, however, was wasting its breath when it attempted to convince a Frenchman of that day that his countrymen did not owe their liberties solely to him. If the French had not been too generous and well-bred to remind him of the millions of livres obtained by him from the French King for the support of the American cause, he might have found it more difficult to deny that he was the real captor of Cornwallis.

How heartily Franklin hated disputation we have already had some occasion to see. This aversion is repeatedly expressed in the Autobiography. Referring to his arguments with Collins, he tells us in one place that the disputatious turn of mind

is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice; and thence, besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of disgusts and perhaps enmities where you may have occasion for friendship.

In another place, he has this to say of the contentious Governor Morris, one of the Colonial governors of Pennsylvania:

He had some reason for loving to dispute, being eloquent, an acute sophister, and, therefore, generally successful in argumentative conversation. He had been brought up to it from a boy, his father, as I have heard, accustoming his children to dispute with one another for his diversion, while sitting at table after dinner; but I think the practice was not wise; for, in the course of my observation, these disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them.

The same thought is stated in a letter from Franklin to Robert Morris in which the former told the latter that he would see, on comparing a letter which Franklin had written, with the answer, that, if he had replied, which he could easily have done, a dispute might have arisen out of it, in which, if he had got the better, he should perhaps have got nothing else.

Facetious and agreeable as he was, he was likewise free from the unsocial habit of monopolizing conversation:

The great secret of succeeding in conversation, [he declared], is to admire little, to hear much; always to distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as possibly we can; to hearken to what is said, and to answer to the purpose.

Nor, in making or borrowing these just observations, was Franklin like Carlyle who has been wittily said to have preached the doctrine of silence in thirty volumes. What he preached in these respects, he practised.

He was friendly and agreeable in conversation [Miss Logan tells us], which he suited to his company, appearing to wish to benefit his hearers. I could readily believe that he heard nothing of consequence himself but what he turned to the account he desired, and in his turn profited by the conversation of others.

It is hardly just to Franklin, however, to portray his social character negatively. The truth is, as the extracts from his correspondence have clearly enough shown, he was one of the most companionable and one of the kindest and most sympathetic and affectionate of human beings. He detested wrangling and discord. He had no patience with malice, and refused to allow the Pennsylvania Gazette to be made a vehicle for detraction. To tell a chronic grumbler that he was hurt by his "voluminous complaints," or to write to a friend that he would have sent him a longer letter but for the coming in of a bavard who had worried him till evening was about as close as he ever got to fretfulness. There is testimony to the effect that he never uttered a hasty or angry word to any member of his household, servant or otherwise. Even where he had strong reasons for resentment, he was remarkably just, generous and forgiving. Speaking in the Autobiography of the manner in which he had been deceived by Governor Keith, he had only these mild words of reproof for him:

He wish'd to please everybody; and, having little to give, he gave expectations. He was otherwise an ingenious, sensible man, a pretty good writer, and a good governor for the people, tho' not for his constituents, the proprietaries, whose instructions he sometimes disregarded. Several of our best laws were of his planning and passed during his administration.

When Bradford was Postmaster, he refused to allow his post-riders to carry any newspaper but his own. When the tables were turned, and Franklin was in the position as Postmaster himself to shut out every publication from the mails except his Gazette, he declined to retaliate on Bradford's meanness. Drained of money, as he was by Ralph, when they were in London together, he nevertheless summed up the situation in the Autobiography with the charitable statement: "I lov'd him, notwithstanding, for he had many amiable qualities." If there was any person for whom Franklin entertained, and had just cause to entertain, a bitter feeling of contempt and dislike, it was Thomas Penn. Yet, when Lady Penn solicited his assistance, for the protection of her interests in Pennsylvania, after the Proprietary Government in that Province had collapsed with the royal authority, he did all that he could properly do to aid her.

He was always ready for a friendly game of cribbage, cards or chess. Though entirely too temperate to indulge any physical appetite to excess, he was not insensible to the pleasures of the table in his later years. Wine, too, he relished sufficiently to thank God for it liturgically in his youth, and to consume a second bottle of it at times in middle age with the aid of his friend "Straney." When Col. Henry Bouquet was looking forward to a hot summer in Charleston, he wrote to him that he did all that he could for his relief, by recommending him to an ingenious physician of his acquaintance, who knew the rule of making cool, weak, refreshing punch, not inferior to the nectar of the gods. It would not do, of course, to accept too literally the song in which Franklin exalted Bacchus at the expense of Venus, or the Anacreontic letter to the Abbé Morellet, in which wine was extolled as if it were all milk of our Blessed Lady. But these convivial effusions of his pen nevertheless assist us in arriving at a correct interpretation of his character.

He was fond of music also, and was something of a musician himself. He could play on the harp, the guitar and the violin, and he improved the armonica, which acquired some temporary repute. His interest in this musical instrument owed its birth to the melodious sounds which a member of the Royal Society, Mr. Delavel, happened to produce in his presence by rubbing his fingers on the edges of bowls, attuned to the proper notes by the different measures of water that they contained. It was upon the armonica that Franklin played at the social gatherings under M. Brillon's roof which he called his Opera, and to which such lively references are made in the letters that passed between Madame Brillon and himself. The advantages of the instrument, he wrote to Giambatista Beccaria, were that its tones were incomparably sweet beyond those of any other; that they could be swelled and softened at pleasure by stronger or weaker pressures of the fingers, and continued to any length; and that the instrument, being once well tuned, never again required tuning.

Blend with all this the happy disposition, which led Franklin to declare in his eighty-second year that he comforted himself with the reflection that only three incurable diseases, the gout, the stone, and old age, had fallen to his share, and that they had not yet deprived him of his natural cheerfulness, his delight in books, and enjoyment of social conversation, and we can form some adequate idea of what he brought to intercourse with his fellow-creatures. Only about two weeks before his death he wrote to Jane Mecom from his death-bed:

I do not repine at my malady, though a severe one, when I consider how well I am provided with every convenience to palliate it, and to make me comfortable under it; and how many more horrible evils the human body is subject to; and what a long life of health I have been blessed with, free from them all.

In his Proposals Relating to Education, he dwelt upon the importance of "that Benignity of Mind, which shows itself in searching for and seizing every Opportunity to serve and to oblige; and is the Foundation of what is called Good Breeding; highly useful to the Possessor, and most agreeable to all." This benignity of mind belonged to him in an eminent degree. The grape vines that he procured for his friend Quincy at the cost of so much trouble to himself were but one of the ten thousand proofs that he gave his friends of his undiminished affection and unselfish readiness to serve them. Throughout his whole life, he had a way of keeping friendship fresh by some thoughtful gift or act of kindness. Books, pamphlets, writing materials, seeds of many descriptions, candles, hams, American nuts and dried apples, even choice soap, were among the articles with which he reminded his friends that he had not forgotten them.

The Box not being full [he wrote to Collinson], I have put in a few more of our Candles which I recommend for your particular Use when you have Occasion to read or write by Night; they give a whiter Flame than that of any other kind of Candle, and the Light is more like Daylight than any other Light I know; besides they need little or no Snuffing, and grease nothing. There is still a little Vacancy at the End of the Box, so I'll put in a few Cakes of American Soap made of Myrtle Wax, said to be the best Soap in the World for Shaving or Washing fine Linnens etc. Mrs. Franklin requests your Daughter would be so good as to accept 3 or 4 Cakes of it, to wash your Grandson's finest Things with.

In a letter to Bartram, who had informed him that his eye sight was failing, Franklin surmises that this good and dear old friend did not have spectacles that suited him.

Therefore [he said] I send you a complete set, from number one to thirteen, that you may try them at your ease; and, having pitched on such as suit you best at present, reserve those of higher numbers for future use, as your eyes grow still older; and with the lower numbers, which are for younger people, you may oblige some other friends. My love to good Mrs. Bartram and your children.

Afterwards, he sends to Bartram several sorts of seed and the English medal which had been awarded to him for his botanical achievements. And with them went also one of the compliments in which his urbanity abounded. Alluding to the medal, he says, "It goes in a Box to my Son Bache, with the Seeds. I wish you Joy of it. Notwithstanding the Failure of your Eyes, you write as distinctly as ever."

"Please to accept a little Present of Books, I send by him, curious for the Beauty of the Impression," he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan, when Temple was on the point of visiting England. One of his last gifts was a collection of books to Abdiel Holmes, the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes. In addition to the gifts that he made to his friends, and the numerous commissions that he executed for them, when he was in London, he was prompt to let them feel that they could always be certain of his sympathy in every respect that affected their prosperity or happiness for good or for evil. In one of his letters, he assures Jared Eliot that, if he should send any of his steel saws to Philadelphia for sale, the writer would not be wanting, where his recommendation might be of service. When at Passy, he wrote to George Whatley for a copy of his "excellent little Work," The Principles of Trade. "I would get it translated and printed here," he said. The same generous impulse led him to write to Robert Morris, when Morris was acquiring his reputation as "The Financier," "No one but yourself can enjoy your growing reputation more than I do." Often as he was honored both at home and abroad by institutions of learning, it is safe to say that no honor that he ever received afforded him more pleasure than he experienced when the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred at his instance by the University of Edinburgh upon Dr. Samuel Cooper.

In no respect, however, did Franklin commend himself more signally to the affection of his friends than in the notice that he took of their children. His relations to some of these children were closely akin to those of adoption. To John Hughes, Josiah Quincy, Henry Laurens and de Chaumont, he wrote at one time or another referring to their "valuable" sons, and filling their bosoms with the parental joy that his commendation could not fail to excite.

In these attributes of mind, character and nature can readily be found, we think, the explanation of that capacity for winning and retaining friends which made the life of Franklin as mellow as a ripe peach. The most important of them in a social sense lead us, of course, simply to the statement that he was far more beloved than most men are because he was himself influenced far more than most men are by the spirit of love. His sympathy and affection were given to men in gross, and they were given to men in detail. His heart was capacious enough to take in the largest enterprises of human benevolence, but, unlike the hearts of many philanthropists and reformers, it was not so intensely preoccupied with them as to have no place for

 
That best portion of a good man's life, —
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of Kindness and of Love.
 

CHAPTER II
Franklin as a Man of Business

When some one said to Erskine that punning was the lowest kind of wit, he replied that the statement was true, because punning was the foundation of all wit.

The business career of Franklin did not move upon such an exalted plane as his scientific or political career, but it was the basis on which the entire superstructure of his renown as a philosopher and a statesman was built up; inasmuch as it was his early release from pecuniary cares which enabled him to apply himself with single-minded devotion to electrical experiments, and to accept at the hands of the people of Pennsylvania the missions to England which opened up the wider horizon of his postmeridian life. Quite apart, however, from the scientific and political reputation, to which his material success smoothed the way, his business career has an intrinsic interest of its own. In itself alone, when the limited opportunities afforded by Colonial conditions for the accumulation of a fortune are considered, it is a remarkable illustration of the extent to which sleepless energy and wise conduct rise superior to the most discouraging circumstances. Comparatively few young men aspire to be philosophers or statesmen, but almost every young man of merit finds himself under the necessity of striving for a pecuniary independence or at any rate for a pecuniary livelihood. How this object can be most effectually accomplished, is the problem, above all others in the world, the most importunate; and the effort to solve it from generation to generation is one of the things that invest human existence with perpetual freshness. To a young man, involved in the hopes and anxieties of his first struggles for a foothold in the world, the history of Franklin, as a business man, could not but be full of inspiration, even if it had not flowered into higher forms of achievement, and were not reflected in publications of rare literary value. But, putting altogether out of sight the great fame acquired by Franklin in scientific and political fields, a peculiar vividness is imparted to his business career by other circumstances which should not be overlooked. His main calling was that of a printer, a vocation of unusual importance and influence in a free community. "I, Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, printer, late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the Court of France, now President of the State of Pennsylvania," is the way in which he describes himself in his will executed less than two years before his death. And from that day to this, upon one memorable occasion or another, guilds of printers on both sides of the Atlantic have acclaimed him as little less than the patron saint of their craft.

Two of his commercial enterprises were the Pennsylvania Gazette, the most readable newspaper of Colonial America, and Poor Richard's Almanac, the only almanac that has ever attained the rank of literature. And finally the story of Franklin's business vicissitudes and the fortune, that he ultimately won, has been pictured with incomparable distinctness in the fascinating Autobiography. There he has set forth, as no other man with such lowly beginnings has had the genius to set forth, the slow, painful progress of a printer and merchant, under harsh and rigid conditions, from poverty to wealth. That fortune cannot be won under such circumstances except by the exercise of untiring industry, pinching frugality and unceasing vigilance, but that, with good health, good character, unquailing courage and due regard to Father Abraham's harangue, every man can conquer adversity, is the moral which the Autobiography has for the youth who has no inheritance but his own hands or brain. It is sad to reflect how much more impressive and stimulating this moral would be, if the Autobiography did not also disagreeably remind us that pecuniary ideals subject human character to many peculiar temptations of their own, and that, as the result of the destructive competition, which extends even to the sapling struggling in the thick set copse for its share of light and air, the success of one man in business is too often founded upon the ruins of that of another.

The business life of Franklin began when he was ten years old. At that age, he was taken from Mr. Brownell's school in Boston, and set to the task at the Blue Ball, his father's shop, of "cutting wick for the candles, filling the dipping mold and the molds for cast candles, attending the shop, going of errands, etc." At this he continued until he was twelve years of age, but his duties were so distasteful to him that his father feared that, unless he could find some more congenial occupation for him, he would run off to sea. To avert this danger, Josiah sometimes took Benjamin about with him, and showed him joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers and other artisans at their several trades in the hope of awakening an inclination in him for one of them. The walks were not unprofitable to the son.

It has ever since [he says in the Autobiography] been a pleasure to me to see good workmen handle their tools; and it has been useful to me, having learnt so much by it as to be able to do little jobs myself in my house when a workman could not readily be got, and to construct little machines for my experiments, while the intention of making the experiment was fresh and warm in my mind.

After this circuit of the various handicrafts, Josiah decided to make a cutler of Benjamin, and he placed him on probation with Samuel Franklin, a cutler, and a son of Josiah's brother, Benjamin. But Samuel thought that he should be paid a fee for instructing his cousin, and the suggestion was so displeasing to Josiah that he took the lad back to his own home. He doubtless felt that Samuel might have remembered whose roof it was that had sheltered his father when the latter first came over from England to Boston.

The real inclination, however, that Benjamin discovered at this period of his life was for books. His father observed it, and decided to make a printer of him, and it was when James, an older son of Josiah, returned from England, with a press and letters, to set up as a printer at Boston, that Benjamin was finally persuaded to enter into indentures of apprenticeship with him. He did not yield at once, because, while he preferred the business of a printer to that of a tallow chandler, the salt of the sea was still in his blood. Under the provisions of the indentures, he was to serve as his brother's apprentice, until he was twenty-one years of age, but he was to be allowed the wages of a journeyman during the last year of the apprenticeship. It was a fortunate thing for the apprentice that he should have become bound to a master, who had been trained for his craft in London, and the extraordinary skill which he early acquired as a printer was probably due in part to this circumstance. Among the publications printed by James, while the apprenticeship lasted, were Stoddard's Treatise on Conversion, Stone's Short Catechism and A Prefatory Letter about Psalmody. These publications were all of the kind that Franklin afterwards came to regard as hopelessly dry pemmican. Other publications, printed by James Franklin, during the same time, were various New England sermons, The Isle of Man, or Legal Proceedings in Manshire against Sin, an allegory, A Letter from One in the Country to his Friend in Boston, News from the Moon, A Friendly Check from a kind Relation to the Chief Cannoneer and A Word of Comfort to a Melancholy Country– all political pamphlets, – several papers on inoculation, and a production bearing the quaint title Hooped Petticoats Arraigned by the Light of Nature and the Law of God. But it was through a publication of a very different nature from these that James Franklin has come to occupy his position of prominence in the life of his apprentice. This publication was the New England Courant, already mentioned above. Its first issue appeared at Boston on August 21, 1721, and so bold were its pungent comments upon the clergy and magistrates of the Colony that, within a year, James Franklin was by the Council summoned before it for what it conceived to be highly injurious reflections upon the civil authorities. The reflections consisted in this: A letter from Newport in the Courant for June 11, 1722, stated that a piratical vessel had been seen off Block Island, and that two vessels were being fitted out to pursue her. "We are advised from Boston," was the conclusion of the letter, "that the Government of the Massachusetts are fitting out a ship (The Flying Horse) to go after the pirates, to be commanded by Captain Peter Papillon, and 'tis thought he will sail some time this month, wind and weather permitting." The letter, of course, was fictitious, and but a mild piece of satire in comparison with some of the prior utterances of the Courant. But this time the magistracy of the Colony was too much exasperated by the past misdemeanors of the Courant to overlook such a gibe at the expense of its activity. When questioned by the Council, James admitted that he was the owner of the paper, but refused to disclose the name of the author of the offensive letter. Benjamin was questioned, too, and united in the refusal. This was excusable in him as it was a point of honor for an apprentice not to betray his master's secrets, but James had no such plea behind which to shelter himself. Indeed, his bearing before the Council appears to have been too haughty to warrant the idea that he was much concerned about bringing forward any sort of defence. The examination resulted in a decision by the Council that the letter was "a high affront to the Government" and an order to the Sheriff to commit James to the Boston Jail.

A week in jail was sufficient to bring James a whining suppliant to the feet of his oppressors. At the end of that time, he addressed an humble petition to the Council, acknowledging his folly in affronting the civil government, and his indecent behavior, when arraigned for it, and praying for forgiveness and less rigorous confinement. The petition was granted, but, when he was released, he had been a whole month in durance. In the meantime, however, Benjamin, who had attracted the attention of his brother and the group of writers, who contributed to the columns of the Courant, by a sprightly series of letters signed Silence Dogood, of which we shall say something hereafter, had been conducting the publication, and, with the aid of his literary coadjutors, assailing the proceedings of the Council in prose and verse. These attacks continued for six months after James was released, and were borne by the Council with a supineness which was probably due to the fear of exciting popular sympathy with the Courant as a champion of free speech. But in the issue of the Courant for January 14, 1723, appeared an article so caustic that the Council could contain itself no longer. It was headed by the well known lines of Hudibras, which are significant of the spirit in which the youthful Franklin confronted the whole system of Puritan Asceticism:

 
In the wicked there's no vice,
Of which the saints have not a spice;
And yet that thing that's pious in
The one, in t'other is a sin.
Is't not ridiculous and nonsense,
A saint should be a slave to conscience?
 

The performance has so many earmarks of Franklin's peculiar modes of thought and speech that it is hard not to ascribe its authorship to him without hesitation. Besides thrusts at the Governor and other public functionaries, it lashed the pietists of the place and time with unsparing severity. Many persons, it declared, who seemed to be more than "ordinarily religious," were often found to be the greatest cheats imaginable. They would dissemble and lie, snuffle and whiffle, and, if it were possible, would overreach and defraud all who dealt with them.

For my own part [the writer further declared] when I find a man full of religious cant and pellavar, I presently suspect him to be a knave. Religion is, indeed, the principal thing; but too much of it is worse than none at all. The world abounds with knaves and villains; but of all knaves, the religious knave is the worst; and villainies acted under the cloak of religion are the most execrable. Moral honesty, though it will not of itself, carry a man to heaven, yet I am sure there is no going thither without it. And however such men, of whom I have been speaking, may palliate their wickedness, they will find that publicans and harlots will enter the kingdom of heaven before themselves.

The same day, on which this issue of the Courant appeared, the Council passed an order, denouncing it in scathing terms, and appointing a committee of three persons to consider and report what was proper for the Court to do with regard to it. It did not take the committee long to report. They condemned the Courant in stern language as an offence to church and state, and "for precaution of the like offence for the future," humbly proposed that "James Franklin, the printer and publisher thereof, be strictly forbidden by this Court to print or publish the New England Courant, or any other pamphlet or paper of the like nature, except it be first supervised by the Secretary of this Province." The report was approved, and followed by an order, carrying its recommendations into execution. But the proprietor of the Courant and his literary retainers were equal to the crisis. They assembled at once, and resolved that the paper should thenceforth be issued in the name of Benjamin, at that time a boy of seventeen. At the same time, to retain his hold on his apprentice until the expiration of his term, James resorted to a knavish expedient.

The contrivance [the Autobiography tells us] was that my old indenture should be return'd to me, with a full discharge on the back of it, to be shown on occasion, but to secure to him the benefit of my service, I was to sign new indentures for the remainder of the term, which were to be kept private. A very flimsy scheme it was; however, it was immediately executed.

As the final step in the fraud, the next issue of the Courant announced that the late publisher of the paper, finding that so many inconveniences would arise by his taking the manuscripts and public news to be supervised by the Secretary as to render his carrying it on unprofitable, had entirely dropped the undertaking. The Courant itself, however, went merrily along in its old evil courses, despite the fact that the same issue, speaking through its new management, as if it were an entire stranger to its guilty past, deprecated newspaper license in the strongest terms, looked forward to a future of genial good-humor only, and even gave expression to such a deceitful sentiment as this: "Pieces of pleasancy and mirth have a secret charm in them to allay the heats and tumors of our spirits, and to make a man forget his restless resentments." These debonair pretences were hardly uttered before they were laid aside, and the attacks on the clergy and their sanctimonious adherents renewed with as much wit and vivacity as formerly, if not more; and so eagerly read were the lampoons of the Courant by the population of Boston, which, perhaps, after all, stiff-necked as it was, did not differ from most urban populations in containing more sinners than saints, that, under the management of "Old Janus," the mask behind which young Franklin concealed his features, the Courant was in a few months able to raise its price from ten to twelve shillings a year. It was a lawless sheet, but, in its contest against arbitrary power and muffled speech, it was swimming with a current that was to gather up additional elements of irresistible volume and force at every stage of its journey towards the open main of present American political ideas.

In the management of the Courant, Franklin had scored his first business success. James might well have made his gifted apprentice his co-partner; but, whether from jealousy, the sauciness of the apprentice, mere choler, or the domineering temper that we should naturally expect in a man who meekly kissed the hand of tyranny after a single week in jail, he was far from doing anything of the sort. Smarting under the snubs and blows administered to him by a brother, from whose fraternal relationship to him he thought that he was entitled to receive somewhat more than the ordinary indulgence shown an apprentice, Benjamin, to use his own words, took upon him to assert his freedom; presuming that James would not venture to produce the new indentures. When James found that his apprentice was about to leave him, he prevented him from securing employment with any other Boston printer by warning them all against him. The consequence was that the boy, between his reputation as "a young genius that had a turn for libelling and satyr," the horror with which he was pointed at by good people as an infidel or atheist, the lowering eye of the Provincial Government, and the rancor with which he was pursued by his brother, found himself under a cloud of opprobrium from which he could not escape except by making his home in another place than Boston. Knowing that his father would detain him, if he learnt that he was about to go elsewhere, he sold enough of his books to obtain a small sum of money for his journey, and contrived, through the management of Collins, to be secretly taken on board of a sloop on the eve of sailing for New York, under the pretence of his being a young acquaintance of Collins, who had got a naughty girl with child. The flight which followed has been narrated and pictured until it is almost as well known as the exodus of the Old Testament. He would be a rash writer, indeed, who imagined that he could tell that story over again in any words except those of Franklin himself without dispelling a charm as subtle as that which forbids a seashell to be removed from the seashore. How, with a fair wind, he found himself, a boy of seventeen, in New York,⁶ without a claim of friendship, acquaintance or recommendation upon a human being in that town; how he fruitlessly applied for employment to the only printer there, William Bradford, and was advised by him to go on to Philadelphia; how, owing to an ugly squall, he was thirty hours on the waters of New York Bay before he could make the Kill, without victuals, or any drink except a bottle of filthy rum, and with no companion except his boatman and a drunken Dutchman; how after breaking up a fever, brought on by this experience, with copious draughts of cold water, he trudged on foot all the way across New Jersey from Amboy to Burlington; stopping the first day for the night at a poor inn, where travel-stained and drenched to the skin by rain, he was in danger of being taken up as a runaway servant; stopping the second day at an inn within eight or ten miles of Burlington, kept by a Dr. Brown, an infidel vagabond, with a flavor of letters, and arriving the next morning at Burlington, where a kindly old woman of whom he had bought gingerbread, to eat on his way down the Delaware, gave him a dinner of ox cheek with great good will, and accepted only a pot of ale in return – all these things are told in the Autobiography in words as well known to the ordinary American boy as the prominent incidents of his own life. And so also is the descent of the Delaware in the timely boat that hove in sight as Benjamin was walking in the evening by the water-side at Burlington on the day of his arrival there, and took him aboard, putting in about midnight at Cooper's Creek for fear that it had passed in the darkness the town which has since grown to be a vast city more luminous at night than the heavens above it, and landing at Market Street, Philadelphia, the next day, Sunday, at eight or nine o'clock. Here the dirty, hungry wayfarer found himself in a land marked by many surprising contrasts with the one from which he had fled. There was no biscuit to be had in the town, nor could he even obtain a three-penny loaf at the baker shop on Second Street; but for three pence he purchased to his astonishment three great puffy rolls, so large that, after sating his hunger with one of them, as he walked up Market Street as far as Fourth Street, and then back by other streets for a drink of river-water to the Market Street Wharf, he still had the other two left to give to a mother and child, who had come down the Delaware with him, and were on their way to a more distant point. But, doubtless, of all the things in that unfamiliar place, the one that seemed to him most unlike his former home was the serene, mild face that religion wore. It must have been like mollifying oil poured into a wound for him to find himself in such an edifice as the Great Quaker meeting house near the market with a placid, clean-dressed concourse of worshippers, whose brooding silence, so unlike the strident voices of the Saints, with whom he had been warring in Boston, soon lulled him to sleep; a sleep not so deep or so long, however, that the youth, exhausted by the labor of rowing, and the want of rest, could not, when diverted from the sign of the disreputable Three Mariners, and directed to the sign of the more reputable Crooked Billet, in Water Street, by a friendly Quaker guide, consume in profound slumber, with a brief intermission for supper, the entire time between dinner and the next morning. He was too young yet to need to be reminded by any Poor Richard that there is sleeping enough in the grave, and the next morning was to see the beginning of a struggle, first for subsistence, and then for a fortune, hard as a muscle tense with the utmost strain that it can bear.

With the return of day, he made himself as tidy as he could without the aid of his clothes chest, which was coming around by sea, and repaired to the printing shop of Andrew Bradford, to whom he had been referred by William Bradford, the father of Andrew, in New York. When he arrived at the shop, he found the father there. By travelling on horseback, he had reached Philadelphia before Benjamin. By him Benjamin was introduced to Andrew Bradford, who received him civilly, and gave him breakfast but told him that he was not at present in need of a hand, having recently secured one. There was another printer in town, however, he said, lately set up, one Keimer, who perhaps might employ him. If not, Benjamin was welcome to lodge at his house, and he would give him a little work to do now and then until he could find steadier employment for him.

Benjamin then went off to see Keimer; and William Bradford accompanied him; for what purpose soon became apparent enough. "Neighbor," said Bradford, "I have brought to see you a young man of your business; perhaps you may want such a one." Keimer asked Benjamin a few questions, put a composing stick in his hands to test his competency, and declared that he would employ him soon though he had just then nothing for him to do. Then taking old Bradford, whom he had never seen before, and whose relationship to Andrew he never suspected, to be a friendly fellow townsman, he opened up his plans and prospects to his visitors, and announced that he expected to get the greater part of the printing business in Philadelphia into his hands. This announcement prompted William Bradford to draw him on "by artful questions, and starting little doubts, to explain all his views, what interest he reli'd on, and in what manner he intended to proceed." "I," observes Franklin, "who stood by and heard all, saw immediately that one of them was a crafty old sophister, and the other a mere novice. Bradford left me with Keimer, who was greatly surpris'd when I told him who the old man was."

There was room enough in Philadelphia for such an expert craftsman as Benjamin. Andrew Bradford had not been bred to the business of printing, and was very illiterate, and Keimer, though something of a scholar, was a mere compositor, and knew nothing of presswork. His printing outfit consisted of an old shattered press, and one small, worn-out font of English letters. When Benjamin called on him, he was composing directly out of his head an elegy on Aquila Rose, a worthy young Philadelphian who had just died:

 
What mournful accents thus accost mine ear,
What doleful echoes hourly thus appear!
What sighs from melting hearts proclaim aloud
The solemn mourning of this numerous crowd.
In sable characters the news is read,
Our Rose is withered, and our Eagle's fled,
In that our dear Aquila Rose is dead.
 

These are a few of the many lines in which Keimer, disdaining ink-bottle and quill, traced with his composing stick alone from birth to death the life of his lost Lycidas. As there was no copy, and but one pair of cases, and the threnody was likely to require all the letters that Keimer had, no helper could be of any assistance to him. So Benjamin put the old press into as good a condition as he could, and, promising Keimer to come back and print off the elegy, as soon as it was transcribed into type from the tablets of his brain, returned to Bradford's printing-house. Here he was given a small task, and was lodged and boarded until Keimer sent for him to strike off his poem. While he had been away, Keimer had procured another pair of cases, and had been employed to reprint a pamphlet; and upon this pamphlet Benjamin was put to work.

During the period of his employment by Keimer, an incident arose which gave a decisive turn to his fortunes for a time. Happening to be at New Castle, his brother-in-law, Robert Holmes, the master of a sloop that plied between Boston and the Delaware River, heard that he was at Philadelphia, and wrote to him, earnestly urging him to return to Boston. To this letter Benjamin replied, thanking Holmes for his advice, but stating his reasons for leaving Boston fully and in such a way as to convince him that the flight from Boston was not so censurable as he supposed. The letter was shown by Holmes to Sir William Keith, who read it, and was surprised when he was told the age of the writer. Benjamin, he said, appeared to be a young man of promising parts, and should, therefore, be encouraged, for the printers at Philadelphia were wretched ones, and he did not doubt that, if Benjamin would set up as a printer there, he would succeed. As to himself, he would procure him the public printing and render him any other service in his power. Before these circumstances were brought to the knowledge of Benjamin, the Governor and Col. French of New Castle proceeded to look him up, and one day, while he and Keimer were working together near the window of the Keimer printing-office, they saw the pair coming across the street in their fine clothes towards its door. As soon as they were heard at the door, Keimer, assuming that they were calling upon him, ran down to greet them, but the Governor inquired for Benjamin, walked upstairs, and, with a condescension and politeness to which the youth was quite unaccustomed, paid him many compliments, expressed a desire to be acquainted with him, blamed him kindly for not making himself known to him, when Benjamin first came to Philadelphia, and invited him to accompany him to the tavern where he was going, he said, with Col. French to taste some excellent Madeira.

"I," says Franklin, "was not a little surprised, and Keimer star'd like a pig poison'd." But the invitation was accepted, and, at a tavern, at the corner of Third Street, and over the Madeira, Keith suggested that the youth should become a printer on his own account, and pointed out to him the likelihood of his success; and both he and Col. French assured him that he would have their interest and influence for the purpose of securing the public printing in Pennsylvania and the three Lower Counties on the Delaware. When Benjamin stated that he doubted whether his father would assist him in the venture, Keith replied that he would give him a letter to Josiah, presenting the advantages of the scheme, and that he did not doubt that it would be effectual. The result of the conversation was a secret understanding that Benjamin should return to Boston in the first available vessel with Keith's letter, and, while he was awaiting this vessel, Benjamin continued at work with Keimer as usual; Keith sending for him now and then to dine with him, and conversing with him in the most affable, familiar and friendly manner imaginable.

Later a little vessel came along bound for Boston. With Keith's letter in his possession, Benjamin took passage in her, and, after a dangerous voyage of two weeks, found himself again in the city from which he had fled seven months before. All the members of his family gave him a hearty welcome except his brother James, but Josiah, after reading the Governor's letter, and considering its contents for some days, expressed the opinion that he must be a man of small discretion to think of setting up a boy in business who wanted yet three years of being at man's estate. He flatly refused to give his consent to the project, but wrote a civil letter to the Governor, thanking him for the patronage that he had proffered Benjamin, and stating his belief that his son was too young for such an enterprise. Nevertheless, Josiah was pleased with the evidences of material success and standing that his son had brought back with him from Philadelphia, and, when Benjamin left Boston on his return to Philadelphia, it was with the approbation and blessing of his parents, and some tokens, in the form of little gifts, of their love, and with the promise, moreover, of help from Josiah, in case he should not, by the time he reached the age of twenty-one, save enough money by his industry and frugality to establish himself in business.

When Benjamin arrived at Philadelphia, and communicated Josiah's decision to Keith, the Governor was not in the least disconcerted. There was a great difference in persons he was so kind as to declare. Discretion did not always accompany years, nor was youth always without it. "And since he will not set you up," he said to Benjamin, "I will do it myself. Give me an inventory of the things necessary to be had from England, and I will send for them. You shall repay me when you are able; I am resolv'd to have a good printer here, and I am sure you must succeed." This, the Autobiography tells us, was uttered with such apparently heartfelt cordiality that Benjamin did not entertain the slightest doubt of Keith's sincerity, and, as he had kept, and was still keeping, his plans entirely secret, there was no one more familiar with Keith's character than himself to warn him that the actual value of Keith's promises was a very different thing from their face value. Believing the Governor to be one of the best men in the world to have thus unsolicited made such a generous offer to him, Benjamin drew up an inventory calling for a small printing outfit of the value of about one hundred pounds sterling, and handed it to him. It met with his approval, but led him to ask whether it might not be of some advantage for Benjamin to be on the spot in England to choose the type, and to see that everything was good of its kind. Moreover, he suggested that, when Benjamin was there, he might make some useful acquaintance, and establish a profitable correspondence with book-sellers and stationers. To the advantage of all this Benjamin could not but assent. "Then," said Keith, "get yourself ready to go with Annis"; meaning the master of the London Hope, the annual ship, which was the only one at that time plying regularly between London and Philadelphia.

Until Annis sailed, Benjamin continued in the employment of Keimer, whom he still kept entirely in ignorance of his project, and was frequently at the home of Keith. During this time, Keith's intention of establishing him in business was always mentioned as a fixed thing, and it was understood that he was to take with him letters of recommendation from Keith to a number of the latter's friends in England besides a letter of credit from Keith to supply him with the necessary money for buying the printing outfit and the necessary printer's supplies. Before Annis' ship sailed, Benjamin repeatedly called upon Keith for these letters at different times appointed by him, but on each occasion their delivery was postponed to a subsequent date. Thus things went on until the ship was actually on the point of sailing. Then, when Benjamin called on Keith, to take his leave of him and to receive the letters, the Governor's secretary, Dr. Bard, came out from Keith and told him that the Governor was busily engaged in writing, but would be at New Castle before the ship, and that there the letters would be delivered. Upon the arrival of the ship at New Castle, Keith, true to his word, was awaiting it, but, when Benjamin went to Keith's lodgings to get the letters, the Governor's secretary again came out from him with a statement by him that he was then absorbed in business of the utmost importance, but that he would send the letters aboard. The message was couched in highly civil terms, and was accompanied by hearty wishes that Benjamin might have a good voyage, and speedily be back again. "I returned on board," says Franklin in the Autobiography, "a little puzzled, but still not doubting." At the very beginning of the voyage, Benjamin and his graceless friend Ralph had an unusual stroke of good luck. Andrew Hamilton, a famous lawyer of Philadelphia, who was accompanied by his son, afterwards one of the Colonial Governors of Pennsylvania, Mr. Denham, a Quaker merchant, and Messrs. Onion and Russell, the masters of the Principio Iron Works in Cecil County, Maryland, had engaged the great cabin of the ship; so that it looked as if Benjamin and Ralph, who were unknown to any of the cabin passengers, were doomed to the obscurity and discomfort of the steerage. But, while the ship was at New Castle, the elder Hamilton was recalled to Philadelphia by a great fee in a maritime cause, and, just before she sailed, Col. French came on board, and treated Benjamin with such marked respect that he and Ralph were invited by the remaining cabin passengers to occupy the cabin with them – an invitation which the two gladly accepted. They had good reason to do so. The cabin passengers formed a congenial company, the plenteous supply of provisions laid in by Andrew Hamilton, with the stores to which they were added, enabled them to live uncommonly well, and Mr. Denham contracted a lasting friendship for Benjamin. The latter, however, had not lost sight of the letters from Keith which had been so long on their way to his hands. As soon as he learnt at New Castle that Col. French had brought the Governor's dispatches aboard, he asked the captain for the letters that were to be under his care. The captain said that all were put into the bag together, and that he could not then come at them, but that, before they landed in England, Benjamin should have the opportunity of picking them out. When the Channel was reached, the captain was as good as his word, and Benjamin went through the bag; but no letters did he find that were addressed in his care. He picked out six or seven, however, that he thought from the handwriting might be the promised letters, especially as one was addressed to Basket, the King's printer, and another to some stationer. On the 24th day of December, 1724, the ship reached London. The first person that Benjamin waited upon was the stationer, to whom he delivered the letter addressed to him, with the statement that it came from Governor Keith. "I don't know such a person," the stationer said, but, on opening the letter, he exclaimed, "O! this is from Riddlesden. I have lately found him to be a compleat rascal, and I will have nothing to do with him, nor receive any letters from him." With that he gave the letter back to Benjamin and turned on his heel to serve a customer. Then it was that Benjamin, putting two and two together, began to doubt Keith's sincerity, and looked up Mr. Denham, and told him what had happened. There was not the least probability, Mr. Denham declared, that Keith had written any letters for him. No one, he said, who knew the Governor, trusted him in the slightest degree, and, as for his giving a letter of credit to Benjamin, he had no credit to give. One advantage, however, Benjamin reaped from the deception practised upon him. Both Mr. Denham and himself as well as the stationer knew that Riddlesden was a knave. Not to go further, Deborah's father by becoming surety for him had been half ruined. His letter disclosed the fact that there was a scheme on foot to the prejudice of Andrew Hamilton, and also the fact that Keith was concerned in it with Riddlesden; so, when Hamilton came over to London shortly afterwards, partly from ill will to Keith and Riddlesden, and partly from good will to Hamilton, Benjamin adopted the advice of Mr. Denham and waited on him, and gave him the letter. He thanked Benjamin warmly, and from that time became his friend, to his very great advantage on many future occasions. "I got his son once £500," notes the grateful Franklin briefly in a foot-note of the Autobiography.

By cozenage almost incredible, Benjamin, at the age of eighteen, had been thus lured off to London; the London of Addison, Pope and Sir Isaac Newton. Rather than confess the emptiness of his flattering complaisance Keith preferred to rely upon the chance that, once in London, the youth would be either unable or disinclined to return to his own native land. It would be hard to say what might have become of him if he had not had the skill as a printer which exemplified in a striking way the truth of two of the sayings of Poor Richard, "He that hath a Trade hath an Estate" and "He that hath a Calling, hath an Office of Profit and Honour."

The most serious stumbling block to his advancement in London was the one that he brought over seas with him, namely, Ralph himself, who had deserted his wife and child in Philadelphia, and now let his companion know for the first time that he never meant to return to that city. All the money that Ralph had, when he left home, had been consumed by the expenses of the voyage, but Benjamin was still the possessor of fifteen pistoles when the voyage was over, and from this sum Ralph occasionally borrowed while he was endeavoring to convert some of his high-flown ambitions into practical realities. First, he applied for employment as an actor, only to be told by Wilkes that he could never succeed on the stage, then he tried to induce Roberts, a publisher in Paternoster Row, to establish a weekly periodical like the Spectator, with himself as the Addison, on certain conditions to which Roberts would not give his assent. Finally, he was driven to the stress of seeking employment as a copyist for stationers and lawyers about the Temple, but he could not find an opening for even such ignoble drudgery as this. Soon all of Benjamin's pistoles were gone. But, in the meantime, with his training as a printer, he had secured employment without difficulty at Palmer's, a famous printing-house in Bartholomew Close, where he remained for nearly a year. Here he labored pretty diligently, but with Ralph as well as himself to maintain, and with the constant temptations to expense, afforded by playhouses and other places of amusement, he was unable to hoard enough money to pay his passage back to Philadelphia.

For a time, after Ralph and himself arrived at London, they were inseparable companions, occupying the same lodgings in Little Britain, the home of bookstalls, and sharing the same purse. But when Ralph drifted off into the country, all intercourse between the friends was brought to an end by the overtures that Benjamin made to his mistress in his absence. It was then that Benjamin, relieved of the burden which the pecuniary necessities of Ralph had imposed on him, began to think of laying aside a little money, and left Palmer's to work at Watts' near Lincoln's Inn Fields, a still more important printing-house, where he was employed so long as he remained in London. His reminiscences of this printing-house are among the most interesting in the Autobiography. One episode during his connection with it presents him to us with some of the lines of his subsequent maturity plainly impressed on him. "I drank," he says, "only water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great guzzlers of beer." When they observed that his physical strength was superior to theirs, they wondered that the Water-American, as they called him, should be stronger than they who drank strong beer. A boy was incessantly running between an alehouse and the printing-house for the purpose of keeping the latter supplied with drink. Benjamin's pressmate drank every day a pint of beer before breakfast, a pint at breakfast, with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six o'clock, and another pint when he had done his day's work. Franklin vainly endeavored to convince him that the physical strength, produced by beer, could only be in proportion to the grain or barley-flour dissolved in water that the beer contained, that there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread, and that, therefore, if he would eat that with a pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer. As it was, he had four or five shillings to pay out of his wages every Saturday night for muddling liquor, and in this way he and his fellow-workmen kept themselves always under.

Benjamin began at Watts' as a pressman, but, after some weeks of service, he was transferred by the master to the composing-room. There a toll of five shillings for drink was demanded of him by the other compositors as the price of his admission to their society. At first he refused to pay it, as he had already paid a similar bienvenu in the press-room, and the master followed his refusal up by positively forbidding him to pay it; but after a few weeks of recusancy he learnt how despotic a thing an inveterate custom is. He was excommunicated for a while by all his fellow-workmen, and could not leave the composing-room for even the briefest time without having his sorts mixed or his pages transposed by the Chapel ghost, who was said to have a deep grudge against all imperfectly initiated compositors. Master or no master, he finally found himself forced to comply with the custom and to pay the exaction, convinced as he became of the folly of being on ill terms with those with whom one is bound to live continually. Erelong his offence was forgotten, and his influence firmly established among his fellow-compositors. It was prevailing enough to enable him to propose some reasonable changes in the Chapel laws, and to carry them through in the face of all opposition. At the same time, the example of temperance, set by him, induced a great part of his companions to give up their breakfast of beer, bread and cheese, and to supply themselves from a neighboring public-house with a large porringer of hot water-gruel, seasoned with butter and pepper, and crumbed with bread, for the price of a pint of beer, namely, three half-pence. This made a more comfortable as well as a cheaper breakfast, and one that left their heads clear besides. Those of Benjamin's fellow-workmen whom he could not reclaim fell into the habit of using his credit for the purpose of getting beer when their light at the alehouse, to use their own cant expression, was out. To protect himself, he stood by the pay-table on Saturday night, and collected enough from their wages to cover the sums for which he had made himself responsible, amounting sometimes to as much as thirty shillings a week. The loan of his credit in this way and his humor gave him an assured standing in the composing-room. On the other hand, his steadiness – for he never, he says, made a St. Monday – recommended him to the favor of his master; and his uncommon quickness in composing enabled him to secure the higher compensation which was paid for what would now be termed "rush work." His situation was at this time very agreeable and his mind became intently fixed upon saving as much of his wages as he could.

Finding that his lodgings in Little Britain were rather remote from his work, he obtained others in Duke Street, opposite the Romish Chapel, with a widow, who had been bred a Protestant, but had been converted to Catholicism by her husband, whose memory she deeply revered. It is a pleasing face that looks out at us from the portrait painted of her by Franklin in the Autobiography. She

had lived much among people of distinction, and knew a thousand anecdotes of them as far back as the time of Charles the Second. She was lame in her knees with the gout, and, therefore, seldom stirred out of her room, so sometimes wanted company; and hers was so highly amusing to me, that I was sure to spend an evening with her whenever she desired it. Our supper was only half an anchovy each, on a very little strip of bread and butter, and half a pint of ale between us; but the entertainment was in her conversation. My always keeping good hours, and giving little trouble in the family, made her unwilling to part with me; so that, when I talk'd of a lodging I had heard of, nearer my business, for two shillings a week, which, intent as I now was on saving money, made some difference, she bid me not think of it, for she would abate me two shillings a week for the future, so I remained with her at one shilling and six pence as long as I staid in London.

It was in the garret of this house that the nun mentioned by us in connection with the religious opinions of Franklin passed her secluded life.

It was while he resided here that Wygate, a fellow-printer, made a proposal to him that, if accepted, might have given a different direction to his career. Drawn to Benjamin, who had taught him how to swim, by common intellectual tastes, and by the admiration excited in him by Benjamin's vigor and agility as a swimmer, he suggested to the latter that they should travel all over Europe together, and support themselves as they went by the exercise of their handicraft. Benjamin was disposed to adopt the suggestion, but, when he mentioned it to his friend, Mr. Denham, upon whom he was in the habit of calling, the latter disapproved of it, and advised him to dismiss every thought from his mind except that of returning to Pennsylvania, which he was about to do himself. Nay more, he told Benjamin that he expected to take over a large amount of merchandise with him, and to open a store in Philadelphia; and he offered to employ Benjamin as his clerk to keep his books, when the latter had acquired a sufficient knowledge of bookkeeping under his instruction, copy his letters, and attend to the store. In addition, he promised that, as soon as Benjamin should have the requisite experience, he would promote him by sending him with a cargo of bread-stuffs to the West Indies, and would, moreover, procure profitable commissions for him from others, and, if Benjamin made a success of these opportunities, establish him in life handsomely. The proposal was accepted by Benjamin. He was tired of London, remembered with pleasure the happy months spent by him in Pennsylvania, and was desirous of seeing it again. He agreed, therefore, at once, to become Mr. Denham's clerk at an annual salary of fifty pounds, Pennsylvania money. This was less than he was earning at the time as a compositor, but Mr. Denham's offer held out the prospect of a better future on the whole to him.

After entering into this agreement, Benjamin supposed that he was done with printing forever. During the interval preceding the departure of Mr. Denham and himself for America, he went about with his employer, when he was purchasing goods, saw that the goods were packed properly for shipment, and performed other helpful offices. After the stock of goods had been all safely stored on shipboard, he was, to his surprise, sent for by Sir William Wyndham, who had heard of his swimming exploits, and who offered to pay him generously, if he would teach his two sons, who were about to travel, how to swim; but the two youths had not yet come to town, and Benjamin did not know just when he would sail; so he was compelled to decline the invitation. The offer of Sir William, however, made him feel that he might earn a good deal of money, were he to remain in England and open a swimming school, and the reflection forced itself upon his attention so strongly that he tells us in the Autobiography that, if Sir William had approached him earlier, he would probably not have returned to America so soon.

He left Gravesend for Philadelphia on July 23, 1726, after having been in London for about eighteen months. During the greater part of this time, he had worked hard, and spent but little money upon himself except in seeing plays and for books. It was Ralph who had kept him straitened by borrowing sums from him amounting in the whole to about twenty-seven pounds. "I had by no means improv'd my fortune," Franklin tells us in the Autobiography, "but I had picked up some very ingenious acquaintance, whose conversation was of great advantage to me; and I had read considerably."⁷

After a long voyage, he was again in Philadelphia, and Keith was now a private citizen. When Benjamin met him on the street, he showed a little shame at the sight of his dupe, but he passed on without saying anything. Keimer seemed to have a flourishing business. He had moved into a better house, and had a shop well supplied with stationery, plenty of type, and a number of hands, though none of them were efficient.

Mr. Denham opened a store in Water Street, and the merchandise brought over with him was placed in it. Benjamin gave his diligent attention to the business, studied accounts, and was in a little while an expert salesman. But then came one of those sudden strokes of misfortune, which remind us on what perfidious foundations all human hopes rest. Beginning with his relations to Mr. Denham, Franklin narrates the circumstances in these words:

We lodg'd and boarded together; he counsell'd me as a father, having a sincere regard for me. I respected and loved him, and we might have gone on together very happy, but, in the beginning of February, 1726/7, when I had just pass'd my twenty-first year, we both were taken ill. My distemper was a pleurisy, which very nearly carried me off. I suffered a good deal, gave up the point in my own mind, and was rather disappointed when I found myself recovering, regretting, in some degree, that I must now, some time or other, have all that disagreeable work to do over again. I forget what his distemper was; it held him a long time, and at length carried him off. He left me a small legacy in a nuncupative will, as a token of his kindness for me, and he left me once more to the wide world; for the store was taken into the care of his executors, and my employment under him ended.

Franklin did have all that disagreeable work to do over again, for it was of a pleuritic abscess that he died in the end. Of Mr. Denham we cannot take our leave without drawing upon the Autobiography for an incident which shows that he was one of the many good men whose friendship was given so generously to Franklin. He was at one time a merchant at Bristol, and failed in business. After compounding with his numerous creditors, he migrated to America where he made a fortune in a few years. While he was in England with Benjamin, he invited his former creditors to an entertainment, and, when they were all seated, thanked them for the easy terms on which they had compromised their claims against him. Duly thanked, they supposed that there was nothing in store for them but the ordinary hospitality of such an occasion, but, when each turned his plate over, he found under it an order upon a banker for the full amount, with interest, of the unpaid balance of the debt that he had released.

At the time of Mr. Denham's death, Franklin had only recently arrived at the age of twenty-one. Holmes, his brother-in-law, now urged him to return to his trade, and Keimer offered him a liberal yearly wage to take charge of his printing-office, so that he himself might have more time for his stationery business. Franklin had heard a bad character of Keimer in London from Keimer's wife and her friends, and he was reluctant to have anything more to do with him; so much so that he endeavored to secure employment as a merchant's clerk, but, being unable to do so, he closed with Keimer.

I found in his house [says the Autobiography] these hands: Hugh Meredith, a Welsh Pennsilvanian, thirty years of age, bred to country work; honest, sensible, had a great deal of solid observation, was something of a reader, but given to drink. Stephen Potts, a young countryman of full age, bred to the same, of uncommon natural parts, and great wit and humour, but a little idle. These he had agreed with at extream low wages per week, to be rais'd a shilling every three months, as they would deserve by improving in their business; and the expectation of these high wages, to come on hereafter, was what he had drawn them in with. Meredith was to work at press, Potts at book-binding, which he, by agreement, was to teach them, though he knew neither one nor t'other. John, – a wild Irishman, brought up to no business, whose service, for four years, Keimer had purchased from the captain of a ship; he, too, was to be made a pressman. George Webb, an Oxford scholar, whose time for four years he had likewise bought, intending him for a compositor, of whom more presently; and David Harry, a country boy, whom he had taken apprentice.

George Webb is later described by Franklin as being lively, witty, good-natured and a pleasant companion, but idle, thoughtless, and imprudent to the last degree. While a student at Oxford, he had become possessed with the desire to see London and be a player. Yielding to this impulse, he walked outside of Oxford, hid his gown in a furze bush, and strode on to London where he fell into bad company, spent all his money, pawned his clothes and lacked bread; having failed to secure an opening as a player. While in this situation, he was induced by his necessities to bind himself to go over to America as an indentured servant, and this he did without ever writing a line to his friends to let them know what had become of him. John, the Irishman, soon absconded. With the rest of Keimer's awkward squad, Franklin quickly formed very agreeable relations, all the more so because they had found Keimer incapable of teaching them, but now found that Franklin taught them something daily. By Keimer, too, Franklin was for a time treated with great civility and apparent regard. The selfish reasons for such treatment were patent enough.

Our printing-house [declares the Autobiography] often wanted sorts, and there was no letter-founder in America; I had seen types cast at James's in London, but without much attention to the manner; however, I now contrived a mould, made use of the letters we had as puncheons, struck the matrices in lead, and thus supply'd in a pretty tolerable way all deficiencies. I also engrav'd several things on occasion; I made the ink; I was warehousman, and everything, and, in short, quite a fac-totum.

Keimer was simply using Franklin to lick his rough cubs into shape. The value of Franklin's services declined every day as his other hands became more efficient, and, when he paid him his wages for the second quarter, he let him know that he thought that he should submit to a reduction. By degrees, he grew less civil, assumed a more imperious air, became fault-finding and captious, and seemed ready for an outbreak. Nevertheless, Franklin preserved his patience, thinking that Keimer's demeanor was partly due to his embarrassed circumstances. But a very small spark was enough to produce an explosion. Startled one day by a loud noise near the court-house, Franklin put his head out of the window of the printing-office to see what was the matter. Just then, Keimer, who was in the street, looked up and saw him, and called out to him in vociferous and angry tones to mind his business, adding some reproachful words that nettled Franklin the more because they were heard by the whole neighborhood. Keimer made things still worse by coming up into the printing-office and continuing his rebuke. High words passed between the two, and Keimer gave Franklin the quarter's notice to quit, to which he was entitled, saying as he did it that he wished he could give him a shorter one. Franklin replied that the wish was unnecessary, and, taking up his hat, walked out of doors, requesting Meredith, as he left, to take care of some of his things that remained behind him, and to bring them to his lodgings. This Meredith, who had a great regard for Franklin, and regretted very much the thought of being in the printing-office without him, did the evening of the same day, and he availed himself of the opportunity to dissuade Franklin from returning to New England. Keimer, he said, was in debt for all that he possessed, his creditors were beginning to be uneasy, and he managed his shop wretchedly, often selling without profit for ready money, and frequently giving credit without keeping an account. He must, therefore, fail, which would make an opening for Franklin. To this reasoning Franklin objected his want of means. Meredith then informed him that his father had a high opinion of him, and, from some things, that his father had said to him, he was sure that, if Franklin would enter into a partnership with him, the elder Meredith would advance enough money to set them going in business. His time with Keimer, he further said, would be out in the spring. Before then, they might procure their press and type from London. "I am sensible," added Meredith, "I am no workman; if you like it, your skill in the business shall be set against the stock I furnish, and we will share the profits equally."

Franklin acceded to the proposal, and Meredith's father ratified it all the more willingly as he saw that Franklin had a great deal of influence with his son, had prevailed on him to abstain from dram-drinking for long periods of time, and might be able to induce him to give up the miserable habit entirely when they came to form the close relations of partners with each other. An inventory of what was needed for the business was accordingly given to the father; an order for it was placed by him in the hands of a merchant; and the things were sent for. Until they arrived, the partnership was to be kept secret, and Franklin was to seek employment from Bradford. Bradford, however, was not in need of a hand, and for some days Franklin was condemned to idleness. But opportunely enough the chance presented itself to Keimer just at this time of being employed to print some paper money for the Province of New Jersey which would require cuts and type that nobody but Franklin was clever enough to execute or make. Fearing that Bradford might employ him, and secure the work, Keimer sent Franklin word that old friends should not be estranged by a few passionate words, and that he hoped Franklin would return to him. Influenced by the desire of Meredith to derive still further benefit from his instruction, Franklin did return to Keimer, and entered upon relations with him that proved more satisfactory than any that he had had with him for some time past. Keimer secured the New Jersey contract.

The New Jersey jobb was obtain'd [the Autobiography states], I contriv'd a copperplate press for it, the first that had been seen in the country; I cut several ornaments and checks for the bills. We went together to Burlington, where I executed the whole to satisfaction; and he received so large a sum for the work as to be enabled thereby to keep his head much longer above water.

One of the attractive things about the youth of Franklin is the extent to which his love of reading and intellectual superiority gave him a standing with distinguished or prominent men much older than himself. In the case of Sir William Keith, the standing produced nothing but deception and disappointment, but, in the case of Cotton Mather, it supplied Franklin with one of those moral lessons for which his mind had such an eager appetency.

The last time I saw your father [he wrote late in life to Samuel Mather, the son of Cotton] was in the beginning of 1724, when I visited him after my first trip to Pennsylvania. He received me in his library, and on my taking leave showed me a shorter way out of the house through a narrow passage, which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning partly toward him, when he said hastily, Stoop, stoop! I did not understand him, till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man that never missed any occasion of giving instruction, and upon this he said to me, "You are young, and have the world before you; STOOP as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps." This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me; and I often think of it, when I see pride mortified, and misfortune brought upon people by their carrying their heads too high.

Gov. William Burnet, of New York, the son of the famous English Bishop of that name, was another conspicuous personage to whose friendly notice the youth was brought. Shortly after the apt admonition of Cotton Mather, when Franklin was on his return to Philadelphia, the Governor heard from the captain of the vessel, by which Franklin had been conveyed to New York, that a young man, one of his passengers, had a great many books with him, and asked the captain to bring this young man to see him. The Governor loved books and lovers of books.

I waited upon him accordingly [says Franklin] and should have taken Collins with me but that he was not sober. The gov'r. treated me with great civility, show'd me his library, which was a very large one, and we had a good deal of conversation about books and authors. This was the second governor who had done me the honour to take notice of me; which, to a poor boy like me, was very pleasing.

The happy consequences to Ralph and himself of the respect, shown him by Col. French at New Castle, and the lasting sense of gratitude that he soon afterwards excited in Andrew Hamilton have just been mentioned. This capacity for arresting the attention of men of years and influence now made its mark in New Jersey. Some of the principal men of the province were appointed by the Assembly to oversee the working of Keimer's press, and to take care that no more bills were printed than were authorized by law. They discharged this duty by turns, and usually each one, when he came, brought a friend or so with him for company. In this way, Franklin was introduced to a considerable group of persons who invited him to their houses, introduced him to their friends, and showed him much attention. Keimer, on the other hand, perhaps, Franklin surmises, because his mind had not been so much improved by reading as his, was a little neglected, though the master. The explanation given by Franklin for this neglect would seem a rather inadequate one when we recollect that in the same context he sums up the character of Keimer in these trenchant words: "In truth, he was an odd fish; ignorant of common life, fond of rudely opposing receiv'd opinions, slovenly to extream dirtiness, enthusiastic in some points of religion, and a little knavish withal." Like St. Sebastian, poor Keimer will never be drawn without that arrow in his side.

For three months Franklin remained at Burlington, making printer's ink money. At the end of that time, he could reckon among his friends Judge Allen, Samuel Bustill, the Secretary of the Province, Isaac Pearson, Joseph Cooper, and several of the Smiths, members of the Assembly, and Isaac Decow, the surveyor-general.

The latter [he says] was a shrewd, sagacious old man, who told me that he began for himself, when young, by wheeling clay, for the brickmakers, learned to write after he was of age, carri'd the chain for surveyors, who taught him surveying and he had now by his industry, acquir'd a good estate; and says he, "I foresee that you will soon work this man out of his business, and make a fortune in it at Philadelphia." He had not then the least intimation of my intention to set up there or anywhere. These friends were afterwards of great use to me, as I occasionally was to some of them. They all continued their regard for me as long as they lived.

Shortly after the completion of the New Jersey contract, the new type, which had been ordered for Franklin and Meredith from London, arrived at Philadelphia. With Keimer's consent, the two friends left him before he knew of its arrival. They rented a house near the market, and, to reduce the rent of twenty-four pounds a year, they sublet a part of it to Thomas Godfrey, who was to board them. They had scarcely made ready for business when George House, an acquaintance of Franklin, brought to them a countryman who had inquired of him on the street where he could find a printer. By this countryman the firm was paid for the work that he gave them the sum of five shillings, and this sum, Franklin declares in the Autobiography, being their first fruits, and coming in at a time when they had expended all their available cash in preparing for business, awakened more pleasure in him than any crown that he had ever since earned, and, besides, made him prompter than he, perhaps, would otherwise have been to help beginners. Whether there were any "boomers," to use the cant term of to-day, in Philadelphia at that time the Autobiography does not tell us, but there was, to use another cant term of to-day, at least one "knocker."

There are croakers in every country [says Franklin in the Autobiography] always boding its ruin. Such a one then lived in Philadelphia: a person of note, an elderly man, with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopt one day at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing-house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious, for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us. And he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it. This man continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking.

The outlook of Franklin was a cheerful, optimistic one, and he had no sympathy with pessimists of any sort. Even his civic interests came back to him in personal profit, since, aside from its public aims, the Junto was a most useful aid to the business of Franklin and Meredith. All its members made a point of soliciting patronage for the new printing firm. Breintnal, for instance, obtained for it the privilege of printing forty sheets of the history which the Quakers published of their sect; the rest having gone to Keimer. The price was low, and the job cost Franklin and Meredith much hard labor. The work, Franklin tells us, with the fond minuteness with which a man is disposed to dwell upon the events of his early life, was a folio, of pro patria size, and in pica, with long primer notes. Franklin composed it at the rate of a sheet a day, and Meredith ran off what was composed at the press. It was often eleven at night and later, when Franklin had completed his distribution for the work of the next day, for now and then he was set back by other business calls. So resolved, however, was he never to default on his sheet a day that one night, when one of his forms was accidentally broken up, and two pages of his work reduced to pi, he immediately distributed and composed it over again before he went to bed, though he had supposed, when the accident occurred, that a hard day's task had ended. This industry brought the firm into favorable notice, and especially was Franklin gratified by what Dr. Baird had to say about it. When the new printing-office was mentioned at the Merchants' Every Night Club, and the opinion was generally expressed that three printing-offices could not be maintained in Philadelphia, he took issue with this view; "For the industry of that Franklin," he said, "is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind; I see him still at work when I go home from club, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of bed." This statement led one of the persons who heard it to offer to furnish the new firm with stationery; but it was not yet ready to open a stationery shop.

About this time, George Webb, who had bought his time of Keimer, with the aid of one of his female friends, solicited from the firm employment as a journeyman. Its situation was not such as to warrant his employment, but Franklin indiscreetly let him know as a secret that he expected to establish a newspaper soon; when he might have work for him. Bradford's newspaper, The American Mercury, he told Webb, was a paltry thing, stupid and wretchedly managed, and yet was profitable. "Three can keep a Secret if two are dead," is a saying of Poor Richard. It would have been well if Franklin on this occasion had been mindful of the wisdom in which it was conceived. He requested Webb not to mention what he said; but, as is often true under such circumstances, it would have been more prudent for him to have asked him to mention it. Webb did tell Keimer, and he immediately published the prospectus of a newspaper on which Webb was to be employed. This was resented by Franklin, and, to counteract the scheme, he and his friend Breintnal wrote some clever little essays for Bradford's newspaper under the title of the "Busy Body." In that dull sheet, they were, to borrow Shakespeare's image, like bright metal on sullen ground. Public attention was fixed upon them, and Keimer's prospectus was overlooked. He founded his newspaper nevertheless, and conducted it for nine months under the prolix name of the Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette. It never had, at any time, more than ninety subscribers, and, at the end of the nine months, in 1729, Franklin, who had for some time had his arms extended to catch it when it fell, bought it at a trifling price. Under his ownership, the cumbrous name of the paper was cut down simply to that of the Pennsylvania Gazette, and the absurd plan formed by Keimer of publishing an instalment of Chambers' Universal Dictionary of all the Arts and Sciences in every issue was abandoned for a strain of original comment and unctuous humor which made the Gazette in popularity second only to Poor Richard's Almanac. Under Franklin's hands, the paper assumed from the beginning a better typographical appearance than any previously known to the Province, and some spirited observations by him on a controversy between Governor Burnet and the Massachusetts Assembly, which called into play his aversion to political tyranny, aroused so much public attention that all the leading citizens of the Province became subscribers. Many other subscribers followed in their train, and the subscriptions went on continually increasing until in a few years, to quote Franklin's own words, the Gazette proved extremely profitable to him.

This was one of the first good effects of my having learnt a little to scribble [he tells us], another was that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the Votes and laws, and other publick business. He had printed an address of the House to the Governor, in a coarse, blundering manner; we reprinted it elegantly and correctly, and sent one to every member. They were sensible of the difference: it strengthened the hands of our friends in the House, and they voted us their printers for the year ensuing.

Among these friends, was the grateful Andrew Hamilton.

The young printer had pushed himself forward successfully enough to make his competition keenly felt by both Keimer and Bradford. But now unexpectedly, when all the omens were so fair, he found himself on the brink of ruin. For some time past, he had faithfully observed his obligations to Meredith, though his friends lamented his connection with him. Meredith was no compositor, and but a poor pressman, and, if he had been the best compositor or pressman in the world, he would have been a poor partner, for he was seldom sober. While Franklin was bearing him along on his back as well as he could, Meredith's father found himself unable to advance for the firm the second instalment of one hundred pounds, necessary to complete the payment for its printing outfit. The result was that the merchant, who had sold it to the firm, grew impatient, and sued them all. They gave bail, but realized that, if the money could not be raised in time, judgment and execution would follow, and that the outfit would be sold at half price. Then it was, to recall the simple and affecting words of Franklin himself in the Autobiography, that two true friends, William Coleman and Robert Grace, whose kindness he had never forgotten, and never would forget, while he could remember anything, came to him separately, unknown to each other, and, without any application from him, each offered to advance to him all the money that should be necessary to enable him to acquire the whole business of the firm, if that should be practicable.⁸ They did not like the idea of his continuing to be a partner of Meredith, who, they said, was often seen drunk in the streets, and playing at low games in alehouses to the discredit of the firm. Distressing, however, as his situation was, Franklin appears to have acted with a high-minded regard to the proprieties of the occasion. He told Coleman and Grace that, so long as there was any prospect that the Merediths might live up to their agreement, he was under too great obligations to them for what they had done, and would do, if they could, to suggest a dissolution of the partnership, but that, if they finally defaulted in the performance of their part of the agreement, and the partnership was dissolved, he would feel at liberty to accept the assistance of his friends.

But he was astute as well as conscientious. After the matter had rested in this position for some time, he said to Meredith:

Perhaps your father is dissatisfied at the part you have undertaken in this affair of ours, and is unwilling to advance for you and me what he would for you alone. If that is the case, tell me, and I will resign the whole to you, and go about my business.

No, said he, my father has really been disappointed, and is really unable; and I am unwilling to distress him farther. I see this is a business I am not fit for. I was bred a farmer, and it was a folly in me to come to town, and put myself, at thirty years of age, an apprentice to learn a new trade. Many of our Welsh people are going to settle in North Carolina, where land is cheap. I am inclin'd to go with them, and follow my old employment. You may find friends to assist you. If you will take the debts of the company upon you; return to my father the hundred pound he has advanced; pay my little personal debts, and give me thirty pounds and a new saddle, I will relinquish the partnership, and leave the whole in your hands.

Franklin agreed to this proposal. It was made the basis of a contract which was immediately signed and sealed. Meredith received the thirty pounds and the saddle, and soon afterwards went off to North Carolina, whence he sent to Franklin the next year two long letters containing the best account of the climate, soil, husbandry and other features of that Province that had been given up to that time. "For in those matters," adds Franklin, with his usual generosity, "he was very judicious. I printed them in the papers, and they gave great satisfaction to the publick."

After the departure of Meredith for North Carolina, Franklin turned to the two friends who had proffered their help. He accepted from each of them, because he would not give an unkind preference to either, one half of the money he needed, paid off the debts of the partnership, advertised its dissolution and went on with the business in his own name. This was on July 14, 1730.

Seasonably for him, there was a loud cry among the people at this time for a more abundant issue of paper money. The wealthier members of the community were all against the proposition. They feared that an addition to the existing paper circulation would depreciate, as it had done in New York, and that the debts due to them would be discharged by payment in a medium worth less than its nominal value. The question was discussed by the Junto, and Franklin argued in favor of the issue; being persuaded that the prosperity of the Province had been very much promoted by a small previous issue of paper money in 1723. He remembered, he says in the Autobiography, that, when he first walked about the streets of Philadelphia, eating his roll, most of the houses on Walnut Street, between Second and Front Streets, and many besides, on Chestnut and other streets, were placarded, "To be let"; which made him feel as if the inhabitants of Philadelphia were deserting the town one after the other; whereas at the time of this discussion all the old houses were occupied, and many new ones were in process of construction. Not content with presenting his views on the subject to the Junto, he wrote an anonymous pamphlet on it entitled The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency. This pamphlet was well received by the common people, he tells us, but met with the disfavor of the rich, because it swelled the clamor for more money. Their opposition, however, for lack of writers, competent to refute its reasoning, languished, and the issue was authorized by the Assembly. Franklin's friends in the house rewarded him for his part in the controversy over it by employing him to print the money. "A very profitable jobb and a great help to me," remarks Franklin complacently in the Autobiography, and he adds, "This was another advantage gain'd by my being able to write."

Through the influence of his friend Hamilton, he likewise secured the contract for printing the paper money, issued by the Three Lower Counties on the Delaware. "Another profitable jobb as I then thought it," he says, "small things appearing great to those in small circumstances." Hamilton also procured for him the privilege of printing the laws and legislative proceedings of the Three Lower Counties, and he retained it as long as he remained in the printing business. Now, for the first time, he felt that his position was assured enough for him to open up a small stationery shop, where he sold blanks of all sorts, paper, parchment, chapmen's books and other such wares. The blanks he believed to be "the correctest that ever appear'd among us, being assisted in that by my friend Breintnal." The demands on his printing-office, too, increased to such a degree that he employed a compositor, one Whitemarsh, an excellent workman, whom he had known in London, and undertook the care of an apprentice, a son of the ever-to-be-lamented Aquila Rose. Soon he was prospering to such an extent that he could begin to pay off the debt that he owed on his printing outfit. These are the words in which he himself described his situation at this time:

In order to secure my credit and character as a tradesman, I took care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, but to avoid all appearances to the contrary. I drest plainly; I was seen at no places of idle diversion. I never went out a fishing or shooting; a book, indeed, sometimes debauch'd me from my work, but that was seldom, snug, and gave no scandal; and, to show that I was not above my business, I sometimes brought home the paper I purchas'd at the stores thro' the streets on a wheel-barrow. Thus being esteem'd an industrious, thriving young man, and paying duly for what I bought, the merchants who imported stationery solicited my custom; others proposed supplying me with books, and I went on swimmingly. In the meantime, Keimer's credit and business declining daily, he was at last forc'd to sell his printing-house to satisfy his creditors. He went to Barbadoes, and there lived some years in very poor circumstances.

For some time before Keimer went off to Barbadoes, he had been in the condition of an unsound tree, which still stands but with a dry rot at its heart momentarily presaging its fall. As far back as Issue No. 27 of The Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette, he had found it necessary to explain a week's delay in the publication of that issue by stating to the public that he had been awakened, when fast asleep in bed, about eleven at night, over-tired with the labor of the day, and taken away from his dwelling by a writ and summons; it being basely and confidently given out that he was that very night about to run away, though there was not the least color or ground for such a vile report. He was, he further declared, "the shuttlecock of fortune … the very but for villany to shoot at, or the continued mark for slander and her imps to spit their venom upon." It was remarkable, he thought, that

a person of strict sincerity, refin'd justice, and universal love to the whole creation, should for a series of near twenty years, be the constant but of slander, as to be three times ruin'd as a master-printer, to be nine times in prison, one of which was six years together, and often reduc'd to the most wretched circumstances, hunted as a partridge upon the mountains, and persecuted with the most abominable lies the devil himself could invent or malice utter.

It was but the old story of the man, who is dizzy, thinking that the whole world is spinning around.

David Harry, Keimer's former apprentice, had also opened a printing-office in Philadelphia. When his enterprise was in its inception, Franklin regarded his rivalry with much uneasiness on account of his influential connections. He accordingly proposed a partnership to him, a proposal which, fortunately for the former, was disdainfully refused. "He was very proud," says Franklin, "dress'd like a gentleman, liv'd expensively, took much diversion and pleasure abroad, ran in debt, and neglected his business; upon which, all business left him." The result was that Harry had to follow Keimer to Barbadoes, taking his printing outfit with him. Here the former apprentice employed the former master as a journeyman; they frequently quarrelled with each other; Harry steadily fell behind, and was compelled to sell his type, and to return to his country work in Pennsylvania. The purchaser of the outfit employed Keimer to operate it, but, in a few years more, Keimer was transported by death out of the world, which for a considerable part of his life he had seen only through the gratings of a jail.

The departure of Harry left Franklin without any competitor except his old one, Bradford, who was too rich and easy-going to actively push for business. But, in one respect, Bradford was a formidable rival. He was the Postmaster at Philadelphia, and his newspaper flourished at the expense of the Gazette upon the public impression that his connection with the Post-office gave him facilities for gathering news and for circulating advertisements that Franklin did not enjoy.

To this period belong Franklin's treaty for a wife with enough means to discharge the balance of one hundred pounds still due on his printing outfit, and his final recoil to Deborah whose industry and frugality were far more than the pecuniary equivalent of one hundred pounds. After his marriage, he was, if anything, even more industrious than before, and this is what he has to say about his habits and employments during the period that immediately followed that event:

Reading was the only amusement I allow'd myself. I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolicks of any kind; and my industry in my business continu'd as indefatigable as it was necessary. I was indebted for my printing-house; I had a young family coming on to be educated, and I had to contend with for business two printers, who were established in the place before me. My circumstances, however, grew daily easier. My original habits of frugality continuing, and my father having among his instructions to me when a boy, frequently repeated a proverb of Solomon, "Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men," I from thence considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth and distinction, which encourag'd me, tho' I did not think that I should ever literally stand before kings, which, however, has since happened; for I have stood before five, and even had the honour of sitting down with one, the King of Denmark, to dinner.

Another passage in the Autobiography tells us just what degree of frugality Franklin and Deborah practiced at this stage of his business career.

We kept no idle servants [he says], our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time bread and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon. But mark how luxury will enter families, and make a progress, in spite of principle: being call'd one morning to breakfast, I found it in a China bowl, with a spoon of silver! They had been bought for me without my knowledge by my wife, and had cost her the enormous sum of three-and-twenty shillings, for which she had no other excuse or apology to make, but that she thought her husband deserv'd a silver spoon and China bowl as well as any of his neighbors. This was the first appearance of plate and China in our house, which afterward, in a course of years, as our wealth increased, augmented gradually to several hundred pounds in value.

In 1732 was first published, at fivepence a copy, Franklin's famous almanac known as Poor Richard's Almanac, which for twenty-five years warmed the homes of Pennsylvania with the ruddy glow of its wit, humor and wisdom. His endeavor in conducting it he tells us was to make it both entertaining and useful, and he was so successful that he reaped considerable profit from the nearly ten thousand copies of it that he annually sold. Hundreds of the inhabitants of Pennsylvania, who read nothing else, read the Almanac. Its infectious humor, its coarse pleasantry, its proverbs and sayings so much wiser than the wisdom, and so much wittier than the wit of any single individual, made the name of Franklin a common household word from one end of Pennsylvania to another, and, when finally strained off into Father Abraham's speech, established his reputation as a kindly humorist and moral teacher throughout the world.

In somewhat the same spirit of instruction as well as entertainment was the Gazette, too, conducted.

I considered my newspaper, also [says Franklin], as another means of communicating instruction, and in that view frequently reprinted in it extracts from the Spectator, and other moral writers; and sometimes publish'd little pieces of my own, which had been first compos'd for reading in our Junto.

The caution exercised by the Gazette in shutting out malice and personal abuse from its columns is the subject of one of the weightiest series of statements in the Autobiography.

In the conduct of my newspaper [Franklin declares] I carefully excluded all libelling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country. Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind, and the writers pleaded, as they generally did, the liberty of the press, and that a newspaper was like a stage-coach, in which any one who would pay had a right to a place, my answer was, that I would print the piece separately if desired, and the author might have as many copies as he pleased to distribute himself, but that I would not take upon me to spread his detraction; and that, having contracted with my subscribers to furnish them with what might be either useful or entertaining, I could not fill their papers with private altercation, in which they had no concern, without doing them manifest injustice. Now, many of our printers make no scruple of gratifying the malice of individuals by false accusations of the fairest characters among ourselves, augmenting animosity even to the producing of duels; and are, moreover, so indiscreet as to print scurrilous reflections on the government of neighboring states, and even on the conduct of our best national allies, which may be attended with the most pernicious consequences. These things I mention as a caution to young printers, and that they may be encouraged not to pollute their presses and disgrace their profession by such infamous practices, but refuse steadily, as they may see by my example that such a course of conduct will not, on the whole, be injurious to their interests.

By 1733 Franklin was sufficiently established in business to branch out still more. That year he sent one of his journeymen, Thomas Whitemarsh, to Charleston, South Carolina, where a printer was needed, under an agreement of partnership which was the prototype of most of the subsequent articles of copartnership formed by him with other printers under similar conditions; that is to say, he furnished the printing outfit, paid one third of the expenses, and received one third of the profits. The history of this partner gave Franklin an opportunity to moralize a little in the Autobiography upon the importance of a knowledge of accounts rather than of music or dancing as a part of female education. The Carolina printer was a man of education and honest, but ignorant of accounts, and, though he made occasional remittances, Franklin could never get any account from him, nor any satisfactory statement of the condition of the partnership business. On his death, however, his widow, who had been born and bred in Holland, not only sent Franklin as clear a statement as was possible of the past transactions of the firm, but subsequently rendered him an exact account every quarter with the utmost punctuality, and, besides, managed the business with such success that she reared a family of children decently, and, upon the expiration of the copartnership, purchased the outfit from Franklin, and turned it over to her son.

The success of the Carolina partnership encouraged Franklin to form partnerships with other journeymen of his, and by 1743 he had opened three printing-offices in three different colonies, and proposed to open a fourth, if he could find a suitable person to take charge of it. Others were opened by him later. Among the persons besides Whitemarsh, established by him at different times as printers, under one arrangement or another with himself, were Peter Timothy in South Carolina, Smith and Benjamin Mecom in Antigua, James Parker in New York, his brother in Rhode Island, Hall and Miller and Samuel Holland at Lancaster, and William Daniell at Kingston, Jamaica. Speaking of his partners in the Autobiography, he says of them:

Most of them did well, being enabled at the end of our term, six years, to purchase the types of me and go on working for themselves, by which means several families were raised. Partnerships often finish in quarrels; but I was happy in this, that mine were all carried on and ended amicably, owing, I think, a good deal to the precaution of having very explicitly settled, in our articles, everything to be done by or expected from each partner, so that there was nothing to dispute, which precaution I would therefore recommend to all who enter into partnerships; for, whatever esteem partners may have for, and confidence in each other at the time of the contract, little jealousies and disgusts may arise, with ideas of inequality in the care and burden of the business, etc., which are attended often with breach of friendship and of the connection, perhaps with lawsuits and other disagreeable consequences.

Two other business enterprises of Franklin merit notice. He was the founder of the first newspaper in the United States to be published in a foreign tongue, namely, the Philadelphische Zeitung, which owed its origin to the large number of Germans who came over to Pennsylvania during the Colonial Period. He was also the founder of a monthly literary magazine which for some reason he does not mention in the Autobiography at all. It was the second enterprise of the kind undertaken in America, and was known as The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for All the British Plantations in America. To Franklin as a business man might aptly be applied the words of Emerson with respect to Guy:

 
Stream could not so perversely wind
But corn of Guy's was there to grind.
 

One exception, however, appears to have been this magazine which lasted but a short time. It was ill-starred from the start. When Franklin was ready to spring it upon the public, he engaged John Webbe as its editor, but Webbe betrayed the project to Bradford, who at once announced that, a little later, a magazine would be offered to the public edited by Webbe, and published by himself. When the first number of Franklin's magazine came out, he stated that its publication was earlier than he had intended because of the faithless conduct of Webbe. This Webbe resented by charging Franklin, who was then Postmaster at Philadelphia, with shutting out Bradford's Mercury from the post, but Franklin silenced his fire by stating and proving that he had had no choice in the matter, because he had been commanded by Postmaster-General Spottswood, on account of Bradford's failure as Postmaster at Philadelphia to account with him, to suffer no longer any of his newspapers or letters to be conveyed by post free of charge.

The business of Franklin received another push forward with the political consequence which he acquired through the Gazette and the influence of the Junto. In 1736, he was chosen Clerk of the General Assembly, and in the succeeding year he was appointed Postmaster at Philadelphia, in the place of Bradford, by Alexander Spottswood, who had been Governor of Virginia, and was then the Deputy Postmaster-General for America. The salary of the Postmastership was small, but, for the purposes of the Gazette, the office gave him the same advantage that Bradford had enjoyed, when he refused to allow that newspaper to be carried by his post-riders. The positions of the two men were now reversed, but Franklin was too magnanimous to remind Bradford, sternly, as he did Jemmy Read, that Fortune's Wheel is ever turning. "My old competitor's newspaper," he says, "declined proportionably, and I was satisfy'd without retaliating his refusal, while postmaster, to permit my papers being carried by the riders." Bradford had suffered, Franklin adds, "for his neglect in due accounting." And this gave him occasion to observe that regularity and clearness in rendering accounts and punctuality in making remittances are "the most powerful of all recommendations to new employments and increase of business."

The office of Clerk of the Assembly also had its business value.

Besides the pay for the immediate service as clerk [Franklin says] the place gave me a better opportunity of keeping up an interest among the members, which secur'd to me the business of printing the votes, laws, paper money, and other occasional jobbs for the public, that, on the whole, were very profitable.

The first year that he came up for election the vote in his favor was unanimous, but the next year, while he was elected, it was only after a new member had made a long speech against him in the interest of another candidate. How Franklin conciliated the unfriendliness of this member is fully told in the Autobiography;

I therefore did not like the opposition of this new member, who was a gentleman of fortune and education, with talents that were likely to give him, in time, great influence in the House, which, indeed, afterwards happened. I did not, however, aim at gaining his favour by paying any servile respect to him, but, after some time, took this other method. 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." And it shows how much more profitable it is prudently to remove, than to resent, return, and continue inimical proceedings.

The artifice practised by Franklin on this occasion has been condemned. What he really did, of course, was to use gratified vanity as a foil to mortified vanity. The possible consequences of the new member's hostility were too serious for him to say as Washington was in the habit of saying when he had a bad cold: "Let it go as it came." He knew that the malice was as shallow as the good will; and the alternatives were resentment, sycophancy, or a little subtlety. Under the circumstances, Franklin would not have been Franklin, if he had not elected subtlety.

Nothing was now wanting to the full development of his business career except the repetition in other communities of the success that had crowned his personal exertions in Pennsylvania. Referring to the state of his business at this time, he says in the Autobiography;

My business was now continually augmenting, and my circumstances growing daily easier, my newspaper having become very profitable, as being for a time almost the only one in this and the neighboring provinces. I experienced, too, the truth of the observation, "that after getting the first hundred pound, it is more easy to get the second," money itself being of a prolific nature.

The outcome of it all was that, in the year 1748, at the age of forty-two, he flattered himself, to repeat his own language, that, by the sufficient, though moderate, fortune which he had acquired, he had secured leisure during the rest of his life for philosophical studies and amusements.

The plan that he formed for securing this leisure, which he turned to such fruitful, purposes, was marked by his usual good judgment. In 1744, he had taken into his employment David Hall, a Scotch journeyman, and a friend of Strahan. He now admitted Hall to partnership with him. "A very able, industrious, and honest partner, Mr. David Hall, with whose character I was well acquainted, as he had work'd for me for four years," are the terms in which he speaks of Hall in the Autobiography. "He took off my hands," he continues, "all care of the printing-office, paying me punctually my share of the profits. The partnership continued eighteen years, successfully for us both." Under the provisions of the partnership agreement, Hall was to carry on the printing and publishing business of Franklin in his own way, but in the firm name of Franklin and Hall, and Hall was to pay to Franklin a thousand pounds a year for eighteen years; at the end of which period Hall was to become the sole proprietor of the business.⁹ Exactly what income Franklin was deriving from his printing and publishing business at the time that this agreement was entered into is not known, but reasonable conjecture has placed it at something like two thousand pounds a year. At that time he was also the owner of a considerable amount of property, representing invested returns from his business in the past. The Gazette continued to be published until the year 1821. When the term of eighteen years, during which the partnership was to last, expired in 1766, the profits had been over twelve thousand pounds, Pennsylvania currency, from subscriptions, and over four thousand pounds, Pennsylvania currency, from advertisements. Judged by the standards of the time and place, it was an extraordinary degree of success which had enabled Franklin in some twenty years to establish so lucrative a business as that which he handed over to the management of Hall in 1748, and few indeed have been the men in mercantile history, who have been willing, after so long a period of prosperous addiction to gain, to turn away to purely intellectual and unremunerative pursuits from such a prospect of increasing self-enrichment as that renounced by Franklin when he wrote to Cadwallader Colden that he, too, was taking the proper measures for obtaining leisure to enjoy life and his friends more than in the past; having put his printing-house under the care of his partner, David Hall, absolutely left off book-selling, and removed to a more quiet part of the town, where he was settling his old accounts, and hoped soon to be quite master of his own time, and no longer, as the song had it, at everyone's call but his own. Nobody knew better than he that, if, after getting the first hundred pounds, it is easier to get the second, it is still easier, after getting the second hundred pounds, to get the third.

For Hall, Franklin entertained uninterrupted feelings of respect and affection, down to the date of the former's death on December 17, 1772. "My Love to Mr. Hall," is one of his messages to Deborah some seven years after the firm of Franklin and Hall was created. Before that he had written to Strahan, "Our friend, Mr. Hall, is well, and manages perfectly to my satisfaction." Many years after the death of Hall, the account between Franklin and him had not been wholly settled, and a letter from the former to Strahan in the year 1785 tells him that Hall and himself had not been of the same mind as to "the value of a copyright in an established newspaper, of each of which from eight to ten thousand were printed," but "were to be determined" by Strahan's opinion. "My long absence from that country, and immense employment the little time I was there," Franklin wrote, "have hitherto prevented the settlement of all the accounts that had been between us; though we never differed about them, and never should if that good honest man had continued in being."

Franklin's failure to forecast the stubborn hostility of the Colonies to the Stamp Act not only cost him some personal popularity but it caused his firm some pecuniary loss. Anticipating with his usual shrewdness the passage of that Act, which imposed a tax of a sterling half-penny on every half-sheet of a newspaper, however small, he sent over to Hall one hundred reams of large half-sheet paper, but permission could not be obtained to have it stamped in America, and it was all reshipped to England at a loss.

As to the Paper sent over [he wrote to Hall] I did it for the best, having at that time Expectations given me that we might have had it stampt there; in which case you would have had great Advantage of the other Printers, since if they were not provided with such Paper, they must have either printed but a half sheet common Demi, or paid for two Stamps on each Sheet. The Plan was afterward alter'd notwithstanding all I could do, it being alledged that Scotland & every Colony would expect the same Indulgence if it was granted to us. The Papers must not be sent back again: But I hope you will excuse what I did in Good will, tho' it happen'd wrong.

After the retirement of Franklin from active business, he still continued to hold his office as Postmaster at Philadelphia, and, while holding it, he was employed by the Deputy Postmaster-General for America as his comptroller to examine and audit the accounts of several of his subordinate officers. Upon the death of the Deputy Postmaster-General, he was appointed his successor, jointly with William Hunter, of Virginia, by the British Postmasters-General. When the pair were appointed, the office had never earned any net revenue for the British Crown. Under the terms of their appointment, they were to have six hundred pounds a year between them, if they could make that sum out of its profits, and, when they entered upon it, so many improvements had to be effected by them that, in the first four years, it ran into debt to them to the extent of upwards of nine hundred pounds; but, under the skilful management of Franklin, it became remunerative, and, before he was removed by the British Government, after his arraignment before the Privy Council, it had been brought to yield three times as much clear revenue to the Crown as the Irish Post-office. "Since that imprudent transaction," Franklin observes in the Autobiography, "they have receiv'd from it – not one farthing!"

On August 10, 1761, eight years after the appointment of Franklin and Hunter, and a few weeks before Foxcroft succeeded Hunter, there was a net balance of four hundred and ninety-four pounds four shillings and eight pence due by the American Post-office to the British Crown; which was duly remitted. "And this," exclaims the astonished official record of the fact in England, "is the first remittance ever made of the kind." Between August 10, 1761, and the beginning of 1764, the net profits of the American Post-office amounted to two thousand and seventy pounds twelve shillings and three and one quarter pence, and drew from the British Postmasters-General the statement, "The Posts in America are under the management of persons of acknowledged ability." With this record of administrative success, it is not surprising that, when Franklin was removed from office, he should have written to Thomas Cushing these bitter words:

I received a written notice from the Secretary of the general post-office, that His Majesty's postmaster-general found it necessary to dismiss me from my office of deputy postmaster-general in North America. The expression was well chosen, for in truth they were under a necessity of doing it; it was not their own inclination; they had no fault to find with my conduct in the office; they knew my merit in it, and that, if it was now an office of value, it had become such chiefly through my care and good management; that it was worth nothing, when given to me; it would not then pay the salary allowed me, and, unless it did, I was not to expect it; and that it now produces near three thousand pounds a year clear to the treasury here. They had beside a personal regard for me. But as the postoffices in all the principal towns are growing daily more and more valuable, by the increase of correspondence, the officers being paid commissions instead of salaries, the ministers seem to intend, by directing me to be displaced on this occasion, to hold out to them all an example that, if they are not corrupted by their office to promote the measures of administration, though against the interests and rights of the colonies, they must not expect to be continued.

Not only was the American postal service made by Franklin's able management to yield a net revenue to the British Crown, but it was brought up to a much higher level of efficiency. For one thing, the mails between New York and Philadelphia were increased from one a week in summer and two a month in winter to three a week in summer and one a week in winter. In 1764, a Philadelphia merchant could mail a letter to New York and receive a reply the next day. For another thing, post-riders were required to carry all newspapers offered to them for carriage whether the newspapers of postmasters or not. In the discharge of his postal duties, Franklin was compelled to make many long journeys outside of Pennsylvania, and these journeys did much, as we have said, to extend his reputation on the American continent and to confirm his extraordinary familiarity with American conditions. As soon as he was appointed Deputy Postmaster-General for America with Hunter, William Franklin was appointed Comptroller of the Post-office. The post-office at Philadelphia he first conferred upon William Franklin, then upon Joseph Read, one of Deborah's relatives, and then upon Peter Franklin, Franklin's brother. Indeed, so long as there was a Franklin or a Read willing to enter the public service, Franklin's other fellow-countrymen had very little chance of filling any vacant post in the American Post-office. This was doubtless due not only to his clannishness but also to the fact that, as far as we can now judge, nepotism was a much more venial offence in the eyes of the public during the colonial era than now. Even now it may be doubted whether the disfavor with which it is regarded is prompted so much by its prejudicial tendency from a public point of view as by its tendency, from the point of view of the spoilsman, to interfere with the repeated use of office for partisan purposes.

The income upon which Franklin retired from business was the sum of one thousand pounds a year for eighteen years, which Hall agreed to pay him, the small salary, arising from the office of Postmaster at Philadelphia, and the income, supposed to be about seven hundred pounds a year, produced by his invested savings. When in England, in addition to the one thousand pounds a year, paid to him by Hall, which ended in the year 1766, and the income derived by him from invested savings, he received a salary of three hundred pounds a year from his office as Deputy Postmaster-General for America, until he was removed in 1774, and for briefer periods a salary of five hundred pounds a year from his office as Colonial Agent for Pennsylvania, and salaries of four hundred pounds, two hundred pounds and one hundred pounds as the Colonial Agent of Massachusetts, Georgia and New Jersey, respectively. With his removal from his office of Deputy Postmaster-General, all these agencies and the salaries attached to them came to an end. When the annuity paid to him by Hall ceased, his income was so seriously curtailed that he was compelled, as we have seen, to remind Deborah of the fact. After his return from England in 1775, he was appointed the Postmaster-General of the United States at a salary of one thousand pounds a year.

For his public services in France, he was allowed at first a salary of five hundred pounds a year and his expenses, and subsequently, when his rank was advanced to that of ambassador, two thousand five hundred pounds a year. When he returned from France to America, he communicated to his old friend, Charles Thomson, the Secretary of Congress, his hope that Congress might be kind enough to recognize the value of his services and sacrifices in the American cause by granting him some small tract of land in the West. He saw, he said, that Congress had made a handsome allowance to Arthur Lee for his services to America in England before his appointment as Commissioner to France, though it had made none to the writer or to Mr. Bollan, who were also parties to these services. Moreover, Lee, on his return to America, as well as John Jay, had been rewarded by Congress with a good office. The letter, of course, made out an irrefragable case; for, if the United States had given the whole Northwest Territory to Franklin, his heirs and assigns forever, the gift would hardly have exceeded the value of his services. It was written just before the Old Congress gave way to the First Congress under the Federal Constitution, and nothing ever came of it. The conduct of the Old Congress to Franklin in other respects had been so ungenerous that it is hardly likely that it would have made any response to the appeal anyhow unless solicited by a more intriguing spirit than his.

The State of Georgia was more mindful of its obligations to him, and voted him the right to take up three thousand acres of land within its limits.

After his return from France, a great rise took place in the value of real estate in Philadelphia, and his houses and lots reaped its benefits to a conspicuous degree. On Jan. 29, 1786, he wrote to Ferdinand Grand, "My own Estate I find more than tripled in Value since the Revolution"; and similar statements are to be found in other letters of his at this time.

At this period of his life, a considerable amount of his attention was given to the improvement of his property. On Apr. 22, 1787, in a letter to Ferdinand Grand, he said, "The three Houses which I began to build last year, are nearly finished, and I am now about to begin two others. Building is an Old Man's Amusement. The Advantage is for his Posterity."

When Franklin died, his estate consisted of ten houses in Philadelphia, and almost as many vacant lots, a pasture lot near Philadelphia, a farm near Burlington, New Jersey, a house in Boston, the right to the three thousand acres of land in Georgia, a tract of land on the Ohio, a tract of land in Nova Scotia, twelve shares of the capital stock of the Bank of North America and bonds of individuals in excess of eighteen thousand pounds. The value of his entire estate was supposed to be between two hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Under his management, the Gazette was probably the best newspaper produced in Colonial America. In its early history, it appeared first twice a week, and then weekly, and consisted of but a single sheet, which, when folded, was about 12 by 18 inches square. Parton is not accurate, as his own context shows, in stating that Franklin "originated the modern system of business-advertising." Other newspapers of the time, including Bradford's Mercury, contained advertisements for the recovery of runaway servants and slaves, and lost or stolen articles, and for the sale of different kinds of merchandise. When Franklin fled from Boston, his brother James advertised for another apprentice in the Courant. Nor is Parton accurate, either, in stating that Franklin "invented the plan of distinguishing advertisements by means of little pictures, which he cut with his own hands." There were such cuts in Bradford's Mercury even before the Gazette was founded. The Gazette won a position of its own because its proprietor and editor brought to its issues that knowledge of human life and human nature and that combination of practical sagacity, humor and literary skill which he carried into everything. The latest advices of the day, foreign and domestic, which were tardy enough, extracts from the Spectator and other moral writers of the age, verses from contemporary poets, cuttings from the English newspapers, broad, obscene jokes, as unconscious of offence as the self-exposure of a child or an animal, all assembled with the instinctive eye to unity of effect, which is the most consummate achievement of journalistic art, made up the usual contents of the Gazette. Now, along with news items of local and outside interest, we have a humorous account of a lottery in England, by which, for the better increase of the King's subjects, all the old maids are to be raffled for; now some truculent flings at the Catholics, the caput lupinum of that age; now a hint to a delinquent subscriber that it was considerably in his power to contribute towards the happiness of his most humble obliged servant; now an exasperating intimation that the Mercury has been depredating upon the columns of its rival; now some little essay or dialogue from the pen of Franklin himself, good enough to be classed as literature. The open, kindly, yet shrewd, face, with the crow's-feet, furrowed by the incessant play of humor about the corners of its eyes, looks out at us from every page.

The editor of the Gazette sustains to his readers a relation as personal as that sustained by Poor Richard to his. He goes off to New Jersey to print some paper currency for that Colony, and he inserts this paragraph in the Gazette: "The Printer hopes the irregular Publication of this Paper will be excused a few times by his Town Readers, on consideration of his being at Burlington with the press, labouring for the publick Good, to make Money more plentiful." The statement that a flash of lightning in Bucks County had melted the pewter buttons off the waistband of a farmer's breeches elicits the observation, "Tis well nothing else thereabouts was made of pewter." When contributions by others failed him, he even wrote letters to himself under feigned names. "Printerum est errare," we are told, and then, under this announcement, Franklin, in another name, addresses the following facetious letter to himself:

Sir, As your last Paper was reading in some Company where I was present, these Words were taken Notice of in the Article concerning Governor Belcher (After which his Excellency, with the Gentlemen trading to New England, died elegantly at Pontack's). The Word died should doubtless have been dined, Pontack's being a noted Tavern and Eating house in London for Gentlemen of Condition; but this Omission of the Letter (n) in that Word, gave us as much Entertainment as any Part of your Paper. One took the Opportunity of telling us, that in a certain Edition of the Bible, the Printer had, where David says I am fearfully and wonderfully made, omitted the Letter (e) in the last Word, so that it was, I am fearfully and wonderfully mad; which occasion'd an ignorant Preacher, who took that Text, to harangue his Audience for half an hour on the Subject of Spiritual Madness. Another related to us, that when the Company of Stationers in England had the Printing of the Bible in their Hands, the Word (not) was left out of the Seventh Commandment, and the whole Edition was printed off with Thou shalt commit Adultery, instead of Thou shalt not, &c. This material Erratum induc'd the Crown to take the Patent from them which is now held by the King's Printer. The Spectator's Remark upon this Story is, that he doubts many of our modern Gentlemen have this faulty edition by 'em, and are not made sensible of the Mistake. A Third Person in the Company acquainted us with an unlucky Fault that went through a whole Impression of Common-Prayer Books; in the Funeral Service, where these Words are, We shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an Eye, &c., the Printer had omitted the (c) in changed, and it read thus, We shall all be hanged, &c. And lastly, a Mistake of your Brother News-Printer was mentioned, in The Speech of James Prouse written the Night before he was to have been executed, instead of I die a Protestant, he has put it, I died a Protestant. Upon the whole you came off with the more favourable Censure, because your Paper is most commonly very correct, and yet you were never known to triumph upon it, by publickly ridiculing and exposing the continual Blunders of your Contemporary Which Observation was concluded by a good old Gentleman in Company, with this general just Remark, That whoever accustoms himself to pass over in Silence the Faults of his Neighbours, shall meet with much better Quarter from the World when he happens to fall into a Mistake himself; for the Satyrical and Censorious, whose Hand is against every Man, shall upon such Occasions have every Man's Hand against him.

This is an accusation of plagiarism made by Franklin against Bradford:

When Mr. Bradford publishes after us [he declared], and has Occasion to take an Article or two out of the Gazette, which he is always welcome to do, he is desired not to date his Paper a Day before ours, (as last Week in the Case of the Letter containing Kelsey's Speech, &c) lest distant Readers should imagine we take from him, which we always carefully avoid.

Bradford hit back as best he could. On one occasion he charged that the contract for printing paper money for the Province of New Jersey had been awarded to Franklin at a higher bid than that of another bidder. "Its no matter," he said, "its the Country's Money, and if the Publick cannot afford to pay well, who can? Its proper to serve a Friend when there is an opportunity."

One of Franklin's favorite devices for filling up gaps in the Gazette was to have himself, in the guise of a correspondent, ask himself questions, and then answer them. "I am about courting a girl I have had but little acquaintance with; how shall I come to a knowledge of her faults, and whether she has the virtues I imagine she has," is one such supposititious question. "Commend her among her female acquaintance," is the ready-made answer. Another imaginary question was of this tenor: "Mr. Franklin: Pray let the prettiest Creature in this Place know (by publishing this), that if it was not for her Affectation she would be absolutely irresistible." Next week a flood of replies gushed out of the editor's pigeon-holes. One ran thus:

"I cannot conceive who your Correspondent means by 'the prettiest creature' in this Place; but I can assure either him or her, that she who is truly so, has no Affectation at all."

And another ran thus:

"Sir, Since your last Week's Paper I have look'd in my Glass a thousand Times, I believe, in one way; and if it was not for the Charge of Affectation I might, without Partiality believe myself the Person meant."

At times we cannot but suspect that Franklin has deliberately created a sensation for the purpose of quickening the sale of the Gazette. For instance, a peruke maker in Second Street advertises that he will "leave off the shaving business after the 22nd of August next." Commenting on this advertisement, Franklin observes that barbers are peculiarly fitted for politics, for they are adept shavers and trimmers; and, when the angry peruke maker calls him to task for his levity, he replies that he cherishes no animosity at all towards him, and can only impute his feelings to a "Want of taste and relish for pieces of that force and beauty which none but a University bred gentleman can produce."

On another occasion, when advertising the sailing of a ship, he added this N. B. of his own: "No Sea Hens, nor Black Gowns will be admitted on any terms." To such a degree were some of the clergy incensed by it that they withdrew their subscriptions; but it is not unlikely that in a day or so twice their number in scoffers were added to the subscription list of the young printer. At times the fooling is bald buffoonery.

On Thursday last [he informed his readers] a certain P – r ('tis not customary to give names at length on these occasions) walking carefully in clean clothes over some barrels of tar on Carpenter's Wharf, the head of one of them unluckily gave way, and let a leg of him in above the knee. Whether he was upon the Catch at that time, we can not say, but 'tis certain he caught a Tar-tar, 'Twas observed he sprang out again right briskly, verifying the common saying, as nimble as a Bee in a Tar barrel. You must know there are several sorts of bees: 'tis true he was no honey bee, nor yet a humble bee: but a Boo-bee he may be allowed to be, namely B. F.

Franklin was a publisher of books as well as a newspaper proprietor. Most of the books and pamphlets published by him were of a theological or religious nature, in other words books which, aside from the pecuniary profit of printing them, he was very much disposed to regard as no books at all. Others were of a description to serve the practical wants of a society yet simple in its structure, such as The Gentlemen's Pocket Farrier and Every Man his Own Doctor, or the Poor Planter's Physician. But some were of real note such as two little volumes of native American poetry, Colden's Essay on the Iliac Passion, which is said to have been the first American medical treatise, Cadwallader's Essay on the West India Dry Gripes, and James Logan's translation of Cato's Moral Distichs, which Franklin regarded as his chef d'œuvre, and which is said to have been the first book in the Latin tongue to have been both translated and printed in America. Worthy of mention also are various publications on the subject of slavery, precursors of the endless succession a little later on of anti-slavery tracts, books and speeches, which anon became a mountain. The mercantile business, of which Franklin's stationery shop was the nucleus, was of a highly miscellaneous character. In addition to books and pamphlets printed by himself, he imported and sold many others including chapmen's books and ballads.

At the time I establish'd myself in Pennsylvania [he tells us in the Autobiography], there was not a good bookseller's shop in any of the Colonies to the southward of Boston. In New York and Philad'a the printers were indeed stationers; they sold only paper, etc., almanacs, ballads, and a few common school-books. Those who lov'd reading were oblig'd to send for their books from England.

The spirit in which he imported the pamphlets sold by him is indicated in one of his letters to Strahan. "Let me have everything, good or bad, that makes a Noise and has a Run," he says. His stock of merchandise included everything usually sold at a stationer's shop such as good writing paper, choice writing parchment, cyphering slates and pencils, Holman's ink powders, ivory pocket books, pounce and pounce boxes, sealing wax, wafers, pencils, fountain pens, choice English quills, brass inkhorns, and sand glasses. There were besides "fine mezzotints, a great variety of maps, cheap pictures engraved on copper plate of all sorts of birds, beasts, fishes, fruits, flowers etc., useful to such as would learn to draw." Along with these things, and choice consignments of the Franklin Crown Soap, were vended articles almost as varied as the contents of a junkshop, such as the following:

very good sack at 6s per gallon, glaz'd fulling papers and bonnet-papers, very good lamp-black, very good chocolate, linseed oil, very good coffee, compasses and scales, Seneca rattlesnake root, with directions how to use it in the pleurisy &c., dividers and protractors, a very good second hand two-wheel chaise, a very neat, new fashion'd vehicle, or four wheel'd chaise, very convenient to carry weak or other sick persons, old or young, good Rhode Island cheese and codfish, quadrants, forestaffs, nocturnals, mariner's compasses, season'd murchantable boards, coarse and fine edgings, fine broad scarlet cloth, fine broad black cloth, fine white thread hose and English sale duck, very good iron stoves, a large horse fit for a chair or saddle, the true and genuine Godfrey's cordial, choice bohea tea, very good English saffron, New York Lottery tickets, choice makrel, to be sold by the barrel, a large copper still, very good spermacety, fine palm oyl, very good Temple spectacles and a new fishing net.

Another commodity in which Franklin dealt was the unexpired time of indentured or bond servants, who had sold their services for a series of years in return for transportation to America. This traffic is illustrated in such advertisements in the Gazette as these: "To be sold. A likely servant woman, having three years and a half to serve. She is a good spinner"; "To be sold. A likely servant lad about 15 years of age, and has 6 years to serve." And alas! the humanitarian, who strove so earnestly, during the closing years of his life, when he was famous and rich, and the President of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, to bring home the horrors of slavery to the Southern conscience, was himself what involved until the end utter social disrepute in the slaveholding South, that is to say, a negro-trader. "Some of these slaves," Paul Leicester Ford tells us in The Many Sided Franklin, "he procured from New England where, as population grew in density, the need for them passed, leading to their sale in the colonies to the southward." The business was certainly a repulsive one, even when conducted by such a lover of the human species as Franklin. How far this is true the reader can judge for himself when he reads the following advertisements, which are but two of the many of the same kind that appeared in the Gazette:

To be sold a likely negro woman, with a man-child, fit for town or country business. Enquire of the printer hereof.

To be sold. A prime able young negro man, fit for laborious work, in town or country, that has had the small pox: As also a middle aged negro man, that has likewise had the small pox. Enquire of the printer hereof: Or otherwise they will be expos'd to sale by publick vendue, on Saturday the 11th of April next, at 12 o'clock, at the Indian-king, in Market Street.

While Franklin was printing pamphlets against slavery and selling negroes, and Deborah was stitching pamphlets and vending old rags, Mrs. Read, the mother of Deborah, was engaged in compounding and vending an ointment suited to conditions still graver than those for which the Franklin Crown Soap was intended. We can hardly doubt that this advertisement, which was published in the Gazette, was penned by the same hand which wrote the Ephemera:

The Widow Read, removed from the upper End of High Street to the New Printing Office near the Market, continues to make and sell her well-known Ointment for the ITCH, with which she has cured abundance of People in and about this City for many Years past. It is always effectual for that purpose, and never fails to perform the Cure speedily. It also kills or drives away all Sorts of Lice in once or twice using. It has no offensive Smell, but rather a pleasant one; and may be used without the least Apprehension of Danger, even to a sucking Infant, being perfectly innocent and safe. Price 2s. a Galleypot containing an Ounce; which is sufficient to remove the most inveterate Itch, and render the Skin clear and smooth.

The same advertisement informed the public that the Widow Read also continued to make and sell her excellent Family Salve or Ointment, for Burns or Scalds, (Price 1s. an Ounce) and several other Sorts of Ointments and Salves as usual.

From this review of the business career of Franklin, it will be seen that the stairway, by which he climbed to pecuniary independence and his wider fame, though not long, was, in its earlier gradations, hewn step by step from the rock. From the printing office of Keimer to Versailles and the salon of Madame Helvétius was no primrose path. As long as the human struggle in its thousand forms, for subsistence and preferment, goes on, as long as from year to year youth continues to be rudely pushed over the edge of the nest, with no reliance except its own strength of wing, it is safe to say that the first chapters of the Autobiography will remain a powerful incentive to human hope and ambition.

CHAPTER III
Franklin as a Statesman

The career of Franklin as a public official began in 1736, when he was appointed Clerk of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. In this position, he remained until his retirement from business precipitated so many political demands upon him that he had to give it up for still higher responsibilities.

The publick [he says in the Autobiography] now considering me as a man of leisure, laid hold of me for their purposes, every part of our civil government, and almost at the same time, imposing some duty upon me. The Governor put me into the commission of the peace; the corporation of the city chose me of the common council, and soon after an alderman; and the citizens at large chose me a burgess to represent them in Assembly.¹⁰

His legislative seat was all the more agreeable to him because he had grown tired as clerk of listening to debates in which he could take no part, and which were frequently so lifeless that for very weariness he had to amuse himself with drawing magic squares or circles, or what not, as he sat at his desk. The office of justice of the peace he withdrew from by degrees, when he found that, to fill it with credit, more knowledge of the common law was requisite than he possessed, and, in this connection, the belief maybe hazarded that his influence in Congress and the Federal Convention of 1787 would have been still greater, if he had been a better lawyer, and, therefore, more competent to cope in debate with contemporaries fitter than he was to discuss questions which, true to the time-honored Anglo-Saxon traditions, turned largely upon the provisions of charters and statutes. That he was lacking in fluency of speech we have, as we have seen, his own admission – a species of evidence, however, by no means conclusive in the case of a man so little given to self-praise as he was. But there is testimony to convince us that, as a debater, Franklin was, at least, not deficient in the best characteristic of a good debater, that of placing the accent upon the truly vital points of his case.

I served [declares Jefferson] with General Washington in the legislature of Virginia, before the revolution, and, during it, with Dr. Franklin in Congress. I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point, which was to decide the question. They laid their shoulders to the great points, knowing that the little ones would follow of themselves.

What John Adams has to say about Franklin as a legislator is manifestly the offspring of mere self-love. After taking a view of his own legislative activity through the highly magnifying lens, which he brought to bear upon everything relating to himself, he pictures Franklin in Congress as "from day to day, sitting in silence, a great part of his time fast asleep in his chair."

But whatever were the demerits of Franklin as a speaker, his influence was very great in every legislative assembly in which he ever sat. To begin with, he had the kind of eloquence that gives point to his own saying, "Whose life lightens, his words thunder." Commenting in the latter part of his career to Lord Fitzmaurice upon the stress laid by Demosthenes upon action as the point of first importance in oratory, he said that he

thought another kind of action of more importance to an orator, who would persuade people to follow his advice, viz. such a course of action in the conduct of life, as would impress them with an opinion of his integrity as well as of his understanding; that, this opinion once established, all the difficulties, delays, and oppositions, usually occasioned by doubts and suspicions, were prevented; and such a man, though a very imperfect speaker, would almost always carry his points against the most flourishing orator, who had not the character of sincerity.

In the next place, Franklin's rare knowledge and wisdom made him an invaluable counsellor for any deliberative gathering. He was the protagonist in the Pennsylvania Assembly of the Popular Party, in its contest with the Proprietary Party, and was for a brief time its Speaker. As soon as he returned from Europe, at the beginning of the Revolution, he was thrice honored by being elected to the Continental Congress, the Pennsylvania Assembly, and the Convention to frame a constitution for Pennsylvania. Besides appointing him Postmaster-General, Congress placed him upon many of its most important committees; the Assembly made him Chairman of its Committee of Safety, a post equivalent, for all practical purposes, to the executive headship of the Province; and the Convention made him its President. It is safe to say that, had there not been a Washington, even his extreme old age and physical infirmities would not have kept him from being the presiding officer of the Federal Convention of 1787 and the first President of the United States. The intellect of Franklin was too solid to be easily imposed upon by mere glibness of speech. "Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason," remarks Poor Richard. Equally pointed is that other saying of his, "The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise." But Franklin was fully alive to the splendid significance of human eloquence, when enlisted in the service of high-minded and far-seeing statesmanship. Speaking in a letter to Lord Stanhope of Lord Chatham's speech in support of his motion for the removal of the King's troops from Boston, he said, "Dr. F. is fill'd with admiration of that truly great Man. He has seen, in the course of Life, sometimes Eloquence without Wisdom, and often Wisdom without Eloquence; in the present Instance he sees both united; and both, as he thinks, in the highest Degree possible."

When Franklin took his seat in the Assembly, William Franklin was elected its clerk in his place; for heredity as well as consanguinity was a feature of the Franklin system of patronage. Once elected to the Assembly, he acquired a degree of popularity and influence that rendered his re-election for many years almost a matter of course. "My election to this trust," he says in the Autobiography, "was repeated every year for ten years, without my ever asking any elector for his vote, or signifying, either directly or indirectly, any desire of being chosen." So eager were his constituents to confer the honor upon him that they kept on conferring it upon him year after year, even when he was abroad.¹¹ He proved himself eminently worthy of this confidence. By nature and training, he was a true democrat, profoundly conservative at the core, but keenly sensitive to every rational and wholesome appeal to his liberal or generous instincts. He loved law and order, stable institutions, and settled forms and tendencies, rooted in the soil of transmitted wisdom and experience. He was too much of an Englishman to have any sympathy with hasty changes or rash innovations. Much as he loved France he could never have been drawn into such a delirious outburst as the French Revolution. He loved liberty as Hampden loved it, as Chatham loved it, as Gladstone loved it. John Wilkes, though in some respects an ignoble, was in other respects an indubitable champion of English freedom; yet Franklin utterly failed to see in him even a case for the application of his reminder to his daughter that sweet and clear waters come through very dirty earth. His happy nature and his faith in individual thrift sometimes made him slow to believe that masses of men had as much cause for political discontent as they claimed, and for such mob violence, as attended the career of Wilkes, of whom he speaks in one of his letters to his son as "an outlaw and an exile, of bad personal character, not worth a farthing," it was impossible for his deep-seated respect for law and order to have any toleration; though he did express on one occasion the remarkable conviction that, if George the Third had had a bad private character, and John Wilkes a good one, the latter might have turned the former out of his kingdom.

It is certain, however, that few men have ever detested more strongly than he did the baseness and meanness of arbitrary power. And he had little patience at the same time with conditions of any sort that rested upon mere precedent, or prescription. He welcomed every new triumph of science over inert matter, every fresh victory of truth over superstition, bigotry, or the unseeing eye, every salutary reform that vindicated the fitness of the human race for its destiny of unceasing self-advancement. His underlying instincts were firmly fixed in the ground, but his sympathies reached out on every side into the free air of expanding human hopes and aspirations. In his faith in the residuary wisdom and virtue of the mass of men, he is more like Jefferson than any of his Revolutionary compeers. "The People seldom continue long in the wrong, when it is nobody's Interest to mislead them," he wrote to Abel James. The tribute, it must be confessed, is a rather equivocal one, as it is always somebody's interest to mislead the People, but the sanguine spirit of the observation pervades all his relations to popular caprice or resentment. Less equivocal was his statement to Galloway: "The People do not indeed always see their Friends in the same favourable Light; they are sometimes mistaken, and sometimes misled; but sooner or later they come right again, and redouble their former Affection." Few were the public men of his age who looked otherwise than askance at universal suffrage, but he was not one of them.

Liberty, or freedom [he declared in his Some Good Whig Principles], consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who frame the laws, and who are to be the guardians of every man's life, property, and peace; for the all of one man is as dear to him as the all of another; and the poor man has an equal right, but more need, to have representatives in the legislature than the rich one.

For similar reasons he was opposed to entails, and favored the application of the just and equal law of gavelkind to the division of intestate estates.

It was impossible for such a man as this not to ally himself with the popular cause, when he became a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly. At that time, the Proprietary Government of Pennsylvania had proved as odious to the people of the Province as the proprietary governments of South Carolina and the Jerseys had proved to the people of those Colonies. Almost from the time of the original settlement, the relations between the Assembly and the Penns had been attended by mutual bickerings and reproaches. First William Penn had scolded the Assembly in a high key, then his sons; and, in resolution after resolution, the Assembly had, in true British fashion, stubbornly asserted the liberties and privileges of their constituents, and given the Proprietary Government, under thinly veiled forms of parliamentary deference, a Roland for its every Oliver. The truth was that a Proprietary Government, uniting as it did governmental functions, dependent for their successful exercise upon the popular faith in the disinterestedness of those who exercised them, with the selfish concerns of a landlord incessantly at loggerheads with his vendees and tenants over purchase money and quitrents, was utterly incompatible with the dignity of real political rule,¹² and hopelessly repugnant to the free English spirit of the Pennsylvanians. Under such circumstances, there could be no such thing as a true commonwealth; nor anything much better than a feudal fief. Political sovereignty lost its aspect of detachment and legitimate authority in the eyes of the governed, and wore the appearance of a mere organization for the transaction of private business. Almost as a matter of course, the Proprietaries came to think and speak of the Province as if it were as much their personal property as one of their household chattels, refusing, as Franklin said, to give their assent to laws, unless some private advantage was obtained, some profit got or unequal exemption gained for their estate, or some privilege wrested from the people; and almost, as a matter of course, the disaffected people of the Province sullenly resented a situation so galling to their pride and self-respect. Franklin saw all this with his usual clearness. After conceding in his Cool Thoughts that it was not unlikely that there were faults on both sides, "every glowing Coal being apt to inflame its Opposite," he expressed the opinion that the cause of the contentions was

radical, interwoven in the Constitution, and so become of the very Nature, of Proprietary Governments. And [he added] as some Physicians say, every Animal Body brings into the World among its original Stamina the Seeds of that Disease that shall finally produce its Dissolution; so the Political Body of a Proprietary Government, contains those convulsive Principles that will at length destroy it.

The Proprietary Government of Pennsylvania was bad enough in principle; it was made still worse by the unjust and greedy manner in which it was administered by Thomas and Richard Penn, who were the Proprietaries, when Franklin became a member of the Assembly. The vast estate of William Penn in Pennsylvania, consisting of some twenty-six million acres of land, held subject to the nominal obligation of the owner to pay to the King one fifth of such gold and silver as the Province might yield, descended upon the death of Penn to his sons John, Thomas and Richard, in the proportion of one half to John, as the eldest son, and in the proportion of one fourth each to Thomas and Richard. John died in 1746, after devising his one half share to Thomas; thus making Thomas the owner of three out of the four shares.¹³ The political powers of the Proprietaries were exercised by a deputy-governor whose position was in the highest degree vexatious and perplexing. He held his office by appointment of the Proprietaries, who resided in England, and the mode in which he was to discharge his duties was prescribed by rigid "instructions," issued to him by them. His salary, however, was derived from the Assembly, which was rarely at peace with the Proprietary Government. If he obeyed his instructions, he ran the risk of losing his salary; if he disobeyed them, he was certain to lose his place. Incredible as it may now seem, the main duty imposed upon him by his instructions was that of vetoing every tax bill enacted by the Assembly which did not expressly exempt all the located, unimproved and unoccupied lands of the Proprietaries, and all the quitrents, fines and purchase money out at interest, to which they were entitled, that is to say, the greater part of their immense estate. This was the axis about which the bitter controversy between the Popular and Proprietary parties, in which Franklin acquired his political training and reputation, revolved like one of the lurid waterspouts with which a letter that his correspondent John Perkins received from him has been illustrated. The Assembly insisted that they should not be required to vote money for the support of the Proprietary Government, unless the proprietary estate bore its proper share of the common burden. The Governor did not dare to violate his instructions for fear of being removed by his masters, and of being sued besides on the bond by which he had bound himself not to violate them. At times, the feud was so intense and absorbing, that, like a pair of gamecocks, too intent on their own deadly encounter to hear an approaching footstep, the combatants almost lost sight of the fact that, under the shelter of their dissensions, the Indian was converting the frontiers of Pennsylvania into a charred and blood-stained wilderness. Occasionally the Assembly had to yield the point with a reservation asserting that its action was not to be taken as a precedent, and once, when England as well as America was feeling the shock of Braddock's defeat, the pressure of public opinion in England was sufficient to coerce the Proprietaries into adding five thousand pounds to the sum appropriated by the Assembly for the defence of the Province. But, as a general thing, there was little disposition on either side to compromise. The sharpness of the issue was well illustrated in the bill tendered by the Assembly to Governor Morris for his signature after Braddock's defeat. Both before, and immediately after that catastrophe, he had, in reliance upon the critical condition of the public safety, endeavored to drive the Assembly into providing for the defence of the Province without calling upon the proprietary estate for a contribution. The bill in question declared "that all estates, real and personal, were to be taxed, those of the proprietaries not excepted." "His amendment," says Franklin in his brief way, "was, for not read only; a small, but very material alteration."¹⁴

This dependence of the Governor upon the Assembly for his salary and the dependence of the Assembly upon the Governor for the approval of its enactments brought about a traffic in legislation between them which was one of the most disgraceful features of the Proprietary régime; though it became so customary that even the most honorable Governor did not scruple to engage in it. This traffic is thus described by Franklin in his stirring "Preface to the Speech of Joseph Galloway, Esq.":

Ever since the Revenue of the Quit-rents first, and after that the Revenue of Tavern-Licenses, were settled irrevocably on our Proprietaries and Governors, they have look'd on those Incomes as their proper Estate, for which they were under no Obligations to the People: And when they afterwards concurr'd in passing any useful Laws, they considered them as so many Jobbs, for which they ought to be particularly paid. Hence arose the Custom of Presents twice a Year to the Governors, at the close of each Session in which Laws were past, given at the Time of Passing. They usually amounted to a Thousand Pounds per Annum. But when the Governors and Assemblies disagreed, so that Laws were not pass'd, the Presents were withheld. When a Disposition to agree ensu'd, there sometimes still remain'd some Diffidence. The Governors would not pass the Laws that were wanted, without being sure of the Money, even all that they call'd their Arrears; nor the Assemblies give the Money without being sure of the Laws. Thence the Necessity of some private Conference, in which mutual Assurances of good Faith might be receiv'd and given, that the Transactions should go hand in hand.

This system of barter prevailed even before Franklin became a member of the Assembly, and how fixed and ceremonious its forms sometimes were we can infer from what happened on one of the semi-annual market days during Governor Thomas' administration. Various bills were lying dormant in his hands. Accordingly the House ordered two of its members to call upon him and acquaint him that it had long "waited for his Result" on these bills, and desired to know when they might expect it. They returned and reported that the Governor was pleased to say that he had had the bills long under consideration, and "waited the Result" of the House. Then, after the House had resolved itself into a committee of the whole, for the purpose of taking the "Governor's support" into consideration, there was a further interchange of communications between the House and the Governor; the former reporting "some progress" to the Governor, and the Governor replying that, as he had received assurances of a "good disposition," on the part of the House, he thought it incumbent upon him to show the like on his part by sending down the bills, which lay before him, without any amendment. The manifestation of a good disposition was not the same thing as an actual promise to approve the bills; so the wary assembly simply resolved that, on the passage of such bills as then lay before the Governor, and of the Naturalization Bill, and such other bills as might be presented to him during the pending session, there should be paid to him the sum of five hundred pounds; and that, on the passage of the same bills, there should be paid to him the further sum of one thousand pounds for the current year's support. Agreeably with this resolution, orders were drawn on the Treasurer and Trustees of the Loan-Office, and, when the Governor was informed of the fact, he appointed a time for passing the bills which was done with one hand, while he received the orders in the other. Thereupon with the utmost politeness he thanked the House for the fifteen hundred pounds as if it had been a free gift, and a mere mark of respect and affection. "I thank you, Gentlemen," he said, "for this Instance of your Regard; which I am the more pleased with, as it gives an agreeable Prospect of future Harmony between me and the Representatives of the People."

Despicably enough, while this treaty was pending, the Penns had a written understanding with the Governor, secured by his bond, that they were to receive a share of all money thus obtained from the people whom they sought to load with the entire weight of taxation. Indeed, emboldened as Franklin said by the declining sense of shame, that always follows frequent repetitions of sinning, they later in Governor Denny's time had the effrontery to claim openly, in a written reply to a communication from the Assembly, with respect to their refusal to bear any part of the expenses entailed on the Province by the Indians, that the excess of these donatives over and above the salary of the Governor should belong to them. By the Constitution, they said, their consent was essential to the validity of the laws enacted by the People, and it would tend the better to facilitate the several matters, which had to be transacted with them, for the representatives of the People to show a regard to them and their interest. The Assembly hotly replied that they hoped that they would always be able to obtain needful laws from the goodness of their sovereign without going to the market for them to a subject. But the hope was a vain one, and to that market, directly or indirectly, the People of Pennsylvania still had to go, for some time to come. To use Franklin's language, there was no other market that they could go to for the commodity that they wanted.

Do not, my courteous Reader [he exclaims with fine scorn in the "Preface to the Speech of Joseph Galloway, Esq."] take Pet at our Proprietary Constitution, for these our Bargain and Sale Proceedings in Legislation. 'Tis a happy Country where Justice, and what was your own before, can be had for Ready Money. 'Tis another Addition to the Value of Money, and of Course another Spur to Industry. Every Land is not so bless'd. There are Countries where the princely Proprietor claims to be Lord of all Property; where what is your own shall not only be wrested from you, but the Money you give to have it restor'd, shall be kept with it, and your offering so much, being a Sign of your being too Rich, you shall be plunder'd of every Thing that remain'd. These Times are not come here yet: Your present Proprietors have never been more unreasonable hitherto, than barely to insist on your Fighting in Defence of their Property, and paying the Expences yourselves; or if their estates must, (ah! must) be tax'd towards it, that the best of their Lands shall be tax'd no higher than the worst of yours.

Governor Hamilton, who succeeded Governor Thomas, so far departed from the vicious practice of buying and selling laws as to sign them without prepayment, but, when he observed that the Assembly was tardy in making payment, and yet asked him to give his assent to additional laws, before prior ones had been paid for, he stated his belief to it that as many useful laws had been enacted by him as by any of his predecessors in the same space of time, and added that, nevertheless, he had not understood that any allowance had been made to him for his support, as had been customary in the Province. The hint proved effective, the money was paid and the bills were approved.

From the time that Franklin became a member of the Assembly until the time that the minor controversy between the Proprietary Party and the Popular Party in Pennsylvania was obscured by the larger controversy between the Crown and all the American Colonies, he was engaged in an almost uninterrupted struggle with the Proprietaries, first, for the annulment of their claim to exemption from taxation, and, secondly, for the displacement of their government by a Royal Government. If there was ever an interlude in this struggle, it was only because, in devising measures for the defence of the Province, a Proprietary Governor found it necessary, at some trying conjuncture, to rely upon the management of Franklin to quiet the Quakers, who constituted a majority of the Assembly and detested both war and the Proprietaries, or upon the general abilities and popularity of Franklin to strengthen his own feeble counsels. If there was any political tranquillity in the Province during this time, it was, to employ one of Franklin's own comparisons, only such tranquillity as exists in a naval engagement between two broadsides. On the one hand were ranged the official partisans and dependents of the Proprietary Government and other adherents of the kind, whose allegiance is likely to be won by the social prestige and political patronage of executive authority. To this faction, in the latter stages of the conflict, was added a large body of Presbyterians whose sectarian sympathies had been excited by the Scotch-Irish uprising against the Indians, of which we have previously spoken. On the other hand were ranged the Quakers, upon whom the burden of resisting the Proprietary encroachments upon the popular rights had mainly rested from the origin of the Province, and middle-class elements of the population whose views and sympathies were not highly colored by any special influences. The task of preparing resolutions, addresses and remonstrances, voicing the popular criticism of the Proprietaries, was mainly committed to Franklin by the Assembly. It was with him, too, as the ablest and most influential representative of the popular interest that the various Proprietary Governors usually dealt.

We first find him high in favor with Governor Thomas and his Council at the time of the Association because of his activity, when still only Clerk of the Assembly, in providing for the defence of the Province and arousing a martial spirit in its people. This was the period when the Quaker found it necessary to help his conscience out a little with his wit, and when Franklin made good use of the principle that men will countenance many things with their backs that they will not countenance with their faces. The Quaker majority in the Assembly did not relish his intimacy at this time with the members of the Council who had so often trod on their punctilio about military expenditures, and it might have been pleased, he conjectured, if he had voluntarily resigned his clerkship; "but," he declares in the Autobiography, "they did not care to displace me on account merely of my zeal for the association, and they could not well give another reason."

Governor Hamilton became so sick of the broils, in which he was involved by the Proprietary instructions, that he resigned. His successor was the Governor Morris whose father loved disputation so much that he encouraged his children to practise it when he was digesting his dinner. Franklin met him at New York when he was on his way to Boston, and Morris was on his way to Philadelphia to enter upon his duties as Governor. So ready for a war of words was the new Governor that, when Franklin returned from Boston to Philadelphia, he and the House had already come to blows, and the conflict never ceased as long as he remained Governor. In the conflict, Franklin was his chief antagonist. Whenever a speech or message of the Governor was to be answered, he was made a member of the Committee appointed to answer it, and by such committees he was invariably selected to draft the answer. "Our answers," he says, "as well as his messages, were often tart, and sometimes indecently abusive." But the Governor was at heart an amiable man, and Franklin, resolute as he was, when his teeth were fairly set, had no black blood in his veins. Though one might have imagined, he says, that he and the Governor could not meet without cutting throats, so little personal ill-will arose between them that they even often dined together.

One afternoon [he tells us in the Autobiography] in the height of this public quarrel, we met in the street. "Franklin," says he, "you must go home with me and spend the evening; I am to have some company that you will like"; and, taking me by the arm, he led me to his house. In gay conversation over our wine, after supper, he told us, jokingly, that he much admir'd the idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him a government, requested it might be a government of blacks, as then, if he could not agree with his people, he might sell them. One of his friends, who sat next to me, says, "Franklin, why do you continue to side with these damn'd Quakers? Had you not 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 blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wip'd off his colouring as fast as he laid it on, and plac'd it, in return, thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton, grew tir'd of the contest, and quitted the Government.

All these disputes originated in the instructions given by the Proprietaries to their Governors not to approve any tax measure enacted by the Assembly that did not expressly exempt their estates; conduct which Franklin justly terms in the Autobiography "incredible meanness."

The ability of Governor Morris to keep on good terms with Franklin in spite of the perpetual wrangling between the Assembly and himself Franklin sometimes thought was due to the fact that the Governor was bred a lawyer and regarded him as simply the advocate of the Assembly and himself as simply the advocate of the Proprietaries. However this was, he sometimes called upon Franklin in a friendly way to advise with him on different points; and occasionally, though not often, Franklin tells us, took his advice. But when the miserable fugitives, who escaped from the Aceldama on the Monongahela, brought back to the settlements their awful tale of carnage and horror, and Dunbar and his rout were cravenly seeking the protection of those whom they should have protected, Governor Morris was only too glad to consult, and take the advice of, the strongest man on the American Continent, except the gallant Virginian, young in years, but from early responsibilities and hardships, as well as native wisdom and intrepidity, endowed with a calm judgment and tempered courage far beyond his years, whom Providence almost seemed to have taken under its direct guardianship for its future purposes on the day that Braddock fell. Later, when it appeared as if the Indians would carry desolation and death into the very bowels of Pennsylvania, the Governor was equally glad to place Franklin in charge of its Northwestern Frontier, and to thrust blank military commissions into his hands to be filled up by him as he pleased. And later still, when the desire of the Governor to consult with Franklin about the proper measures for preventing the desertion of the back counties of Pennsylvania had brought the latter home from the Northwestern Frontier, the Governor did not hesitate, in planning an expedition against Fort Duquesne, to offer Franklin a commission as general. If Franklin had accepted the offer, we are justified, we think, in assuming that he would have won at least as high a degree of credit as that which he accorded to Shirley. "For tho' Shirley," he tells us in the Autobiography, "was not a bred soldier, he was sensible and sagacious in himself, and attentive to good advice from others, capable of forming judicious plans, and quick and active in carrying them into execution." No mean summary of the military virtues of Franklin himself as a citizen soldier. But Franklin knew the limitations of his training too well to be allured by such a deceitful honor. There were few civil tasks to which he was not equal, but, when it came to being a military commander, he had the good sense to make an admission like that which Shirley made to him. When a banquet was given to Lord Loudon by the city of New York, Shirley was present, though the occasion was due to the fact that the command previously held by him had just been transferred to Loudon. Franklin noticed that he was sitting in a very low seat. "They have given you, sir, too low a seat," he said. "No matter, Mr. Franklin," replied Shirley, "I find a low seat the easiest." When Governor Morris saw that, disputatious as he was, he was no match in that respect for the Assembly, he was succeeded by Governor Denny, who brought over with him from England the gold medal awarded by the Royal Society to Franklin for his electrical discoveries. This honor as well as the political experience of his predecessors was calculated to impress upon the Governor the importance of being on good terms with Franklin. At all events, when the medal was delivered by him to Franklin at a public dinner given to himself, after his arrival at Philadelphia, he added to the gift some very polite expressions of his esteem, and assured Franklin that he had long known him by reputation. After dinner, he left the diners with their wine, and took Franklin aside into another room, and told him that he had been advised by his friends in England to cultivate a friendship with him as the man who was best able to give him good advice, and to make his task easy. Much also was said by the Governor about the good disposition of the Proprietary towards the Province and the advantage that it would be to everyone and to Franklin particularly if the long opposition to the Proprietary was abandoned, and harmony between him and the people restored. No one, said the Governor, could be more serviceable in bringing this about than Franklin himself, who might depend upon his services being duly acknowledged and recompensed. "The drinkers," the Autobiography goes on, "finding we did not return immediately to the table, sent us a decanter of Madeira, which the Governor made liberal use of, and in proportion became more profuse of his solicitations and promises."

To these overtures Franklin replied in a proper strain of mingled independence and good feeling, and concluded by expressing the hope that the Governor had not brought with him the same unfortunate instructions as his predecessors. The only answer that the Governor ever gave to this inquiry was given when he settled down to the duties of his office. It then became plain enough that he was under exactly the same instructions as his predecessors; the old ulcer broke out afresh, and Franklin's pen was soon again prodding Proprietary selfishness. But through it all he contrived to maintain the same relations of personal amity with Governor Denny that he had maintained with Governor Morris. "Between us personally," he says, "no enmity arose; we were often together; he was a man of letters, had seen much of the world, and was very entertaining and pleasing in conversation." But the situation, so far as the Province was concerned, was too grievous to be longer borne without an appeal for relief to the Crown. The Assembly had enacted a bill, appropriating the sum of sixty thousand pounds for the King's use, ten thousand pounds of which were to be expended on Lord Loudon's orders, and the Governor, in compliance with his instructions, had refused to give it his approval. This brought things to a head, the House resolved to petition the King to override the instructions and Franklin was appointed its agent to go over to England and present the petition. His passage was engaged, his sea-stores were actually all on board, when Lord Loudon himself came over to Philadelphia for the express purpose of bringing about an accommodation between the jarring interests. The Governor and Franklin met him at his request, and opened their minds fully to him; Franklin revamping all the old popular arguments, so often urged by him, and the Governor pleading his instructions, the bond that he had given and the ruin that awaited him if he disregarded it. "Yet," says Franklin, "seemed not unwilling to hazard himself if Lord Loudon would advise it." This his Lordship did not choose to do, though Franklin once thought that he had nearly prevailed on him to do it; and finally he entreated Franklin to use his influence with the Assembly to induce it to yield, promising, if it did, to employ unsparingly the King's troops for the defence of the frontiers of Pennsylvania, but stating that, if it did not, those frontiers must remain exposed to hostile incursion. The result was that the packet, in which Franklin engaged passage, sailed off with his sea-stores, while the parties were palavering, and the Assembly, after entering a formal protest against the duress, under which it gave way, abandoned its bill, and enacted another with the hateful exemption in it which was promptly approved by the Governor.

Franklin was now free to embark upon his voyage, whenever he could find a ship ready to sail, but, unfortunately for him, all the packets by which he could sail were at the beck of Lord Loudon, who was the most vacillating of human beings. When Franklin, before leaving Philadelphia, inquired of him the precise time at which a packet boat, that he said would be off soon, would sail, he replied: "I have given out that she is to sail on Saturday next; but I may let you know, entre nous, that if you are there by Monday morning, you will be in time, but do not delay longer." Because of detention at a ferry, Franklin did not reach New York before noon on Monday, but he was relieved, when he arrived, to be told that the packet would not sail until the next day. This was about the beginning of April. In point of fact, it was near the end of June when it got off. At the time of Franklin's arrival in New York, it was one of the two packets, that were being kept waiting in port for the dispatches, upon which his Lordship appeared to be always engaged. While thus held up, another packet arrived only to be placed under the same embargo. Each had a list of impatient passengers, and many letters and orders for insurance against war risks from American merchants, but, day after day, his Lordship, entirely unmindful of the impatience and anxiety that he was creating, sat continually at his desk, writing his interminable dispatches. Calling one morning to pay his respects, Franklin found in his ante-chamber Innis, a Philadelphia messenger, who had brought on a batch of letters to his Lordship from Governor Denny, and who told Franklin that he was to call the next day for his Lordship's answer to the Governor, and would then set off for Philadelphia at once. On the strength of this assurance, Franklin the same day placed some letters of his own for delivery in that city in Innis' hands. A fortnight afterwards, he met the messenger in the same ante-chamber. "So, you are soon return'd, Innis" he said. "Return'd!" replied Innis, "No, I am not gone yet." "How so?" "I have called here by order every morning these two weeks past for his lordship's letter, and it is not yet ready." "Is it possible, when he is so great a writer? for I see him constantly at his escritoire." "Yes," says Innis, "but he is like St. George on the signs, always on horseback, and never rides on." Indeed, so purely rotatory was all his Lordship's epistolary energy, unremitting as it seemed to be, that one of the reasons given by William Pitt for subsequently removing him was that "the minister never heard from him, and could not know what he was doing." Finally, the three packets dropped down to Sandy Hook to join the British fleet there. Not knowing but that they might make off any day, their passengers thought it safest to board them before they dropped down. The consequence was that they found themselves anchored at Sandy Hook for about six weeks, "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean," and driven to the necessity of consuming all their sea-stores and buying more. At length, when the fleet did weigh anchor, with his Lordship and all his army on board, bound for the reduction of Louisburg, the three packets were ordered to attend it in readiness to receive the dispatches which the General was still scribbling upon the element that was not more mutable than his own purposes. When Franklin had been five days out, his packet was finally released, and stood off beyond the reach of his Lordship's indefatigable pen, but the other two packets were still kept in tow by him all the way to Halifax, where, after exercising his men for some time in sham attacks on sham forts, he changed his mind about besieging Louisburg, and returned to New York with all his troops and the two packets and their passengers. In the meantime, the French and their savage friends had captured Fort George, and butchered many of the garrison after its capitulation. The captain of one of the two packets, that were brought back to New York, afterwards told Franklin in London that, when he had been detained a month by his Lordship, he requested his permission to heave his ship down and clear her bottom. He was asked how long that would require. He answered three days. His Lordship replied, "If you can do it in one day, I give leave; otherwise not; for you must certainly sail the day after tomorrow." So he never obtained leave, though detained afterwards, from day to day, during full three months. No wonder that an irate passenger, who represented himself as having suffered considerable pecuniary loss, swore after he finally reached London in Franklin's presence, that he would sue Lord Loudon for damages.

As Oxenstiern's son was enjoined by his father to do, Franklin had gone out into the world and seen with what little wisdom it is ruled. "On the whole," he says in the Autobiography, "I wonder'd much how such a man came to be intrusted with so important a business as the conduct of a great army; but, having since seen more of the great world, and the means of obtaining, and motives for giving places, my wonder is diminished."

The Autobiography makes it evident enough that for Loudon Franklin came to entertain the heartiest contempt.¹⁵ His Lordship's movements in 1757 he stigmatized as frivolous, expensive and disgraceful to the nation beyond conception. He was responsible, Franklin thought, for the loss of Fort George, and for the foundering of a large part of the Carolina fleet, which, for lack of notice from him, remained anchored in the worm-infested waters of Charleston harbor for three months, after he had raised his embargo on the exportation of provisions. Nor does Franklin hesitate to charge that this embargo, while laid on the pretence of cutting off the enemy from supplies, was in reality laid for the purpose of beating down the price of provisions in the interest of the contractors, in whose profits, it was suspected, that Loudon had a share. Not only did his Lordship decline, on the shallow pretext that he did not wish to mix his accounts with those of his predecessors, to give Franklin the order that he had promised him for the payment of the balance, still due him on account of Braddock's expedition, though liquidated by his own audit, but, when Franklin urged the fact that he had charged no commission for his services, as a reason why he should be promptly paid, his Lordship cynically replied, "O, Sir, you must not think of persuading us that you are no gainer; we understand better those affairs, and know that everyone concerned in supplying the army finds means, in the doing it, to fill his own pockets."

Franklin and his son arrived in London on July 27, 1757. Shortly after he had settled down in his lodgings, he called upon Dr. Fothergill, whose counsel he had been advised to obtain, and who thought that, before an application was made to the British Government, there should be an effort to reach an understanding with the Penns themselves. Then took place the interview between Franklin and Lord Granville, at which his Lordship, after some preliminary discourse, expressed this alarming opinion:

You Americans have wrong ideas of the nature of your constitution; you contend that the King's instructions to his governors are not laws, and think yourselves at liberty to regard or disregard them at your own discretion. But those instructions are not like the pocket instructions given to a minister going abroad, for regulating his conduct in some trifling point of ceremony. They are first drawn up by judges learned in the laws; they are then considered, debated, and perhaps amended in Council, after which they are signed by the king. They are then, so far as they relate to you, the law of the land, for the King is the LEGISLATOR OF THE COLONIES.

The correctness of this opinion was combated by Franklin. He told his Lordship that this was new doctrine to him, and that he had always understood from the American charters that the colonial laws were to be enacted by the assemblies of the Colonies, and that, once enacted and assented to by the King, the King could not repeal or alter them, and that, as the colonial assemblies could not make laws for themselves without his assent, so he could not make laws for them without their assent. The great man's reply was as brief as a great man's reply is only too likely to be when his opinions are questioned by his inferiors. It was merely that Franklin was totally mistaken. Franklin did not think so, and, concerned for fear that Lord Granville might be but expressing the sentiment of the Court, he wrote down what had been said to him as soon as he returned to his lodgings. The utterance reminded him that some twenty years before a bill had been introduced into Parliament by the ministry of that time containing a clause, intended to make the King's instructions laws in the Colonies, but that the clause had been stricken out of it by the House of Commons. For this, he said, the Colonies adored the Commons, as their friends and the friends of liberty, until it afterwards seemed as if they had refused the point of sovereignty to the King only that they might reserve it for themselves.

A meeting between the Proprietaries and Franklin was arranged by Doctor Fothergill. It assumed the form that such meetings are apt to assume, that is of mutual professions of an earnest desire to agree, repetition of the old antagonistic reasonings and a disagreement as stubborn as before. However, it was agreed that Franklin should reduce the complaints against the Proprietaries to writing, and that the Proprietaries were to consider them. When the paper was drawn, they submitted it to their solicitor, Ferdinand John Paris, who had represented them in the celebrated litigation between the Penns and the Lords Baltimore over the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, and had written all their papers and messages in their disputes with the Pennsylvania Assembly. "He was," says Franklin, "a proud, angry man, and as I had occasionally in the answers of the Assembly treated his papers with some severity, they being really weak in point of argument and haughty in expression, he had conceived a mortal enmity to me." With Paris, Franklin refused to discuss the points of his paper, and the Proprietaries then, on the advice of Paris, placed it in the hands of the Attorney- and Solicitor-Generals for their opinion and advice. By them no answer was given for nearly a year, though Franklin frequently called upon the Proprietaries for an answer only to be told that they had not yet received the opinion of their learned advisers. What the opinion was when it was finally rendered the Proprietaries did not let Franklin know, but instead addressed a long communication, drawn and signed by Paris, to the Assembly, reciting the contents of Franklin's paper, complaining of its lack of formality as rudeness, and justifying their conduct. They would be willing, they said, to compose the dispute, if the Assembly would send out some person of candor to treat with them. Franklin supposed that the incivility imputed to him consisted in the fact that he had not addressed the Proprietaries by their assumed title of True and Absolute Proprietaries of the Province of Pennsylvania.

The letter of the Proprietaries was not answered by the Assembly. While they were pretending to treat with Franklin, Governor Denny had been unable to withstand the pressure of his situation, and, at the request of Lord Loudon, had approved an act subjecting the estates of the Penns to taxation. When this Act was transmitted to England, the Proprietaries, upon the advice of Paris, petitioned the King to withhold his assent from it, and, when the petition came on for hearing, the parties were represented by counsel. On the one hand it was contended that the purpose of the Act was to impose an oppressive burden upon the Proprietary estates, and that the assessment under it would be so unequal because of the popular prejudice against the Penns that they would be ruined. To this it was replied that the Act was not conceived with any such purpose, and would not have any such effect, that the assessors were honest and discreet men under oath, and that any advantage that might inure to them individually from over-assessing the property of the Proprietaries would be too trifling to induce them to perjure themselves. It was also urged in opposition to the petition that the money, for which the Act provided, had been printed and issued, and was now in the hands of the inhabitants of the Province, and would be deprived of all value, to their great injury, if the Act did not receive the royal assent merely because of the selfish and groundless fears of the Proprietaries. At this point, Lord Mansfield, one of the counsel for the Proprietaries, led Franklin off into a room nearby, while the other lawyers were still pleading, and asked him if he was really of the opinion that the Proprietary estate would not be unfairly taxed if the Act was executed. "Certainly," said Franklin. "Then," said he, "you can have little objection to enter into an engagement to assure that point." "None at all," replied Franklin. Paris was then called in, and, after some discussion, a paper, such as Lord Mansfield suggested, was drawn up and signed by Franklin and Mr. Charles, who was the agent of Pennsylvania for ordinary purposes, and the law was given the royal assent with the further engagement, upon the part of Franklin and Mr. Charles, that it should be amended in certain respects by subsequent legislation. This legislation, however, the Assembly afterwards declined to enact when a committee, appointed by it, upon which it was careful to place several close friends of the Proprietaries, brought in an unanimous report stating that the yearly tax levied before the order of the Council reached Pennsylvania had been imposed with perfect fairness as between the Proprietaries and the other tax-payers.

In the most important respect, therefore, Franklin's mission to England had resulted in success. The principle was established by the Crown that the estate of the Proprietaries was subject to taxation equally with that of the humblest citizen of Pennsylvania; and the credit of the paper money, then scattered throughout the province, was saved. The Assembly rewarded its servant, when he returned to Pennsylvania, with its formal thanks and the sum of three thousand pounds. He responded in the happy terms which he always had at his command on occasions of this sort. "He made answer," says the official report, "that he was thankful to the House, for the very handsome and generous Allowance they had been pleased to make him for his Services; but that the Approbation of this House was, in his Estimation, far above every other kind of Recompense."

The Proprietaries punished their servant, Governor Denny, by removing him and threatening him with suit for the breach of his bond, but it is a pleasure to be told in the Autobiography that his position was such that he could despise their threats.

While the duel was going on between the Proprietaries and the Assembly, Franklin had some significant things at times to say about it in his familiar letters. As far as we can see, his political course, during this period, was entirely candid and manly. He was on agreeable personal terms with all the colonial governors, he seems to have cherished an honest desire to be helpful to the Proprietaries, so far as their own illiberality and folly would allow him to be, and it is very plain that he was not without the feeling that the demands of the Popular Party itself were occasionally immoderate. He was quite willing for the sake of peace to concede anything except the essential points of the controversy, but when it came to these he was immovable as men of his type usually are when they realize that a claim upon them is too unjust or exorbitant even for their pacific temper.

I am much oblig'd to you for the favourable Light you put me in, to our Proprietor, as mention'd in yours of July 30 [he wrote to Peter Collinson in 1754], I know not why he should imagine me not his Friend, since I cannot recollect any one Act of mine that could denominate me otherwise. On the contrary if to concur with him, so far as my little Influence reach'd in all his generous and benevolent Designs and Desires of making his Province and People flourishing and happy be any Mark of my Respect and Dutyful Regard to him, there are many who would be ready to say I could not be suppos'd deficient in such Respect. The Truth is I have sought his Interest more than his Favour; others perhaps have sought both, and obtain'd at least the latter. But in my Opinion great Men are not always best serv'd by such as show on all Occasions a blind Attachment to them: An Appearance of Impartiality in general gives a Man sometimes much more Weight when he would serve in particular instances.

To the friend to whom these words were written Franklin was disposed to unbosom himself with unusual freedom, and, in the succeeding year, in another letter to Collinson, he used words which showed plainly enough that he thought that the Assembly too was at times inclined to indulge in more hair-splitting and testiness than was consistent with the public welfare.

You will see [he said] more of the same Trifling in these Votes in both sides. I am heartily sick of our present Situation; I like neither the Governor's Conduct, nor the Assembly's; and having some Share in the Confidence of both, I have endeavour'd to reconcile 'em but in vain, and between 'em they make me very uneasy. I was chosen last Year in my Absence and was not at the Winter Sitting when the House sent home that Address to the King, which I am afraid was both ill-judg'd and ill-tim'd. If my being able now and then to influence a good Measure did not keep up my Spirits I should be ready to swear never to serve again as an Assembly Man, since both Sides expect more from me than they ought, and blame me sometimes for not doing what I am not able to do, as well as for not preventing what was not in my Power to prevent. The Assembly ride restive; and the Governor tho' he spurs with both heels, at the same time reins in with both hands, so that the Publick Business can never move forward, and he remains like St. George on the Sign, Always a Horseback and never going on. Did you never hear this old Catch?

 
Their was a mad Man – He had a mad Wife,
And three mad Sons beside;
And they all got upon a mad Horse
And madly they did ride.
 

Tis a Compendium of our Proceedings and may save you the Trouble of reading them.

In a still later letter to the same correspondent, Franklin asserted that there was no reason for excluding Quakers from the House, since, though unwilling to fight themselves, they had been brought to unite in voting the sums necessary to enable the Province to defend itself. Then, after referring to the defamation, that was being heaped upon him by the Proprietary Party, in the place of the court paid to him when he had exerted himself to secure aids from the House for Braddock and Shirley, he said, "Let me know if you learn that any of their Slanders reach England. I abhor these Altercations and if I did not love the Country and the People would remove immediately into a more quiet Government, Connecticut, where I am also happy enough to have many Friends."

However, there was too much fuel for the fire to die down. The claim of the Proprietaries to exemption from taxation was only the most aggravated result of their efforts, by their instructions to their Governors, to shape the legislation of the Province in accordance with their own personal aims and pecuniary interests instead of in the spirit of the royal charter, which gave to William Penn, and his heirs, and his, or their, deputies or lieutenants, free, full and absolute power, for the good and happy government of Pennsylvania, to make and enact any laws, according to their best discretion, by and with the advice, assent and approbation of the freemen of the said country, or of their delegates or deputies. In the report of the Committee of Aggrievances of the Assembly, drawn by Franklin, the case of the freemen of the Province against the Penns, which led to Franklin's first mission to England, is clearly stated. They are arraigned not only for seeking to exempt the bulk of their estate from the common burden of taxation, but also, apart from this, for stripping, by their instructions, their governors, and thereby the People themselves, of all real discretion in fixing by legislation the measure and manner in which, and the time at which, aids and supplies should be furnished for the defence of the Province. They had even, the report charged, prohibited their governors, by their instructions, from assenting to laws disposing of interest arising from the loan of bills of credit or money raised by excise taxes – forms of revenue to which the Proprietary estate did not contribute at all – unless the laws contained a clause giving their governors the right to negative a particular application of the sums. Another grievance was the issuance by the governor of commissions to provincial judges, to be held during the will and pleasure of the governors instead of during good behavior, as covenanted by William Penn – a practice which gave the Proprietaries control of the judicial as well as the executive Branch of the provincial government.

For a time, after Franklin returned to Pennsylvania in 1762, there was something like peace between the Proprietaries and the people. When a nephew of Thomas Penn was appointed governor, the Assembly accepted him as a family pledge of restored good feeling.

The Assembly [Franklin wrote to Dr. Fothergill] received a Governor of the Proprietary family with open arms, addressed him with sincere expressions of kindness and respect, opened their purses to them, and presented him with six hundred pounds; made a Riot Act and prepared a Militia Bill immediately, at his instance, granted supplies, and did everything that he requested, and promised themselves great happiness under his administration.

And no governor was ever so dependent upon the good will of the Assembly. It was during his administration that the Scotch-Irish inhabitants of the frontier, inflamed by Indian outrages, imbrued their hands in the blood of the Conestoga Indians, and, so far from being intimidated by the public proclamations issued by the Governor for their arrest and punishment, marched to the very threshold of Philadelphia itself with the purpose of destroying the Moravian Indians huddled there in terror of their lives. The whole Province outside of the City of Philadelphia was given over to lawlessness and disorder. In the contagious excitement of the hour, a considerable portion of its population even believed that the Quakers had gained the friendship of the Indians by presents, supplied them secretly with arms and ammunition, and engaged them to fall upon and kill the whites on the Pennsylvania frontier. Under these circumstances, the Governor simply did what Governor Morris and Governor Denny had been compelled to do before him, namely, call in the aid of the man who could in a letter to Peter Collinson truthfully sum up all that there was in the military demonstration which angered Thomas Penn so deeply with the simple utterance, "The People happen to love me." The whole story was told by Franklin to Dr. Fothergill in the letter from which we have just quoted.

More wonders! You know that I don't love the Proprietary and that he does not love me. Our totally different tempers forbid it. You might therefore expect that the late new appointments of one of his family would find me ready for opposition. And yet when his nephew arrived, our Governor, I considered government as government, and paid him all respect, gave him on all occasions my best advice, promoted in the Assembly a ready compliance with everything he proposed or recommended, and when those daring rioters, encouraged by general approbation of the populace, treated his proclamation with contempt, I drew my pen in the cause; wrote a pamphlet (that I have sent you) to render the rioters unpopular; promoted an association to support the authority of the Government and defend the Governor by taking arms, signed it first myself, and was followed by several hundreds, who took arms accordingly. The Governor offered me the command of them, but I chose to carry a musket and strengthen his authority by setting an example of obedience to his order. And would you think it, this proprietary Governor did me the honour, in an alarm, to run to my house at midnight, with his counsellors at his heels, for advice, and made it his head-quarters for some time. And within four and twenty hours, your old friend was a common soldier, a counsellor, a kind of dictator, an ambassador to the country mob, and on his returning home, nobody again. All this has happened in a few weeks.

With the retirement of the backwoodsmen from Philadelphia to their homes, sprang up one of the angriest factional contests that Pennsylvania had ever known. Every malignant passion, political or sectarian, that lurked in the Province was excited into the highest degree of morbid life. The Presbyterians, the Churchmen, even some of the Quakers, acclaimed the Paxton Boys as instruments of a just vengeance, and they constituted a political force, which the Governor was swift to utilize for the purpose of strengthening his party. He dropped all efforts to apprehend the murderers of the Conestoga Indians, granted a private audience to the insurgents, and accused the Assembly of disloyalty, and of encroaching upon the prerogatives of the Crown, only because it had been presumptuous enough to make an appointment to a petty office in a bill tendered to him for his assent. It was during his administration, too, that the claim was made that, even if the Proprietary estate had been subjected to taxation by the Lords in Council, under the terms of one of the amendments, proposed by them, "the best and most valuable," of the Proprietary lands "should be tax'd no higher than the worst and least valuable of the People's."

When the conflict was reopened, the Assembly boldly brought it to an issue. One of its committees, with Franklin at its head, reported a series of resolutions censuring the proprietaries, condemning their rule as too weak to maintain its authority and repress disorder, and petitioning the King to take over the Government of the Province, after such compensation to the Proprietaries as was just. The Assembly then adjourned to sound the temper of their constituents, and their adjournment was the signal for a pamphlet war attended by such a hail of paper pellets as rarely marked any contest so early in the history of the American Colonies. Among the best of them was the pamphlet written by Franklin, and entitled Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of our Public Affairs, which has already been mentioned, and which denounced in no uncertain terms the "insolent Tribunitial VETO," with which the Proprietaries were in the habit of declaring that nothing should be done, unless their private interests in certain particulars were served.

On May 14, 1764, the Assembly met again, and was soon deeply engaged in a debate as to whether an address should be sent to the King, praying the abolition of the Proprietary Government. Long did the debate last; Joseph Galloway making the principal argument in support of the proposition, and John Dickinson the principal one against it. When the vote was taken, the affirmative prevailed, but, as Isaac Norris, who had been a member of the body for thirty years, and its speaker for fifteen, was about to be bidden by it to sign the address, he stated that, since he did not approve it, and yet would have to sign it as speaker, he hoped that he might have time to draft his objections to it. A short recess ensued, and when the members convened again, Norris sent word that he was too sick to be present, and requested that another person should be chosen as speaker. The choice of the body then fell upon Franklin, who immediately signed the paper.

The next sitting of the Assembly was not to be held until the succeeding October, and before that time the annual election for members of the Assembly was to take place. For the purpose of influencing public opinion, Dickinson, upon its adjournment, published his speech with a long preface by Dr. William Smith. Galloway followed suit by publishing his speech with a long preface by Franklin. This preface is one of Franklin's masterpieces, marked it is true by some quaint conceits and occasional relaxations of energy, but full of power and withering sarcasm. Preceded by such a lengthy and brilliant preface, Galloway must have felt that his speech had little more than the secondary value of an appendix. With the consummate capacity for pellucid statement, which was one of Franklin's most remarkable gifts, it narrated the manner in which the practice of buying legislation from the Proprietaries had been pursued. With equal force and ingenuity, it demonstrated that five out of the six amendments, proposed by the Lords in Council to the Act, approved by Governor Denny, did not justify the charge that the circumstances, in which they originated, involved any real injustice to the Proprietaries, and that the sixth, which forbade the tender to the Proprietaries of paper bills of fluctuating value, in payment of debts payable to them, under the terms of special contracts, in coin, if a measure of justice to them, would be also a measure of justice to other creditors in the same situation, who were not mentioned in the amendment.

Referring to the universal practice in America of making such bills a legal tender and the fact that the bills in question would have been a legal tender as respects the members of the Assembly and their constituents as well as the Proprietaries, Franklin's preface glows like an incandescent furnace in these words:

But if he (the reader) can not on these Considerations, quite excuse the Assembly, what will he think of those Honourable Proprietaries, who when Paper Money was issued in their Colony for the Common Defence of their vast Estates, with those of the People, and who must therefore reap, at least, equal Advantages from those Bills with the People, could nevertheless wish to be exempted from their Share of the unavoidable Disadvantages. Is there upon Earth a Man besides, with any Conception of what is honest, with any Notion of Honor, with the least Tincture in his Veins of the Gentleman, but would have blush'd at the Thought; but would have rejected with Disdain such undue Preference, if it had been offered him? Much less would he have struggled for it, mov'd Heaven and Earth to obtain it, resolv'd to ruin Thousands of his Tenants by a Repeal of the Act, rather than miss of it, and enforce it afterwards by an audaciously wicked Instruction, forbidding Aids to his King, and exposing the Province to Destruction, unless it was complied with. And yet, – these are Honourable Men… Those who study Law and Justice, as a Science [he added in an indignant note] have established it a Maxim in Equity, "Qui sentit commodum, sentire debet et onus." And so consistent is this with the common Sense of Mankind, that even our lowest untaught Coblers and Porters feel the Force of it in their own Maxim, (which they are honest enough never to dispute) "Touch Pot, touch Penny."

Other passages in the Preface were equally scorching. Replying to the charge of the Proprietaries that the Quaker Assembly, out of mere malice, because they had conscientiously quitted the Society of Friends for the Church, were wickedly determined to ruin them by throwing the entire burden of taxation on them, Franklin had this to say:

How foreign these Charges were from the Truth, need not be told to any Man in Pennsylvania. And as the Proprietors knew, that the Hundred Thousand Pounds of paper money, struck for the defence of their enormous Estates, with others, was actually issued, spread thro' the Country, and in the Hands of Thousands of poor People, who had given their Labor for it, how base, cruel, and inhuman it was, to endeavour by a Repeal of the Act, to strike the Money dead in those Hands at one Blow, and reduce it all to Waste Paper, to the utter Confusion of all Trade and Dealings, and the Ruin of Multitudes, merely to avoid paying their own just Tax! – Words may be wanting to express, but Minds will easily conceive, and never without Abhorrence!

But fierce as these attacks were, they were mild in comparison with the shower of stones hurled by Franklin at the Proprietaries in the Preface in one of those lapidary inscriptions which were so common in that age. The prefacer of Dickinson's Speech had inserted in his introduction a lapidary memorial of William Penn made up of tessellated bits of eulogy, extracted from the various addresses of the Assembly itself. This gave Franklin a fine opportunity to retort in a similar mosaic of phrases and to contrast the meanness of the sons with what the Assembly had said of the father.

That these Encomiums on the Father [he said] tho' sincere, have occurr'd so frequently, was owing, however, to two Causes; first, a vain Hope the Assemblies entertain'd, that the Father's Example, and the Honors done his Character, might influence the Conduct of the Sons; secondly, for that in attempting to compliment the Sons on their own Merits, there was always found an extreme Scarcity of Matter. Hence the Father, the honored and honorable Father, was so often repeated, that the Sons themselves grew sick of it; and have been heard to say to each other with Disgust, when told that A, B, and C. were come to wait upon them with Addresses on some public Occasion, "Then I suppose we shall hear more about our Father." So that, let me tell the Prefacer, who perhaps was unacquainted with this Anecdote, that if he hop'd to curry more Favor with the Family, by the Inscription he has fram'd for that great Man's Monument, he may find himself mistaken; for, – there is too much in it of our Father.

If therefore, he would erect a Monument to the Sons, the Votes of Assembly, which are of such Credit with him, will furnish him with ample Materials for his Inscription.

To save him Trouble, I will essay a Sketch for him, in the Lapidary Style, tho' mostly in the Expressions, and everywhere in the Sense and Spirit of the Assembly's Resolves and Messages.

 
Be this a Memorial
Of T – and R – P – ,
P – of P, —
Who, with Estates immense,
Almost beyond Computation,
When their own Province,
And the whole British Empire
Were engag'd in a bloody and most expensive War,
Begun for the Defence of those Estates,
Could yet meanly desire
To have those very Estates
Totally or Partially
Exempted from Taxation,
While their Fellow-Subjects all around them, Groan'd
Under the Universal Burthen.
To gain this Point,
They refus'd the necessary Laws
For the Defence of their People,
And suffer'd their Colony to welter in its Blood,
Rather than abate in the least
Of these their dishonest Pretensions.
The Privileges granted by their Father
Wisely and benevolently
To encourage the first Settlers of the Province,
They,
Foolishly and cruelly,
Taking Advantage of public Distress,
Have extorted from the Posterity of those Settlers;
And are daily endeavouring to reduce them
To the most abject Slavery:
Tho' to the Virtue and Industry of those People
In improving their Country,
They owe all that they possess and enjoy.
A striking Instance
Of human Depravity and Ingratitude;
And an irrefragable Proof,
That Wisdom and Goodness
Do not descend with an Inheritance;
But that ineffable Meanness
May be connected with unbounded Fortune.
 

It may well be doubted whether any one had ever been subjected to such overwhelming lapidation as this since the time of the early Christian martyrs.

There are many other deadly thrusts in the Preface, and nowhere else are the issues between the Proprietaries and the People so clearly presented, but the very completeness of the paper renders it too long for further quotation.

Franklin, however, was by no means allowed to walk up and down the field, vainly challenging a champion to come out from the opposing host and contend with him. At his towering front the missiles of the Proprietary Party were mainly directed. Beneath one caricature of him were these lines:

 
"Fight dog, fight bear! You're all my friends:
By you I shall attain my ends,
For I can never be content
Till I have got the government.
But if from this attempt I fall,
Then let the Devil take you all!"
 

Another writer strove in his lapidary zeal to fairly bury Franklin beneath a whole cairn of opprobrious accusations, consuming nine pages of printed matter in the effort to visit his political tergiversation, his greed for power, his immorality and other sins, with their proper deserts, and ending with this highly rhetorical apostrophe:

 
"Reader, behold this striking Instance of
Human Depravity and Ingratitude;
An irrefragable Proof
That neither the Capital services
of Friends power, tyranny."
Nor the attracting Favours of the Fair,
Can fix the Sincerity of a Man,
Devoid of Principles and
Ineffably mean:
Whose ambition is
And whose intention is
 

The illegitimacy of William Franklin, of course, was freely used during the conflict as a means of paining and discrediting Franklin. In a pamphlet entitled, What is sauce for a Goose is also Sauce for a Gander, the writer asserted that the mother of William was a woman named Barbara, who worked in Franklin's house as a servant for ten pounds a year, that she remained in this position until her death and that Franklin then stole her to the grave in silence without pall, tomb or monument. A more refined spirit, which could not altogether free itself from the undertow of its admiration for such an extraordinary man, penned these lively lines entitled, "Inscription on a Curious Stove in the Form of An Urn, Contrived in such a Manner As To Make The Flame Descend Instead of Rising from the Fire, Invented by Dr. Franklin."

 
"Like a Newton sublimely he soared
To a summit before unattained,
New regions of science explored
And the palm of philosophy gained.
 
 
"With a spark which he caught from the skies
He displayed an unparalleled wonder,
And we saw with delight and surprise
That his rod could secure us from thunder.
 
 
"Oh! had he been wise to pursue
The track for his talents designed,
What a tribute of praise had been due
To the teacher and friend of mankind.
 
 
"But to covet political fame
Was in him a degrading ambition,
The spark that from Lucifer came
And kindled the blaze of sedition.
 
 
"Let candor then write on his urn,
Here lies the renowned inventor
Whose fame to the skies ought to burn
But inverted descends to the centre."
 

The election began at nine o'clock in the morning on October 1, 1764. Franklin and Galloway headed the "Old Ticket," and Willing and Bryan the "New." The latter ticket was supported by the Dutch Calvinists, the Presbyterians and many of the Dutch Lutherans and Episcopalians; the former by the Quakers and Moravians and some of the McClenaghanites. So great was the concourse of voters that, until midnight, it took fifteen minutes for one of them to work his way from the end of the line of eager electors to the polling place. Excitement was at white heat, and, while the election was pending, hands were busy scattering squibs and campaign appeals in English and German among the crowd. Towards three the next morning, the new-ticket partisans moved that the polls be closed, but the motion was opposed by their old-ticket foes, because they wished to bring out a reserve of aged or lame retainers who could not stand long upon their feet. These messengers were dispatched to bring in such retainers from their homes in chairs and litters, and, when the new-ticket men saw the success, with which the old-ticket men were marshalling their recruits, they, too, began to scour the vicinage for votes, and so successful were the two parties in mobilizing their reserves that the polls did not close until three o'clock in the afternoon of the second day. Not until the third day were the some 3900 real and fraudulent votes cast counted; and, when the count was over, it was found that Franklin and Galloway had been defeated. "Franklin," said an eye-witness of the election, "died like a philosopher. But Mr. Galloway agonized in death like a mortal deist, who has no hopes of a future life."

As for Franklin, his enemies had simply kicked him upstairs. A majority of the persons returned as elected belonged to his faction, and, despite the indignant eloquence of Dickinson, who declared him to be the most bitterly disliked man in Pennsylvania, the Assembly, by a vote of nineteen to eleven, selected him as the agent of the Province to go over to England, and assist Richard Jackson, its standing agent, in "representing, soliciting and transacting the affairs" of the Province for the ensuing year.

The minority protested; and moved that its protest be spread upon the minutes, and, when this motion was denied, it published its remonstrance in the newspapers. This act provoked a pamphlet in reply from Franklin entitled Remarks on a Late Protest. Though shorter it is as good, as far as it goes, as the preface to Galloway's speech. He tosses the protestants and their reasons for believing him unfit for the agency on his horns with astonishing ease and strength, calls attention to the trifling majority of some twenty-five votes by which he was returned defeated, and chills the habit that we often indulge of lauding the political integrity and decorum of our American ancestors at our own expense by inveighing against the "many Perjuries procured among the wretched Rabble brought to swear themselves intitled to a Vote" and roundly saying to the protestants to their faces, "Your Artifices did not prevail everywhere; nor your double Tickets, and Whole Boxes of Forged Votes. A great Majority of the new-chosen Assembly were of the old Members, and remain uncorrupted."

Apart from the reference to the illegitimacy of William Franklin, Franklin had passed through the heated contest with the Proprietaries without the slightest odor of fire upon his garments. With his hatred of contention, it is natural enough that he should have written to Collinson, when the pot of contention was boiling so fiercely in Pennsylvania in 1764: "The general Wish seems to be a King's Government. If that is not to be obtain'd, many talk of quitting the Province, and among them your old Friend, who is tired of these Contentions & longs for philosophic Ease and Leisure." But he did not overstate the case when he wrote to Samuel Rhoads in the succeeding year from London, "The Malice of our Adversaries I am well acquainted with, but hitherto it has been Harmless; all their Arrows shot against us, have been like those that Rabelais speaks of which were headed with Butter harden'd in the Sun."

Franklin was a doughty antagonist when at bay, but he had few obdurate resentments, and was quick to see the redeeming virtues of even those who had wronged him. He assisted in the circulation of John Dickinson's famous Farmer's Letters, and curiously enough when Dickinson was the President of the State of Pennsylvania at the close of the Revolution, and the 130,000 pounds which that State had agreed to pay for the vacant lots and unappropriated wilderness lands of the Penns was claimed to be an inadequate consideration by some of them, he gave to John Penn, the son of Thomas Penn, a letter of recommendation to "the Civilities and Friendship" of Dickinson.

I would beg leave to mention it to your Excellency's Consideration [he said], whether it would not be reputable for the Province, in the cooler Season of Peace to reconsider that Act, and if the Allowance made to the Family should be found inadequate, to regulate it according to Equity, since it becomes a Virgin State to be particularly careful of its Reputation, and to guard itself not only against committing Injustice, but against even the suspicion of it.

But nothing better proves what a selfish cur Thomas Penn was than the fact that, more than twenty years after the election, of which we have been speaking, so magnanimous a man as Franklin could express this sober estimate of his conduct and character in a letter to Jan Ingenhousz:

In my own Judgment, when I consider that for near 80 Years, viz., from the Year 1700, William Penn and his Sons receiv'd the Quit-rents which were originally granted for the Support of Government, and yet refused to support the Government, obliging the People to make a fresh Provision for its Support all that Time, which cost them vast Sums, as the most necessary Laws were not to be obtain'd but at the Price of making such Provision; when I consider the Meanness and cruel Avarice of the late Proprietor, in refusing for several Years of War, to consent to any Defence of the Frontiers ravaged all the while by the Enemy, unless his Estate should be exempted from paying any Part of the Expence, not to mention other Atrocities too long for this letter, I can not but think the Family well off, and that it will be prudent in them to take the Money and be quiet. William Penn, the First Proprietor, Father of Thomas, the Husband of the present Dowager, was a wise and good Man, and as honest to the People as the extream Distress of his Circumstances would permit him to be, but the said Thomas was a miserable Churl, always intent upon Griping and Saving; and whatever Good the Father may have done for the Province was amply undone by the Mischief received from the Son, who never did anything that had the Appearance of Generosity or Public Spirit but what was extorted from him by Solicitation and the Shame of Backwardness in Benefits evidently incumbent on him to promote, and which was done at last in the most ungracious manner possible. The Lady's Complaints of not duly receiving her Revenues from America are habitual; they were the same during all the Time of my long Residence in London, being then made by her Husband as Excuses for the Meanness of his Housekeeping and his Deficiency in Hospitality, tho' I knew at the same time that he was then in full Receipt of vast Sums annually by the Sale of Lands, Interest of Money, and Quit-rents. But probably he might conceal this from his Lady to induce greater Economy as it is known that he ordered no more of his Income home than was absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, but plac'd it at Interest in Pennsylvania & the Jerseys, where he could have 6 and 7 per Cent, while Money bore no more than 5 per cent in England. I us'd often to hear of those Complaints, and laugh at them, perceiving clearly their Motive. They serv'd him on other as well as on domestic Occasions. You remember our Rector of St. Martin's Parish, Dr. Saunders. He once went about, during a long and severe Frost, soliciting charitable Contributions to purchase Coals for poor Families. He came among others to me, and I gave him something. It was but little, very little, and yet it occasion'd him to remark, "You are more bountiful on this Occasion than your wealthy Proprietary, Mr. Penn, but he tells me he is distress'd by not receiving his Incomes from America." The Incomes of the family there must still be very great, for they have a Number of Manors consisting of the best Lands, which are preserved to them, and vast Sums at Interest well secur'd by Mortgages; so that if the Dowager does not receive her Proportion, there must be some Fault in her Agents. You will perceive by the length of this Article that I have been a little échauffé by her making the Complaints you mention to the Princess Dowager of Lichtenstein at Vienna. The Lady herself is good & amiable, and I should be glad to serve her in anything just and reasonable; but I do not at present see that I can do more than I have done.

And Thomas Penn, too, like St. Sebastian, will never be drawn without that arrow in his side.

When Franklin was appointed agent, the provincial treasury was empty, but so deeply aroused was public sentiment, in favor of the substitution of a royal for the proprietary government, that the merchants of Philadelphia in a few hours subscribed a sum of eleven hundred pounds, to defray his expenses. Of this amount, however, he refused to accept but five hundred pounds, and, after a trying passage of thirty days, he found himself again at No. 7 Craven Street.

So far as the immediate object of his mission was concerned, it proved a failure. Before he left Pennsylvania, George Grenville, the Prime Minister of England, had called the agents of the American Colonies, resident at London, together and informed them that a debt of seventy-three millions sterling had been imposed upon England by the recent war, and that he proposed to ask Parliament to place a part of it upon the American Colonies. In the stream of events, which began with this proposal, the proprietary government in Pennsylvania and the royal governments in other American Colonies were alike destined to be swept away.

After the arrival of Franklin in England, the local struggle in Pennsylvania was of too secondary importance to command serious attention; and, beyond a few meagre allusions to it, there is no mention made of it in his letters. The temper of the English Ministry was not friendly to such a revolutionary change as the abolition of the proprietary government, and Franklin, after he had been in England a few years, had too many matters of continental concern to look after to have any time left for a single phase of the general conflict between the Colonies and the mother country.

Before passing to his share in this conflict, a word should be said about the Albany Congress, in which he was the guiding spirit. In 1754, when another war between England and France was feared, a Congress of Commissioners from the several Colonies was ordered by the Lords of Trade to be held at Albany. The object of the call was to bring about a conference between the Colonies and the Chiefs of the Six Nations as to the best means of defending their respective territories from invasion by the French. When the order reached Pennsylvania, Governor Hamilton communicated it to the Assembly, and requested that body to provide proper presents for the Indians, who were to assemble at Albany; and he named Franklin and Isaac Norris, the Speaker of the Assembly, as the Commissioners from Pennsylvania, to act in conjunction with Thomas Penn and Richard Peters, the Secretary of the Proprietary Government. The presents were provided, and the nominations confirmed by the Assembly, and Franklin and his colleagues arrived at Albany in the month of June, 1754.

He brought his usual zeal to the movement. Before he left Philadelphia, with a view to allaying the jealousies, which existed between the different colonies, he published an article in his Gazette pointing out the importance of unanimity, which was accompanied by a woodcut representing a snake severed into as many sections as there were colonies. Each section bore the first letter of the name of a colony, and beneath the whole, in capital letters, were the words, "Join or die." On his way to Albany, he drafted a plan of union, looking to the permanent defence of the colonies, which closely resembled a similar plan of union, put forward thirty-two years before by Daniel Coxe in a tract entitled A Description of the English Province of Carolina. The Congress was attended by Commissioners from all the Colonies except New Jersey, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. One of its members was Thomas Hutchinson, of Massachusetts, who was to bring down on Franklin's head the most trying crisis in his career. James De Lancey, the Lieutenant-Governor of New York, was chosen to be its presiding officer. Mingled with the Commissioners and the inhabitants of Albany, as they walked its streets, were the representatives of the Iroquois, whose tribes had cherished an unappeasable hatred for the French ever since the fatal day when Frontenac had thrown in his fortunes with those of their traditional enemies, the Hurons. Much time had to be expended by the Commissioners in distributing among them the presents that they had brought for them, and in conducting with ceremonious and tedious formality the long powwows in which the Indian heart, if there was such a thing, so dearly delighted. When the assembly entered upon its deliberations, a committee of seven was appointed by it to consider the objects of the Congress, and it was composed of one commissioner from each colony; Franklin being the member from Pennsylvania, and Thomas Hutchinson the member from Massachusetts. After the Commissioners gathered at Albany, it was found that plans of union had been framed by other members of the Congress besides Franklin. All the plans were compared and considered by the committee, and Franklin's was adopted, amended and reported to the Congress, and was by it, after a long debate, approved, and recommended to the favorable consideration of Parliament and the King whose assent, it was conceded, was essential to its efficacy.

It was a simple but comprehensive scheme of government. The several colonies were to remain independent except so far as they surrendered their autonomy for purposes of mutual defence; there were to be a President-General, appointed and paid by the King, who was to be the executive arm of the Union, and a Grand Council of forty-eight members, elected by the different Colonial Assemblies, which was to be its legislative organ. The first meeting of the Council was to be at Philadelphia¹⁶; it was to meet once a year or oftener, if there was need, at such times and places as it should fix on adjournment, or as should be fixed, in case of an emergency, by the call of the President-General, who was authorized to issue such a call, with the consent of seven members of the Council; the tenure of members of the Council was to be for three years, and, on the death or resignation of a member, the vacancy was to be filled by the Assembly of his colony at its next sitting; after the election of the first members of the Council, the representation of the colonies in it was to be in proportion to their respective contributions to the Treasury of the Union, but no colony was to be represented by more than seven nor less than two members; the Council was to have the power to choose its Speaker, and was to be neither dissolved, prorogued nor continued in session longer than six weeks at one time without its consent, or the special command of the Crown; its members were to be allowed for their services ten shillings sterling a day, whether in session or journeying to or from the place of meeting; twenty-five members were to constitute a quorum, provided that among this number was at least one member from a majority of the Colonies; the assent of the President General was to be essential to the validity of all acts of the Council, and it was to be his duty to see that they were carried into execution, and the President-General and Council were to negotiate all treaties with the Indians, declare war and make peace with them, regulate all trade with them, purchase for the Crown from them all lands sold by them, and not within the limits of the old Colonies; and make and govern new settlements on such lands until erected into formal colonies. They were also to enlist and pay soldiers, build forts and equip vessels for the defence of the Colonies, but were to have no power to impress men in any colony without the consent of its assembly; all military and naval officers of the Union were to be named by the President-General with the approval of the Council, and all civil officers of the Union were to be named by the Council with the approval of the President-General; in case of vacancies, resulting from death or removal, in any such offices, they were to be filled by the Governors of the Provinces in which they occurred until appointments could be made in the regular way; and the President-General and Council were also to have the power to appoint a General Treasurer for the Union and a Local Treasurer for the Union in each colony, when necessary. All funds were to be disbursed on the joint order of the President-General and the Council, except when sums had been previously appropriated for particular purposes, and the President-General had been specially authorized to draw upon them; the general accounts of the Union were to be each year communicated to the several Colonial Assemblies; and, for the limited purposes of the Union, the President-General and the Council were authorized to enact laws, and to levy general duties, imposts and taxes; the laws so enacted to be transmitted to the King in Council for his approbation, and, if not disapproved within three years, to remain in force. A final feature of the plan was the provision that each Colony might in a sudden emergency take measures for its own defence, and call upon the President-General and Council for reimbursement.

The Albany plan of union was one of the direct lineal antecedents of the Federal Constitution. In other words, it was one of the really significant things in our earlier history that tended to foster the habit of union, without which that constitution could never have been adopted. But, when considered in the light of the jealousy with which the mother country then regarded the Colonies, and with which the Colonies regarded each other, it is not at all surprising that the plan recommended by it should have to come to nothing. "Its fate was singular," says Franklin in the Autobiography. "The assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much prerogative in it, and in England it was judg'd to have too much of the democratic." Even in Pennsylvania, though the Governor laid it before the Assembly with a handsome tribute to "the great clearness and strength of judgment," with which it had been drawn up, that body, when Franklin was absent, condemned it without giving it any serious consideration. In England it met with the disapproval of the Board of Trade, and "another scheme," to recur to the Autobiography, "was form'd, supposed to answer the same purpose better, whereby the governors of the provinces, with some members of their respective councils, were to meet and order the raising of troops, building of forts, etc., and to draw on the treasury of Great Britain for the expense, which was afterwards to be refunded by an act of Parliament laying a tax on America."

The Albany plan was an eminently wise one, and Franklin was probably justified in forming the favorable view of it which he expressed in these words in the Autobiography:

The different and contrary reasons of dislike to my plan makes me suspect that it was really the true medium; and I am still of opinion it would have been happy for both sides the water if it had been adopted. The colonies, so united, would have been sufficiently strong to have defended themselves; there would then have been no need of troops from England; of course, the subsequent pretence for taxing America, and the bloody contest it occasioned, would have been avoided. But such mistakes are not new; history is full of the errors of states and princes.

 
"Look round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!"
 

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forc'd by the occasion.

In the autumn of 1754, Franklin made a journey to Boston. There he met Shirley, and was apprised by him of the plan formed in England for the defence of the Colonies. This intelligence elicited three notable letters from him to Shirley in which he succinctly but luminously and vigorously stated his objections to the plan. In the first letter, he deprecated in brief but grave general terms a scheme of colonial administration, in which the people of the Colonies were to be excluded from all share in the choice of the Grand Council contemplated by the scheme, and were to be taxed by a Parliament in which they were to have no representation. Where heavy burdens are laid on the people, it had been found useful, he said, to make such burdens as much as possible their own acts. The people bear them better when they have, or think they have, some share in the direction; and, when any public measures are generally grievous, or even distasteful to the people, the wheels of government move more heavily.

In the second letter, Franklin states what in his opinion the people of the Colonies were likely to say of the proposed plan, namely, that they were as loyal as any other subjects of the King; that there was no reason to doubt their readiness to grant such sums as they could for the defence of the Colonies; that they were likely to be better judges of their own military necessities than the remote English Parliament; that the governors, who came to the Colonies, often came merely to make their fortunes, and to return to England, were not always men of the best abilities or integrity, had little in common with the colonists, and might be inclined to lavish military expenditures for the sake of the profit to be derived from such expenditures by them for themselves and their friends and dependents; that members of colonial councils being appointed by the Crown, on the recommendation of colonial governors, and being often men of small estates, and dependent on such governors for place, were too subject to influence; that Parliament was likely to be misled by such governors and councils; and yet their combined influence would probably shield them against popular resentment; that it was deemed an unquestionable right of Englishmen not to be taxed but by their own consent, given through their representatives, and that the Colonies had no representation in Parliament; that to tax the people of the Colonies without such representation, and to exclude them altogether from the proposed plan was a reflection on their loyalty, or their patriotism, or their intelligence, and that to tax them without their consent, was, indeed, more like raising contributions in an enemy's country than the taxation of Englishmen. Such were some of the objections stated in this letter to the imposition of taxes on the Colonies by the British Parliament. There were others of a kindred nature, and still others, based upon the claim that the Colonies were already paying heavy secondary taxes to England. Taxes, paid by landholders and artificers in England, Franklin declared, entered into the prices paid in America for their products, and were therefore really taxes paid by America to Britain. The difference between the prices, paid by America for these products, and the cheaper prices, at which they could be bought in other countries, if America were allowed to trade with them, was also but a tax paid by America to Britain and, where the price was paid for goods which America could manufacture herself, if allowed by Great Britain to do so, the whole of it was but such a tax. Such a tax, too, was the difference between the price that America received for its own products in Britain, after the payment of duties, and the price that it could obtain in other countries, if allowed to trade with them. In fine, as America was not permitted to regulate its trade, and restrain the importation and consumption of British superfluities, its whole wealth ultimately found its way to Great Britain, and, if the inhabitants of Great Britain were enriched in consequence, and rendered better able to pay their taxes, that was nearly the same thing as if America itself was taxed. Of these kinds of indirect taxes America did not complain, but to pay direct taxes, without being consulted as to whether they should be laid, or as to how they should be applied, could not but seem harsh to Englishmen, who could not conceive that by hazarding their lives and fortunes in subduing and settling new countries, and in extending the dominion and increasing the commerce of the mother country, they had forfeited the native rights of Britons; which they thought that, on these accounts, might well be given to them, even if they had been before in a state of slavery. Another objection to the scheme, the letter asserted, was the likelihood that the Governors and Councillors, not being associated with any representatives of the people, to unite with them in their measures, and to render these measures palatable to the people, would become distrusted and odious; and thus would embitter the relations between governors and governed and bring about total confusion. The letter, short as it is, sums up almost all the main points of the more copious argument that was, in a few years, to be made with so much pathos as well as power by the Colonies against the resolve of the British Ministry to tax them without their consent.

Franklin's third letter to Shirley is but the statement in embryo of the sagacious and enlarged views of the policy of Great Britain, with respect to the Colonies, which he subsequently expressed in so many impressive forms. The letter is, first of all, interesting as showing that the subject of promoting a closer union between Great Britain and her colonies by allowing the latter to be represented in Parliament had already been discussed by Shirley and Franklin in conversation. It is also an indication, for all that was said later about the submissive loyalty of the Colonies, that the sense of injustice and hardship worked by the repressive effects of the existing British restrictions on American commerce and manufactures was widely diffused in America. The proposal to allow America representatives in Parliament would, Franklin thought, be very acceptable to the Colonies, provided the presentation was a reasonable one in point of numbers, and provided all the old acts of Parliament, limiting the trade, or cramping the manufactures, of the Colonies, were, at the same time, repealed and the cis-Atlantic subjects of Great Britain put on the same footing of commercial and industrial freedom as its trans-Atlantic subjects, until a Parliament, in which both were represented, should deem it to be to the interest of the whole empire that some or all of the obnoxious laws should be revived. Franklin also was too much of a latter-day American not to believe that laws, which then seemed to the colonists to be unjust to them, would be acquiesced in more cheerfully by them, and be easier of execution, if approved by a Parliament in which they were represented. The letter ended with a series of original reflections, highly characteristic of the free play, which marked the mental operations of the writer in dealing with any subject, encumbered by short-sighted prejudices. Of what importance was it, he argued, whether manufacturers of iron lived at Birmingham or Sheffield, or both, since they were still within the bounds of Great Britain? Could the Goodwin Sands be laid dry by banks, and land, equal to a large county thereby gained to England, and presently filled with English inhabitants, would it be right to deprive such inhabitants of the common privileges enjoyed by other Englishmen, the right of vending their produce in the same ports, or of making their own shoes, because a merchant or a shoemaker, living on the old land, might fancy it more for his advantage to trade or make shoes for them? Would this be right even if the land was gained at the expense of the State? And would it seem less right if the charge and labor of gaining the additional territory to Great Britain had been borne by the settlers themselves?

Now I look on the colonies [Franklin continued] as so many counties gained to Great Britain, and more advantageous to it than if they had been gained out of the seas around its coasts, and joined to its land: For being in different climates, they afford greater variety of produce, and being separated by the ocean, they increase much more its shipping and seamen; and since they are all included in the British Empire, which has only extended itself by their means; and the strength and wealth of the parts are the strength and wealth of the whole; what imports it to the general state, whether a merchant, a smith, or a hatter, grow rich in Old or New England?

To this question, of course, the nineteenth or twentieth century could only have had one answer; but the eighteenth, blinded by economic delusions, had many.

In the opinion of Franklin, expressed in his letters to Peter Collinson, until the Albany plan of union, or something like it, was adopted, no American war would ever be carried on as it should be, and Indian affairs would continue to be mismanaged. But he was fair-minded and clear-sighted enough to see that, if some such plan was not adopted, the fault would lie with the Colonies rather than with Great Britain. In one of his letters to Peter Collinson, he declared that, in his opinion, it was not likely that any of them would agree to the plan, or even propose any amendments to it.

Every Body [he said] cries, a Union is absolutely necessary; but when they come to the Manner and Form of the Union, their weak Noddles are perfectly distracted. So if ever there be an Union, it must be form'd at home by the Ministry and Parliament. I doubt not but they will make a good one, and I wish it may be done this winter.

The essential features of the Albany plan of union were all outlined by Franklin three or four years before the Albany Congress met, in a letter to James Parker, his New York partner. A union of the colonies, under existing conditions, was, he thought, impracticable. If a governor became impressed with the importance of such a union, and asked the other colonial governors to recommend it to their assemblies, the request came to nothing, either because the governors were often on ill terms with their assemblies, and were seldom the men who exercised the most influence over them, or because they threw cold water on the request for fear that the cost of such a union might make the people of their colonies less able or willing to give to them, or simply because they did not earnestly realize the necessity for it. Besides, under existing conditions, there was no one to back such a request or to answer objections to it. A better course would be to select half a dozen men of good understanding and address, and send them around, as ambassadors to the different colonies, to urge upon them the expediency of the union. It would be strange, indeed, Franklin thought, if the six Iroquois tribes of ignorant savages could be capable of forming a union which had lasted for ages, and yet ten or a dozen English colonies be incapable of forming a similar one. These views were elicited by a pamphlet on the importance of gaining and preserving the friendship of the Indians, which had been sent to Franklin by Parker, and they constitute a natural introduction to a brief review of the relations sustained by one of the most reasonable of the children of men to perhaps the most unreasonable of all the children of men, the Indian of the American forest.

With the Indians, their habits, characteristics, polity and trade Franklin was very conversant. Repeatedly, during his lifetime, the frontiers of Pennsylvania were harried by the tomahawk and scalping-knife. In a letter, written a few months after Braddock's defeat to Richard Partridge, he mentions, for instance, that the savages had just surprised and cut off eight families near Shamokin, killing and scalping thirteen grown persons and kidnapping twelve children. In another letter to Peter Collinson, written the next year, he made this appalling summary of what, with the aid of the French, the revenge of the Delawares for the imposition practised upon them in the Walking Purchase was supposed to have cost the Province. "Some Hundreds of Lives lost, many Farms destroy'd and near £100,000 spent, yet," he added, "the Proprietor refuses to be taxed except for a trifling Part of his Estate." During the incursions of this period, the Indian war-parties pushed their outrages to a point only eighty miles from Philadelphia. A diarist, Thomas Lloyd, who accompanied Franklin on his expedition to Gnadenhutten, gives us this ghastly description of what they found there:

Here all round appears nothing but one continued scene of horror and destruction. Where lately flourished a happy and peaceful village, it is now all silent and desolate; the houses burnt; the inhabitants butchered in the most shocking manner; their mangled bodies, for want of funerals, exposed to birds and beasts of prey; and all kinds of mischief perpetrated that wanton cruelty can invent.

Not even a Rizpah left to brood over the scalpless forms, and to drive away the buzzard and the wild things of the forest! In this scene, and the pettier but similarly tragic scenes of death and havoc, furnished, from time to time, over a wide range of frontier territory, by lonely fields and cabins, upon which the tomahawk had ruthlessly descended, is to be found the psychology of the furious passions, which hurried the wretched Conestoga Indians out of existence, and of the outspoken or covert sympathy, which made a mockery of the attempt to bring their butchers to justice. Even men cooler than the Paxton Boys, hardened by revolting cruelties, not distinguishable from those inflicted by talon or tooth, except in their atrocious refinements of torture, and yet brought home in some form or other to almost every fireside in Pennsylvania, came to think of killing and mutilating an Indian with no more compunction than if he were a rattlesnake. James Parton mentions with a natural shudder the fact that Governor John Penn, after the retirement of the Paxton Boys from Philadelphia, offered the following bounties: For every captive male Indian of any hostile tribe one hundred and fifty dollars; for every female captive one hundred and thirty-eight dollars, for the scalp of a male Indian one hundred and thirty-four dollars, for the scalp of a female Indian fifty dollars. To Franklin himself, when on the Gnadenhutten expedition, fell the duty of instructing a Captain Vanetta, who was about to raise a company of foot-soldiers for the protection of upper Smithfield, while its inhabitants were looking after their corn, that forty dollars would be allowed and paid by the Provincial Government for each Indian scalp produced by one of his men with the proper attestations. How accustomed even Franklin became to the ever-repeated story of Indian barbarities, and to occasional reprisals by the whites, hardly less shocking, is revealed by a brief letter from him to Peter Collinson in 1764, in which, with the dry conciseness of an old English chronicler, he reports the narratives of a British soldier, Owens, who had deserted to the Indians, and a white boy, whom Owens had brought back with him from captivity, together with five propitiatory Indian scalps, when he returned to his former allegiance.

The Account given by him and the Boy [wrote Franklin] is, that they were with a Party of nine Indians, to wit, 5 men, 2 Women, and 2 Children, coming down Susquehanah to fetch Corn from their last Year's Planting Place; that they went ashore and encamp'd at Night and made a Fire by which they slept; that in the Night Owens made the White Boy get up from among the Indians, and go to the other side of the Fire; and then taking up the Indians' Guns, he shot two of the Men immediately, and with his Hatchet dispatch'd another Man together with the Women and Children. Two men only made their escape. Owens scalp'd the 5 grown Persons, and bid the White Boy scalp the Children; but he declin'd it, so they were left.

Franklin, however, was not the man to say, as General Philip Sheridan was many years afterwards to be reputed to have said, that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. In the course of his varied life, he had many opportunities for becoming familiarly acquainted with the history and character of the Indians, and forming a just judgment as to how far their fiendish outbreaks were due to sheer animal ferocity, and how far to the provocation of ill-treatment by the whites; and he was too just not to know and declare that almost every war between the Indians and the whites in his time had been occasioned by some injustice of the latter towards the former. As far back as 1753, he and Isaac Norris, the Speaker of the Assembly, were appointed commissioners by it to unite with Richard Peters, the Secretary of the Proprietary Government, in negotiating a treaty with the western Indians at Carlisle, and the manner, in which this treaty was conducted, is told in the Autobiography in his lively way. In 1756, he again served as a commissioner, this time with William Logan and Richard Peters, two members of the Governor's Council, and Joseph Fox, William Masters and John Hughes, three members of the Assembly, for the purpose of negotiating a treaty at Easton with Teedyuscung, the King of the Delawares. At this conference, Governor Denny himself was likewise present. In 1763, he was appointed one of the commissioners to expend the money appropriated by the Assembly for levying a military force to defend the Pennsylvania frontier against the Indians. The Albany Congress, as we have seen, brought him into direct personal contact with the Iroquois who, to a fell savagery only to be compared with that of the most ferocious beasts of the jungle, united a capacity for political cohesion and the rudiments of civilized life which gave them quite an exceptional standing in the history of the American Indian. By virtue of these circumstances, to say nothing of other sources of knowledge and information, Franklin obtained an insight, at once shrewd and profound, into everything that related to the American Indian, including the best methods by which his good will could be conciliated and his trade secured. The following remarks in his Canada Pamphlet give us a good idea of the mobility and special adaptation to his physical environment which made the Indian, in proportion to his numbers, the most formidable foe that the world has ever seen:

They go to war, as they call it, in small parties, from fifty men down to five. Their hunting life has made them acquainted with the whole country, and scarce any part of it is impracticable to such a party. They can travel thro' the woods even by night, and know how to conceal their tracks. They pass easily between your forts undiscovered; and privately approach the settlements of your frontier inhabitants. They need no convoys of provisions to follow them; for whether they are shifting from place to place in the woods, or lying in wait for an opportunity to strike a blow, every thicket and every stream furnishes so small a number with sufficient subsistence. When they have surpriz'd separately, and murder'd and scalp'd a dozen families, they are gone with inconceivable expedition through unknown ways, and 'tis very rare that pursuers have any chance of coming up with them. In short, long experience has taught our planters, that they cannot rely upon forts as a security against Indians: The inhabitants of Hackney might as well rely upon the tower of London to secure them against highwaymen and housebreakers.

This is the Indian seen from the point of view of the soldier and colonial administrator. He is fully as interesting, when considered by Franklin in a letter to Richard Jackson from the point of view of the philosopher:

They visit us frequently, and see the advantages that arts, sciences, and compact societies procure us. They are not deficient in natural understanding; and yet they have never shown any inclination to change their manner of life for ours, or to learn any of our arts. When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language, and habituated to our customs, yet, if he goes to see his relatives, and makes one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return. And that this is not natural to them merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons, of either sex, have been taken prisoners by the Indians, and lived a while with them, though ransomed by their friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no redeeming them. One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was brought home to possess a good estate; but, finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and a match-coat, with which he took his way again into the wilderness.

So that I am apt to imagine that close societies, subsisting by labour and art, arose first not from choice but from necessity, when numbers, being driven by war from their hunting grounds, and prevented by seas, or by other nations, from obtaining other hunting grounds, were crowded together into some narrow territories, which without labour could not afford them food.

A man had to be humorous, indeed, to see anything humorous in the American Indian, but Franklin's sense of the ludicrous was equal to even that supreme achievement. We have already referred to the image of hell that he saw in the nocturnal orgies of the drunken Indians at Carlisle. Prudently enough, they were not allowed by the Provincial Commissioners to have the rum that was in store for them until they had ratified the treaty entered into on that occasion; an artifice that doubtless proved quite as effective in hastening its consummation as the one adopted by Chaplain Beatty of distributing the rum before, instead of after, prayers, did in securing the punctual attendance of Franklin's soldiers at them. But diabolical as were the gestures and yells of the drink-crazed Indians, men and women, at Carlisle, Franklin contrived to bring away a facetious story from the conference for the Autobiography. The orator, who called on the Commissioners the next day, after the debauch, for the purpose of apologizing for the conduct of himself and his people,

laid it upon the rum; and then endeavoured to excuse the rum by saying, "The Great Spirit, who made all things, made everything for some use, and whatever use he design'd anything for, that use it should always be put to. Now, when he made rum, he said 'Let this be for the Indians to get drunk with'; and it must be so."… And indeed [adds Franklin] if it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means. It has already annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the seacoast.

There is another good Indian story in the letter from Franklin to Richard Jackson from which we have recently quoted. When everything had been settled at a conference between the Six Nations and some of the Colonies, and nothing remained to be gone through with but a mutual exchange of civilities, the English Commissioners told the Indians that they had in their country a college for the instruction of youth in the various languages, arts and sciences, and that, if the Indians were willing, they would take back with them a half-dozen of their brightest lads and bring them up in the best manner. The Indians, after weighing the proposal, replied that they remembered that some of their youths had formerly been educated at that college, but that it had been observed that for a long time, after they returned to their friends, they were absolutely good for nothing; being neither acquainted with the true methods of killing deer, catching beaver, or surprising an enemy. The proposition, however, they regarded as a mark of kindness and good will on the part of the English, which merited a grateful return, and therefore, if the English gentlemen would send a dozen or two of their children to Opondago, the Great Council would take care of their education, bring them up in what was really the best manner, and make men of them.¹⁷

That the whites had much to answer for in their intercourse with the Indians Franklin saw clearly. The Canada Pamphlet speaks of the goods sold to them by French and English traders as loaded with all the impositions that fraud and knavery could contrive to enhance their value, and in one of Franklin's notes on the Albany plan of union he referred many Indian wars to cheating, practised by Indian traders on Indians, whom they had first made drunk. These traders he termed on another occasion, "the most vicious and abandoned Wretches of our Nation." "I do not believe we shall ever have a firm peace with the Indians," he wrote to Thomas Pownall in 1756, "till we have well drubbed them." This was the natural language of a man who had no toleration for wanton applications of force but did not shrink from applying it, when nothing else would answer. But no man could have been more fearless than he in denouncing outrages committed by the whites upon inoffensive Indians, or Indians of any sort, when not on the war path. "It grieves me," he wrote to Sir William Johnson in 1766, "to hear that our Frontier People are yet greater Barbarians than the Indians, and continue to murder them in time of peace."

His views about the proper methods of controlling the Indians and securing their trade were worthy of his liberal and enlightened mind. Their friendship he deemed to be of the greatest consequence to the Colonies, and the best way to make sure of it, he thought, was to regulate trade between the whites and the Indians in such a way as to convince the latter that, as between France and England, the English goods were the best and cheapest, and the English merchants the most honorable, and to form a union between the Colonies strong enough to make the Indians feel that they could depend on it for protection against the French, or that they would suffer at its hands if they should break with it. The Indian trade, for which the colonists had sacrificed so much blood and treasure, was, he boldly reminded his auditors, in his famous examination before the House of Commons, not an American but a British interest, maintained with British manufactures for the profit of British merchants and manufacturers. In a letter to Cadwallader Colden, he even suggested that the Government should take it over, and furnish goods to the Indians at the cheapest prices, without regard to profit, as Massachusetts had done.

Other suggestions of Franklin with respect to the conduct of the Indian trade were hardly less interesting. Pittsburg, he contended, after the restoration of peace in 1759, should be retained by the English, with a small tract of land about it for supplying the fort with provisions, and with sufficient hunting grounds in its vicinity for the peculiar needs of their Indian friends. A fort, and a small population of sober, orderly people there, he thought, would help to preserve the friendship of the Indians by bringing trade and the arts into close proximity to them, and would bridle them, if seduced from their allegiance by the French, or would, at least, stand in the gap, and be a shield to the other American frontiers.

Another suggestion of his was that, in time of peace, parties should be allowed to issue from frontier garrisons on hunting expeditions, with or without Indians, and enjoy the profits of the peltry that they brought back. In this way, a body of wood-runners would be formed, well acquainted with the country and of great value in time of war as guides and scouts. Every Indian was a hunter, every Indian was a disciplined soldier. They hunted in precisely the same manner as they made war. The only difference was that in hunting they skulked, surprised and killed animals, and, in making war, men. It was just such soldiers that the colonies needed; for the European military discipline was of little use in the woods. These words were penned four or five years before the battle of the Monongahela confirmed so bloodily their truth. Franklin also thought that a number of sober, discreet smiths should be encouraged to reside among the Indians. The whole subsistence of Indians depended on their keeping their guns in order. They were a people that thought much of their temporal, but little of their spiritual interests, and, therefore, a smith was more likely to influence them than a Jesuit. In a letter to his son, he mentions that he had dined recently with Lord Shelburne, and had availed himself of the occasion to urge that a colony should be planted in the Illinois country for furnishing provisions to military garrisons more cheaply, clinching the hold of the English upon the country, and building up a strength which, in the event of a future war, might easily be poured down the Mississippi upon the lower country, and into the Bay of Mexico, to be used against Cuba or Mexico itself.

The reader has already had brought to his attention the provisions of the Albany plan of union which were intended to vest in the government sketched by it the control of Indian treaties, trade and purchases.

The ignorance of the Indian character, which prevailed in England, often, we may be sure, brought a smile to the face of Franklin. Among his writings are remarks made at the request of Lord Shelburne on a plan for regulating Indian affairs submitted to him by the latter. It is to be regretted that the circumstances of the case were such that it was impossible for Franklin to escape the restraints of official gravity even when he was assigning the rambling habits of the Indians as his reason for believing that an Indian chief would hardly be willing to reside permanently with one of the functionaries, who was to aid in carrying the plan into effect, or when he was giving the high value, that the Indian attached to personal liberty, and the low value, that he attached to personal property, as his reason for thinking that imprisonment for debt was scarcely consistent with aboriginal ideas of equity. The plan was of a piece with the suggestion attributed to Dean Tucker that the colonies should be protected from Indian incursions by clearing away the trees and bushes from a tract of land, a mile in width, at the back of the colonies. As Benjamin Vaughan said, this brilliant idea not only involved a first cost (not to mention the fact that trees and bushes grow again when cut down) of some £128,000 for every hundred miles but quite overlooked the fact that the Indians, like other people, knew the difference between day and night. He forgot, said Franklin, "that there is a night in every twenty-four hours."

The distinction, which Franklin enjoyed in England, during his first mission to that country, was due to his philosophical and literary reputation, but his second mission to England and the colonial agencies, held by him while it lasted, afforded him an opportunity for playing a conspicuous part in the stirring transactions, which ushered in the American Revolution. Apart from all other considerations, his place in the history of these transactions will always be an extraordinary one because of the consummate wisdom and self-restraint exhibited by him in his relations to the controversy that finally ended in a fratricidal war between Great Britain and her colonies, which should never have been kindled. To the issues, involved in this controversy, he brought a vision as undimmed by political bigotry and false economic conceptions of colonial dependence as that of a British statesman of the present day. It is easy to believe that, if his counsels had been heeded, Great Britain and the communities, which make up the American Union, would now be connected by some close organic or federative tie. It is, at least, certain that no other Englishman on either side of the Atlantic saw as clearly as he did the true interests of both parties to the fatal conflict, or strove with such unerring sagacity and sober moderation of purpose to avert the breach between the two great branches of the English People. In no way can the extreme folly, which forced independence upon the colonies, be better measured than by contrasting the heated vehemence of Franklin's later feelings about the King and Parliament with his earlier sentiments towards the country that he did not cease to call "home" until to call it so would have been mockery. Devoted attachment to England, the land endeared to him by so many ties of family, intellectual sympathy and friendship, profound loyalty to the British Crown, deep-seated reverence for the laws, institutions and usages of the noble people, in whose inheritance of enlightened freedom he vainly insisted upon having his full share as an Englishman, were all characteristics of his, before the alienation of the colonies from Great Britain.¹⁸

His earlier utterances breathe a spirit of ingrained loyalty to the British Crown. The French were "mischievous neighbors," France "that perfidious nation." "I congratulate you on the defeat of Jacobitism by your glorious Duke," he wrote to Strahan in 1746, after the Duke of Cumberland had earned his title of "The Butcher" at Culloden. "I pray God to preserve long to Great Britain the English Laws, Manners, Liberties, and Religion," was an exclamation seven years later in one of his letters to Richard Jackson. "Wise and good prince," "the best of Kings," "Your good King," are some of the terms in which he expressed his opinion of his royal master. In the light of later events, there is something little short of amusing about the horoscope which he framed of the reign of George the Third in a letter to Strahan a year or so before the passage of the Stamp Act. Replying to forebodings of Strahan, Franklin said of the Prince, whom he styled "Our virtuous young King":

On the contrary, I am of Opinion that his Virtue and the Consciousness of his sincere Intentions to make his People happy will give him Firmness and Steadiness in his Measures and in the Support of the honest Friends he has chosen to serve him; and when that Firmness is fully perceiv'd, Faction will dissolve and be dissipated like a Morning Fog before the rising Sun, leaving the rest of the Day clear with a Sky serene and cloudless. Such after a few of the first Years will be the future course of his Majesty's Reign, which I predict will be happy and truly glorious.

In his letter to Polly about the French King and Queen, whom he had seen dining in state, which was written the year after the repeal of the Stamp Act, he declared, in his fear that he might seem to be too well pleased with them, that no Frenchman should go beyond him in thinking his own King and Queen, "the very best in the World, and the most amiable." The popular commotions in the succeeding year, with their watch cry of Wilkes and Liberty, seemed to him to indicate that some punishment was preparing for a people, who were ungratefully abusing the best Constitution and the best King that any nation was ever blessed with. As late as 1770, he wrote to Dr. Samuel Cooper, "Let us, therefore, hold fast our Loyalty to our King, who has the best Disposition towards us, and has a Family Interest in our Prosperity." Indeed, even two years later than this, he complacently wrote to his son, "The King, too, has lately been heard to speak of me with great regard." Strangely enough it was not until two years before the battle of Bunker Hill that he awoke sufficiently from his fool's paradise to write to his son, "Between you and I, the late Measures have been, I suspect, very much the King's own, and he has in some Cases a great Share of what his Friends call Firmness." Even then he hazarded the opinion that by painstaking and proper management the wrong impression of the colonists that George the Third had received might be removed. Down to this time so secretly had the King pursued the insidious system of corruption by which he kept his Parliamentary majority unmurmuringly subservient to his system of personal government, that Franklin does not appear to have even suspected that his was the master hand, or rather purse, which shaped all its proceedings against America. When the whole truth, however, was made manifest to Franklin, his awakening was correspondingly rude and unforgiving. How completely reversed became the current of all his feelings towards George the Third, after the Revolution began, we have already seen in some of our references to letters written by him to his English friends, in which the King, whom he once revered, was scored in terms of passionate reprobation.

Tenacious, too, was the affection with which Franklin clung to England and the English people. Some years before the passage of the Stamp Act, he wrote to Lord Kames from London that he purposed to give form to the material that he had been gathering for his Art of Virtue when he returned to his other country, that is to say, America.

Of all the enviable Things England has [he wrote a few years later to Polly], I envy it most its People. Why should that petty Island, which compar'd to America, is but like a stepping Stone in a Brook, scarce enough of it above Water to keep one's Shoes dry; why, I say, should that little Island enjoy in almost every Neighbourhood, more sensible, virtuous, and elegant Minds, than we can collect in ranging 100 Leagues of our vast Forests?

How eagerly even when he was in the New World he relished the observations of his friend Strahan on current English politics, we have already seen. We have also already seen how seriously he entertained even the thought of transferring his family for good to England. Indeed his intense loyalty to English King and People, together with his remoteness from the contagious excitement of the Colonies over the passage of the Stamp Act, caused him for a time, with a curious insensibility to the real state of public opinion in America, to lag far behind the revolutionary movement in that country. Not only, before he was fully aroused to the stern purpose of his fellow-countrymen to resist the collection of the stamp tax to the last extremity, did he recommend his friend John Hughes to the British Ministry as a stamp-tax collector, and send to his partner Hall a large quantity of paper for the use of the Gazette, of such dimensions as to secure a saving in stamps for its issues, but he wrote to Hughes in these terms besides:

If it (the Stamp Act) continues, your undertaking to execute it may make you unpopular for a Time, but your acting with Coolness and Steadiness, and with every Circumstance in your Power of Favour to the People, will by degrees reconcile them. In the meantime, a firm Loyalty to the Crown & faithful Adherence to the Government of this Nation, which it is the Safety as well as Honour of the Colonies to be connected with, will always be the wisest Course for you and I to take, whatever may be the Madness of the Populace or their blind Leaders, who can only bring themselves and Country into Trouble and draw on greater Burthens by Acts of Rebellious Tendency.

The rashness of the Virginia Assembly in relation to the Stamp Act he thought simply amazing.

Much better known is the letter that he wrote about the same time to Charles Thomson. After stating that he had done everything in his power to prevent the passage of the Stamp Act, he said:

But the Tide was too strong against us. The nation was provoked by American Claims of Independence, and all Parties joined in resolving by this act to settle the point. We might as well have hindered the sun's setting. That we could not do. But since 'tis down, my Friend, and it may be long before it rises again, let us make as good a night of it as we can. We may still light candles. Frugality and Industry will go a great way toward indemnifying us. Idleness and Pride tax with a heavier hand than Kings and Parliaments; if we can get rid of the former, we may easily bear the latter.

Six months later, when the loud and fierce protest of his fellow-countrymen against the Stamp Act had reached his ear, and convinced him that they were more likely to light camp-fires than candles, he held a very different language. Asked, during his famous examination before the House of Commons, whether he thought that the people of America would submit to pay the Stamp Tax, if it were moderated, he replied, "No, never, unless compelled by force of arms." Public leaders, after all, to use Gladstone's happy image with regard to the orator, do little more than give back in rain what they receive in mist from the mass of men. But with the repeal of the Stamp Act, and part of the duties imposed upon America, Franklin would readily have lapsed in every respect into his old affectionate relations to England, if Parliament had not, by its unwise reservation of its right to tax America, fallen into the bad surgery, to use his own words, of leaving splinters in the wound that it had inflicted. It now seems strange enough that, after the turbulent outbreak in America, which preceded the repeal, he should have been willing to accept a post under the Duke of Grafton, and to remain in England for some time longer if not for the rest of his life; yet such is the fact. When he heard through a friend that the Duke had said that, if he chose rather to reside in England than to return to his office as Deputy Postmaster-General for America, it would not be the Duke's fault, if he was not well provided for, he declared in the polished phrases of a courtier that there was no nobleman, to whom he could from sincere respect for his great abilities and amiable qualities so cordially attach himself, or to whom he should so willingly be obliged for the provision mentioned, as to the Duke of Grafton, if his Grace should think that he could in any station, where he might be placed, be serviceable to him and to the public. To any one who knows what a profligate the Duke was, during the most scandalous part of his career, this language sounds not a little like the conventional phrases in which Franklin, during his mission to France, assured Crocco, the blackmailing emissary of the piratical emperor of Morocco that he had no doubt but that, as soon as the affairs of the United States were a little settled, they would manifest equally good dispositions as those of his master and take all the proper steps to cultivate and secure the friendship of a monarch, whose character, Franklin knew, they had long esteemed and respected.

But in the same letter to his son, in which the declaration about the Duke of Grafton was recalled, Franklin made it clear that he was unwilling, by accepting office, to place himself in the power of any English Minister committed to the fatuous policy of taxing America. It was not until forbearance had ceased to be a virtue, and an American Whig could no longer hold an English office without reproach, that his innate conservatism of character yielded to the forces which were slowly but certainly rending the two countries apart. Three years after the repeal of the Stamp Act, which he dubbed "the mother of mischief," he wrote to Jean Baptiste Le Roy of the popular disturbances in Boston as "sudden, unpremeditated things, that happened only among a few of the lower sort." A month later, he wrote to Dr. Cooper:

I have been in constant Pain since I heard of Troops assembling at Boston, lest the Madness of Mobs, or the Insolence of Soldiers, or both, should, when too near each other, occasion some Mischief difficult to be prevented or repaired, and which might spread far and wide. "I hope however," he added, "that Prudence will predominate, and keep all quiet."

A little later still, in another letter to the same correspondent, after saying that he could scarcely conceive a King of better dispositions, of more exemplary virtues, or more truly desirous of promoting the welfare of all his subjects than was George the Third, he further and truly said: "The Body of this People, too, is of a noble and generous Nature, loving and honouring the Spirit of Liberty, and hating arbitrary Power of all sorts. We have many, very many, friends among them."

As late as the autumn of 1774 he was grieved to hear of mobs and violence and the pulling down of houses in America, which the friends of America in England could not justify, and which gave a great advantage to the enemies of America in that country. He was in perpetual anxiety, he wrote Thomas Cushing, lest the mad measures of mixing soldiers among a people whose minds were in such a state of irritation might be attended with some mischief, for an accidental quarrel, a personal insult, an imprudent order, an insolent execution of even a prudent one, or twenty other things might produce a tumult, unforeseen, and, therefore, impossible to be prevented, in which such a carnage might ensue as to make a breach that could never afterwards be healed. That the insults of Wedderburn, heaped upon Franklin in the Privy Council Chamber, under circumstances, calculated to make him feel as if all England were pillorying him, and his subsequent dismissal from the office of Deputy Postmaster-General for America, exerted some degree of corrosive influence upon his mind cannot be denied; but he still kept up his counsels of patience to his people upon the other side of the Atlantic until patience no longer had any meaning, and, when his last efforts, just before he left England for Independence Hall, to bring about a satisfactory adjustment of the quarrel between Great Britain and her colonies finally came to nothing, the tears that Priestley tells us wet his cheeks, as he was leaving England, were proof enough that even a nature, little given to weakness, might well grow faint at the thought of such a tragic separation as that of England and the thirteen colonies nurtured at her breast. But no one can read the life of Franklin without feeling that there never was a time when his heart was not wholly true to the just rights of America. In America, he might miss the companionship of the learned and distinguished friends from whose conversation he derived so much profit and pleasure in England and France. Only such a capital as London or Paris could fully gratify the social and intellectual wants of a man whose survey of human existence was so little subject to cramping restrictions of any kind. But it was the very breadth of Franklin's character which made him first of all an American, instinct with the free spirit of the New World, and faithful to the democratic institutions and ideals, which throve on its freshness and exemption from inherited complications. Over and over again, when he is abroad, he compares the economic and political conditions of his own country with those of foreign countries to the marked disadvantage of the latter. The painful impression, left upon his mind by the squalor and misery of the lower orders of the Irish people, is manifest enough in his correspondence.

Ireland is in itself [he declared in a letter to Thomas Cushing] a poor Country, and Dublin a magnificent City; but the appearances of general extreme poverty among the lower people are amazing. They live in wretched hovels of mud and straw, are clothed in rags, and subsist chiefly on potatoes. Our New England farmers, of the poorest sort, in regard to the Enjoyment of all the Comforts of life, are princes when compared to them. Such is the effect of the discouragements of industry, the non-residence not only of pensioners, but of many original landlords, who lease their lands in gross to undertakers that rack the tenants and fleece them skin and all to make estates to themselves, while the first rents, as well as most of the pensions, are spent out of the country. An English gentleman there said to me, that by what he had heard of the good grazing in North America, and by what he saw of the plenty of flax-seed imported in Ireland from thence, he could not understand why we did not rival Ireland in the beef and butter trade to the West Indies, and share with it in its linen trade. But he was satisfied when I told him that I supposed the reason might be, our people eat beef and butter every day, and wear shirts themselves.

In short, the chief exports of Ireland seem to be pinched off the backs and out of the bellies of the miserable inhabitants.

Darker and more forbidding still glooms the background of the joyous hours spent by Franklin in Ireland, Scotland and England in these painful words which he wrote to Dr. Joshua Babcock in the early part of 1772:

I have lately made a Tour thro' Ireland and Scotland. In those Countries a small Part of the Society are Landlords, great Noblemen, and Gentlemen, extreamly opulent, living in the highest Affluence and Magnificence: The Bulk of the People Tenants, extreamly poor, living in the most sordid Wretchedness, in dirty Hovels of Mud and Straw, and cloathed only in Rags.

I thought often of the Happiness of New England, where every Man is a Freeholder, has a Vote in publick Affairs, lives in a tidy, warm House, has plenty of good Food and Fewel, with whole cloaths from Head to Foot, the Manufacture perhaps of his own Family. Long may they continue in this Situation! But if they should ever envy the Trade of these Countries, I can put them in a Way to obtain a Share of it. Let them with three fourths of the People of Ireland live the Year round on Potatoes and Buttermilk, without shirts, then may their Merchants export Beef, Butter, and Linnen. Let them, with the Generality of the Common People of Scotland, go Barefoot, then may they make large exports in Shoes and Stockings: And if they will be content to wear Rags, like the Spinners and Weavers of England, they may make Cloths and Stuffs for all Parts of the World.

Farther, if my Countrymen should ever wish for the honour of having among them a gentry enormously wealthy, let them sell their Farms & pay rack'd Rents; the Scale of the Landlords will rise as that of the Tenants is depress'd, who will soon become poor, tattered, dirty, and abject in Spirit. Had I never been in the American Colonies, but was to form my Judgment of Civil Society by what I have lately seen, I should never advise a Nation of Savages to admit of Civilization: For I assure you, that, in the Possession & Enjoyment of the various Comforts of Life, compar'd to these People every Indian is a Gentleman: And the Effect of this kind of Civil Society seems only to be, the depressing Multitudes below the Savage State that a few may be rais'd above it.

America on the other hand, as Franklin pictured it, was the land of neither the very rich nor the very poor, but one in which "a general happy mediocrity" prevailed. It was not a Lubberland, nor a Pays de Cocagne, where the streets were paved with half-peck loaves, and the houses tiled with pancakes, and where the fowls flew about ready roasted, crying Come eat me! These were all wild imaginations. On the contrary, it was a land of labor, but also a land where multitudes of emigrants from foreign lands, who would never have emerged from poverty, if they had remained at home, had, with savings out of the wages, earned by them, after they arrived in America, acquired land, and, in a few years, become wealthy farmers. It was a land, too, where religious infidelity was unknown, and where all the means of education were plenteous, the general manners simple and pure, and the temptations to vice and folly fewer than in England.

The contrast between political conditions in Great Britain and political conditions in America was in Franklin's opinion equally unfavorable to Great Britain. Loyal as he was to the King, attached as he was to the English people, he harbored a deep feeling of aversion and contempt for the Parliament which he did not realize was but the marionette of the King. When certain residents of Oxford, after being confined for some days in Newgate for corrupt practices, knelt before the Speaker of the House of Commons, and received his reprimand, Franklin wrote to Galloway:

The House could scarcely keep countenances, knowing as they all do, that the practice is general. People say, they mean nothing more than to beat down the price by a little discouragement of borough jobbing, now that their own elections are all coming on. The price indeed is grown exorbitant, no less than four thousand pounds for a member.

In the same letter, a grim story is told of the callous levity with which the Parliamentary majority regarded its own debasement. It was founded upon a bill brought in by Beckford for preventing bribery and corruption at elections, which contained a clause obliging every member to swear, on his admission to the House, that he had not directly or indirectly given any bribe to any elector. This clause was so generally opposed as answering no end except that of inducing the members to perjure themselves that it was withdrawn. Commenting on the incident, Franklin said:

It was indeed a cruel contrivance of his, worse than the gunpowder plot; for that was only to blow the Parliament up to heaven, this to sink them all down to – . Mr. Thurlow opposed his bill by a long speech. Beckford, in reply, gave a dry hit to the House, that is repeated everywhere. "The honourable gentleman," says he, "in his learned discourse, gave us first one definition of corruption, then he gave us another definition of corruption, and I think he was about to give us a third. Pray does that gentleman imagine there is any member of this House that does not KNOW what corruption is?" which occasioned only a roar of laughter, for they are so hardened in the practice, that they are very little ashamed of it.

Later Franklin wrote to Galloway that it was thought that near two million pounds would be spent in the Parliamentary election then pending, but that it was computed that the Crown had two millions a year in places and pensions to dispose of. On the same day, he wrote to his son, "In short, this whole venal nation is now at market, will be sold for about two millions, and might be bought out of the hands of the present bidders (if he would offer half a million more) by the very Devil himself." To Thomas Cushing he wrote that luxury brought most of the Commons as well as Lords to market, and that, if America would save for three or four years the money she spent in the fashions and fineries and fopperies of England, she might buy the whole Parliament, minister and all.

Over against these depraved electoral conditions he was in the habit of placing the simpler and purer conditions of his native land. In most of the Colonies, he declared in his Rise and Progress of the Differences between Great Britain and her American Colonies, there was no such thing as standing candidate for election. There was neither treating nor bribing. No man expressed the least inclination to be chosen. Instead of humble advertisements, entreating votes and interest, one saw before every new election requests of former members, acknowledging the honor done them by preceding elections, but setting forth their long service and attendance on the public business in that station, and praying that in consideration thereof some other person might be chosen in their room. After a dissolution, the same representatives might be and usually were re-elected without asking a vote or giving even a glass of cider to an elector. On the eve of his return to America in 1775, the contrast between the extreme corruption prevalent in the old rotten state and the glorious public virtue, so predominant in rising America, as he expressed it, assumed a still more aggravated form. After mentioning in his last letter to his friend Galloway the "Numberless and needless Places, enormous Salaries, Pensions, Perquisites, Bribes, groundless Quarrels, foolish Expeditions, false Accounts or no Accounts, Contracts and Jobbs," which in England devoured all revenue, and produced continual necessity in the midst of natural plenty, he said:

I apprehend, therefore, that to unite us intimately will only be to corrupt and poison us also. It seems like Mezentius's coupling and binding together the dead and the living.

 
"Tormenti genus, et sanie taboque fluentes,
Complexu in misero, longâ sic morte necabat."
 

However [he added with his readily re-awakened loyalty to the mother country], I would try anything, and bear anything that can be borne with Safety to our just Liberties, rather than engage in a War with such near relations, unless compelled to it by dire Necessity in our own Defence.

Nor was any American of Franklin's time more profoundly conscious than he of the growing power and splendid destiny of the Colonies. His familiarity with America was singularly minute and accurate. He had supped at its inns and sojourned in its homes, been delayed at its ferries and crippled on its roads. In one way or another, he had acquired a correct and searching insight into almost everything that related to its political, social and industrial life. His answers to the questions put to him during his famous examination before the House of Lords have been justly reputed to be among the most striking of all the proofs of ability that he ever gave, marked as they were by great wisdom and acuteness, marvellous conciseness as well as clearness of statement, invincible tact and dexterity. But in no respect are these answers more remarkable than in the knowledge that they display of colonial America in all its relations. Accompanying this knowledge, too, was unquestionably a powerful feeling of affection for the land of his birth which renders us more or less skeptical as to whether he was at all certain of himself on the different occasions when he expressed his willingness to die in some other land than his own.

I have indeed [he wrote to his son from England in 1772] so many good kind Friends here, that I could spend the Remainder of my Life among them with great Pleasure, if it were not for my American connections, & the indelible Affection I retain for that dear Country, from which I have so long been in a State of Exile.

At all times the tread of those coming millions of human beings, which the family fecundity of America made certain, sounded majestically in his ears. Referring to America in a letter to Lord Kames in the year after the repeal of the Stamp Act, he employed these significant words:

She may suffer at present under the arbitrary power of this country; she may suffer for a while in a separation from it; but these are temporary evils that she will outgrow. Scotland and Ireland are differently circumstanced. Confined by the sea, they can scarcely increase in numbers, wealth and strength, so as to overbalance England. But America, an immense territory, favoured by Nature with all advantages of climate, soil, great navigable rivers, and lakes, &c. must become a great country, populous and mighty; and will, in a less time than is generally conceived, be able to shake off any shackles that may be imposed on her, and perhaps place them on the imposers. In the mean time, every act of oppression will sour their tempers, lessen greatly, if not annihilate the profits of your commerce with them, and hasten their final revolt; for the seeds of liberty are universally found there, and nothing can eradicate them.

Even, if confined westward by the Mississippi and northward by the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, he thought that, in some centuries, the population of America would amount to one hundred millions of people.

Such were the prepossessions brought by Franklin to the controversy between Great Britain and her colonies. In his view he was none the less an Englishman because he was an American, and, as the controversy gained in rancor, his dual allegiance to the two countries led to no little misconstruction. To an unknown correspondent he wrote several years after the repeal of the Stamp Act that he was becoming weary of talking and writing about the quarrel, "especially," he said, "as I do not find that I have gained any point, in either country, except that of rendering myself suspected by my impartiality; in England of being too much an American, and in America, of being too much an Englishman."

His view of the legal tie between England and the Colonies was very simple. How, he wrote to William Franklin, the people of Boston could admit that the General Court of Massachusetts was subordinate to Parliament, and yet, in the same breath, deny the power of Parliament to enact laws for them, he could not understand; nor could he understand what bounds the Farmer's Letters set to the authority in Parliament, which they conceded, to "regulate the trade of the Colonies." It was difficult, he thought, to draw lines between duties for regulation and those for revenue; and, if Parliament was to be the judge, it seemed to him that the distinction would amount to little. Two years previously, however, when examined before the House of Commons; he had stated that, while the right of a Parliament in which the colonies were not represented to impose an internal tax upon them was generally denied in America, he had never heard any objection urged in America to duties laid by Parliament to regulate commerce; and, when he was asked whether there was any kind of difference between the two taxes to the colonies on which they might be laid, he had a prompt answer:

I think the difference is very great. An external tax is a duty laid on commodities imported; that duty is added to the first cost and other charges on the commodity, and, when it is offered to sale, makes a part of the price. If the people do not like it at that price, they refuse it; they are not obliged to pay it. But an internal tax is forced from the people without their consent, if not laid by their own representatives.

And then, when asked immediately afterwards whether, if the external tax or duty was laid on the necessaries of life imported into Pennsylvania, that would not be the same thing in its effects as an internal tax, he doubtless filled the minds of his more insular auditors with astonishment by replying, "I do not know a single article imported into the Northern Colonies, but what they can either do without, or make themselves."

Another neat answer in the examination was his answer when asked whether there was any kind of difference between a duty on the importation of goods and an excise on their consumption:

Yes, a very material one; an excise, for the reasons I have just mentioned, they (the colonists) think you can have no right to lay within their country. But the sea is yours; you maintain, by your fleets, the safety of navigation in it, and keep it clear of pirates; you may have therefore a natural and equitable right to some toll or duty on merchandizes carried through that part of your dominions, towards defraying the expence you are at in ships to maintain the safety of that carriage.

Finally he grew weary of the repeated effort to fix the reproach of inconsistency upon the colonies because of their acquiescence in Parliamentary regulation of their commerce; and, when asked whether Pennsylvania might not, by the same interpretation of her charter, object to external as well as internal taxation without representation, he replied:

They never have hitherto. Many arguments have been lately used here to show them, that there is no difference, and that, if you have no right to tax them internally, you have none to tax them externally, or make any other law to bind them. At present they do not reason so; but in time they may possibly be convinced by these arguments.

Nearly ten years later, Franklin had in a conversation with Lord Chatham at his country seat a notable opportunity to say something further with respect to Parliamentary regulations of American commerce. On this occasion, the great English statesman, then earnestly engaged in a last effort to avert the approaching rupture, observed that the opinion prevailed in England that America aimed at setting up for itself as an independent state; or at least getting rid of the Navigation Acts; and Franklin assured him that, having more than once travelled almost from one end of the continent to the other, and kept a great variety of company, eating, drinking and conversing with them freely, he never had heard in any conversation from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation, or hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America. And, as to the Navigation Act, he said that the main material part of it, that of carrying on trade in British or Plantation bottoms, excluding foreign ships from colonial ports, and navigating with three fourths British seamen was as acceptable to America as it could be to Britain. Indeed, he declared, America was not even against regulations of the general commerce by Parliament, provided such regulations were bona fide for the benefit of the whole empire, not for the small advantage of one part to the great injury of another, such as obliging American ships to call in England with their wine and fruit from Portugal or Spain, the restraints on American manufactures in the woollen and hat-making branches, the prohibiting of slitting-mills, steel-works and the like.

In the opinion of Franklin, Great Britain and America were legally connected as England and Scotland were before the Union by having one common sovereign. He denied that the instructions of the King had the force of law in the Colonies, as Lord Granville had contended, or that the King and Parliament had any legislative authority over them. "Something," he told his son, "might be made of either of the extremes; that Parliament has a power to make all laws for us, or that it has a power to make no laws for us; and I think the arguments for the latter more numerous and weighty than those for the former." The King with his Plantation Parliaments was, in his opinion, the sole legislator of his American subjects, and, in that capacity, was, and ought to be, free to exercise his own judgment, unrestrained and unlimited by the English Parliament.¹⁹ That the Colonies were originally constituted distinct states and intended to be continued such, was clear to him, he wrote to Dr. Cooper, from a thorough consideration of their first charters and the whole conduct of the crown and nation towards them until the Restoration. Since that time Parliament had usurped an authority of making laws for them which before it had not, and America had for some time submitted to the usurpation partly through ignorance and inattention and partly from its weakness and inability to contend. He wished therefore that such expressions as "the supreme authority of Parliament," "the subordinacy of our Assemblies to the Parliament" and the like were no longer employed in the colonies. These opinions were formed at a time when he labored under the egregious error of supposing that, in spite of the wicked machinations of his Parliament, the King regarded his colonies with the eye of mild paternal favor; but they remained his opinions long after he ceased to be the cheat of this delusion.

How far Franklin's idea of the legal bond between Great Britain and the Colonies was a correct one is a technical inquiry that we need not discuss; but his conception of the solidarity of interests which should exist between all parts of the British Empire was as generous and glowing as any federal rhapsodist of the present day could form. When he expounded it to Lord Chatham at Hayes, the latter in his grand way declared that it was a sound one, worthy of a great, benevolent and comprehensive mind. And such it was. The truth is that Franklin was an Imperialist, and the union which he saw was that of a vast English-speaking empire, made up of parts, held in harmony with each other not only by their common English heritage but also by a measure of self-government liberal enough to assure to each of them an intelligent and sympathetic administration of its particular interests. Until the colonial history of England began, all great empires, he told Lord Chatham, had crumbled first at their extremities, because

Countries remote from the Seat and Eye of Government which therefore could not well understand their Affairs for want of full and true Information, had never been well governed but had been oppress'd by bad Governors, on Presumption that Complaint was difficult to be made and supported against them at such a distance.

Had this process of disintegration not been invited in recent years by wrong politics (which would have Parliament to be omnipotent, though it ought not to be so unless it could at the same time be omniscient) they might have gone on extending their Western Empire, adding Province to Province, as far as the South Sea.

It has long appeared to me [he said in his Tract relative to the Affair of Hutchinson's Letters], that the only true British Politicks were those which aim'd at the Good of the Whole British Empire, not that which sought the Advantage of one Part in the Disadvantage of the others; therefore all Measures of procuring Gain to the Mother Country arising from Loss to her Colonies, and all of Gain to the Colonies arising from or occasioning Loss to Britain, especially where the Gain was small and the Loss great, every Abridgment of the Power of the Mother Country, where that Power was not prejudicial to the Liberties of the Colonists, and every Diminution of the Privileges of the Colonists, where they were not prejudicial to the Welfare of the Mo. Country, I, in my own Mind, condemned as improper, partial, unjust, and mischievous; tending to create Dissensions, and weaken that Union, on which the Strength, Solidity, and Duration of the Empire greatly depended; and I opposed, as far as my little Powers went, all Proceedings, either here or in America, that in my Opinion had such Tendency.

But in no words of Franklin is his inspiring idea of British unity more strikingly expressed than in one of his letters to Lord Howe during the Revolutionary War.

Long did I endeavour, with unfeigned and unwearied Zeal [was his touching language] to preserve from breaking that fine and noble China Vase, the British Empire; for I knew, that, being once broken, the separate Parts could not retain even their Shares of the Strength and Value that existed in the Whole, and that a perfect Reunion of those Parts could scarce ever be hoped for. Your Lordship may possibly remember the tears of Joy that wet my Cheek, when, at your good Sister's in London, you once gave me Expectations that a Reconciliation might soon take place.

That there was only one way in which the fair vase upon which his eye lingered so fondly and proudly could for certainty be preserved from irreparable ruin, namely, by admitting the colonies to representation in the British Parliament, Franklin saw with perfect clearness. Repeatedly the thought of such a union emerges from his correspondence only to be dismissed as impracticable. As far back as 1766, he wrote from London to Cadwallader Evans these pregnant words:

My private opinion concerning a union in Parliament between the two countries is, that it would be best for the whole. But I think it will never be done. For though I believe, that, if we had no more representatives than Scotland has, we should be sufficiently strong in the House to prevent, as they do for Scotland, anything ever passing to our disadvantage; yet we are not able at present to furnish and maintain such a number, and, when we are more able, we shall be less willing than we are now. The Parliament here do at present think too highly of themselves to admit representatives from us, if we should ask it; and, when they will be desirous of granting it, we shall think too highly of ourselves to accept of it. It would certainly contribute to the strength of the whole, if Ireland and all the dominions were united and consolidated under one common council for general purposes, each retaining its particular council or parliament for its domestic concerns. But this should have been more early provided for. In the infancy of our foreign establishments it was neglected, or was not thought of. And now the affair is nearly in the situation of Friar Bacon's project of making a brazen wall round England for its eternal security. His servant, Friar Bungey, slept while the brazen head, which was to dictate how it might be done, said Time is, and Time was. He only waked to hear it say, Time is past. An explosion followed, that tumbled their house about the conjuror's ears.

In a subsequent letter to his son in 1768, Franklin again indulges the same day dream, and again reaches the conclusion that such a union would be the best for the whole, and that, though particular parts might find particular disadvantages in it, they would find greater advantages in the security arising to every part from the increased strength of the whole. But such a union, he concluded, was not likely to take place, while the nature of the existing relation was so little understood on both sides of the water, and sentiments concerning it remained so widely different.

Nothing, therefore, remained for Franklin to do except to fall back upon this relation and to make the best of it, to insist that the only constitutional tie between England and the Colonies was the King, and that Parliament had no more right to tax America than to tax Hanover, though the legislative assemblies of the colonies would always be ready in the future as they had been in the past to honor the requisitions for pecuniary aids made upon them by the King, through his Secretary of State; to combat the political and economic dogmas and the national prejudices which stood in the way of the full recognition by England of the fact that her true interest was to be found in the liberal treatment of the Colonies; to warn the Colonies that their connection with England was attended with too many obligations and advantages to be hastily or prematurely forfeited by rash resentments, so long as there was any definite prospect of their appeal to English self-interest and good-feeling not proving in vain; and finally to couple the warning with the suggestion that they should unceasingly keep up the assertion of their just rights, and be prepared, all else failing, to maintain them with an unabated military spirit. It was not to be expected of a man so conservative and constant in nature, and bound to England by so many strong and endearing associations, that he should wage a solitary combat for American rights on English soil before he or any man had reason to know how bitterly the Stamp Act would be returned upon the head of Parliament by America, but never, after the temper of his countrymen in regard to it, was made manifest to him, were his elbows again out of touch with those of his compatriots in America. To their assistance and to the assistance as well of the great body of wise and generous Englishmen, who loved liberty too much at home to begrudge it to Englishmen in America, he brought his every resource, his scientific fame, his social gifts, his personal popularity, his knowledge of the world and the levers by which it is moved, the sane, searching mind, too full of light for bigotry, superstition, or confusion, the pen that enlisted satirical point as readily as grave dissertation in the service of instruction. It cannot be doubted that his exertions should be reckoned among the potent influences that secured the repeal of the Stamp Act. To Charles Thomson he wrote that he had reprinted everything from America that he thought might help their common cause. His examination before the House of Commons was published and had a great run. "You guessed aright," he wrote to Lord Kames with regard to the repeal, "in supposing that I would not be a mute in that play. I was extremely busy, attending Members of both Houses, informing, explaining, consulting, disputing, in a continual hurry from morning to night, till the affair was happily ended."

Some years after the repeal of the Stamp Act, he wrote to Jane Mecom that, at the time of the repeal, the British Ministry were ready to hug him for the assistance that he had afforded them in bringing it about. From the time of the repeal until he returned to America in 1775, his one absorbing object was to create a better understanding between England and her colonies, and to avert the possibility of war between them. Among the things with which he had to contend in accomplishing his aims was the haughty spirit in which the English people were disposed to look down upon the colonists, and to resent any manifestation of independence upon their part as insolent. It was this spirit which made him feel that the assent of England would never be obtained to the representation of America in Parliament.

I am fully persuaded with you [he wrote to Lord Kames], that a Consolidating Union, by a fair and equal representation of all the parts of this Empire in Parliament, is the only firm basis on which its political grandeur and prosperity can be founded. Ireland once wished it, but now rejects it. The time has been, when the colonies might have been pleased with it; they are now indifferent about it; and if it is much longer delayed, they too will refuse it. But the pride of this people can not bear the thought of it, and therefore it will be delayed. Every man in England seems to consider himself as a piece of a sovereign over America; seems to jostle himself into the throne with the King, and talks of our subjects in the Colonies.

This was the sentiment of England in general. In the guard-room and barracks, it assumed at times the grosser form of such contempt as that which led General Clarke to believe as we have seen that the emasculation of all the male Americans would be little more than a holiday task for a handful of British grenadiers. Along with this haughty spirit went a crass ignorance of America and Americans which Franklin despaired of ever enlightening except by good-natured ridicule. An illustration of the manner in which he employed this agency is found in his letter to the Editor of a Newspaper. It had been claimed, he said, that factories in America were impossible because American sheep had but little wool, and the dearness of American labor rendered the profitable working of iron and other materials, except in some few coarse instances, impracticable.

Dear Sir [was his reply], do not let us suffer ourselves to be amus'd with such groundless Objections. The very Tails of the American Sheep are so laden with Wooll, that each has a little Car or Waggon on four little Wheels, to support & keep it from trailing on the Ground. Would they caulk their Ships, would they fill their Beds, would they even litter their Horses with Wooll, if it were not both plenty and cheap? And what signifies Dearness of Labour, when an English shilling passes for five and Twenty? Their engaging 300 Silk Throwsters here in one Week, for New York, was treated as a Fable, because, forsooth, they have "no Silk there to throw." Those, who made this Objection, perhaps did not know, that at the same time the Agents from the King of Spain were at Quebec to contract for 1000 Pieces of Cannon to be made there for the Fortification of Mexico, and at New York engaging the annual Supply of woven Floor-Carpets for their West India Houses, other Agents from the Emperor of China were at Boston treating about an Exchange of raw Silk for Wooll, to be carried in Chinese Junks through the Straits of Magellan.

Another thing, with which Franklin had to contend, was the misrepresentations that the colonial governors were constantly making about American conditions. These misrepresentations were in keeping with the unworthy character of some of them and with the transitory relation that almost all of them bore to the Colonies, of which they were the executives. What the Americans truly thought of them is pointedly expressed in Franklin's Causes of the American Discontents.

They say then as to Governors [he declared], that they are not like Princes whose posterity have an inheritance in the Government of a nation, and therefore an interest in its prosperity; they are generally strangers to the Provinces they are sent to govern, have no estate, natural connexion, or relation there, to give them an affection for the country; that they come only to make money as fast as they can; are sometimes men of vicious characters and broken fortunes, sent by a Minister merely to get them out of the way; that as they intend staying in the country no longer than their government continues, and purpose to leave no family behind them, they are apt to be regardless of the goodwill of the people, and care not what is said or thought of them after they are gone.

That such men were biased and untrustworthy witnesses touching American conditions goes without saying, but, when discontent became deeply implanted in the breasts of the colonists, their partisan and perverted reports to the English Government as to the state of America did much to mislead their masters. The burden of these reports as a rule was that the disaffected were few in numbers and persons of little consequence, that the colonists of property and social standing were satisfied, and inclined to submit to Parliamentary taxation, that it was impossible to establish manufacturing industries in America, and that, if Parliament would only steadily persist in the exercise of its legislative authority over America, the non-importation agreements and other defensive measures adopted by its people would be abandoned.

But the most intractable of all the obstacles with which Franklin had to contend was the policy of commercial and industrial restriction, partly the result of economic purblindness, peculiar to the time, and partly the result of sheer selfishness, which England relentlessly pursued in her relations to the colonies. Every suggestion that this policy should be relaxed was met by its more extreme champions, such as George Grenville, with the statement that the Acts of Navigation were the very Palladium of England. On no account were the Colonies to be allowed to import wine, oil and fruit directly from Spain and Portugal, or to even import iron directly from foreign countries. Enlarged as was the understanding of Lord Chatham himself, it could not tolerate the thought that America should be permitted to convert any form of crude material into manufactured products. Every hat made in America, every shipload of emigrants that left the shores of England for America, was jealously regarded as signifying so much pecuniary loss to England. The colonists were to be mere adscripti glebæ, mere tillers of the American soil for the purpose of wringing from it the price of the manufactured commodities, with which they were to be exclusively supplied by the factories and shops of the mother country. The idea that, in any other sense, the expanding numbers and wealth of America could inure to the benefit of England, was one that seemed to be wholly foreign to its consciousness. To this Little England Franklin steadfastly opposed his conception of an Imperial England, based upon the freedom of all its parts to contribute to the wealth and importance of the whole by the full enjoyment of all their peculiar natural gifts and advantages.

No one can more sincerely rejoice than I do [he wrote to Lord Kames in 1760], on the reduction of Canada; and this is not merely as I am a colonist, but as I am a Briton. I have long been of opinion, that the foundations of the future grandeur and stability of the British Empire lie in America; and though, like other foundations, they are low and little seen, they are, nevertheless, broad and strong enough to support the greatest political structure human wisdom ever yet erected.

These words, splendid as was the vision by which they were illumined, were but the utterance in another form of the thought that he had expressed nine years before in America in his essay on the Increase of Mankind. Speaking of the population of the colonies at that time he said:

This Million doubling, suppose but once in 25 years, will, in another Century, be more than the People of England, and the greatest Number of Englishmen will be on this Side the Water. What an Accession of Power to the British Empire by Sea as well as Land! What Increase of Trade and Navigation! What Numbers of Ships and Seamen! We have been here but little more than 100 years, and yet the Force of our Privateers in the late War, united, was greater, both in Men and Guns, than that of the whole British Navy in Queen Elizabeth's time.

Indeed so fully possessed was he even as late as 1771 with the federative spirit, which has brought recruits from Canada and Australia to the side of England in recent wars that, after urging upon Thomas Cushing the importance of a well-disciplined militia being maintained by Massachusetts, for her protection against invasion by a foreign foe, he added, "And what a Glory would it be for us to send, on any trying Occasion, ready and effectual Aid to our Mother Country!" It is only by reading such words as these that we can begin to divine what the divulsion of England and America has really meant to the vast host of human beings throughout the world who speak the English tongue.

To all the shallow sophistries or sottish errors, that tended to falsify his glorious dream of world-wide British unity, Franklin presented a merciless intellect. With regard to the intention of Parliament to tax the colonies, he had these pointed words to say in a letter to Peter Collinson in 1764: "What we get above a Subsistence we lay out with you for your Manufactures.

"Therefore what you get from us in Taxes you must lose in Trade. The Cat can yield but her skin."

Even more acute was his letter to the Public Advertiser on a proposed Act to prevent emigration from England. Such an Act, he declared, was unnecessary, impracticable, impolitic and unjust. What is more, with an insight into the laws governing population, superior to that of any man of his time, he made his assertions good. To illustrate this claim in part, we need go no further than what he had to say about the necessity of the Act.

As long as the new situation shall be far preferable to the old [he said], the emigration may possibly continue. But when many of those, who at home interfered with others of the same rank (in the competition for farms, shops, business, offices, and other means of subsistence), are gradually withdrawn, the inconvenience of that competition ceases; the number remaining no longer half starve each other; they find they can now subsist comfortably, and though perhaps not quite so well as those who have left them, yet, the inbred attachment to a native country is sufficient to overbalance a moderate difference; and thus the emigration ceases naturally. The waters of the ocean may move in currents from one quarter of the globe to another, as they happen in some places to be accumulated, and in others diminished; but no law, beyond the law of gravity, is necessary to prevent their abandoning any coast entirely. Thus the different degrees of happiness of different countries and situations find, or rather make, their level by the flowing of people from one to another; and where that level is once found, the removals cease. Add to this, that even a real deficiency of people in any country, occasioned by a wasting war or pestilence, is speedily supplied by earlier and more prolific marriages, encouraged by the greater facility of obtaining the means of subsistence. So that a country half depopulated would soon be repeopled, till the means of subsistence were equalled by the population. All increase beyond that point must perish, or flow off into more favourable situations. Such overflowings there have been of mankind in all ages, or we should not now have had so many nations. But to apprehend absolute depopulation from that cause, and call for a law to prevent it, is calling for a law to stop the Thames, lest its waters, by what leave it daily at Gravesend, should be quite exhausted.

Twenty-three years before he had stated the same truths more sententiously in his essay on the Increase of Mankind.

In fine [he said in that essay] a Nation well regulated is like a Polypus; take away a Limb, its Place is soon supply'd; cut it in two, and each deficient Part shall speedily grow out of the Part remaining. Thus if you have Room and Subsistence enough, as you may by dividing, make ten Polypes out of one, you may of one make ten Nations, equally populous and powerful; or rather increase a Nation ten fold in Numbers and Strength.

Franklin clearly saw that, with the increase of population in the colonies, the demand for British manufactures would increase pari passu, and that, with the increased demand for them, the population of Great Britain would increase, perhaps, tenfold. Much as he made of the economic conditions that tended to give a purely agricultural direction to the energies of America, he laughed to scorn the idea that America would always remain in a state of industrial subjection to England.

Only consider the rate of our Increase [he wrote to Peter Collinson, after stating that it was folly to expect that America would always be supplied with cloth by England] and tell me if you can increase your Wooll in that Proportion, and where, in your little Island you can feed the Sheep. Nature has put Bounds to your Abilities, tho' none to your Desires. Britain would, if she could, manufacture & trade for all the World; England for all Britain; – London for all England; – and every Londoner for all London. So selfish is the human Mind! But 'tis well there is One above that rules these Matters with a more equal Hand.

The agency that Franklin held for Pennsylvania in the first instance, and the agencies that he afterwards held for Massachusetts, New Jersey and Georgia, too, afforded him a solid standing for influencing public opinion both in England and America. He was actually in England, and, at the same time, in incessant correspondence with the popular leaders in America. With the beginning of the agitation for the repeal of the Stamp Act he entered upon a course of political activity which added greatly, in another form, to the reputation already acquired by him as a man of science. For his services in securing the repeal, including the flood of light that his answers, when examined before the House of Commons, shed upon the points at issue between the two countries, he was repaid by the English Ministry with attentions which he describes by a term as strong as "caress." Even when the dust of the conflict had thickened, and popular sentiment in England had ranged itself more and more on the side of the King and Parliament, his advice was still eagerly sought by Chatham, Camden, Shelburne and Burke and other liberal and sagacious English statesmen, when they were vainly striving in opposition to restore sanity to the distracted counsels that were menacing the security of the Empire.²⁰ Those must have been proud moments for Franklin, when the elder Pitt, whom he had come to regard in the earlier stages of his maturer life in England as an "inaccessible," received him as an honored guest under his roof at Hayes, or conferred with him at No. 7 Craven Street, or delivered him to the doorkeepers in the House of Lords, saying aloud, "This is Dr. Franklin, whom I would have admitted into the House." There have been few men who might not have envied the privilege of intimate communion with a man not greater, when he was making his country the mistress of the world, than, when decrepit, and in a hopeless minority, he rose in the House of Lords to plead with a voice, inspired not only by his own matchless eloquence but by all that was best in the history and temper of England for the removal of His Majesty's troops from the town of Boston. On the other side of the Atlantic, too, as the final catastrophe drew nearer, Franklin acquired a position, as the champion of the Colonies, which led Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts to say of the memorable report, made by a committee to the town meeting, held in Boston on November 20, 1772, that "although at its first appearance it was considered as their own work, yet they had little more to do than to make the necessary alterations in the arrangement of materials prepared for them by their great director in England, whose counsels they obeyed, and in whose wisdom and dexterity they had an implicit faith."

And with entire truth it can be said that, until war became inevitable, Franklin used his influence in both countries with the unwavering purpose of promoting the best interests of both. The representation of America in Parliament at that time he saw was impracticable, and it is hard to believe, though the imbecility of a government without a sanction had not yet been forced upon his attention by the Articles of Confederation, that so practical a man could have had much faith in the steady efficacy of mere requisitions for aids by the Crown on the colonial assemblies. But, within the limits set him by the insurmountable barriers of the hour, it can not be doubted, bold as such an assertion may be, that the wisest thing that both England and the Colonies could have done, if such an idea is conceivable, would have been to leave the controversy between them to his sole arbitration. The most striking tribute that can be paid to the wisdom and open-mindedness of Franklin is to say that, if this had been done, an accommodation would unquestionably have been reached with due regard to the honor, dignity and essential interests of both countries. His attitude in England was that of a loyal friend to both parties to the controversy, who, as he viewed it, had no cause for disagreement that a temperate and sensible man would not know how to readily remove. To the British public he addressed with numerous variations the following arguments: Notwithstanding the rapid increase of population in America, its area was so vast, and contained so much vacant land, that even such artisans as it had soon drifted into the possession and cultivation of land. The danger, therefore, of industrial competition between the two countries was very remote. The people of America, however, would multiply so rapidly that, in the course of a brief time, the demand for manufactures would increase to such an extent that Great Britain would be powerless alone to supply it. He had satisfied himself by an inspection of the cloth factories in Yorkshire that, with a population doubling as did that of America every twenty-five years, Great Britain would in the future be unable to keep the Americans clothed. It was not right that the interests of a particular class of British merchants, tradesmen or artificers should outweigh those of all the King's subjects in the Colonies. Iron was to be found everywhere in America, and beaver furs were the natural productions of that country; hats, nails and steel were wanted there as well as in England. It was of no importance to the common welfare of the empire whether a subject of the King got his living by making hats on one or the other side of the water, whether he grew rich on the Thames or the Ohio, in Edinburgh or Dublin. Yet the hatters of England had obtained an act in their own favor, restraining that manufacture in America in order to oblige the Americans to send their beaver to England to be manufactured, and to purchase back the hats loaded with the charges of a double transportation. In the same manner, had a few nail-makers and a still smaller body of steel-makers (perhaps there were not a half-dozen of these in England) been able to totally forbid by an Act of Parliament the erecting of slitting mills or steel-furnaces in America. All money made by America in trade, or derived by it from fisheries, the produce of the soil or commerce, finally centred in England; yet, though America was drained of all its specie in the purchase of English goods, often mere luxuries and superfluities, she was not even allowed to issue paper money, however carefully safeguarded, to take its place. The idea that the numerous and separate colonies might become dangerous to the mother country was visionary. They were so jealous of each other that they had been wholly unable to agree upon a union for their common defence or to unite in requesting the mother country to establish one for them. The truth was that they loved England much more than they loved each other. There remained among them so much respect, veneration and affection for Britain, that, if cultivated prudently, with kind usage, and tenderness for their privileges, they might be easily governed still for ages, without force, or any considerable expense. Parliament had no constitutional right to levy a direct tax of any kind on America. The King was the only bond between America and Great Britain. In the beginning, no claim had been made by Parliament of a right to even regulate American commerce, but the power had long been exercised by it without any objection on the part of the colonies, and could, at any rate, be reasonably defended on the ground that Great Britain was put to a great expense in policing the seas over which American commerce moved. If England felt that she could not rely upon the voluntary grants of America, to defray the charges imposed upon her by America, then the logical and proper thing to do before she levied direct taxes upon America was to provide for the representation of the Colonies in Parliament. Until that was done, if it was practicable to do it, she should confine herself to the old constitutional practice of requisitions for pecuniary aid, issued by the Secretary of State, at the instance of the Crown, to the Legislative Assemblies of America. These requisitions of a gracious King had been freely honored in the past. Indeed, the pecuniary burden of the wars, which had been carried on in America, though they were not of her kindling, had been borne by America in a larger proportion to her means than England. But to impose a stamp or tea duty upon America by Act of Parliament was simple madness. No taxes of that sort would ever be collected in America except such as were stained with blood. If Parliament, in which America was not represented, had the right to take from her a penny in a pound, what was there to hinder it from calling, whenever it pleased, for the other nineteen shillings and eleven pence? The only result of a continued attempt to tax America would be the complete loss of her respect and affection, and all the political and commercial advantages that accompanied them. It was a mistake to heed the statements of the Colonial Governors as to the limited extent of popular disaffection in America and the inability of the Colonies to dispense with English manufactures. Their dependence was such as to render them more eager to conciliate court than colonial favor. It was also a mistake to suppose that America could not either make or forego any articles whatsoever that she was in the habit of buying from England. Men would tax themselves as heavily to gratify their resentment as their pride. The Americans had resolved to wear no more mourning, and it was now totally out of fashion with near two millions of people. They had resolved to eat no more lamb, and not a joint of lamb had since been seen on any of their tables, but the lambs themselves were all alive with the prettiest of fleeces on their backs imaginable. Look, too, at the pitiful sum of eighty pounds which was all that the odious tea duty banned by America had produced in a year to defray the expense of some hundreds of thousands of pounds incurred by England in maintaining armed ships and soldiers to support the innumerable officeholders charged with the duty of enforcing the tax.

The argument addressed by Franklin to America was equally earnest. The protection that England could afford her, the office of umpire that England could perform for her, in case of disputes between the Colonies, so that they could go on without interruption with their improvements, and increase their numbers, were the advantages that America enjoyed in her connection with England.

By the Exercise of prudent Moderation on her part, mix'd with a little Kindness [Franklin wrote to Thomas Cushing], and by a decent Behaviour on ours, excusing where we can excuse from a Consideration of Circumstances, and bearing a little with the Infirmities of her Government, as we would with those of an aged Parent,²¹ tho' firmly asserting our Privileges, and declaring that we mean at a proper time to vindicate them, this advantageous Union may still be long continued. We wish it, and we may endeavour it; but God will order it as to His Wisdom shall seem most suitable. The Friends of Liberty here, wish we may long preserve it on our side the Water, that they may find it there if adverse Events should destroy it here. They are therefore anxious and afraid, lest we should hazard it by premature Attempts in its favour. They think we may risque much by violent Measures and that the Risque is unnecessary, since a little Time must infallibly bring us all we demand or desire, and bring it us in Peace and Safety. I do not presume to advise. There are many wiser men among you, and I hope you will be directed by a still superior Wisdom.

Every personal difference Franklin contended did not justify a quarrel nor did every act of oppression on the part of the mother country justify a war. The policy, which he laid down for the Colonies, was to exercise patience and forbearance, and to look to political changes in England and their own rapidly increasing numbers and wealth for the ultimate redress of their grievances, but, in the meantime, to reaffirm fearlessly their constitutional rights on every proper occasion. This policy is again and again recommended in his letters to his friends and political correspondents over-sea. Even before the Stamp Act was actually repealed, he wrote to Charles Thomson expressing the hope that, when that happened, the behavior of America would be so prudent, decent and grateful that their friends in England would have no reason to be ashamed, and their enemies in England, who had predicted that Parliamentary indulgence would only make them more insolent and ungovernable, would find themselves, and be found, false prophets. After the repeal of the Stamp Act, in a letter to Galloway, he expressed deep regret that the English merchants, who had helped to secure that result, and to communicate the knowledge of it, at their expense to America, should feel that the Americans had proved themselves ingrates, and he accordingly said that he hoped that some decent acknowledgments or thanks would be sent to these merchants by the colonial assemblies. When the idea of taxing America was subsequently revived, he wrote to the same correspondent that he knew not what to advise, but that they should all do their endeavors on both sides the water to lessen the present unpopularity of the American cause, conciliate the affections of the British towards them, increase by all possible means the number of their friends, and be careful not to weaken their hands, and strengthen their enemies, by rash proceedings on their side; the mischiefs of which were inconceivable. In a letter to the printer of the Gazetteer, signed "New England," he said: "I only hate calumniators and boutefeus on either side the water, who would for the little dirty purposes of faction, set brother against brother, turn friends into mortal enemies, and ruin an empire by dividing it." In a letter to Cadwallader Evans, in 1768, he even approved the idea that America should manufacture only such things as England neglected.

These are but scant gleanings from the numerous letters in which, down to the very last, Franklin unweariedly repeated his counsels of self-restraint to his fellow-countrymen. Accompanying them was every word of good cheer that he thought might tend to make this self-restraint easier. Several times he assured his American correspondents that, in the debate with the mother country, America had the sympathy of all Europe. For a long time, he endeavored to allay the resentment of his countrymen, under the sting of parliamentary injustice, by voicing the delusion that the King did not share the sentiments of the corrupt legislature which, as a matter of fact, he was all the time corrupting for the purpose of fostering such sentiments. Every indication of a favorable disposition towards the Colonies upon the part of the English People, during the alternations of anxiety and confidence that his mind underwent with the rise and fall of English ministries, friendly or unfriendly to America, was promptly observed by him and reported to America. At times, it is plain enough that he thought a war it would be; yet as late as 1775, when he believed that the adverse ministry of that time was tottering, his sanguine nature reached the conclusion in a letter to James Bowdoin that the redoubled clamor of the trading, manufacturing and Whig interests in England would infallibly overthrow all the enemies of America, and produce an acknowledgment of her rights and satisfaction for her injuries. Parliament rarely gave him any occasion to speak of it except in terms of mingled amazement and indignation; but it is agreeable to remember that, in a letter in 1774 to Jane Mecom, he made grateful mention of "the generous and noble friends of America" in both houses, whose names, dear to the highest traditions of human genius and public spirit, should never be forgotten in any movement to reintegrate in some form the broken fragments of the china vase in which Franklin saw a symbol of the unity of the British Empire.

Accompanying Franklin's counsels of patience, however, was also an unceasing warning to America not to alter for a moment her posture of resistance and protest. "If under all the Insults and Oppressions you are now exposed to," he told Dr. Cooper, "you can prudently, as you have lately done, continue quiet, avoiding Tumults, but still resolutely keeping up your Claim and asserting your Rights, you will finally establish them, and this military Cloud that now blusters over you will pass away, and do no more Harm than a Summer Thunder Shower." "The Colonies," he wrote subsequently to Robert Morris and Thomas Leach, "have Adversaries enow to their common Privileges: They should endeavour to agree among themselves, and avoid everything that may make ill-Blood and promote Divisions, which must weaken them in their common Defence." To Thomas Cushing he wrote that America should continue from time to time to assert its rights in occasional solemn resolves and other public acts, never yielding them up, and avoiding even the slightest expressions that seemed confirmatory of the claim that had been set up against them. As the end of it all became more and more obvious, his note of warning assumed an additional significance. In a letter to Thomas Cushing in 1773, he wrote:

But our great Security lies, I think, in our growing Strength, both in Numbers and Wealth; that creates an increasing Ability of assisting this Nation in its Wars, which will make us more respectable, our Friendship more valued, and our Enmity feared; thence it will soon be thought proper to treat us not with Justice only, but with Kindness, and thence we may expect in a few Years a total Change of Measures with regard to us; unless, by a Neglect of military Discipline, we should lose all martial Spirit, and our Western People become as tame as those in the Eastern Dominions of Britain, when we may expect the same Oppressions; for there is much Truth in the Italian saying, Make yourselves Sheep, and the Wolves will eat you.

Indeed the almost miraculous way in which the population and wealth of America were increasing from year to year was one of the facts which entered most deeply into Franklin's calculation of the resources upon which she could rely not for the purpose of breaking away from the British connection but for the purpose of preventing it from being abused by England. No one saw more clearly than he that the day would come when some descendant, such as Gladstone, of one of his British contemporaries might well apostrophize America as a daughter that, at no very distant time, would, whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably stronger than the mother.²² To Thomas Cushing he wrote in 1773 that the longer England delayed the accommodation, which finally for her own sake she must obtain, the worse terms she might expect, since the inequality of power and importance that then subsisted between her and America was daily diminishing; while the latter's sense of her own rights and of England's injustice was continually increasing.

Optimistic on the whole, however, as was Franklin's outlook during the interval of political strife which preceded the American Revolution, intently as he watched every ebb and flow of English feeling, while this period lasted, it is manifest that in its later stages he realized that the currents upon which he was being borne were steadily moving towards the jaws of the maelstrom. This is apparent enough in his perspicacious letter of May 15, 1771, to the Committee of Correspondence in Massachusetts.

I think one may clearly see, in the system of customs to be exacted in America by act of Parliament, the seeds sown of a total disunion of the two countries, though, as yet, that event may be at a considerable distance. The course and natural progress seems to be, first, the appointment of needy men as officers, for others do not care to leave England; then, their necessities make them rapacious, their office makes them proud and insolent, their insolence and rapacity make them odious, and, being conscious that they are hated, they become malicious; their malice urges them to a continual abuse of the inhabitants in their letters to administration, representing them as disaffected and rebellious, and (to encourage the use of severity), as weak, divided, timid, and cowardly. Government believes all; thinks it necessary to support and countenance its officers; their quarreling with the people is deemed a mark and consequence of their fidelity; they are therefore more highly rewarded, and this makes their conduct still more insolent and provoking.

The resentment of the people will, at times and on particular incidents, burst into outrages and violence upon such officers, and this naturally draws down severity and acts of further oppression from hence. The more the people are dissatisfied, the more rigor will be thought necessary; severe punishments will be inflicted to terrify; rights and privileges will be abolished; greater force will then be required to secure execution and submission; the expense will become enormous; it will then be thought proper, by fresh exactions, to make the people defray it; thence, the British nation and government will become odious, the subjection to it will be deemed no longer tolerable; war ensues, and the bloody struggle will end in absolute slavery to America, or ruin to Britain by the loss of her colonies; the latter most probable, from America's growing strength and magnitude.

But, as the whole empire must, in either case, be greatly weakened, I cannot but wish to see much patience and the utmost discretion in our general conduct, that the fatal period may be postponed, and that, whenever this catastrophe shall happen, it may appear to all mankind that the fault has not been ours.

Franklin's written comments upon the American controversy between the passage of the Stamp Act and his return to America in 1775 are usually marked by a sobriety and dignity of expression worthy of their wisdom. It is only at times that the strong character, habitually held in leash by innate prudence and severely disciplined self-control, breaks out into impatience. Naturally enough now and then he has a word of scorn for the graceless venality which made Westminster almost as much a market as Smithfield, and was, after all, the real thing that rendered England deaf to the warning "Time is" of Friar Bacon's brazen mouth-piece.

Many think the new Parliament will be for reversing the late proceedings [he wrote to Galloway in 1774], but that depends on the Court, on which every Parliament seems to be dependent; so much so, that I begin to think a Parliament here of little Use to the People: For since a Parliament is always to do as a ministry would have it, why should we not be govern'd by the Ministry in the first Instance? They could afford to govern us cheaper, the Parliament being a very expensive Machine, that requires a vast deal of oiling and greasing at the People's Charge; for they finally pay all the enormous Salaries of Places, the Pensions, and the Bribes, now by Custom become necessary to induce the Members to vote according to their Consciences.

Franklin would have been more than human if he had not had a resentful word to say too, when, as the result of the refusal of the Americans to drink any tea, except such as was smuggled into America, free of the detested duty, by the commercial rivals of England, the East India Company could no longer meet its debts, let alone pay dividends and the annuity of four hundred thousand pounds, payable by it to the British Government, and bankruptcy was following bankruptcy like a series of falling bricks, and thousands of Spitalfield and Manchester weavers were starving, or subsisting upon charity. "Blessed Effects of Pride, Pique, and Passion in Government, which should have no Passions," was the caustic observation of Franklin in one of his letters to his son. Bitterness welled up again in his throat when, after he had been bayed by the Privy Council, and dismissed from his office, a special instruction was issued to the Governor of Massachusetts not to sign any warrant on the Treasury for the purpose of paying him any salary as the agent of Massachusetts or reimbursing him for any expenses incurred on her behalf.

The Injustice [he said in his Tract Relative to the Affair of Hutchinson's Letters] of thus depriving the People there of the Use of their own Money, to pay an Agent acting in their Defence, while the Governor, with a large Salary out of the Money extorted from them by Act of Parliament, was enabled to pay plentifully Maudit and Wedderburn to abuse and defame them and their Agent, is so evident as to need no Comment. But this they call Government!

Indecent, however, as was the treatment accorded by the Privy Council to the man, who had striven so loyally, so zealously and so wisely to promote the greatness and glory of England, it hardly conveyed a ruder shock to his mind than that which it received later when he saw the plan for the settlement of the American Controversy drafted by Lord Chatham rejected by the House of Lords, with as much contempt he told Charles Thomson, "as they could have shown to a Ballad offered by a drunken Porter."

To hear so many of these Hereditary Legislators [he said in his Account of Negotiations in London], declaiming so vehemently against, not the Adopting merely, but even the Consideration of a Proposal so important in its Nature, offered by a Person of so weighty a Character, one of the first Statesmen of the Age, who had taken up this Country when in the lowest Despondency, and conducted it to Victory and Glory, thro' a War with two of the mightiest Kingdoms in Europe; to hear them censuring his Plan, not only for their own Misunderstandings of what was in it, but for their Imaginations of what was not in it, which they would not give themselves an Opportunity of rectifying by a second Reading; to perceive the total Ignorance of the Subject in some, the Prejudice and Passion of others, and the wilful Perversion of Plain Truth in several of the Ministers; and upon the whole to see it so ignominiously rejected by so great a Majority, and so hastily too, in Breach of all Decency, and prudent Regard to the Character and Dignity of their Body, as a third Part of the National Legislature, gave me an exceeding mean Opinion of their Abilities, and made their Claim of Sovereignty over three Millions of Virtuous, sensible People in America seem the greatest of Absurdities, since they appear'd to have scarce Discretion enough to govern a Herd of Swine. Hereditary Legislators! thought I. There would be more Propriety, because less Hazard of Mischief, in having (as in some University of Germany) Hereditary Professors of Mathematicks.

Yet this is the Government [Franklin declared in the letter to Charles Thomson, in which he used the simile of the ballad and the drunken porter, and also referred to equally rash conduct upon the part of the House of Commons], by whose Supreme Authority, we are to have our Throats cut, if we do not acknowledge, and whose dictates we are implicitly to obey, while their conduct hardly entitles them to Common Respect.

But it was only after he had been shamelessly and publicly proscribed, under circumstances which gave him good reason to believe that he was but the vicarious victim of a People unfeelingly doomed to the cruel alternatives of fratricidal resistance or vassalage, that he gave way, though still engaged in a last effort to stave off the evil day of separation, to such reproachful or denunciatory utterances as these. Indeed, as it is a satisfaction to a stupid man to know that Homer sometimes nodded, and to a vicious man to know that the character of Washington is supposed to have been at last successfully fly-specked by some petty scandal-monger, so it ought to be a relief to a hasty man to know that Franklin was once on the point of succumbing entirely to a sudden flaw of anger. Goaded beyond endurance by the reflections, which he had just heard in the House of Lords on everything American, including American courage, honesty and intelligence, reflections as contemptuous, he said, as if his countrymen were the lowest of mankind, and almost of a different species from the English of Britain, he drew up a heated protest, as the agent of Massachusetts, demanding from Great Britain present satisfaction for the blockade of Boston, and stating that satisfaction for the proposed exclusion of Massachusetts from the Newfoundland and other fisheries, if carried into effect, would probably also some day be demanded. When he showed the paper to his friend, Thomas Walpole, a member of the House of Commons, Walpole, we are told by him, looked at it and him several times alternately, as if he apprehended him to be out of his senses. However, Franklin asked him to lay it before Lord Camden, which he undertook to do. When it came back to Franklin, it was with a note from Walpole telling him simply that it was thought that it might be attended with dangerous consequences to his person, and contribute to exasperate the nation. The caution that Franklin exhibited before permitting the protest to pass from his possession suggests the idea that, in writing it, he was merely seeking a safe vent for the mental ferment of the moment. It was doubtless well for him that the paper got no further; for it is painful to relate that the disposition was not wanting in England to construe some of his letters to Thomas Cushing as treasonable. In a letter to Cushing, he said that he was not conscious of any treasonable intention, but that, after the manner in which he had recently been treated in the matter of the Hutchinson letters, he was not to wonder if less than a small lump in his forehead was voted a horn. Six months later, he wrote to Galloway that it was thought by many that, if the British soldiers and the New Englanders should come to blows, he would probably be taken up; for the ministerial people affected everywhere to represent him as the cause of all the misunderstanding. We know nothing better calculated to show how hopeless it is for the lamb downstream to convince the wolf upstream that the water flowing by him was not muddied from below than the fact that, during the debate over Lord Chatham's conciliatory Plan, Lord Sandwich referred to Franklin as one of the bitterest and most mischievous enemies that England had ever known. That is to say, Franklin, the loyal Englishman who, in one of his early papers on electricity, could not even mention the King without adding, "God preserve him," who had shrunk in the beginning from the agitation against the Stamp Act as little less than treason, who had deprecated the Boston tea-party as lawless violence, and had, from first to last, condemned mob-license in every form in America as steadfastly as tyranny in England.

The wonder is that he should not have reached the decision sooner than he did that there was nothing to be gained for his country by his longer sojourn in England. His intercourse, as an American agent with Lord Hillsborough, when Secretary of State for America and First Commissioner to the Board of Trade, was alone enough to bring him to such a decision.²³ As an Irishman, familiar with the repressive policy of England in Ireland, Hillsborough could not well approve of British restrictions upon American commerce and manufactures; but there his sympathy with America ceased. Franklin truly said that the agents of the Colonies in England were quite as useful to England as to the Colonies, since they had more than once by timely advice kept the English Government from making mistakes arising out of ignorance of special conditions peculiar to America. But this view was not shared by Hillsborough. He insisted that no agent from Massachusetts should be recognized in England, who was not appointed, from year to year, by the General Court of Massachusetts by an act, to which the Governor of that colony had given his assent. As the Governor was dependent for his appointment upon the British Ministry, and would hardly fail to name any one as agent, who might be selected by it, such a tenure was equivalent to vesting the selection of the agent in Hillsborough himself, whose wishes, when selected, the agent was not likely to oppose. Under such conditions, an agent would be of no value to the colony, Franklin declared, and, under such conditions, he further declared, he would not be willing himself to hold the post. "His Character is Conceit, Wrongheadedness, Obstinacy, and Passion." Such were the terms in which Franklin summed up the moral attributes of Hillsborough to Dr. Cooper, after he had vainly striven for several years to give the former some salutary conception of the importance of ascertaining the real sentiments and wants of America. The letter, in which these terms were employed, was accompanied by minutes of a spirited dialogue between Franklin and Hillsborough, which almost makes us regret that the former, among his other literary ventures, had not tested his qualifications as a playwright. The part of Hillsborough in the colloquy was to let Franklin fully know in language of mixed petulance and contempt that he declined to recognize him as an agent.

No such appointment shall be entered [he is minuted as declaring]. When I came into the administration of American affairs, I found them in great disorder. By my firmness they are now something mended; and, while I have the honour to hold the seals, I shall continue the same conduct, the same firmness. I think my duty to the master I serve, and to the government of this nation, requires it of me. If that conduct is not approved, they may take my office from me when they please. I shall make them a bow, and thank them; I shall resign with pleasure. That gentleman knows it, (pointing to Mr. Pownall), but, while I continue in it, I shall resolutely persevere in the same Firmness. (Spoken with great warmth, and turning pale in his discourse, as if he was angry at something or somebody besides the agent, and of more consequence to himself.)

Then follows Franklin's reply:

B. F. (Reaching out his hand for the paper, which his Lordship returned to him). I beg your Lordship's pardon for taking up so much of your time. It is, I believe, of no great importance whether the appointment is acknowledged or not, for I have not the least conception that an agent can at present be of any use to any of the colonies. I shall therefore give your Lordship no further trouble. (Withdrew.)

As the dialogue discloses, Hillsborough had quite enough enemies already to render it prudent for him to abstain from making another of a man who had declared in the letter, with which it was enclosed, that, if there was to be a war between them, he would do his best to defend himself, and annoy his adversary little, regarding the story of the Earthen Pot and Brazen Pitcher.

One encouragement I have [Franklin said in his letter], the knowledge, that he is not a whit better lik'd by his Colleagues in the Ministry, than he is by me, that he can not probably continue where he is much longer, and that he can scarce be succeeded by anybody, who will not like me the better for his having been at Variance with me.

Later, Franklin wrote to Thomas Cushing:

This Man's Mandates have been treated with Disrespect in America, his Letters have been criticis'd, his Measures censur'd and despis'd; which has produced in him a kind of settled Malice against the Colonies, particularly ours, that would break out into greater Violence if cooler Heads did not set some Bounds to it. I have indeed good Reason to believe that his Conduct is far from being approved by the King's other Servants, and that he himself is so generally dislik'd by them that it is not probable he will continue much longer in his present Station, the general Wish here being to recover (saving only the Dignity of Government) the Good-Will of the Colonies, which there is little reason to expect while they are under his wild Administration. Their permitting so long his Eccentricities (if I may use such an Expression) is owing, I imagine, rather to the Difficulty of knowing how to dispose of or what to do with a man of his wrong-headed bustling Industry, who, it is apprehended, may be more mischievous out of Administration than in it, than to any kind of personal Regard for him.

The Earthen Pot and the Brazen Pitcher did collide, and, contrary to every physical law, it was not the Earthen Pot that suffered. Certain Americans, including Franklin himself, and certain Englishmen had applied to the Crown for a tract of land between the Alleghanies and the Ohio River, and their petition was referred to the Board of Trade of which Hillsborough was President. It asked for the right to settle two million, five hundred thousand acres. Hillsborough, who was secretly hostile to the grant, for the purpose of over-loading the application, deceitfully suggested that the applicants should ask for enough land to constitute a province; whereupon Franklin took him at his word and changed the acreage petitioned for to twenty-three million acres. When the report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, drafted by Hillsborough, was made, it opposed the grant.

If a vast territory [said His Majesty's Governor of Georgia, in a letter to the Commissioners, which is quoted in the Report], be granted to any set of gentlemen, who really mean to people it, and actually do so, it must draw and carry out a great number of people from Great Britain; and I apprehend they will soon become a kind of separate and independent people, and who will set up for themselves; that they will soon have manufactures of their own; that they will neither take supplies from the mother country, nor from the provinces, at the back of which they are settled; that, being at a distance from the seat of government, courts, magistrates, &c., &c., they will be out of the reach and control of law and government; that it will become a receptacle and kind of asylum for offenders, who will fly from justice to such new country or colony.

To this report, which sought to confine America to practically the same limits as those fixed by the French, Franklin, with his knowledge of American conditions, and breadth of vision, made such a crushing reply that, when the report and the reply came before the Privy Council, the application for the grant, partly because of the strength of Franklin's reply, and, partly from dislike to Hillsborough, was approved. Mortified by this action, Hillsborough resigned his office, and was succeeded by Lord Dartmouth, the nobleman described by Cowper as "One who wears a coronet, and prays."

In keeping with the deceit, practiced by Hillsborough, in endeavoring to give an extravagant turn to the Ohio petition, was his previous bearing towards Franklin after the interview with the latter, at which he paid such a fulsome tribute to his own firmness. During the year preceding the action of the Privy Council, Franklin had heard that Hillsborough had expressed himself about him in very angry terms, calling him a Republican, a factious, mischievous fellow, and the like. Nevertheless, a few weeks later, when he was in Ireland, Hillsborough pressed him so warmly to call upon him at his country-seat, upon his way to the North of Ireland, that he did so, and was detained there no less than four days, in the enjoyment of a hospitality so assiduous that his host, Franklin tells us, even put his oldest son, Lord Kilwarling, into his phaeton with him, to drive him a round of forty miles, that he might see the country, the seats, manufactures, etc., and moreover covered him with his own great coat lest he should take cold. Later, after both Franklin and Hillsborough had returned to London, the former called upon the latter repeatedly for the purpose of thanking him for his civilities in Ireland. On each day, he was told that his Lordship was not at home, although on two of them he had good reason to know the contrary. On the last of the two, which was one of his Lordship's levee days, the porter, seeing Franklin, came out and surlily chid the latter's coachman for opening the door of his coach before he had inquired whether his Lordship was at home. Then, turning to Franklin, he said, "My Lord is not at home." "I have never since been nigh him," Franklin wrote to his son, "and we have only abused one another at a distance."

During the year succeeding the action of the Privy Council, when Franklin was with his friend Lord Le Despencer at Oxford, Lord Hillsborough, upon being told by Lord Le Despencer, as they were descending the stairs in Queen's College, that Franklin was above, reascended them immediately, and, approaching Franklin in the pleasantest manner imaginable, said, "Dr. Franklin, I did not know till this Minute that you were here, and I am come back to make you my Bow! I am glad to see you at Oxford, and that you look so well," &c.

In Return for this Extravagance [Franklin said in a letter to his son], I complimented him on his Son's Performance in the Theatre, tho' indeed it was but indifferent, so that Account was settled. For as People say, when they are angry, If he strikes me, I'll strike him again; I think sometimes it may be right to say, If he flatters me, I'll flatter him again. This is Lex Talionis, returning Offences in kind. His Son however (Lord Fairford), is a valuable young Man, and his Daughters, Ladys Mary and Charlotte, most amiable young Women. My Quarrel is only with him, who, of all the Men I ever met with, is surely the most unequal in his Treatment of People, the most insincere, and the most wrong-headed.

Such was the man, to whom the oversight of American affairs was committed at a highly critical period in the relations of England and the Colonies. Speaking of Hillsborough's successor, Lord Dartmouth, Franklin said, "he is truly a good Man, and wishes sincerely a good Understanding with the Colonies, but does not seem to have Strength equal to his Wishes." This minister was wise enough to recognize the agents of the American colonies, including Franklin, again, despite the stand taken by Hillsborough against them. But, when Lord Chatham's conciliatory plan was so summarily rejected by the House of Lords, Dartmouth, though he had, when the motion was first made, suggested that it should be deliberately considered, was later swept along unresistingly by the majority. In his account of the incident, Franklin said, "I am the more particular in this, as it is a Trait of that Nobleman's Character, who from his Office is suppos'd to have so great a Share in American affairs, but who has in reality no Will or Judgment of his own, being with Dispositions for the best Measures, easily prevail'd with to join in the worst."

But it is in the history of the Hutchinson letters that we find the most convincing proof of the hopelessness of Franklin's task in his endeavor to bring public opinion in England over to his generous views of her true interests. On one occasion, when speaking in terms of warm resentment of the conduct of the ministry in dispatching troops to Boston, he was to his great surprise, to use his own words, assured by a gentleman of character and distinction that the action of the ministry in this, and the other respects, obnoxious to America, had been brought about by some of the most reputable persons among the Americans themselves. He was skeptical, and the gentleman, whose name he never revealed, being desirous of establishing the truth of his statement to the satisfaction of both Franklin and Franklin's countrymen, called upon Franklin a few days afterwards, and exhibited to him letters from Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson and Secretary Andrew Oliver of Massachusetts, and other residents of that colony which only too conclusively confirmed what had been said. The gentleman would not permit copies to be taken of the letters, but he delivered the originals to Franklin with the express understanding that they were not to be printed, that no copies were to be taken of them, that they were to be shown only to a few leading men in Massachusetts, and were to be carefully returned. Franklin transmitted them, subject to these conditions, to Thomas Cushing of the Committee of Correspondence at Boston. He did so, he tells us, because he thought that to shift the responsibility for the recent ministerial measures from England to America would tend to restore good feeling between the people of Massachusetts and England, and, moreover, because he felt that intelligence of such importance should not be withheld from the constituents whose agent he was. In his communication, accompanying the letters, Franklin stipulated that they were to be read only by the members of the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence, Messrs. Bowdoin and Pitts of the Council, Drs. Chauncey, Cooper and Winthrop, and a few such other persons as Cushing might select; and were to be returned in a few months to him; but it is not true, as was afterwards alleged by his enemies, that his communication was attended by any effort to conceal his personal relations to the letters. A part of the communication is too good a specimen of the precision that Franklin always brought to the language of rebuke or condemnation not to be quoted at length.

As to the writers [he said], I can easily as well as charitably conceive it possible, that a Man educated in Prepossessions of the unbounded Authority of Parliament, &c. may think unjustifiable every Opposition even to its unconstitutional Exactions, and imagine it their Duty to suppress, as much as in them lies, such Opposition. But when I find them bartering away the Liberties of their native Country for Posts, and negociating for Salaries and Pensions extorted from the People; and, conscious of the Odium these might be attended with, calling for Troops to protect and secure the Enjoyment of them: When I see them exciting Jealousies in the Crown, and provoking it to Wrath against so great a Part of its most faithful Subjects; creating Enmities between the different Countries of which the Empire consists; occasioning a great Expence to the Old Country for Suppressing or Preventing imaginary Rebellions in the New, and to the new Country for the Payment of needless Gratifications to useless Officers and Enemies; I can not but doubt their Sincerity even in the political Principles they profess, and deem them mere Time-servers seeking their own private Emolument, thro' any Quantity of Publick Mischief; Betrayers of the Interest, not of their native Country only, but of the Government they pretend to serve, and of the whole English Empire.

Later, after strong representations had been made to Franklin by Cushing that the letters could be put to no effective use, unless they could be retained or copied, Franklin obtained leave from the gentleman, who had entrusted them to him, to authorize Cushing to show them to any persons that he chose. The fact that the letters were in Boston was soon noised abroad, whereupon the Assembly required them to be laid before it, though under its promise that they would not be printed. An occasion or pretext for disregarding this promise soon arose, when copies were produced in the House by a member who was said to have received them from England. Then the Assembly adopted a series of indignant resolutions, declaring, among other things, that the authors of the letters were justly chargeable with the great corruption of morals, and all the confusion, misery and bloodshed which had been the natural effects of the introduction of troops into the Province, and that it was its bounden duty to pray that his Majesty would be pleased to remove Hutchinson and Oliver forever from the Government thereof. These resolutions were duly followed by a petition for the removal which was transmitted to Franklin and by him transmitted to Lord Dartmouth, who laid it before the King.

When the news reached England that the letters had been published in Massachusetts, there was great curiosity to know who had transmitted them. Thomas Whately, a London banker, and the brother of William Whately, then deceased, to whom they were written, was suspected; he suspected John Temple, a former Governor of New Hampshire, who had had access to the papers of the decedent, and, his suspicions having been brought to the attention of Temple, the latter called upon him, denied all knowledge of the letters, and demanded a public exoneration. The written statement from Whately which followed was not satisfactory to Temple, and he challenged the former to a duel in which Whately was severely wounded. Up to this time, it was not known except to a few persons that Franklin had forwarded the letters to America; nor even for a time after the duel did he feel that it was incumbent upon him to tell the world that he had done so. But, when he heard that the duel would probably be renewed, as soon as Whately recovered his strength, he felt discharged from the obligation of silence that he had previously recognized to the person from whom he had received the letters, and published a communication in the Public Advertiser stating that it was impossible for Whately to have sent the letters to Boston, or for Temple to have purloined them from Whately, because they had never been in Whately's possession, and that he, Franklin alone, was the person who "obtained and transmitted to Boston the letters in question."²⁴

Franklin had put his head into the lion's jaws. While he was preparing for his return to America, for the purpose of attending to a matter arising out of the operations of the American Post-office Department, he received a notice from the Clerk of the Privy Council, informing him that the Lords of the Committee for Plantation Affairs would meet at the Cockpit on Tuesday, January 11, 1774, at noon, for the purpose of considering the petition for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver, which had been referred to the Council by the King, and requiring him to be present. A similar notice was sent to Bollan, the London Agent of the Massachusetts Council. When the petition came on for hearing, at the request of Franklin, its consideration was postponed for some three weeks, so that he could retain counsel to face Alexander Wedderburn, the Solicitor-general, who had been retained by Israel Mauduit, the agent of the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts.

The counsel retained by Franklin were John Dunning, a former Solicitor-general, and subsequently Lord Ashburton, and John Lee, who later became the Solicitor-general under the administration of Charles James Fox. When the hearing did take place, it proved for every reason a memorable one. Edmund Burke could not recollect that so many Privy Councillors had ever attended a meeting of the Council before. There were no less than thirty-five in attendance. The Lord President Gower presided. In the audience, among other persons, were the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord North, the Prime Minister, Lord Shelburne, Edmund Burke, Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, Arthur Lee, of Virginia, then a law student in London, who had been selected by the Legislature of Massachusetts to act as its agent, in the event of the absence or death of Franklin, Ralph Izard, of South Carolina, who had borne Temple's challenge to Thomas Whately, and Dr. Edward Bancroft, who was afterwards at Paris with Franklin. The hearing was opened by the reading of the letter written by Franklin to Lord Dartmouth, when transmitting the petition to him, the petition itself, the resolutions of the Massachusetts Assembly and the letters upon which they were based. In Franklin's opinion, Dunning and Lee in their pleas "acquitted themselves very handsomely." Dunning's points, Burke thought, were "well and ably put." The appeal of the Massachusetts Assembly, Dunning argued was to the wisdom and goodness of his Majesty; they were asking a favor, not demanding justice. As they had no impeachment to make, so they had no evidence to offer. Of similar tenor was the address of John Lee. The reply of Wedderburn was pointed and brilliant, and as rabid as if he had been summing up against an ordinary criminal at an ordinary assize.

The letters, could not have come to Dr. Franklin [he argued], by fair means. The writers did not give them to him; nor yet did the deceased correspondent, who, from our intimacy, would otherwise have told me of it. Nothing, then, will acquit Dr. Franklin of the charge of obtaining them by fraudulent or corrupt means, for the most malignant of purposes, unless he stole them from the person who stole them. This argument is irrefragable. I hope, my lords, you will mark and brand the man, for the honor of this country, of Europe, and of mankind. Private correspondence has hitherto been held sacred in times of the greatest party rage, not only in politics but religion… He has forfeited all the respect of societies and of men [the orator went on]. Into what companies will he hereafter go with an unembarrassed face, or the honest intrepidity of virtue? Men will watch him with a jealous eye; they will hide their papers from him, and lock up their escritoirs. He will henceforth esteem it a libel to be called a man of letters; homo TRIUM literarum! [Trium litterarum homo, a man of three letters, was a fur, or thief]. But [continued Wedderburn], he not only took away the letters from one brother; but kept himself concealed till he nearly occasioned the murder of the other. It is impossible to read his account, expressive of the coolest and most deliberate malice, without horror. Amidst these tragical events, of one person nearly murdered, of another answerable for the issue, of a worthy governor hurt in his dearest interests, the fate of America in suspense; here is a man, who, with the utmost insensibility of remorse, stands up and avows himself the author of all. I can compare it only to Zanga, in Dr. Young's Revenge:

 
"Know then 'twas – I;
I forged the letter, I disposed the picture;
I hated, I despised, and I destroy."
 

I ask, my Lords, whether the revengeful temper attributed by poetic fiction only, to the bloody African, is not surpassed by the coolness and apathy of the wily American?

More than one bystander has recorded the impressions left upon his mind by this savage philippic.

I was not more astonished [Jeremy Bentham tells us] at the brilliancy of his lightning, than astounded at the thunder that accompanied it. As he stood, the cushion lay on the council table before him; his station was between the seats of two of the members, on the side of the right hand of the Lord President. I would not for double the greatest fee the orator could on that occasion have received, been in the place of that cushion; the ear was stunned at every blow.

"At the sallies of his sarcastic wit," Priestley declares, "all the members of the Council, the President himself not excepted, frequently laughed outright. No person belonging to the Council behaved with decent gravity, except Lord North, who, coming late, took his stand behind the chair opposite to me." Burke spoke of the attack on "Poor Dr. Franklin" as "beyond all bounds and decency," and the language, used by Lord Shelburne, in describing it to Lord Chatham, was hardly, if any, less emphatic. "The behavior of the Judges," he said, "exceeded, as was agreed on all hands, that of any committee of elections." Dunning's rejoinder to Wedderburn was wholly ineffective. His voice, always thick, was, from illness, feebler and huskier than usual even in his first address, and, exhausted as he was by standing for three hours in a room, in which no one was allowed to sit but the Privy Councillors themselves, who were supposed on such occasions to be the immediate representatives of the King, his second address was hardly audible. Lee was equally ineffective. Wedderburn's speech, therefore, which from a purely forensic point of view was really a masterpiece, was left to assert its full effect, to become the sensation of every Club in London, and to win the plaudit of every bigoted or unreflecting Englishman. "All men," Fox said, "tossed up their hats and clapped their hands in boundless delight at it."

What of Franklin during the malignant assault? The apartment, in which the hearing took place, was a small one. At one end, was an open fireplace, with a recess on each side of it. The Council table stretched from a point near this fireplace to the other end of the room. The Lord President sat at its head, and the other councillors were ranged in seats down its sides. Such spectators as had been able to secure the highly-prized privilege of being present remained standing throughout the session. In the chimney recess to the left of the President, stood Franklin with Burke and Priestley nearby. The dialectical ability and skill, which made his examination before the House of Commons so famous, he now had no opportunity to display; and unfailing fortitude was all that he could oppose to the outrage for which he had been singled out. With that, however, his uncommon strength of character abundantly supplied him.

The Doctor was dressed in a full dress suit of spotted Manchester velvet [Dr. Edward Bancroft wrote years afterwards to William Temple Franklin], and stood conspicuously erect, without the smallest movement of any part of his body. The muscles of his face had been previously composed, so as to afford a placid, tranquil expression of countenance, and he did not suffer the slightest alteration of it to appear during the continuance of the speech, in which he was so harshly and improperly treated. In short, to quote the words which he employed concerning himself on another occasion, he kept "his countenance as immovable as if his features had been made of wood."

Alone, in the recess on the left hand of the president, stood Benjamin Franklin [is the account of Bentham], in such position as not to be visible from the situation of the president, remaining the whole time like a rock, in the same posture, his head resting on his left hand; and in that attitude abiding the pelting of the pitiless storm.

Nothing but Jedburgh justice, of course, was to be expected from such a Committee in such a case, represented by such an advocate. Its report, dated the same day as its sitting, and as likely as not drafted beforehand, found that the letters had been surreptitiously obtained, and contained "nothing reprehensible"; that the petition was based on resolutions, formed on false and erroneous allegations; and was groundless, vexatious and scandalous; and calculated only for the seditious purpose of keeping up a spirit of clamor and discontent in the province; and that nothing had been laid before the Committee which did, or could, in their opinion, in any manner, or in any degree, impeach the honor, integrity, or conduct of the Governor or Lieutenant-Governor. Wherefore, the Lords of the Committee were humbly of the opinion that the petition ought to be dismissed. This recommendation was approved by the King, and an order was issued by him that the petition be dismissed, as answering the character imputed to it by the Committee. Nor did vengeance stop here. On the second day, after the Committee rose, Franklin was handed a communication from the Postmaster-General, informing him in brief terms that the King had "found it necessary" to dismiss him from the office of Deputy Postmaster-General in America.

In reporting the manner in which he had been affronted by the Privy Council to his Massachusetts constituents, Franklin used language in keeping with the sober spirit in which he had striven from the beginning to bring about an understanding between England and her Colonies.

What I feel on my own account [he said], is half lost in what I feel for the public. When I see, that all petitions and complaints of grievances are so odious to government, that even the mere pipe which conveys them becomes obnoxious, I am at a loss to know how peace and union are to be maintained or restored between the different parts of the empire. Grievances cannot be redressed unless they are known; and they cannot be known but through complaints and petitions. If these are deemed affronts, and the messengers punished as offenders, who will henceforth send petitions? And who will deliver them? It has been thought a dangerous thing in any state to stop up the vent of griefs. Wise governments have therefore generally received petitions with some indulgence, even when but slightly founded. Those, who think themselves injured by their rulers, are sometimes, by a mild and prudent answer, convinced of their error. But where complaining is a crime, hope becomes despair.

His fellow-Americans were not so self-restrained. The American Post Office was shunned by its former patrons, and letters were delivered largely by private agencies, effigies of Wedderburn and Hutchinson were carried about the streets of Philadelphia, and, at night, were burnt, we are told, by Joseph Reed, "with the usual ceremonies, amidst the acclamations of the multitude." "Nothing can exceed," the same narrator adds, "the veneration in which Dr. Franklin is now held, but the detestation we have of his enemies." Wedderburn, who had complained in his speech of the attention paid by the press to the movements of Franklin, as though he were a great diplomatic character, had more occasion than ever to sneer at his public prominence. Hutchinson was compelled to resign his office, and to retire from execration in America to a slender pension and obscurity in England. Even in England, Horace Walpole stayed the pen, to which we are indebted for so many charming letters, long enough to write:

 
"Sarcastic Sawney, swol'n with spite and prate,
On silent Franklin poured his venal hate,
The calm philosopher, without reply,
Withdrew, and gave his country liberty."²⁵
 

Lord John Russell has said that it is "impossible to justify the conduct of Franklin" in the matter of the Hutchinson letters, and from time to time the same idea has been more or less hesitatingly advanced by others. Its justice, we confess, has never been apparent to us. That the letters did pass into the possession of Franklin, under the circumstances stated by him, which certainly do not reflect in any manner upon his honor, can hardly be doubted, unless mere suspicion is to give the lie to a life of uniform integrity. The mode, in which they were transmitted to America, under the restrictions imposed by him, was attended with so little regard to secrecy, so far as his connection with them was concerned, that Dr. Cooper wrote to him, "I can not, however, but admire your honest openness in this affair, and noble negligence of any inconveniences that might arise to yourself in this essential service to our injured country." It was not until the letters had been printed in America, contrary to his engagement with the gentleman, who had handed them to him, that he expressed the wish to Dr. Cooper that the fact of his having sent them should be kept secret, and not then until his inclinations on the subject were pointedly sounded by Dr. Cooper. As soon as they threatened to cause bloodshed, which he had a chance to avert, he made his connection with them public, and assumed the full responsibility for his act. Moreover, he truly said of the letters, when he assumed this responsibility in his communication to the Public Advertiser, "They were not of the nature of private letters between friends. They were written by public officers to persons in public stations, on public affairs, and intended to procure public measures; they were therefore handed to other public persons, who might be influenced by them to produce those measures." Little can be added to this convincing statement. If a political agent of England in Boston had, under the same circumstances, come into possession of letters from English officials in England to Cushing or Dr. Cooper, revealing a deliberate intent on the part of the writers to initiate measures aimed at the just prerogatives of the Crown or Parliament, who would have thought the worse of him if he had transmitted them to King or Parliament? Were letters designed to help along the introduction of a military force into Boston for the purpose of abridging the political liberties of its people entitled to any higher degree of privacy? The accusation that Franklin had violated the confidence of private correspondence came with but poor grace, to say the least, from a Government which made a practice of breaking the seals of letters, and of no letters oftener than of those of Franklin, entrusted to its care. Indeed, not only were the seals of Franklin's letters frequently broken, and the letters read, but, in some instances, the letters were permanently retained by the English Government.

It was the fashion in England for a long time to ascribe the intense resentment felt by Franklin against England, after war broke out between that country and the colonies, to the indignity to which he was subjected by the Privy Council, and his dismission from office. The statement is not supported by the facts. That these circumstances made a deep impression upon his mind is undeniable, but it was really not until he found himself in America in 1775 that he gave himself up to the conclusion that nothing was to be gained by his remaining longer in England. After his removal from office, he still counselled his correspondents in America to adhere to a policy of patience and self-restraint, and in a letter to Thomas Cushing and others, written only a few days after the hearing at the Cockpit, he termed the destruction of the tea at Boston an unwarrantable destruction of private property and "an Act of violent Injustice." To all the efforts of Lord Chatham and his high-minded associates, after this hearing, to bring about a reconciliation between England and America, he lent the full weight of his advice and experience. And, when some of the members of the British Ministry, after it, ashamed to deal with him directly, covertly opened up an interchange of proposals with him through David Barclay, Dr. Fothergill and Lord Howe, in regard to the terms upon which a reconciliation might still be reached, he entered into the negotiations with a spirit singularly free from personal bitterness. There are few things more pathetic in the history of sundered ties than the account that Priestley has given us of the last days that Franklin spent in England in 1775. "A great part of the day above-mentioned that we spent together," Priestley tells us, "he was looking over a number of American newspapers, directing me what to extract from them for the English ones; and in reading them, he was frequently not able to proceed for the tears literally running down his cheeks." These, however, were not womanish tears, but rather such iron tears as ran down Pluto's cheeks. Never was there a time after the heart of America was laid bare to Franklin by the remonstrance against the Stamp Act when he was not unflinchingly prepared, if the painful necessity was forced upon him, to unite with his countrymen in defying the armed power of England. As the fateful issue of the protracted controversy approached nearer and nearer, his language became bolder and bolder.

The eyes of all Christendom [he wrote to James Bowdoin a few days before he left England in 1775], are now upon us, and our honour as a people is become a matter of the utmost consequence to be taken care of. If we tamely give up our rights in this contest, a century to come will not restore us in the opinion of the world; we shall be stamped with the character of dastards, poltrons and fools; and be despised and trampled upon, not by this haughty, insolent nation only, but by all mankind. Present inconveniences are, therefore, to be borne with fortitude, and better times expected.

 
"Informes hyemes reducit
Jupiter; idem
Summovet. Non si male nunc, et olim
Sic erit."²⁶
 

When he reached the shores of his native land, it was to hear that, while he was at sea, the battles of Lexington and Concord had been fought, and that the veins of the two countries, which he had striven so hard to keep closed, were already open and running.²⁷

From that day, Franklin took his place with Washington, the Adamses, Jefferson and Patrick Henry as an inflexible champion of armed resistance to England. If he humored the more timid patriots, who were disposed to make still further appeals to English generosity, it was not because he shared their fallacious hopes but because he did not wish one column of the revolutionary movement to get too far in advance of the other. At this period of his life, his reputation was already very great. The English Tories believed or affected to believe that he was the father of all the mischief responsible for the American crisis. The English Whigs leaned upon his advice and assistance as those of a man who had the welfare of the entire British Empire deeply at heart. How he was regarded at home, is well illustrated in what General Nathanael Greene and Abigail Adams had to say of him when he subsequently visited Washington's head-quarters during the siege of Boston as a member of the Committee appointed by Congress to confer with Washington and delegates from the New England Colonies as to the best plan for raising, maintaining and disciplining the continental army. Recalling an occasion at this time, when Franklin had been brought under his observation, Greene wrote, "During the whole evening, I viewed that very great man with silent admiration." The language of Abigail Adams was not less intense.

I had the pleasure of dining with Dr. Franklin [she said], and of admiring him, whose character from my infancy I had been taught to venerate. I found him social but not talkative; and, when he spoke, something useful dropped from his tongue. He was grave, yet pleasant and affable. You know I make some pretensions to physiognomy, and I thought I could read in his countenance the virtues of his heart, among which, patriotism shone in its full lustre: and with that is blended every virtue of a Christian.

Those were dramatic hours when highly wrought feelings readily ran into hyperbole; nor had any Madame Helvétius come along yet with her "Hélas! Franklin," and disordered skirts.

The reputation, which called forth these tributes, brought Franklin at once to the very forefront of the American Revolution, when he arrived at Philadelphia. The morning after his arrival, he, Thomas Willing and James Wilson, were elected by the Assembly of Pennsylvania as additional deputies to the Continental Congress that was to meet in Philadelphia in a few days, and he was re-elected to Congress at every succeeding election until his departure for France. By the first Congress, he was appointed Chairman of a Committee to devise a postal system for America; and when this Committee recommended the appointment of a Postmaster-General and various postal subordinates, and the establishment of a line of posts from Falmouth (now Portland) in Maine to Savannah, with as many cross posts as the Postmaster-General might think fit, Franklin was elected by Congress the Postmaster-General for the first year. He was also appointed by Congress one of the members of a committee to draw up a declaration, to be published by Washington when he took command of the American army, but the paper drafted by him does not appear to have ever been presented by him to Congress. At any rate, it adds nothing to his literary reputation, and is disfigured by one of the unseasonable facetiæ into which he had a way of wandering at times on grave occasions, after he found his feet again in the easy slippers of his old American environment.

Franklin also made some wise suggestions to Congress with respect to the best method of preventing the depreciation of the paper money issued by it. His first suggestion was that the bills should bear interest. This suggestion was rejected. His next was that, instead of the issuance of any more paper money, what had already been issued should be borrowed back upon interest. His last was that the interest should be paid in hard money, but both of the latter suggestions, though approved by Congress, were approved too late to accomplish their objects. After due tenderness had been exhibited by him to John Dickinson and the other members of Congress, who still clung to the hope of a reconciliation with England, Franklin brought forward a plan for the permanent union and efficient government of the Colonies. Under this plan each colony was to retain its internal independence, but its external relations, especially as respected resistance to the measures of the English Ministry, were committed to an annually-elected Congress. The supreme executive authority of the union was to be vested in a council of twelve, to be elected by the Congress. Ireland, Canada, the West Indies, Bermuda, Nova Scotia and Florida as well as the thirteen colonies within the present limits of the United States, were to be invited to join the confederacy. The union was to last until British oppression ceased, and reparation was made to the Colonies for the injuries inflicted upon them; which, of course, under the circumstances, meant until the Greek Calends. The plan was referred to a committee, but it was never acted upon by the House; being too bold a project to suit the cautious scruples of John Dickinson and the other moderate members of the Continental Congress, who dreaded the effect of a project of union upon the mind of the King, while the petition of Congress to him was pending. Among other important committees upon which Franklin served, when a member of the first Continental Congress, was one to investigate the sources of saltpetre; another to treat with the Indians; another to look after the engraving and printing of the continental paper money; another to consider Lord North's conciliatory resolution; another on salt and lead; and still another to report a plan for regulating and protecting the commerce of the Colonies. At the next session of the Congress, he was equally active. Among the things in which we find him engaged at this session, are the arrangement of a system of posts and expresses for the rapid transmission of dispatches; the establishment of a line of packets between America and Europe; an effort to promote the circulation of the continental money; and the preparation of instructions for the American generals. It was at this session of Congress, too, that Thomas Lynch, of South Carolina, Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, and himself were appointed the committee to visit Washington's camp before Boston. The journey to Boston consumed thirteen days, and the conference, which followed with the American Commander-in-Chief and the delegates from the New England Colonies, resulted in many judicious conclusions with regard to the organization of the American army, and the conduct of the war, and, moreover, was an additional assurance to Washington and New England that, in the military operations before Boston, they could count upon the support of all America. It is obvious enough from writings, found among the papers of Franklin in his handwriting, that months before the Declaration of Independence was signed he was fully ready to renounce all allegiance to Great Britain. When the more conservative members of Congress so far yielded to their fears as to adopt, with the aid of some of the members from New England, a declaration that independence was not their aim, Franklin approved a plan then formed by Samuel Adams of bringing at least all the New England provinces together in a confederacy. "If you succeed," he said to Adams, "I will cast in my lot among you." This was six months before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin also served with John Jay and Thomas Jefferson upon a committee to interview a mysterious foreigner who had repeatedly expressed a desire to make a confidential communication to Congress. The stranger, who possessed a military bearing and spoke with a French accent, assured the committee that his most Christian Majesty, the King of France, had heard with pleasure of the exertions made by the American Colonies in defence of their rights and privileges, wished them success, and would, when necessary, manifest in a more open manner his friendly sentiments towards them. But, as often as he was asked by the committee for his authority for conveying such flattering assurances, he contented himself with drawing his hand across his throat, and saying, "Gentlemen, I shall take care of my head."

When the report of this committee was made to Congress, a motion on the strength of it to send envoys to France was defeated, but later a committee composed of Benjamin Harrison, John Dickinson, Thomas Johnson, John Jay and Franklin was appointed "to correspond secretly with friends in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of the world." The duties of this committee were mainly discharged by Franklin, who had, as we have seen, contracted many durable friendships abroad with men whose aid might mean much to America. To Charles W. F. Dumas, a native of Switzerland, residing at The Hague, he wrote, asking him to sound secretly the ambassadors of the different Powers, other than Great Britain, there for the purpose of ascertaining whether any of their courts were inclined to aid the Colonies or to form alliances with them, to let the mercantile world know that America was prepared to pay very high prices for arms, gunpowder and saltpetre, to send to America two engineer officers qualified to direct siege operations, construct forts and field-works and command artillery, and to receive and forward all letters that passed between the committee and its friends and agents abroad. A draft for one hundred pounds sterling accompanied the letter, together with an assurance from the committee that Dumas' services would be "considered and honorably rewarded by Congress." A similar letter was sent to Arthur Lee in London, accompanied by a remittance of two hundred pounds as his compensation. By the same ship went a letter from Franklin to Don Gabriel de Bourbon of Spain, in which, after thanking the Prince for the copy which he had sent him of the handsome Sallust, printed several years before at the royal press at Madrid, Franklin cleverly leads the attention of the Prince on to the consideration of a rising state which seemed likely soon to act a part of some importance on the stage of human affairs, and to furnish materials for a future Sallust. This letter, in which literary sympathy, the high-bred courtesy of a Spanish hidalgo and political address are mingled with the happiest effect, is a good example of what it meant to America to have such a man as Franklin as her world-interpreter. These letters were all entrusted to the care of a special messenger, Thomas Story. Soon after he left America, M. Penet, a merchant of Nantes, sailed for France with a contract from the committee for furnishing arms, ammunition and clothing to the American army and various letters from Franklin to friends of his in France, including his devoted pupil, Dr. Dubourg. Subsequently, before a reply had been received to any of the letters written by Franklin on its behalf, the committee decided to send an agent to Paris duly empowered to treat with the French King. Silas Deane, a Yale graduate, and a man, who might have left an unblemished reputation as an American patriot behind him, if Arthur Lee had not hounded him out of France and America into England, was selected for this mission. He was selected, Adams is so unkind as to intimate, because he was a Congressman who had lost his seat in Congress. For him Franklin drew up a letter of instruction, fixing the character that he was to assume, that of a merchant, when he reached France, mentioning the persons friendly to America with whom he was to establish a familiar intercourse, and prescribing the manner in which he was to approach M. de Vergennes, the French Minister, for the purpose of soliciting the friendship and assistance of France.

Another important call was made upon the services of Franklin, when with Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, as his colleagues, he was appointed by Congress to visit Canada, and to endeavor to rescue our affairs in that country from the lamentable condition of confusion and distress into which they had fallen. Quebec had been assaulted by Montgomery and Arnold, and had repelled the assault, Montgomery being killed and Arnold wounded in the attempt, and the American army was wasting away in the face of the intense cold, hunger and the small-pox. For the Continental paper money the Canadians had come to entertain a supreme contempt, and their attitude towards the Americans, with whom they had so often been at war in their earlier history, was in every respect that of distrust and aversion. With the committee went John Carroll, the brother of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who had been educated for the priesthood in France, and spoke its language with perfect fluency. It was thought at the time that for the Commission to take with it to Catholic and French Canada such a companion was a masterly stroke of policy. The powers, with which the Commission were clothed, were of a plenary description; to admit Canada into the union of the Colonies, when brought over to the American cause by the appeals of the Commissioners, and to admit it with a republican form of government, to settle disputes between the civil and military authorities in Canada, and to exercise an extraordinary degree of authority in one form or another with respect to the military forces of America there. They were even to take steps to establish a newspaper in Canada to help along the American propaganda.

Of all the episodes in the life of Franklin, this is the one upon which the reader dwells with the least satisfaction. He was entirely too old for the fatigues and hardships of the long April journey of five hundred miles from Philadelphia to New York, and up the Hudson, and over Lakes George and Champlain, and across the country at the head of Lake Champlain to Montreal. The distance between Philadelphia and New York was covered by the party in two days, the journey up the Hudson to Albany was made in a sloop, engaged for them by Lord Stirling, and from Albany to the country seat of General Philip Schuyler at Saratoga, thirty-two miles from Albany, they were conveyed over deep roads in a large country-wagon furnished by the General. Here it was that Franklin, debilitated by the exposure and shocks, to which his frame had been subjected, began to apprehend that he had undertaken a fatigue which, at his time of life, might prove too much for him, and sat down to write to some of his friends by way of farewell. After a few days' rest at Saratoga, the party, preceded by General Schuyler, went forward to Lake George. Though it was the middle of April, the lakes of that country were still covered with ice, and the roads with six inches of snow. After two days and a half of further travel, the southern end of the lake was reached. So encumbered with ice was it that the batteau, equipped with an awning for a cabin, with which General Schuyler had provided the party, took about thirty-six hours to traverse the thirty-six miles between the southern extremity of the lake and its northern. Then came the portage over the neck of land between Lake George and Lake Champlain, and the re-embarkation, after a delay of five days, on the waters of the latter lake. The portage was effected by placing the batteau on wheels and yoking it up to a string of oxen. Three days and a half more brought the party to St. John's, near the head of Lake Champlain, after a strenuous struggle with baffling ice and head winds. Another day's journey in calèches brought them to Montreal where they were received by Arnold and a concourse of officers and citizens, and saluted with military honors.

It is enough to say that the Commissioners found American credit in Canada sunk to the lowest point. Even the express, sent by them from St. John's to tell Arnold of their arrival at that point, was held at a ferry for the ferriage charge until a friend, who was passing, changed an American paper dollar for him into silver; nor would the calèches have come for the Commissioners if this friend had not engaged to pay the hire. Military defeat, violated contracts, discredited paper money and the anticipated coming of a British force overhung like a bank of nimbus cloud the entire horizon of American hopes in Canada. The Commissioners could not borrow money either upon the public or upon their own private credit. In a letter to Congress after they had been in Canada a week, they declared that, if money could not be had to support the American army in Canada with honor, so as to be respected instead of being hated by the people, it was their firm and unanimous opinion that it would be better to immediately withdraw it. With his usual public spirit, Franklin advanced on the credit of Congress to Arnold and other servants of Congress three hundred and fifty-three pounds in gold out of his own pocket – a loan which proved of great service in procuring provisions for the American army at a time of dire necessity. Two days after the letter of the Commissioners to Congress was written, news came to Montreal that a British fleet, full of troops, had reached Quebec, and landed a force, which had routed the small American army there. The decision was at once reached that there was nothing for the American forces to do but to retire to St. John's, and to prepare to resist at that point the advance of the British. This decision was acted upon at once, and the next morning Franklin, attended by John Carroll, set out on his return to Philadelphia; leaving his fellow-commissioners to oversee the retreat to St. John's and the establishment of defensive works at that point. With the assistance of General Schuyler, he and his companion passed safely down the lakes to Albany, and from Albany, after they had again enjoyed the General's hospitality, they were conveyed by his chariot to New York. Here Franklin wrote to his fellow-commissioners that he grew daily more feeble, and thought that he could hardly have got along so far but for Mr. Carroll's friendly assistance and tender care of him. Some symptoms of the gout, he further said, had appeared, which made him believe that his indisposition had been a smothered fit of that disorder, which his constitution wanted strength to form completely. But, with the reappearance of his old malady, came back the wit which, indeed, seems to have languished but little at any time under the rigors of his arduous mission. After congratulating Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll upon the recent capture of a British prize, loaded with seventy-five tons of gunpowder and a thousand carbines with bayonets, he further wrote: "The German Auxiliaries are certainly coming. It is our Business to prevent their Returning."

In the early part of June, Franklin was again in Philadelphia after an absence of about ten weeks. A little later the Declaration of Independence was reported to Congress by the committee, consisting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Robert R. Livingston, Roger Sherman and himself, which had been elected by Congress to draft it, and after a debate, during which John Adams won only less reputation in defending, than Jefferson in writing, it, was adopted and given to the world, whose political opinions it was to influence so profoundly. Owing to a serious attack of the gout, Franklin had no hand in its preparation beyond suggesting a few verbal alterations. His part, however, in the adoption of the Articles of Confederation was more active. To the plan of allowing the thirteen States to vote on all questions by States, and of giving to each State, without reference to population or wealth, a single vote, he was strongly opposed; so much so that he even thought at one time of counselling Pennsylvania not to enter into the union if the plan was adopted. He hotly declared that a confederation upon such iniquitous terms would not last long. But we know from what Jefferson tells us that he also had his humorous fling at it. "At the time of the union of England and Scotland," he said, "the Duke of Argyle was most violently opposed to that measure, and among other things predicted that, as the whale had swallowed Jonah, so Scotland would be swallowed by England." "However," added Franklin, "when Lord Bute came into the government, he soon brought into its administration so many of his countrymen that it was found, in event, that Jonah had swallowed the whale."

About the same time, Franklin, Jefferson and John Adams were appointed a committee by Congress to hit upon a device for the seal of the Confederacy. No more congenial task could possibly have been set for Franklin, whose ingenuity always revelled in conceits of this kind. A device, based upon the drowning of Pharaoh, and accompanied by the motto, "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God," was suggested by him, and was made by the Committee, together with the Eye of Providence in a radiant triangle, the motto, E Pluribus Unum, and other elaborate features a part of its recommendation. As soon as Franklin was safely out of the country in France, Congress, perhaps not forgetting his story of John Thompson, the hatter, rejected as too redundant the entire complicated design except the E Pluribus Unum and the Eye of Providence.

In the summer of 1776, Franklin also endeavored to carry out in another form his idea of preventing the Hessians from returning to their own country by assisting in distributing among them tobacco wrapped in copies of an address offering in the name of Congress a tract of land to every soldier who should desert the British service. Congress could not see why, if these hirelings were to be sold, they should not do the selling themselves instead of their Princes.

It was in the summer of 1776, too, that Franklin, John Adams and Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina, were elected a committee by Congress to call upon Lord Howe at Staten Island for the purpose of ascertaining whether he had any authority to negotiate a treaty of peace, and, if so, of learning what that authority was, and of receiving such propositions as he should think fit to make. Lord Howe was at the time the Admiral of the King's naval forces in America and joint commissioner with his brother General William Howe to grant pardons to such of the American rebels as should be ready to renew their allegiance to the King. On his arrival in July, 1776, at Sandy Hook, he had taken steps to distribute throughout the Colonies a declaration explaining the nature of the commission committed to his brother and himself. At the same time, he had written a letter to Franklin indicating his earnest desire to be instrumental in restoring peace between England and America. The same carrier delivered a copy of the declaration to Congress and the letter to Franklin. Both the declaration and the letter were given rude rebuffs. Congress ordered the declaration to be inserted in the newspapers so that, as it said, the few, who still remained suspended by a hope, founded either in the justice or moderation of their late King, might now at length be convinced that the valor alone of their country was to save its liberties. Franklin, after obtaining the permission of Congress, sent a reply to Lord Howe's letter by the hand of Colonel Palfrey of the American army. It is one of the best letters that he ever wrote, and told Lord Howe such blunt truths, and gave him such candid advice that, after reading it with surprise repeatedly flitting over his face, Lord Howe remarked to Colonel Palfrey with a gentleness as honorable to his amiable character as to that of Franklin that his old friend had expressed himself very warmly. Then subsequently had followed the disaster on Long Island, and the arrival of General Sullivan on parole at Philadelphia with a verbal message from Lord Howe to Congress, stating that he would like to confer with some of its members as private individuals though he could not yet treat with Congress itself. The result was the appointment of the committee to call upon him at Staten Island. The conference between the committee and Lord Howe took place at a house on that island and came to nothing. The committee had no authority to do anything except to receive proposals from Lord Howe, who really had no seasonable proposition to make, and Lord Howe had no authority to do anything except to grant pardons to persons who were not conscious of having committed any offence. When he stated in polite terms that he could not confer with the members of the committee as a committee of Congress but only as gentlemen of great ability and influence in the colonies, Adams declared in his emphatic way that he was willing to consider himself for a few moments in any character which would be agreeable to his Lordship except that of a British subject. "Mr. Adams," gravely observed Lord Howe, "is a decided character." All three of the Commissioners one by one made it clear to Lord Howe that the colonies were irrevocably committed to Independence. There was, therefore, nothing for him to do except to say in the end, "I am sorry, gentlemen, that you have had the trouble of coming so far to so little purpose." Minutes of this interesting conference were jotted down by Henry Strachey, Lord Howe's Secretary, and he has recorded two highly characteristic utterances of Franklin on the occasion. Such, Lord Howe declared, were his feelings towards America, on account of the honor conferred upon his family, by its recognition of the services rendered to it by his eldest brother (Viscount Howe), that, if America should fall, he would feel and lament it like the loss of a brother. Franklin's answer to this generous outburst is thus recorded by Strachey. "Dr. Franklin (with an easy air, a collected countenance, a bow, a smile, and all that naïveté which sometimes appeared in his conversation and often in his writings), My Lord, we will use our utmost endeavors to save your Lordship that mortification." Later, when Lord Howe assured Franklin that it was the commerce, the strength, the men of America rather than her money that Great Britain wanted, Franklin, ever alive to the military advantage possessed by the Colonies in the amazing capacity for reproduction of their people, replied, "Ay, My Lord, we have in America a pretty considerable manufactory of men." Strachey supposed that he meant to convey by this remark the impression that the American army was a large one, but Lord Howe knew Franklin's turn of mind better, and penciled on the margin of Strachey's manuscript, "No; their increasing population."

Lord Howe seems to have borne himself on this occasion in every respect like a gallant gentleman. When the three members of Congress reached the shore opposite to Staten Island, after the journey from Philadelphia, which Adams had made on horseback, and Franklin and Rutledge in chairs, they found a barge from him awaiting them with an officer in it as a hostage for their safe return from the island. Adams suggested that the hostage should be dispensed with, and his colleagues, he tells us in his grandiose way, "exulted in the proposition and agreed to it instantly." The fact was communicated to the officer, who bowed his assent, and re-embarked with the Americans. When Lord Howe saw the barge approaching the beach of the island, he walked down to meet it, and the Hessian regiment, which attended him, was drawn up in two lines facing each other. Upon seeing that the officer, whom he had sent over to the Jersey shore, had returned, Lord Howe exclaimed, "Gentlemen, you make me a very high compliment, and you may depend upon it I will consider it as the most sacred of things." When the party landed, he shook hands very cordially with Franklin, and, after being introduced to Adams and Rutledge, conducted the three between the two files of Hessians to the house where the conference was to take place; all four chatting pleasantly together as they walked along. Adams, who was far too intense an American not to hate savagely a Hessian, fresh from the cattle-pen of his Prince, described these soldiers as "looking fierce as ten Furies, and making all the grimaces, and gestures, and motions of their muskets with bayonets fixed, which, I suppose, military etiquette requires, but which we neither understood nor regarded." The house, which was to be the scene of the conference, was dilapidated and dirty from military use, but the apartment, into which the Americans were ushered, had been hung with moss and branches by Lord Howe with such refinement of taste that Adams subsequently pronounced it "not only wholesome, but romantically elegant." After reaching it, the whole party, including the colonel of the Hessian regiment, sat down to a collation "of good claret, good bread, cold ham, tongues, and mutton." When the repast was over, the colonel withdrew, the table was cleared and the fruitless conference began.

Nor was the activity of Franklin after his return from England limited to his duties as a member of Congress. If he fell asleep at times, when questions were under discussion by that body, it might well have been because he had no other time to sleep. Shortly after his return, he was elected Chairman of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, which was charged with the duty of arming and defending the Province, and of issuing bills of credit to defray the expense. In this office, he proved quite as fertile in expedients as he had done at the time of the Association years before. In the course of a year, the Delaware was effectively protected by forts and batteries and by a marine chevaux-de-frise, planned by Franklin himself; so much so that, when a British fleet attempted several years later to ascend the river, its progress was blocked for two months. Other features of the defensive plans adopted by the committee were row-galleys, fully armed and manned, of which Josiah Quincy spoke in a letter to Washington as "Dr. Franklin's row-galleys."

In the morning at six [Franklin wrote to Priestley], I am at the Committee of Safety, appointed by the Assembly to put the Province in a state of defence; which committee holds till near nine, when I am at the Congress, and that sits till after four in the afternoon. Both these bodies proceed with the greatest unanimity, and their meetings are well attended. It will scarce be credited in Britain, that men can be as diligent with us from zeal for the public good, as with you for thousands per annum. Such is the difference between uncorrupted new states, and corrupted old ones.

To the period when the Committee of Safety was holding its sessions belongs a story which William Temple Franklin tells us of his grandfather. Some of the more intolerant Pennsylvanians asked the Committee to call upon the Episcopal clergy to refrain from prayers for the King.

The measure [said Franklin, who always preserved his sense of proportion] is quite unnecessary; for the Episcopal clergy, to my certain knowledge, have been constantly praying, these twenty years, that "God would give to the king and his council wisdom"; and we all know that not the least notice has ever been taken of that prayer.

While a member of Congress and the Committee of Safety, Franklin was also elected a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, but, as the members of that body were still required before taking their seats to pledge their allegiance to the King, he was unwilling to actually take his seat. The Assembly was under the dominion of John Dickinson, the leader of the Proprietary Party, and was very reluctant to break finally with the Crown. Nevertheless, it re-elected Franklin to Congress, though he alone of the nine delegates, elected from Pennsylvania to that body, was unhesitatingly in favor of independence. This position of isolation he was not condemned to occupy long. At a subsequent election, the party in Pennsylvania, which shared Franklin's views, obtained the upper hand, followed the lead of Congress in repudiating all authority derived from the King and declared the Proprietary Government dissolved. For a time, there was no government of any kind in Pennsylvania for even the most elementary needs of society. The result, however, was an impressive illustration of the fact that all government is by no means on paper, for, at a later period of his life, Franklin told Sir Samuel Romilly that, while this anarchical condition lasted, order was perfectly preserved in every part of Pennsylvania, and that no man, who should have attempted to take advantage of the situation, for the purpose of evading the payment of a debt, could have endured the contempt with which he would have been visited.

The first step towards the restoration of civil government was taken by the Committee of Safety. It advised the people of Pennsylvania to elect delegates to a conference; they responded by doing so, and the delegates met at Philadelphia, sat five days, renounced allegiance to the King, took an oath of obedience to Congress and issued a call to the people to elect delegates to meet in convention and to form a constitution. At the election, which ensued, Franklin was one of the eight delegates elected from Philadelphia, and, when the convention met, he was unanimously chosen its President. On account of his duties as a member of Congress, his attendance upon the sessions of the convention was irregular, but it was regular enough to exert a marked influence over the proceedings of the body. In one respect, that is in the adoption of a single legislative chamber, the constitution framed by the convention bore the unmistakable impress of his peculiar political ideas.²⁸

A few weeks after the Declaration of Independence was adopted, Franklin received a long letter from Dubourg addressed to "My Dear Master," which justified at least the inference that Vergennes leaned towards the cause of the Colonies. Encouraged by this letter, Congress elected three envoys to represent America in France: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Silas Deane. Deane was already in France. Jefferson was compelled by the ill health of his wife to decline, and Arthur Lee, then in London, was elected in his stead.

After a voyage of thirty days in the Reprisal, commanded by Captain Wickes, a small war-vessel in the service of Congress, Franklin reached Quiberon Bay. Thence he proceeded by land to Nantes and from Nantes to Paris. After his arrival at Paris, he lodged at the Hôtel d'Hambourg, in the Rue de l'Université, until he found a home in the house at Passy placed at his disposal by M. Donatien LeRay de Chaumont. For a time, he courted retirement, but, as France was drawn more and more closely into concert with the American rebels, his activity became more and more open, until the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga induced that country to abandon the policy of connivance and secret assistance, which it had pursued behind the screen, supplied by the commercial adventures of Caron de Beaumarchais, even before Franklin landed in Europe, and to enter into the treaty of alliance with the United States which made Adams, Lee and himself our fully acknowledged representatives at the French Court. The circumstances, under which the news of Burgoyne's capitulation was communicated to Franklin and his colleagues, constitute one of the most thrilling moments in history. The messenger, who conveyed it, was Jonathan Loring Austin, a young New Englander, and the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of War; and he was sent in a swift vessel for the very purpose by the State of Massachusetts. "Whatever in thy wise providence thou seest best to do with the young man, we beseech thee most fervently, at all events, to preserve the packet," is the tactless petition that Dr. Cooper is said to have addressed to Heaven on the Sunday before Austin sailed. The rumor of his coming preceded his arrival at Passy, and, when his chaise was heard in the court of the Hôtel de Chaumont, Deane, Arthur and William Lee, Ralph Izard, Dr. Bancroft, Beaumarchais and Franklin went out to meet him. "Sir," said Franklin, "is Philadelphia taken?" "Yes, sir," replied Austin. At this Franklin clasped his hands and turned as if to go back into the house. "But, sir," said Austin, "I have greater news than that. General Burgoyne and his whole army are prisoners of war!" The night of American adversity was now for the first time lit up by a real augury of dawn, and the treaties of amity and commerce and alliance between France and the United States, in the existing state of French feeling, followed almost as a matter of course.

When, weak from his long voyage, Franklin started out on the journey from the seashore to Paris, which led him at one point through the forest haunts of a bloodthirsty gang of robbers, he was seventy years of age. "Yet," he could truly declare some ten years later to George Whatley, "had I gone at seventy, it would have cut off twelve of the most active years of my life, employed too in matters of the greatest importance." These were indeed years of precious service to his country and of a fame for himself as resplendent as any in modern history which lacks the lustre of military glory. What Washington was to America in the field, Franklin was to her in the foreign relations upon which it may well be doubted whether the success of her arms did not at times depend. To obtain material aid in the form of money and munitions of war, soldiers and fleets from the one powerful country in Europe, which manifested a disposition to side actively with America, was the cardinal object of American policy after the outbreak of the Revolution, and rarely has any man ever been more richly qualified for the accomplishment of any object than was Franklin for the accomplishment of this. In the first place, his liberal and sympathetic nature, with its unrivalled capacity for assimilating foreign usages and habits of thought and feeling, slid without the slightest friction into every recess of its French environment. This was a fact of supreme importance in the case of a people so distinctive in point of race and temperament, and so irredeemably wedded to their own national prepossessions and prejudices as the French. Doubtless, Franklin was too wise a man not to have courted French favor, in a social sense, to some extent as a matter of political policy. Then, too, there is every reason to know that he was sincerely grateful to France for the benefits which she showered upon his country and himself. But it was mainly the spell of La Belle France herself, with her cordial appeal to his delight in existence, which finally produced the state of mutual affection that enabled him to say with truth that he loved the French and that they loved him. What this meant to our cause we can easily divine when we remember how wholly some of the colleagues of Franklin failed to recommend themselves to the good will of the people, whose good will it was of the utmost concern to America that they should conciliate, or to abstain from untimely dissensions. The exact reverse of what Franklin said of himself might be said of them. They disliked the French People, and the French People disliked them.²⁹ More than once it required all the management of Franklin to placate feelings that they had aroused in Vergennes, the French Minister, by lack of tact or good judgment. On one occasion, after being lectured by Adams, on the subject of the American paper money, held by citizens of France, Vergennes wrote to Franklin that nothing could be less analogous than the language of Adams to the alliance subsisting between his Majesty and the United States. In the same letter, he asked Franklin to lay the whole correspondence between Adams and himself before Congress, adding that his Majesty flattered himself that that Assembly, inspired with principles different from those which Mr. Adams had discovered, would convince his Majesty that they knew how to prize those marks of favor which the King had constantly shown to the United States. No choice was left to Franklin except to comply with the request and to do what he could to satisfy Vergennes that the sentiments of Congress and of Americans generally were very different from those of Adams. But unfortunately, before the correspondence between Adams and Vergennes could reach Congress, Adams had again, by his officious conduct in another particular, elicited a sharp rebuke from Vergennes. This correspondence, too, Vergennes requested Franklin to lay before Congress, which Franklin did with comments not more severe than the occasion called for, but which the pride of Adams, already deeply infected with the jealousy of Franklin, which he shared with Arthur Lee, so far as his manlier and wholesomer nature allowed, never fully forgave. "He," Vergennes said of Adams, in a letter to La Luzerne, "possesses a rigidity, a pedantry, an arrogance and a vanity which render him unfit to treat political questions."

After peace was restored between Great Britain and the United States, the strictures of Adams upon Vergennes and France became so imprudent and outspoken that Franklin wrote to Robert Morris:

I hope the ravings of a certain mischievous madman here against France and its ministers, which I hear of every day, will not be regarded in America, so as to diminish in the least the happy union that has hitherto subsisted between the two nations, and which is indeed the solid foundation of our present importance in Europe.

Four months later, Franklin, to use his own words, hazarded a mortal enmity by making this communication to Robert R. Livingston:

I ought not, however, to conceal from you, that one of my Colleagues is of a very different Opinion from me in these Matters. He thinks the French Minister one of the greatest Enemies of our Country, that he would have straitned our Boundaries, to prevent the Growth of our People; contracted our Fishery, to obstruct the Increase of our Seamen; and retained the Royalists among us, to keep us divided; that he privately opposes all our Negociations with foreign Courts, and afforded us, during the War, the Assistance we receiv'd, only to keep it alive, that we might be so much the more weaken'd by it; that to think of Gratitude to France is the greatest of Follies, and that to be influenc'd by it would ruin us. He makes no Secret of his having these Opinions, expresses them publicly, sometimes in presence of English Ministers, and speaks of hundreds of Instances which he could produce in Proof of them.

All this Franklin believed to be

as imaginary as I know his Fancies to be, that Count de V. and myself are continually plotting against him, and employing the News-Writers of Europe to depreciate his Character, &c. But as Shakespear says, "Trifles light as Air, &c." I am persuaded, however, that he means well for his Country, is always an honest Man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.

A clever and just flash of characterization but for the usual inability of Franklin to refer abnormal conduct to anything short of dementia.³⁰ In the latter part of the same year, Franklin again had occasion to write to Robert Morris,

My Apprehension that the Union between France and our States might be diminished by Accounts from hence, was occasioned by the extravagant and violent Language held here by a Public Person, in public Company, which had that Tendency; and it was natural for me to think his Letters might hold the same Language, in which I was right; for I have since had Letters from Boston informing me of it. Luckily here, and I hope there, it is imputed to the true Cause, a Disorder in the Brain, which, tho' not constant, has its Fits too frequent.

Apart from more general considerations, as Franklin was, at the very time that Adams was holding this kind of discourse, soliciting more money from Vergennes for the United States, it was natural enough that he should fear the tendency of such ungrateful and provoking language to chill the liberality of the French Minister. It is agreeable, however, to recollect that in the succeeding year the able, upright and patriotic statesman, who had to such a conspicuous degree the defects of his virtues, was so far restored to reason, that Franklin could write to William Temple Franklin that he had walked to Auteuil on Saturday to dine with Mr. A. &c., with whom he went on comfortably.

As to how far Arthur Lee succeeded in ingratiating himself with Vergennes, the correspondence of that Minister with the French Minister in America enables us to judge without difficulty. In one letter, he wrote that he had too good an opinion of the intelligence and wisdom of the members of Congress and of all true patriots to suppose that they would allow themselves to be led astray by the representations of a man (Lee) whose character they ought to know.

As to Dr. Franklin [he continued], his conduct leaves nothing for Congress to desire. It is as zealous and patriotic, as it is wise and circumspect; and you may affirm with assurance, on all occasions where you think proper, that the method he pursues is much more efficacious than it would be if he were to assume a tone of importunity in multiplying his demands, and above all in supporting them by menaces, to which we should neither give credence nor value, and which would only tend to render him personally disagreeable.

The writer might as well have added "as is Arthur Lee." In another letter, Vergennes stated that the four millions more that France had decided to grant Dr. Franklin would convince Congress that they had "no occasion to employ the false policy of Mr. Izard and Mr. Lee to procure succors."³¹

For very different reasons, even Jay, with his admirable character, did not achieve any success in dealing with the French people beyond the kind of success which the French themselves damn with the phrase succès d'estime. The complaint that M. Grand made of him, when he was in Spain, "that he always appeared very much buttoned up," was hardly less applicable to him when he was transferred to Paris as one of our Peace Commissioners. "Mr. Jay," diarizes Adams, "likes Frenchmen as little as Mr. Lee and Mr. Izard did. He says they are not a moral people; they know not what it is; he don't like any Frenchman; the Marquis de Lafayette is clever, but he is a Frenchman."

John Laurens, too, when he came over to Paris to solicit money for the American army, beau sabreur as he was, handled the French as awkwardly as the rest. "He was indefatigable, while he staid," Franklin wrote to William Carmichael, "and took true Pains, but he brusqu'd the Ministers too much, and I found after he was gone that he had thereby given more Offence than I could have imagin'd." The truth is that, until the watchful detachment of Adams and Jay from their foreign environment became of some service to the United States in helping to assure to them the full fruits of their victory in the final shuffle of diplomacy over the Treaty of Peace, Franklin after the return of Silas Deane to America was the only one of our diplomatic representatives who can be said to have earned his salt in France.³² The rest, so far from promoting the objects of the French mission, did much to jeopard its success. The United States could well have afforded to keep them all at home and to pay them double the amount of the salaries which were wasted upon them abroad. They either could not rise above the limitations and prejudices of foreigners in dealing with a people peculiarly tenacious of their own national views and characteristics, or were too lacking in diplomatic instinct and savoir faire to hold their own grating idiosyncracies of temper and disposition in check, when it was of the highest importance to their country that they should do so; or they were so restive under the pre-eminence of Franklin as to be unable to control the envy and ill-feeling, which harassed his peace, and tended to discredit the cause, in which they were engaged. Congress did not do many wise things in regard to our interests in France during the Revolution, but undoubtedly it did one, when it finally brought the discord of its envoys in that country to an end by declining to accept the resignation of Franklin and appointing him the sole Ambassador of the United States at Paris.³³ Under no circumstances, does his success in obtaining succor for America from France stand out so clearly as when contrasted with the futile missions of Arthur Lee, William Lee, Ralph Izard, Francis Dana and John Jay to other courts than that of France. So far from obtaining any material aid for the United States from the countries, to which they were accredited, and should never have been sent,³⁴ they had to fall back upon Franklin himself for their own subsistence; though it is only fair to them to say that some of them were allowed by these countries too little freedom of approach to make an impression of any kind upon them, good or otherwise. For the bad feeling entertained by Adams, Lee and Izard towards Franklin there is no valid reason for holding Franklin responsible. It is plain that he did not lack the inclination to be on friendly terms with Adams; and there is no evidence that he in any way provoked the malice which he suffered at the hands of Arthur Lee, or the passionate animosity which he excited in Ralph Izard. As late as 1780, after the return of Adams to Europe as a peace commissioner, Franklin wrote to William Carmichael that Adams and himself lived on good terms with each other, though the former, he added, had never communicated anything of his business to him, and he had made no inquiries of him. If Franklin did not live on good terms with Arthur Lee, it was because no one, unless it were Adams, or Ralph Izard, when drawn to Lee by common jealousy of Franklin, could live on good terms with a man whose character was so hopelessly soured and perverted by suspicion and spleen. It was doubtless with entire truth that Franklin in a letter to William Carmichael, in which he termed Lee the most malicious enemy that he ever had, declared that there was not the smallest cause for his enmity. It had been inspired in England, as it had been revived in France, simply by the brooding desire of Lee to displace Franklin. In 1771, he made it plain in a letter from England to Samuel Adams that Franklin, in his opinion, was not too good to be the instrument of Lord Hillsborough's treachery in pretending that all designs against the charter of Massachusetts had been laid aside.

The possession of a profitable office at will, the having a son in a high post at pleasure, the grand purpose of his residence here being to effect a change in the government of Pennsylvania, for which administration must be cultivated and courted [Lee wrote], are circumstances which, joined with the temporizing conduct he has always held in American affairs, preclude every rational hope that, in an open contest between an oppressive administration and a free people, Dr. Franklin can be a faithful advocate for the latter.

In another letter he intimated a suspicion that Dr. Franklin had been "bribed to betray his trust." The motive for such communications is made clear enough by still another letter that he sent over to Boston stating that, while Dr. Franklin frequently assured him that he would sail for Philadelphia in a few weeks, he believed he would not quit them till he was gathered to his fathers.³⁵ The insidious calumnies that Lee sowed in Massachusetts, when he was coveting Franklin's agency for that colony, were only too effective for a time in creating even in the minds of such men as Samuel Adams, John Adams, and Josiah Quincy an impression unfavorable to Franklin's fidelity to the American cause. How little based on any real misgivings as to the character of the man, whose place he craved, were the innuendoes and accusations of Lee, may be inferred from his statement at the time of the Privy Council outrage that Franklin bore the assaults of Wedderburn "with a firmness and equanimity which conscious integrity can inspire." In a letter to Lord Shelburne in 1776, he even spoke of Franklin as "our Pater Patriæ."

In France, the same sense of having a young man's revenue withered out by tedious expectation led to similar misrepresentations and intrigue. This time, the object was to bring about the transfer of Franklin from France, where the jealousy of Lee was incessantly inflamed by his great reputation and influence, to some other post, and the appointment of Lee himself as his successor. If the change had not been such as to foreshadow utter ruin to American interests in France, the letters that Arthur Lee wrote to his brother Richard Henry Lee in the prosecution of these aims would be little less than ludicrous. "My idea of adapting characters and places is this," he said in one letter, "Dr. F. to Vienna, as the first, most respectable, and quiet; Mr. Deane to Holland… France remains the centre of political activity, and here, therefore, I should choose to be employed." There was but one way, he said in another letter to his brother, of bringing to an end the neglect, dissipation, and private schemes, which he saw in every department of the American Mission at Paris, and that was the plan he had before suggested of appointing the Dr. honoris causa to Vienna, Mr. Deane to Holland, and Mr. Jennings to Madrid, and of leaving him (Lee) at Paris. To Samuel Adams he wrote that he had been at the several courts of Spain, Vienna and Berlin, and found that of France to be the great wheel that moved them all. He would, therefore, be much obliged to Adams for remembering that he should prefer being at the court of France.

Lee was a man of considerable ability, though his incurable defects of disposition and temper almost wholly deprived him of the profitable use of it, and he was from first to last, when in Europe, loyal to the American cause. But, if there ever was a person born under the malignant sign, Scorpio, it was he. He was

 
"More peevish, cross and splenetic
Than dog distract or monkey sick."
 

In the course of his suspicious, jealous and quarrelsome life he appears to have inflicted a venomous sting upon almost every human being that ever crossed the path of his inordinate and intriguing ambition. In the monopoly of intelligence and public virtue that he arrogated to himself he was not unlike the French woman who was credited by Franklin with the assertion that she met with nobody but herself that was always in the right. With a few exceptions, no prominent American in France, when he was in that country, escaped his insidious defamation. Silas Deane was the accomplice of Beaumarchais in his effort to make the United States pay for free gifts of the French King. Franklin was a cunning rogue ever on the watch to line the pockets of his grandnephew, Jonathan Williams; indeed Lee did not scruple to term him "the father of corruption"; every day gave him fresh reasons for suspecting William Carmichael; John Paul Jones was merely the captain of "a cruising job of Chaumont and Dr. Franklin." And so on with the other contemporaries, whose character he did his best to tarnish with the breath of calumny, ever actuated as he was by the sinister, backward-spelling disposition which

 
"Never gives to truth and virtue that
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth."
 

What both Lee and Adams could not forgive in Franklin was the fact that, though there were three American envoys at Paris, the French Ministry and People would have it that there was only one, "le digne Franklin,"³⁶ "le plus grand philosophe du siècle," "l'honneur de l'Amérique, et de l'humanité." The wounded sense of self-importance, awakened by this fact, assumed in Adams, except in his more extravagant moments, no worse form than that of quickened self-assertion, or the charge that Franklin was grown too inert, from years and physical infirmities, to conduct the routine business of the mission with the proper degree of order and system, or was too susceptible to social and academic flattery to keep a vigilant eye upon the more selfish side of French policy. But in the case of Lee, lacerated vanity not only led him along finally to the conclusion that Deane and Franklin were both rascals, but early convinced him that all their transactions, even the simplest, where he was concerned, were shaped by a desire to slight or affront him, or to deprive him of his just privileges and standing as one of the Commissioners. He had hardly been in France a year before his perverse pen was lecturing and scolding Franklin as if he were one of the most arbitrary and inconsiderate of men instead of one of the most reasonable and considerate. At first, Franklin did not reply to such letters, but his failure to reply simply supplied Lee with another excuse for scolding. At last, Lee, after taxing him with tardiness in settling the accounts of the Commissioners, and with keeping him in the dark about the mission on which M. Gérard had been sent to America, expressed the hope that he would not treat this letter from him as he had many others with the indignity of not answering it.

It is true [said Franklin], that I have omitted answering some of your Letters, particularly your angry ones, in which you, with very magisterial Airs, school'd and documented me, as if I had been one of your Domestics. I saw in the strongest Light the Importance of our living in decent Civility towards each other, while our great Affairs were depending here. I saw your jealous, suspicious, malignant and quarrelsome Temper, which was daily manifesting itself against Mr. Deane, and almost every other Person you had any Concern with: I therefore pass'd your Affronts in Silence; did not answer but burnt your angry Letters, and received you when I next saw you with the same Civility as if you had never wrote them.

These words are taken from a letter in which Franklin replied in detail to all the grievances vented in Lee's letter. On the day before, he had written a curter reply which gives us a good idea of what his anger was at flood-tide.

It is true [this reply began], I have omitted answering some of your Letters. I do not like to answer angry Letters. I hate Disputes. I am old, can not have long to live, have much to do and no time for Altercation. If I have often receiv'd and borne your Magisterial Snubbings and Rebukes without Reply, ascribe it to the right Causes, my Concern for the Honour & Success of our Mission, which would be hurt by our Quarrelling, my Love of Peace, my Respect for your good Qualities, and my Pity of your Sick Mind, which is forever tormenting itself, with its Jealousies, Suspicions & Fancies that others mean you ill, wrong you, or fail in Respect for you. If you do not cure yourself of this Temper it will end in Insanity, of which it is the Symptomatick Forerunner, as I have seen in several Instances. God preserve you from so terrible an Evil: and for his sake pray suffer me to live in quiet.

The petition was not heeded. Cut off by his impracticable temper and the dis-esteem of the French Ministry from any participation in the more important transactions of the Mission, the industrious malice of Lee found employment in accusations of peculation against the other agents of the United States in France and in petty refinements over the proper methods of keeping the accounts and papers of the Commissioners. Everything that he touched threw out thorns and exuded acrid juices. Franklin might well have said of him what he said of his brother, William Lee, that he was not only a disputatious but a very artful man. He pursued Deane with such plausible misrepresentations, when the latter sought justice at the hands of Congress, that the unhappy man was finally hurried, to use Franklin's phrase, into joining his friend, Arnold. How he harried Jonathan Williams, we have already seen. So well understood was his litigious, malevolent temper that, when the State of Virginia desired to purchase arms and military stores in France, several merchants refused to have any dealings with him, and one firm dealt with him only to be involved in the usual web of fine-spun suspicion and controversy.

I hope, however [wrote Franklin to Patrick Henry, at the time Governor of Virginia, who had solicited Franklin's assistance in the matter], that you will at length be provided with what you want, which I think you might have been long since, if the Affair had not been in Hands, which Men of Honour and Candour here are generally averse to dealing with, as not caring to hazard Quarrels and Abuses in the settlement of their Accounts.

He dared not meddle, he said, with the dispute in which Lee was engaged, "being charg'd by the Congress to endeavour at maintaining a good Understanding with their other Servants," which was, "indeed, a hard task with some of them," he declared.

As his acquaintance with Lee and his brother, William Lee, extended, Franklin became more and more wary in dealing with them. This was illustrated in his attitude towards the papers of Thomas Morris, the brother of Robert Morris, and the Commercial Agent of the United States at Nantes. When this gentleman, who, according to one of his contemporaries, "turned out the greatest drunkard the world ever produced," had duly paid the forfeit of his bibulous life, William Lee, with the aid of an order from the French Ministry, secured possession of all his papers, public and private, and, when on the eve of setting out for Germany, placed the trunk containing them sealed in the custody of Franklin. The key, Franklin told him, he would rather have in the keeping of Arthur Lee. A correspondence followed between Franklin and John Ross, who had obtained an order from Congress for the delivery of the trunk to him. If it had been Pandora's box, Franklin could not have undertaken the delivery of the papers in a more gingerly manner.

I am glad [he wrote to Ross], an Order is come for delivering them to you. But as the Dispute about them may hereafter be continued, and Papers suspected to be embezzled by somebody; and as I have sign'd a terrible long Receipt for the Trunk, of which I have no copy, and only remember that it appear'd to be constructed with all the Circumspection of the Writers Motto, Non incautus futuri and that it fill'd a Half Sheet so full there was scarce Room for the Names of the four Evidences he requir'd to witness it; I beg you will not expect me to send it to you at Nantes but appoint who you please to receive it for you here. For I think I must deliver it before Witnesses, who may certify the State of the Seals; nothing being more likely than that Seals on a Trunk may rub off in the Carriage on so long a Journey; and then I should be expos'd to the Artful Suggestions of some who do not love me, & whom I conceive to be of very malignant Dispositions.

Afterwards, when Arthur Lee informed Franklin that, unless he was furnished with money by him, he would have to give up the thought of proceeding to Spain, Franklin replied dryly: "As I can not furnish the Expence, and there is not, in my Opinion, any Likelihood at Present of your being received at that Court, I think your Resolution of returning forthwith to America is both wise and honest." And, even when he supposed that he was finally rid of the gad-fly, which had annoyed him so long, and that Lee was off for America, with his poisoned ink-well and busy pen, Franklin took pains that he should not have everything his own way, though a thousand leagues distant. "There are some Americans returning hence," he wrote to Samuel Cooper, "with whom our people should be upon their guard, as carrying with them a spirit of enmity to this country. Not being liked here themselves, they dislike the people; for the same reason, indeed, they ought to dislike all that know them."

Three days later, he wrote to Joseph Reed, of Pennsylvania, a letter in which, after denying a false statement made about the writer by Lee, he said, "He proposes, I understand, to settle in your Government. I caution you to beware of him; for, in sowing Suspicions and Jealousies, in creating Misunderstandings and Quarrels among friends, in Malice, Subtilty, and indefatigable industry, he has I think no equal." A few days later, he wrote to William Carmichael, "Messrs. Lee and Izard are gone to L'Orient, in order to embark in the Alliance together, but they did not travel together from hence. No soul regrets their departure. They separately came to take leave of me, very respectfully offering their services to carry any dispatches, etc."

But gone the gad-fly was not yet. After Lee reached L'Orient, the officers and men of the Alliance refused to weigh anchor until certain claims of theirs to wages and prize money were complied with, and, while John Paul Jones, their captain, was away at Paris, engaged in an effort to hasten the payment of the prize-money, Captain Peter Landais, acting under the advice of Arthur Lee and Commodore Gillon, took possession of the ship and sailed off for America. As soon as the news of the mutiny came to Franklin, he suspected that Arthur Lee was at the bottom of it.

I have no doubt [he wrote to Samuel Wharton, in regard to Landais] that your suspicion of his Adviser is well founded. That Genius must either find or make a Quarrel wherever he is. The only excuse for him that his Conduct will admit of, is his being at times out of his Senses. This I always allow, and am persuaded that if some of the many Enemies he provokes do not kill him sooner he will die in a madhouse.

The sequel of this high-handed proceeding afforded Franklin another opportunity to question Lee's mental soundness. The Alliance was not long out before Landais exhibited such flightiness that its passengers deposed him, and placed the ship in command of its first lieutenant. Commenting on the incident, Franklin wrote to Samuel Cooper:

Dr. Lee's accusation of Capt. Landais for Insanity was probably well founded; as in my Opinion would have been the same Accusation, if it had been brought by Landais against Lee; For tho' neither of them are permanently mad, they are both so at times; and the Insanity of the Latter is the most Mischievous.

How truly high-handed the rape of the Alliance was, will be realized, when the reader is told that at the time Landais had been deprived of the captaincy of the Alliance, upon the charge of gross misconduct in the glorious engagement between the Serapis and the Bon Homme Richard, and was looking forward to a court-martial in America upon specifications involving a capital offence; that he had abandoned the ship, and that Jones, who had won imperishable honor and renown in the conflict between the Serapis and the Bon Homme Richard, had been placed in command of her by Franklin, and had been in command of her for eight months; and that Franklin had in a letter to Landais sternly refused to restore her to him.

Of William Lee, Franklin had, as we have just seen, very much the same opinion that he had of Arthur Lee. When he talked to Franklin of nominating Jonathan Williams, his grandnephew, and Mr. Lloyd in the place of Thomas Morris and himself as the Commercial Agents of the United States at Nantes, Franklin wrote to Williams: "I question whether there be Flesh enough upon the Bone for two to pick. I doubt its being worth your while to accept of it. I did not thank him for mentioning you because I do not wish to be much oblig'd to him and less to be a little oblig'd."

Not long after this, Franklin had less cause to think well of William Lee than ever. Upon representations being made by Ralph Izard and him to the three Commissioners, Arthur Lee, Deane and Franklin, that, though they had been appointed Ministers to the courts of Berlin, Vienna and Florence by Congress, no provision for their expenses had reached them, the three Commissioners asked what sums they would require. William Lee replied that he could not exactly compute in advance what he would need, but that, if he was empowered to draw upon the banker of the Commissioners, he would certainly only draw from time to time for such sums as were absolutely necessary; and that it was therefore a matter of little importance at what amount the credit was fixed. "It would however look handsome & confidential," he said, "if the sum were two Thousand Louis." Thereupon, Franklin tells us, the Commissioners "did frankly but unwarily give the Orders." Soon afterwards, Deane and Franklin were informed that William Lee and Izard had gone directly to the banker of the Commissioners, and drawn out the whole amount of the credit, and had deposited it to their own account exclusively. After that, even an order from Congress, empowering William Lee and Izard to draw upon the Commissioners for their expenses at foreign courts, was unavailing to open Franklin's purse strings. Doubtless, he wrote with calm irony to the Committee on Foreign Affairs at home, Congress, when it passed its resolution, intended to supply the Commissioners with funds for meeting the drafts of William Lee and Izard. And, to make things still worse for the disappointed beneficiaries of the resolution, he further said: "I could have no intention to distress them, because I must know it is out of my Power, as their private Fortunes and Credit will enable them at all times to pay their own Expences."

Arthur Lee had taken good care to protect himself against any such afterclaps. In a formal letter to him, refusing to accede to his suggestion that no orders should be drawn upon the banker of the Commissioners, unless signed by all three of the Commissioners, Franklin told him flatly that he did not choose to be obliged to ask Mr. Lee's consent, whenever he might have occasion to draw for his subsistence, as that assent could not be expected from any necessity of a reciprocal compliance on Mr. Franklin's part, Mr. Lee having secured his subsistence by taking into his own disposition 185,000 livres, and his brother, by a deception on the Commissioners, 48,000.

Ralph Izard, of South Carolina, was very closely linked with Arthur Lee in Franklin's mind. Though appointed by Congress Commissioner to the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany at Florence, this court refused to receive him for fear of offending England, and he remained in Paris during the entire period of his appointment. In a letter to James Lovell, Franklin stated that he had made it a constant rule to answer no angry, affronting or abusive letters, of which he had received many, and long ones, from Mr. Lee and Mr. Izard. The hostility of Izard to Franklin, due in the main to the same causes as Arthur Lee's, was whetted partly by the fact that he was not consulted, when the treaty of alliance was entered into between the American Commissioners and France, and partly by the fact that Franklin refused to honor some of his pecuniary applications. In a letter from Passy to Francis Hopkinson, Franklin, as we have seen, said that he deserved Izard's enmity because he might have avoided it by paying him a compliment which he neglected, but elsewhere in his correspondence he rests this enmity upon substantially the same grounds as that of Arthur Lee. When Izard assailed him, because he had not conferred with him in relation to the treaty of alliance, Franklin replied that he would give his letter a full answer when he had the honor of seeing him. "But," he said, "I must submit to remain some days under the Opinion you appear to have form'd not only of my poor Understanding in the general Interests of America, but of my Defects in Sincerity, Politeness & Attention to your Instructions."

It is doubtful whether a letter in which, in reply to an application for money, he reminded Izard of the latter's own pecuniary independence, was ever sent; but part of it is too pointed not to bear quotation. After dwelling upon the many calls upon the funds in the hands of the Commissioners, it goes on in these words:

In this Situation of our Affairs, we hope you will not insist on our giving you a farther Credit with our Banker, with whom we are daily in danger of having no farther Credit ourselves. It is not a Year since you received from us the sum of Two Thousand Guineas, which you thought necessary on Acc^t of your being to set out immediately for Florence. You have not incurr'd the Expence of that Journey. You are a Gentleman of Fortune. You did not come to France with any Dependence on being maintained here with your Family at the Expence of the United States, in the Time of their Distress, and without rendering them the equivalent Service they expected.

Izard seems to have had the kind of temper that heats as readily as iron but cools off as slowly as a footbrick, wrapped up in flannels.³⁷ Speaking of the indignity, to which Franklin had been subjected in his sight before the Privy Council, he said: "When Dr. Franklin was so unmercifully bespattered by Wedderburn, I sat upon thorns; and had it been me that was so grossly insulted, I should instantly have repelled the attack, in defiance of every consequence." It is not unlikely that he would have been as good as his word, so prompt was the second, who had borne the challenge from Temple to Whately, to give free play to his irascible and imperious nature. But Graydon is our authority for the statement, too, that as long as four years after Izard had returned in the Alliance from France to the United States, the name of Franklin could not be mentioned in his presence without hurrying him into a state of excitement.

Altogether, our readers will agree with us, we are sure, in thinking that few things in our national history are calculated to leave a more painful impression upon the mind than the conduct of some of the men, who were supposed to represent the United States abroad, while Franklin, in spite of the jarring discords, of which he was the innocent author, was manfully struggling with the responsibilities which belonged in part to others, but never really rested upon any but his own old shoulders (as he termed them). By character and temperament, in some instances, they were conspicuously unfitted for the delicate tasks of diplomacy, and were too raw and rigidly set in their personal and national prejudices besides ever to succeed in repressing their dislike for the French. There can be no doubt, Jay aside, that they would have quarrelled with each other as rancorously as they did with Franklin but for the cohesion created by their common jealousy of him. How indefensible their attitude towards him was becomes all the more apparent when we recollect that rarely has any man ever been endowed with a mind or nature better fitted to disarm malice than those of Franklin. It is a hard judgment, not to be formed without due allowance for the extent to which the testimony of history is always suborned by the glamour of a great reputation, but it is nevertheless, we believe, only a just judgment, to declare that Franklin spoke the simple truth when he wrote to William Carmichael, "Lee and Izard are open, and, so far, honourable Enemies; the Adams, if Enemies, are more covered. I never did any of them the least Injury, and can conceive no other Source of their Malice but Envy." The excessive respect, shown him in France by all ranks of people, he said in the same letter, and the little notice taken of them, was a mortifying circumstance, but it was what he could neither prevent nor remedy.

This "excessive respect," or justly deserved fame, as the biographer of Franklin might call it, was another thing which contributed to Franklin's brilliant success at the Court of France. When he arrived in that country, he was no stranger there. His two previous visits to it had made him well acquainted with Turgot, Quesnay, Dupont de Nemours, the elder Mirabeau, Dubourg and Morellet and the other members of the group, known as the Physiocrats, whose speculative passion for Agriculture was one of the active intellectual forces of the time. His literary and scientific attainments had likewise won him the favor of other famous Frenchmen. These are facts of no slight importance, when we recall the extent to which the currents of French thought, on the eve of the French Revolution, were fed and directed by men of letters and philosophers. When Franklin found himself in France, for the third time, he was a member of the Royal Society at London and the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, and had been honored with academic degrees not only by Yale, Harvard and William and Mary in his own country, but by Oxford in England and St. Andrews in Scotland.³⁸ An edition of his scientific works had been translated into French by his friend Dubourg, and his Way to Wealth had been translated into the same language, and distributed broadcast by bishops and curés among the members of their flocks as incentives to industry and frugality. It was in France, too, that D'Alibard had verified the sublime hypothesis of Franklin by drawing down the lightning from the clouds. Moreover, before he left England at the end of his second mission to that country, his activity and prominence in resisting the arbitrary measures of the British Ministry had made his political influence and standing thoroughly familiar to the French Cabinet, which had for many years kept a close watch upon every movement or event that portended a revolt of the American Colonies. Along with these solid claims to the attention and respect of the French people were certain other circumstances that strongly tended to heighten the fame of Franklin. It was the era when the modern Press was beginning to assert its new-born power, and the fur cap, one of the badges of the mediæval printer, that he wore, was hardly necessary to remind the newspapers of that day, with all their facilities for rouging public reputation by artful and persistent publicity, that Franklin was first of all a printer. It was also the era when the idea of the universal brotherhood of men of all classes and races made an uncommonly strong appeal to democratic and humanitarian impulses. Such an age could readily enough regard a man like Franklin as a true citizen of the world, a veritable friend of man and a torch-bearer of the new social and political freedom. It was also the era when it was the mode to indulge dreams of primitive beatitude and idyllic simplicity, and around no figure could such dreams more naturally gather than that of the venerable and celebrated man, whose thin white hair, worn straight without wig or powder, plain dress and frank, direct speech seemed to make him the ideal exemplar of a state of society devoid of monarch, aristocrat or hierarch.³⁹

That Franklin, when he came to Paris, as the representative of a country, which was not only at war with the hereditary enemy of France, but had fearlessly avowed general political sentiments, that France herself was eager to avow, should, with his fame, simple manners and social charm, have excited for a time the surpassing enthusiasm which he did is not surprising; for what the French ardently admire they usually festoon with fireworks and crown with flowers; but that this enthusiasm should have continued, so far as we can see, wholly unabated for nine years, is a surprising thing, indeed, when we recollect how inclined the fickle populace of every country is to beat in its hour of inevitable reaction the idol before which it has prostrated itself in its hour of infatuation. While in France, Franklin was not simply the mode, he was the rage. Learned men from every part of Europe thought a visit to Paris quite incomplete, if it did not include a call upon him. Even the Emperor Joseph, "a King by trade," as he once termed himself, intrigued to meet him incognito. Among the many letters that he received from individuals, distinguished or obscure, who sought to flatter him or to draw upon his wisdom or treasured knowledge, was Robespierre – then a young advocate at Arras – who sent him a copy of his argument in defence of the lightning rod before the Council of Artois, and Marat who, true enough to his future, was investigating the physical laws of heat and flame. In the letter to Franklin, by which the copy of his argument was accompanied, Robespierre spoke of Franklin as "a man whose least merit is to be the most illustrious savant of the world." To have a Franklin stove in its fireplace, with a portrait of Franklin on the wall above it, grew to be a common feature of the home of the wealthier householder in Paris. His spectacles, his marten fur cap, his brown coat, his bamboo cane became objects of general imitation. Canes and snuff-boxes were carried à la Franklin. Portraits, busts and medallions of him were multiplied without stint. Among the busts were some in Sèvres china, set in blue stones with gold borders, and among the medallions were innumerable ones made of clay dug at Passy.

The clay medallion of me [Franklin wrote to Sarah Bache] you say you gave to Mr. Hopkinson was the first of the kind made in France. A variety of others have been made since of different sizes; some to be set in the lids of snuff-boxes, and some so small as to be worn in rings; and the numbers sold are incredible. These, with the pictures, busts, and prints (of which copies upon copies are spread everywhere) have made your father's face as well known as that of the moon, so that he durst not do anything that would oblige him to run away, as his phiz would discover him wherever he should venture to show it.

It was computed that some two hundred different kinds of representations of his face were turned out to be set in rings, watches, snuff-boxes, bracelets, looking-glasses and other chattels. One print of him is said to have made the fortune of the engraver. Particularly striking is the testimony of John Adams to the fame of Franklin when in France, which is part of the remarkable letter published by him in the Boston Patriot on May 11, 1811, in answer to Franklin's strictures on his conduct in France:

His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire; and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them… His name was familiar to government and people, to kings, courtiers, nobility, clergy, and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to such a degree that there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a valet de chambre, coachman or footman, a lady's chambermaid, or a scullion in a kitchen, who was not familiar with it, and who did not consider him as a friend to human kind. When they spoke of him, they seemed to think he was to restore the golden age.

To the pen of Adams we are also indebted for an account of the first public meeting between Voltaire and Franklin, which also testified with such dramatic éclat to the place occupied by Franklin in the hearts of the French people. This was at the hall of the Academy of Science in Paris.

Voltaire and Franklin were both present, and there presently arose a general cry that M. Voltaire and M. Franklin should be introduced to each other. This was done, and they bowed and spoke to each other. This was no satisfaction; there must be something more. Neither of our philosophers seemed to divine what was wished or expected; they, however, took each other by the hand. But this was not enough; the clamor continued, until the explanation came out. "Il faut s'embrasser, à la Française." The two aged actors upon this great theatre of philosophy and frivolity then embraced each other, by hugging one another in their arms, and kissing each other's cheeks, and then the tumult subsided. And the cry immediately spread through the whole kingdom, and, I suppose, over all Europe, "Qu'il était charmant de voir embrasser Solon et Sophocle!"

A few weeks later Voltaire was dead, and, in the fall of the same year, his Apotheosis was celebrated by the Lodge of Nine Sisters – a Freemason's Lodge in Paris. An account of this memorable occasion was subsequently published by the officers of the Lodge. Madame Denis, the niece of Voltaire, and the Marchioness of Villette, whom he called his Belle et Bonne, and under whose roof he died, were present. After various addresses and strains of orchestral music, a clap of thunder was heard. Then

the sepulchral pyramid disappeared, great light succeeded the gloom which had prevailed till now, an agreeable symphony sounded in the place of the mournful music, and an immense picture of the apotheosis of Voltaire was disclosed. The picture represented Corneille, Racine and Molière above Voltaire as he leaves his tomb. Truth and Beneficence present him to them. Envy pulls at his shroud, in the wish to hold him back, but is driven away by Minerva. Higher up may be seen Fame, publishing the triumph of Voltaire.

Crowns were then laid upon the heads of La Dixmerie, the orator, Gauget, the painter, and Franklin, who lifted them from their heads and laid them at the feet of Voltaire's image.

Madame Campan in her Memoirs mentions another occasion on which the most beautiful of three hundred women was designated to place a crown of laurel on Franklin's head, and to kiss him on each cheek.

Add to all these evidences of popular admiration and affection the intimate footing maintained by Franklin in so many French homes, and we begin to understand how powerfully his public and social standing helped to swell the resistless tide of sympathy and enthusiasm which bore down all opposition to the French alliance.

But far more than to his mere congeniality with the social spirit of the French People, or to his literary and scientific fame, or to his kinship with all the liberal tendencies of the eighteenth century in America and Europe, was the success of Franklin at the French court due to those general attributes of mind and character which he brought to every exigency of his private or public life: his good sense, his good feeling, his perfect equipoise, his tact, his reasonableness, his kindly humor. It was these things which, above everything else, enabled him to surmount all the trying difficulties of his situation, and to give to the world the most imposing example of fruitful pecuniary solicitation that it has ever known. The firm hold that he obtained upon the esteem and good will of Vergennes, "that just and good man" he terms him in one of his letters, was but the merited reward of personal qualities which invite, secure and retain esteem and good will under all human conditions. Vergennes, who held the keys of the French money-chest, and directed the policies of France, respected, trusted and liked Franklin, because Franklin, at any rate, duly recognized and acknowledged the generous motives which had, in part, inspired French intervention in the American contest, because he exhibited a considerate appreciation of the sacrifices which it cost France, still bleeding from her last struggle with Great Britain, to make such large and repeated loans to the United States, and because his tactful and discreet applications for pecuniary assistance for his country were never marked by disgusting importunity or thinly veiled menaces. How true this is we have already seen; and its truth is still further confirmed by the testimony of Franklin's successor, Jefferson, who, when asked in Paris, whether he replaced Franklin, was in the habit of replying, "No one can replace him, sir; I am only his successor." After stating the circumstances, including his own association with Franklin at Paris, which had convinced him that the charge of subservience to France, made against Franklin, had not a shadow of foundation, Jefferson pays this impressive tribute to him:

He possessed the confidence of that Government in the highest degree, insomuch, that it may truly be said, that they were more under his influence than he under theirs. The fact is, that his temper was so amiable and conciliatory, his conduct so rational, never urging impossibilities, or even things unreasonably inconvenient to them, in short, so moderate and attentive to their difficulties as well as our own, that what his enemies called subserviency, I saw was only that reasonable disposition, which, sensible that advantages are not all to be on one side, yielding what is just and liberal, is the more certain of obtaining liberality and justice. Mutual confidence produces, of course, mutual influence, and this was all which subsisted between Dr. Franklin and the government of France.

To Jefferson we are also indebted for the statement that, when he was in France, there appeared to him more respect and veneration attached to the character of Franklin than to that of any other person in the same country, foreign or native.

The volume of multifarious tasks performed by Franklin in France was immense. The most valuable service rendered by him to the United States was in obtaining from the French King the pecuniary aids which helped Congress to defray the expenses of the Revolutionary War. It has been truly said that he, and not Robert Morris, was the real financier of the Revolution. Until the triumph of the patriot cause was assured, he was the only one of the American envoys in Europe whose pecuniary solicitations met with any material success. Sometimes even such sums as were obtained by others outside of France were more attributable to his indirect influence than to their own direct efforts. No matter upon whom Congress might recklessly draw drafts, they were certain to come around to the aged negotiator, who appeared to be able to secure money from France even when France had no money for herself. He might be told that a loan which he had just procured from Vergennes was positively the last that France could make, and, yet, when he was compelled by desperation at home to give another reluctant rub to his magic lamp, there always stood the French servitor with his chest of gold. The aggregate amount of the loans and gifts made by France to the United States was on February 21, 1783, little short of forty-three millions of francs. It was these loans and gifts, transformed into munitions of war and military supplies, which again and again infused reviving life into the fainting bosom of his country, and enabled her soldiers to turn an undaunted face to her foes. How a man of Franklin's years could have borne up under such frightful anxieties as those imposed upon him by the pecuniary demands of Congress and her other foreign envoys, to say nothing of additional burdens, it is difficult to understand. In the second year after his arrival in France, when drafts began to pour in on him from Congress, he reminded it that the envoys had not undertaken to do more than to honor its bills for interest on certain specified sums; and this reminder was frequently repeated. It might as well have been syllabled to the winds. Though most of the limited cargoes of tobacco and other products remitted by Congress as a basis of credit fell into the hands of the ever-watchful British cruisers, almost every ship brought over bills upon the envoys or large orders for clothing, arms and ammunition. At one time, they had notice that bills for interest had been drawn on them to the amount of two million and a half, when they did not have a fifth of that sum on deposit with their banker. In a letter to the Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1779, Franklin, who was really our sole envoy for the purpose of paying such bills, enumerates the great quantities of clothing, arms, ammunition and naval stores, which the envoys had sent over to America, the heavy drafts paid by them that Congress had drawn in favor of officers returning to France, or of other persons, the outlays of the envoys for the benefit of American prisoners, the amounts advanced by them to other agents of the United States, the freight charges paid by them and the sums expended by them in fitting out Captain Conygham and the Raleigh, Alfred, Boston, Providence, Alliance, Ranger and other frigates. "And now," he concluded, "the Drafts of the Treasurer of the Loans coming very fast upon me, the Anxiety I have suffered, and the Distress of Mind lest I should not be able to pay them, has for a long time been very great indeed." This was but one of the earlier crises in the financial experience which led Franklin to say that his seemed to be the Gibeonite task of drawing water for all the congregation of Israel. The point of the observation becomes still more manifest when the reader is told that drafts were also frequently drawn on Franklin by the European agents of the Committee of Commerce of Congress, and that even the foreign agents of individual States of the Union, finding that no American abroad but he seemed to have any credit, applied to him for assistance in effecting loans for their principals. Indeed, one agent of the United States, a Mr. Bingham, did not scruple, without authority from Congress, or any other source, to notify Franklin that the Deane and the General Gates had just arrived at Martinique and were in need of overhauling and provisions, and that he would have to draw upon him for the expense. This was too much even for Franklin's patience, and, when Mr. Bingham's bills were returned protested, that gentleman loudly complained that his credit had been effectually ruined. And, as the necessities of Congress became greater and greater, it almost wholly ceased to recognize that there were any limitations upon its right to draw upon Franklin, or that there was even any reason why it should notify him that such drafts were drawn. It simply drew, hit or miss. For pursuing this course in regard to him, there was at least the excuse that, no matter how freely it drew upon him, he somehow contrived to preserve the credit of Congress unstained. But Congress had no such excuse for drawing bills in this reckless manner, as it did too often, upon John Jay, Henry Laurens or John Adams. It is a laughable fact that, when some of its bills drawn upon Henry Laurens reached Europe, the drawee, who had never arrived in Holland, the country to which he was accredited, at all, was a prisoner in the Tower. As none of the other envoys, upon whom Congress drew, had any resource but to beg Franklin to pay the drafts, these drafts might as well have been drawn upon him in the first instance. No wonder that, with this accumulation of responsibility upon his shoulders, Franklin should have written to John Jay in Spain in these terms:

But the little Success that has attended your late applications for money mortified me exceedingly; and the Storm of Bills, which I found coming upon us both has terrified and vexed me to such a Degree, that I have been deprived of Sleep, and so much indispos'd by continual anxiety, as to be render'd almost incapable of writing.

This very letter, however, bears witness to his remarkable aptitude for dunning without incurring its odious penalties. Overcoming his almost invincible reluctance, he said, he had made another application to the French Court for more money, and had been told to make himself easy as he would be assisted with what was necessary. Indeed, so generous was its conduct on this occasion that, when Franklin, in part payment for the loan, proposed that Congress should provision the French army in America with produce demanded from the States, his Majesty declined the proposal, saying that to furnish his army with such a large quantity of provisions as it needed might straiten Congress. "You will not wonder at my loving this good prince," Franklin concluded.

Amid all the cruel embarrassments of his situation, however, he never abated one jot of heart or hope, nor for one moment lost sight of the imperial future which he so clearly foresaw for the country that was adding sixty thousand children to her numbers annually. In this same letter, he let Jay know that in his opinion no amount of present distress should induce the United States to make the concessions to Spain that she was disposed to hold out as the price of her assistance. "Poor as we are," his indomitable spirit declared, "yet, as I know we shall be rich, I would rather agree with them to buy at a great Price the whole of their Right on the Mississippi, than sell a Drop of its waters. A Neighbour might as well ask me to sell my Street Door." Loyal, too, to Congress he remained from first to last. The worst that he was willing to say in a letter to Thomas Ruston of its rash conduct in flooding the world with bills that for all it knew might never be paid was a quiet, "That body Is, as you suppose, not well skill'd in Financing."

Less than two months after his letter to Jay, we find him again appealing to Vergennes for pecuniary aid with which to enable Congress to co-operate with the French forces in America, and, a few weeks later, when the vitality of the American cause was at its lowest point, he again takes up, on fresh calls from Congress, the same tedious refrain. The letter written by him to Vergennes on this occasion is one of his supplicatory masterpieces. He lays before the French Minister evidence that the spirit of the United States is unbroken, and that the recent success of the British in Carolina was chiefly due to the lack of the necessary means for "furnishing, marching, and paying the Expence of Troops sufficient to defend that Province." He tells him that Lafayette had written that it was impossible to conceive, without seeing it, the distress that the troops had suffered for want of clothing; and that Washington, too, had written to him that the situation of the United States made one of two things essential to them, a peace, or the most vigorous aid of their allies, particularly in the article of money. For the aid, so necessary in the present conjuncture, he said, they could rely on France alone, and the continuance of the King's goodness towards them. And then he concluded with these affecting but not altogether artless words:

I am grown old. I feel myself much enfeebled by my late long Illness, and it is probable I shall not long have any more Concern in these Affairs. I therefore take this Occasion to express my Opinion to your Excellency, that the present Conjuncture is critical; that there is some Danger lest the Congress should lose its Influence over the people, if it is found unable to procure the Aids that are wanted; and that the whole System of the New Governt in America may thereby be shaken; that, if the English are suffer'd once to recover that Country, such an Opportunity of effectual Separation as the present may not occur again in the Course of Ages; and that the Possession of those fertile and extensive Regions, and that vast Sea Coast, will afford them so Broad a Basis for future Greatness, by the rapid growth of their Commerce, and Breed of Seamen and Soldiers, as will enable them to become the Terror of Europe, and to exercise with impunity that Insolence, which is so natural to their Nation, and which will increase enormously with the Increase of their Power.

Hard upon the heels of this letter came a letter from John Adams, inquiring whether Franklin could furnish funds for paying bills to the amount of ten thousand pounds sterling which had been drawn by Congress on Adams. Franklin replied by saying that he had not yet received a positive answer to his last appeal for aid to the French King, but that he had, however, two of the Christian Graces, Faith and Hope, though his faith was only that of which the Apostle speaks – the evidence of things not seen. In truth, he declared, he did not see at that time how so many bills drawn at random on the Ministers of Congress in France, Spain and Holland were to be paid. But all bills drawn upon them by Congress should be accepted at any risk; and he would accordingly do his best, and, if those endeavors failed, he was ready to break, run away or go to prison with Adams, as it should please God. His endeavors were successful, so startlingly successful that Vergennes informed him that his Majesty, to give the States a signal proof of his friendship, had resolved to grant them the sum of six millions, not as a loan, but as a free gift. But the announcement was accompanied by the significant statement that, as the supplies previously purchased in France by the United States, were supposed to be of bad quality, the Ministers would themselves take care of the purchase, with part of the gift, of such articles as were urgently needed in America, and the balance, remaining after these purchases, was to be drawn for by General Washington upon M. d'Harvelay, Garde du Trèsor Royal. "There was no room to dispute on this point," Franklin wrote to Samuel Huntington, "every donor having the right of qualifying his gifts with such terms as he thinks proper"; but the restrictions upon the gift would seem, after all, to have been waived. Shortly after the six millions was promised, Colonel Laurens, who was supposed by Washington to be peculiarly competent to state the needs of the American army, arrived in France, and to him Franklin delegated the task of making purchases for Congress with part of the sum. Franklin was already supporting Adams, Dana, Jay and Carmichael on the proceeds of his persuasive approaches to the French King, and, at best, the arrival of Laurens would have meant little except another ministerial mouth to feed. Unfortunately, however, it signified much more to Franklin's peace. Before returning to America, with two millions and a half of the six millions, Laurens made such free use of the remainder that Franklin, unable to meet bills, with which he was threatened, was compelled to write to Adams not to accept any more bills that were expected to be paid by him without notice to him, and to Jay that, if the bills drawn upon him some months before could not be paid by him, they would have to go to protest. "For," Franklin said, "it will not be in my Power to help you. And I see that nothing will cure the Congress of this Madness of Drawing upon the Pump at Aldgate, but such a Proof that its Well has a Bottom."

To make things worse, though Congress continued to draw bills upon Franklin after the gift of the six millions, it deprived him of the ability to use that fund by forbidding any portion of it to be used without its order. Franklin by prompt action did succeed in intercepting a part of the six millions, which Laurens had taken to Holland, and which was about to follow him to America. Speaking of this in a letter to William Jackson, who had come over with Laurens, and was very angry with Franklin for detaining the amount, Franklin wrote, "I see, that nobody cares how much I am distressed, provided they can carry their own Points. I must, therefore, take what care I can of mine, theirs and mine being equally intended for the Service of the Public." It would have been well for Jackson if he had let the matter rest there, but he did not, and had the temerity to write to Franklin a saucy letter to which he replied in these terms:

These Superior Airs you give yourself, young Gentleman, of Reproof to me, and Reminding me of my Duty do not become you, whose special Department and Employ in Public Affairs, of which you are so vain, is but of yesterday, and would never have existed but by my Concurrence, and would have ended in Disgrace if I had not supported your enormous Purchases by accepting your Drafts. The charging me with want of oeconomy is particularly improper in you, when the only Instance you know of it is my having indiscreetly comply'd with your Demand in advancing you 120 Louis for the Expence of your Journey to Paris and when the only Instance I know of your oeconomizing Money is your sending me three Expresses, one after another, on the same Day, all the way from Holland to Paris, each with a Letter saying the same thing to the same purpose.

One of the transactions, mentioned in this correspondence, is a good illustration of the pecuniary "afterclaps," to use Franklin's term, to which Franklin was frequently subjected. He had agreed to pay for goods for the United States to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds. Instead of the purchases amounting to fifteen thousand pounds, they amounted to fifty thousand, and he persistently refused to pay for them. Jackson then hurried express to him, urged that the goods were bought by order of Colonel Laurens, that they were on shipboard, and that, if Franklin did not pay for them, they would have to be relanded and returned, or sold; which would be a disgrace, he insisted, to the United States. In the end, Franklin accepted the bills for the whole amount, and applied to the French Ministry for the money with which to pay for them. The application was a particularly disagreeable one to him, not only because all the fiscal calculations of the French Government for the year had been completed, but because no part of the purchase price of the goods would be expended in France. At first, the grant was absolutely refused, but at length Franklin obtained it, and hoped that the difficulty was over. It was not. Afterwards, the officers of the ship decided that she was overloaded, and the goods were transferred to two other ships, whose owners required Franklin to either buy the ships, or to pay them a freight bill nearly equal to the value of the ships. This whole transaction was bad enough, but William Jackson at least had the grace to notify Franklin that the bills in this instance were about to descend upon him before their descent. This, we know from a mildly reproachful letter, written by Franklin to John Paul Jones, a Mr. Moylan was not kind enough to do when he drew upon Franklin for nearly one hundred thousand livres for supplies ordered by Jones for the Ariel.

These are but typical instances of the financial complications in which Franklin was involved from time to time while he was drawing water for all the congregation of Israel. Long after their date, bills were still making his life miserable.

This serves chiefly to acquaint you [he wrote on one occasion to John Adams] that I will endeavour to pay the Bills that have been presented to you drawn on Mr. Laurens. But you terrify me, by acquainting me that there are yet a great number behind. It is hard that I never had any information sent me of the Sums drawn, a Line of Order to pay, nor a Syllable of Approbation for having paid any of the Bills drawn on Mr. Laurens, Mr. Jay or yourself.

To John Jay about the same time he wrote, "The cursed Bills, as you justly term them, do us infinite Prejudice." In a letter to John Adams, he speaks of "the dreaded Drafts." At times it looked as if the stream of French bounty was at last exhausted. "With the million mentioned," he wrote to John Adams in substantially the same terms as he had written to Robert Morris two days before, "I can continue paying to the end of February, and then, if I get no more I must shut up shop." This was in January, 1782, when France, in addition to assisting the United States with a fleet and army, had advanced great additional sums to them since the beginning of the preceding year. At this time, for very shame Franklin could scarcely pluck up courage enough to make another pecuniary application to the French Ministry. In giving in a letter to John Jay his reasons for not holding out the hope of pecuniary relief to him, he said, "I had weary'd this friendly & generous Court with often repeated after-clap Demands, occasioned by these unadvised (as well as ill advis'd) & therefore unexpected Drafts, and was ashamed to show my Face to the Minister." In the same letter, Franklin also said: "We have been assisted with near 20 Millions since the Beginning of last Year, besides a Fleet and Army; and yet I am oblig'd to worry [them] with my Solicitations for more, which makes us appear insatiable."

But the most interesting passage in this letter is the following: "You mention my Proposing to repay the Sum you want in America. I had try'd that last year. I drew a Bill on Congress for a considerable Sum to be advanced me here, and paid in provisions for the French Troops. My Bill was not honoured!" Worst of all, when Bills from Congress still showered upon him, after its promise that no more bills would be drawn on him subsequent to a fixed date, he began to suspect that the drawing was still going on, and that the bills were antedated. To no American was the heedless reliance of Congress upon the generosity of France more mortifying than to him. He repeatedly suggested the obligation of his own country to look more to self-help and less to the aid of her friendly and generous ally, and, at times, in his characteristic way, he would demonstrate arithmetically how easy it would be for the United States to support the burden of the war themselves if they would only keep down the spirit of luxury and extravagance at home, and cease to buy so many foreign gewgaws and superfluities and so much tea. "In my opinion, the surest way to obtain liberal aid from others is vigorously to help ourselves," he wrote to Robert R. Livingston. "It is absurd," he said later in another letter to Robert Morris, "the pretending to be lovers of liberty while they (the American people) grudge paying for the defence of it." He was generously prompt always also to ascribe any temporary interruption to the flow of French subsidy to the pressing necessities of France herself. Full, too, always he was of simple-hearted gratitude to France for the princely help that she had given to the American cause. No one knew better than he that this help originated partly in selfish policy, and was continued partly because it had been extended too liberally already to be easily discontinued. "Those, who have begun to assist us," he shrewdly observed to Jay, when counselling him that every first favor obtained from Spain was tant de gagné, "are more likely to continue than to decline." Every appeal that he ever made in his life to liberality in any form took the bias of self-interest duly into account. But he was merely true to his settled principle that human character is an amalgam of both unselfish and selfish motives, when, realizing that the aid rendered by France to the United States originated partly in the glow of a generous enthusiasm for the cause of human liberty and fraternity, he wrote to Robert R. Livingston on August 12, 1782, a letter in which, after stating that the whole amount of the indebtedness, then due by the United States to France, amounted to eighteen million livres, exclusive of the Holland loan guaranteed by the King of France, he said:

In reading it [a statement of the account] you will discover several fresh marks of the King's goodness towards us, amounting to the value of near two millions. These, added to the free gifts before made to us at different times, form an object of at least twelve millions, for which no returns but that of gratitude and friendship are expected. These, I hope, may be everlasting.

In a subsequent letter to Vergennes, Franklin referred to the King as our "Friend and Father." But naturally enough deep-seated gratitude found its most impressive utterance when the long and bloody war was at an end, the independence of the United States fully established and Franklin ready, as he wrote to Robert R. Livingston, to say with old Simeon, "Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."

May I beg the favour of you, Sir [he wrote to Vergennes, when he was soon to leave France forever], to express respectfully for me to his Majesty, the deep Sense I have of all the inestimable Benefits his Goodness has conferr'd on my Country; a Sentiment that it will be the Business of the little Remainder of Life now left me, to impress equally on the Minds of all my Countrymen. My sincere Prayers are, that God may shower down his Blessings on the King, the Queen, their children, and all the royal Family to the latest Generations!

It would be irksome to detail all the loans obtained by Franklin from the French King, and all the terrifying drafts drawn upon him. Profuse from first to last as were the bills, which he was called upon to pay, he appears to have met them all, with a few exceptions, whether drawn upon Adams, Jay, Laurens or himself. Nor, when an extortioner attempted to perpetrate an outrage upon the United States, did he fail to oppose him with a wit quite as keen as his and with a spirit far more resolute. Such a skinflint seems to have been De Neufville, of Amsterdam, who offered on one occasion to borrow money for the United States, provided that their representatives hypothecated to his firm, in the name of the whole Congress of the Thirteen United States, as security for the loan, all the lands, cities, territories and possessions of the said Thirteen States, present or prospective. After mercilessly analyzing in a letter to John Adams the unconscionable covenants by which this tremendous hypothecation was to be accompanied, Franklin ended with these observations:

By this time, I fancy, your Excellency is satisfy'd, that I was wrong in supposing J. de Neufville as much a Jew as any in Jerusalem (a reference to what he had said in a former letter) since Jacob was not content with any per cents, but took the whole of his Brother Esau's Birthright, & his Posterity did the same by the Cananites, & cut their Throats into the Bargain; which, in my Conscience, I do not think M. J. de Neufville has the least Inclination to do by us, – while he can get anything by our being alive.

The immediate occasion for this letter was the refusal of De Neufville to allow the goods which had bred trouble between Franklin and William Jackson to be delivered to the agents of the United States until a claim for damages that he had preferred against the United States was satisfied. "We have, you observe" Franklin had written in an earlier letter to John Adams, "our Hands in the Lyon's Mouth; but if Mr. N. is a Lyon, I am a Bear, and I think I can hug & gripe him till he lets go our Hands." And he was as good as his word, and let De Neufville know that, if he did not deliver the goods, the bills drawn by him on Franklin for the price, though accepted, would not be paid. A few days later, in another letter to Adams with respect to the same matter, Franklin said in regard to a proposal of settlement made by De Neufville, "I think that the less we have to do with that Shark the better; his jaws are too strong, his teeth too many and his appetite immensely voracious." Before the episode was ended, De Neufville was only too glad to dispatch his son to Paris to beseech the bear to relax his hug.

There was still another reason why the arrival of bills from America should be feared by Franklin. They were drawn in three sets each, and there was constant danger, as the sets came in at different times, of the same bill being paid more than once. In fact, repeated efforts were fraudulently made to palm off duplicates and triplicates as firsts upon Franklin. To shut off frauds, the minutest inspection of the bills, as they were presented for payment, was indispensable, and, for this task, Franklin, Congress having wholly ignored his request for a secretary, had no one to help him but Temple and the French clerk at fifty louis a year. The task was rendered especially laborious by the fact that a host of the bills was drawn by Congress in very small amounts for the payment of interest abroad.

Far less tedious, of course, but still burdensome enough, was the labor of copying the dispatches that left Franklin's hands. At one time, the Atlantic was so alive with British cruisers that a dispatch on its way to Congress from France had almost as little chance of escape as a jettisoned dog in a shark-infested sea.

Adams [stated one of the letters in 1777 of our envoys in France], by whom we wrote early this summer, was taken on this coast, having sunk his dispatches. We hear that Hammond shared the same fate on your coast. Johnson, by whom we wrote in September, was taken going out of the channel, and poor Captain Wickes (of the Reprisal) who sailed at the same time, and had duplicates, we just now hear foundered near Newfoundland, every man perishing but the cook.

It was a batch of papers tossed into the ocean, and snatched up by a nimble British sailor, before they sank, that first apprised the British Ministry of the treaty for an alliance hatching between Holland and the United States, and led Great Britain to declare war promptly against Holland. With such perilous conditions to face, Franklin's dispatches were sometimes copied as often as seven times. Besides the copy retained by him, and the copy sent to Congress, other copies were later sent to Congress by the next ships leaving France for the United States.

Another most onerous function imposed upon Franklin, until the appointment of Thomas Barclay, a merchant, as Consul-General to France, was that of purchasing supplies for Congress and fitting out ships. Special provision for this function should, of course, have been made by Congress, so as to leave him free to give his attention to what he termed his political duties, but it was not until after he had repeatedly begged Congress to relieve him from it that Congress first appointed for that purpose Colonel Palfrey, who was lost at sea, on his way over to France, and then Barclay. In the meantime, Franklin had suffered infinite annoyance in the performance of duties for which he had no time, and insisted that he had no knowledge or training. Writing to Jonathan Williams about the dispatch of certain goods to America, he said:

At this Distance from the Ports, and unacquainted as I am with such Affairs, I know not what to advise about getting either that Cloathing or the small Arms and Powder at L'Orient or the Cloth of Mr. Ross transported to America; and yet everybody writes to me for Orders, or Advice, or Opinion, or Approbation, which is like calling upon a blind Man to judge of Colours.

Writing later to Williams about the same matter, when it had assumed a still more vexatious aspect, he peremptorily turned down a project laid before him by Williams, saying with an ebullition of impatience quite unlike the ordinary tenor of his even temper, "I have been too long in hot Water, plagu'd almost to Death with the Passions, Vagaries, and ill Humours and Madnesses of other People. I must have a little Repose."

Another office performed by Franklin, though no special commission for the purpose was ever issued to him by Congress, was that of a Judge in Admiralty. A large quantity of blank commissions for privateers having been sent to him by Congress shortly after his arrival in France, he delivered them to cruisers, fitted out in the ports of France, and manned by smugglers, who knew every creek and cove on the English coast which they had so often visited by night as well, to use a simile employed by one of Franklin's correspondents, as they knew the corners of their beds. The alarm and loss created by these privateers was no mean offset to the destructive efficiency of the British cruisers. One privateer, the Black Prince, took in the course of three months more than thirty sail. Such was the apprehension excited by the depredations of American privateers that the seacoasts of England were kept in a constant state of panic, and the premium rate on marine insurance was largely enhanced. As prizes were brought into French harbors, the papers seized in them were examined by Franklin for the purpose of passing upon their legality and the liability of the prizes to sale. It was also under the patronage of Franklin and Deane that the Reprisal, the first American ship to fire a gun or capture a prize in European waters, the Lexington, a sloop-of-war, of fourteen guns, fitted out by Congress, and commanded by Captain Johnson, the Dolphin, a cutter of ten guns, purchased by our envoys from M. de Chaumont, and the Surprise, a cutter, commanded by the doughty Captain Gustavus Conyngham, inflicted such injury upon English commerce, including the capture of the Lisbon packet by Captain Wickes, that the French Ministry was compelled to heed the remonstrances of Lord Stormont, the English Minister, so far as to make a deceitful show, in one form or another, of vindicating the outraged neutrality of France. But, when the flimsiest ruses were allowed by the French Ministry to circumvent its interdiction of the abuse of its ports by American ships, with prizes in tow, and Captain Conyngham and his crew, after passing a few days in luxury in a French prison, found means in some unaccountable manner to escape, just as two English men-of-war were coming over to ask that they be delivered to them as pirates, there was little fear anywhere along the French coast, or in the breasts of our envoys, that any sternly vigorous embargo was likely to be laid upon the privateering activities of the United States by anything except the naval energy of England itself.

At this time, Franklin was eager to retaliate the destruction and suffering wantonly inflicted upon some of the defenceless seacoast towns of America by the British. He, therefore, advised Congress to put three frigates into the very best fighting trim, and to send them, loaded with tobacco, as if they were common merchantmen, to Nantes or Bordeaux, but with instructions, when they reached the one or the other port, to make off suddenly for some unsuspecting British port, pounce upon the vessels in its harbor, levy contributions, burn, plunder and get away before any harm could be done to them by a counterstroke.

The burning or plundering of Liverpool or Glasgow [he said] would do us more essential service than a million of treasure and much blood spent on the continent. It would raise our reputation to the highest pitch, and lessen in the same degree that of the enemy. We are confident it is practicable, and with very little danger.

In a letter to Lafayette, too, Franklin stated that the coasts of England and Scotland were extremely open and defenceless, and that there were many rich towns in those countries near the sea "which 4 or 5000 Men, landing unexpectedly, might easily surprize and destroy, or exact from them a heavy Contribution taking a part in ready Money and Hostages for the rest." He even calculated in livres the amounts that might be demanded of Bristol, Bath, Liverpool, Lancaster and other English towns.

But the most eventful thing that Franklin ever did in relation to American activity on the sea was to invite John Paul Jones to take command of a fine frigate that the envoys had ordered from Holland, but had been compelled by the vigilance of Great Britain to turn over to France, when but partially built. While at Brest, Jones received a confidential note from Franklin telling him that the King had asked the loan of him to the French navy for a while, and wished him to take command of the frigate. "She is at present," he said, "the property of the King; but, as there is no war yet declared, you will have the commission and flag of the United States, and act under their orders and laws." The frigate, however, was far from being completed, and the thought of a stranger being placed in command of her was highly irritating to French naval officers with a mind to promotion. Chafing under the delay and uncertainty, occasioned by these circumstances, Jones, whose remarkable literary facility, despite his lack of education, is at least one illustration of the truth of Dogberry's saying that reading and writing come by nature, wrote impatient appeals to the French Minister, Franklin, the members of the Royal Family and the King himself.

While in this humor, his eye happened to fall upon a maxim in one of Poor Richard's Almanacs, "If you would have your business done, go; if not, send." He heeded the suggestion, proceeded to Versailles and secured an order for the purchase of the forty-gun ship, which, in honor of his monitor, he called the Bon Homme Richard. What she did, old as she was, with her heroic commander, and her medley crew of Americans, Irish, English, Scotch, French, Portuguese, Maltese and Malay sailors, before she relaxed her dying clutch upon the Serapis, and sank, immortalized by a splendid victory, to the bottom of the ocean, there is no need for the biographer of Franklin to tell. It is enough to say that for Franklin Jones ever entertained a feeling little short of passionate reverence. "The letter which I had the honor to receive from your Excellency to-day … would make a coward brave," was his reply to one of Franklin's wise and humane letters of instruction. This letter is evidence enough that Franklin was not so incensed by the ruthless conduct at times of the British in America as to be lost to the clemency of his own abstract views about the proper limits of warfare.

Altho' [he said] the English have wantonly burnt many defenceless Towns in America, you are not to follow this Example, unless where a Reasonable Ransom is refused; in which Case, your own generous feelings, as well as this Instruction, will induce you to give timely Notice of your Intention, that sick and ancient Persons, Women and Children, may be first removed.

The relief of American prisoners in England was another thing which continually taxed the attention of Franklin during the Revolutionary War. "I was sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not," was a reproach that no one of them could justly address to him. His nature was a truly compassionate one, and, in few respects, does it show to greater advantage than in his unceasing efforts to secure the exchange of his unhappy countrymen, confined at Portsmouth and Plymouth, or, that failing, to provide them with all the pecuniary succor in his power, in addition to that so generously extended to them by many kind hearts in England.⁴⁰ In his friend, David Hartley, a man, whose peaceful and humane instincts even the vilest passions of war could not efface, he had an agent in a position to reach the ear of the English Ministry for the purpose of promoting the exchange of prisoners. For different reasons, the task was a painfully slow one. In the beginning, all American prisoners were committed to prison upon the charge of high treason, a charge entirely inconsistent with the idea of exchange. Besides, England was reluctant to relinquish the advantage that she had, until the treaty of alliance between France and America was consummated, in the fact that American ships had nowhere to confine their prisoners except under their own hatches. They tried to meet this difficulty by releasing English prisoners on parole on their each promising that they would secure the release of an American prisoner, but the English Admiralty, after some hesitation, finally refused to surrender a single American prisoner in exchange for such paroled Englishmen. Commenting upon this fact, along with another incident, Franklin wrote to James Lovell, "There is no gaining anything upon these Barbarians by Advances of Civility or Humanity." At last, however, several cartels were agreed upon, and he enjoyed the great happiness of seeing some hundred or so American captives brought over to France and released. He was still, however, to incur a great disappointment when, owing to the fear on the part of Holland of provoking English resentment, the five hundred prisoners, transferred to Holland by John Paul Jones, after his engagement with the Serapis, had to be exchanged for French instead of American prisoners. The French Ministry promised to make this disappointment good by advancing to Franklin an equal number of English prisoners taken by French ships, but the English Ministry promptly met this promise by refusing to exchange American prisoners for any English prisoners except such as had been captured by American ships. It was also a great disappointment to Franklin that he could not induce the English Ministry to give its assent to a formal proposition from him that prisoners, taken by either country, should be immediately released upon the understanding that an equal number of prisoners held by the other should also be released. The high-minded conduct of Hartley, inspired in part by the hope that lenient treatment of American prisoners might help to re-unite the two countries, was all the more admirable, when contrasted with the harsh words, in which Franklin sometimes in his letters to him inveighed against the English King, Parliament and People. It is inconceivable that even Hartley would not have gradually wearied of well-doing, if his perfect knowledge of Franklin's benevolent nature had not taught him how to make liberal allowances for his friend's occasional gusts of indignation.

This indignation was usually visited upon the English King and Ministry, but upon one occasion it was visited upon the English people as well.

It is now impossible [he wrote to Hartley] to persuade our people, as I long endeavoured, that the war was merely ministerial, and that the nation bore still a good will to us. The infinite number of addresses printed in your gazettes, all approving this conduct of your government towards us, and encouraging our destruction by every possible means, the great majority in Parliament constantly manifesting the same sentiments, and the popular public rejoicings on occasion of any news of the slaughter of an innocent and virtuous people, fighting only in defence of their just rights; these, together with the recommendations of the same measures by even your celebrated moralists and divines, in their writings and sermons, that are cited approved and applauded in your great national assemblies; all join in convincing us, that you are no longer the magnanimous and enlightened nation, we once esteemed you, and that you are unfit and unworthy to govern us, as not being able to govern your own passions.

Indeed, in this letter Franklin even told Hartley that, if the resentment of the English people did not speedily fall on their ministry, the future inhabitants of America would detest the name of Englishman as much as the children in Holland did those of Alva and Spaniard. But, scold as he might England and her rulers, he deeply appreciated the magnanimity of the good man, who even took pains to see that sums placed in his hands by Franklin were duly applied to the relief of the prisoners for whose liberty he strove so disinterestedly. Referring in one of his letters to Hartley to two little bills of exchange that he had sent to him for this purpose, he said, "Permit me to repeat my thankful Acknowledgments for the very humane and kind part you have acted in this Affair. If I thought it necessary I would pray God to bless you for it. But I know he will do it without my Prayers."

Correspondingly stern was the rebuke of Franklin for the heartless knave, Thomas Digges, equal even to the theft of an obolus placed upon the closed eyelids of a dead man as the price of his ferriage across the Styx – who drew upon Franklin in midwinter for four hundred and ninety-five pounds sterling for the relief of the American prisoners, and converted all but about thirty pounds of the sum to his own personal use. "We have no Name in our Language," said Franklin in a letter to William Hodgson, "for such atrocious Wickedness. If such a Fellow is not damn'd, it is not worth while to keep a Devil."

Besides Hartley, to say nothing of this William Hodgson, a merchant, who performed offices for Franklin similar to those of Hartley, there was another Englishman whose humanity with regard to American prisoners elicited the grateful acknowledgments of Franklin. This was Thomas Wren, a Presbyterian minister at Portsmouth, who was untiring in soliciting contributions from his Christian brethren in England, and applying the sums thus obtained by him, as well as the weekly allowances sent to him by Franklin, to the wants of American prisoners in Forton Prison. "I think some public Notice," Franklin wrote to Robert R. Livingston, "should be taken of this good Man. I wish the Congress would enable me to make him a Present, and that some of our Universities would confer upon him the Degree of Doctor." The suggestion bore fruit, Congress sent Wren a vote of thanks, and the degree of Doctor in Divinity was conferred upon him by Princeton College. He, too, did not need the prayers of Franklin to receive the blessings reserved for the few rare spirits who can hear the voice of the God of Mercy even above the tumult of his battling children.

There were many other engrossing claims of a public or quasi-public nature upon Franklin's attention in France. In the earlier stages of the Revolutionary War, he was fairly besieged by foreign officers eager to share in its peril and glory. Several of those recommended by him to Congress – such as Steuben – gave a good account of themselves in America, but the number of those, who had no special title to his recommendation, was so great, that his ingenuity and sense of humor were severely strained to evade them or laugh them off.

You can have no Conception [he wrote to a friend] how I am harass'd. All my Friends are sought out and teiz'd to teize me. Great officers of all Ranks, in all Departments; Ladies, great and small, besides professed Sollicitors, worry me from Morning to Night. The Noise of every Coach now that enters my Court terrifies me. I am afraid to accept an Invitation to dine abroad, being almost sure of meeting with some Officer or Officer's Friend, who, as soon as I am put in a good Humour by a Glass or two of Champaign, begins his Attack upon me. Luckily I do not often in my sleep dream myself in these vexatious Situations, or I should be afraid of what are now my only Hours of Comfort. If, therefore, you have the least remaining Kindness for me, if you would not help to drive me out of France, for God's sake, my dear friend, let this your 23rd Application be your last.

The friend to whom this letter was written was a Frenchman, and the lecture that Franklin read to him in it on the easy-going habits of his countrymen in giving recommendations is also worthy of quotation:

Permit me to mention to you [he said] that, in my Opinion, the natural complaisance of this country often carries People too far in the Article of Recommendations. You give them with too much Facility to Persons of whose real Characters you know nothing, and sometimes at the request of others of whom you know as little. Frequently, if a man has no useful Talents, is good for nothing and burdensome to his Relations, or is indiscreet, Profligate, and extravagant, they are glad to get rid of him by sending him to the other end of the World; and for that purpose scruple not to recommend him to those that they wish should recommend him to others, as "un bon sujet, plein de mérite," &c. &c. In consequence of my crediting such Recommendations, my own are out of Credit, and I can not advise anybody to have the least Dependence on them. If, after knowing this, you persist in desiring my Recommendation for this Person, who is known neither to me nor to you, I will give it, tho', as I said before, I ought to refuse it.

The subject was one that repeatedly awakened his humorous instincts.

You can have no conception of the Arts and Interest made use of to recommend and engage us to recommend very indifferent persons [he wrote to James Lovell]. The importunity is boundless. The Numbers we refuse incredible: which if you knew you would applaud us for, and on that Account excuse the few we have been prevail'd on to introduce to you. But, as somebody says,

 
"Poets lose half the Praise they would have got,
Were it but known what they discreetly blot."
 

The extent to which Silas Deane yielded to the solicitations of eager candidates abroad for military honor was one of the things that helped to destroy his standing with Congress. A second letter was written by Franklin to Lovell in which he had a word of extenuation for Deane's weakness in this respect.

I, who am upon the spot [he said] and know the infinite Difficulty of resisting the powerful Solicitations here of great Men, who if disoblig'd might have it in their Power to obstruct the Supplies he was then obtaining, do not wonder, that, being a Stranger to the People, and unacquainted with the Language, he was at first prevail'd on to make some such Agreements, when all were recommended, as they always are, as officiers expérimentés, braves comme leurs épées, pleins de Courage, de Talents, et de Zèle pour notre Cause, &c. &c. in short, mere Cesars, each of whom would have been an invaluable Acquisition to America.

Franklin even had the temerity to draft this jeu d'esprit to suit the character of the more extreme class of applications made to him for military employment, and it was actually used at times according to William Temple Franklin.

The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a Letter of Recommendation, tho' I know nothing of him, not even his Name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here. Sometimes, indeed one unknown Person brings another equally unknown, to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another! As to this Gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his Character and Merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be. I recommend him however to those Civilities, which every Stranger, of whom one knows no Harm, has a Right to; and I request you will do him all the good Offices, and show him all the Favour that, on further Acquaintance, you shall find him to deserve.

An ill-balanced man might have fretted himself into an angry outbreak or a state of physical decline under the exasperation of such importunities, but none of the petty annoyances of Franklin's position were too rough to withstand the smoothing effect of his unctuous humor. It was like the oil that he was in the habit of carrying around with him in the hollow joint of a bamboo cane during the period of his life when he was testing the tranquillizing effect of oil upon ruffled water.

At times, however, the unreasonableness of some of the applicants was too much even for Rabelais in his easy chair.

First [he wrote to a M. Lith], you desired to have Means procur'd for you of taking a Voyage to America "avec sureté"; which is not possible, as the Dangers of the Sea subsist always, and at present there is the additional Danger of being taken by the English. Then you desire that this may be sans trop grandes Dépenses, which is not intelligible enough to be answer'd, because, not knowing your Ability of bearing expences, one can not judge what may be trop grandes. Lastly, you desire Letters of Address to the Congress and to General Washington; which it is not reasonable to ask of one who knows no more of you, than that your name is Lith, and that you live at Bayreuth.

Another applicant, who thirsted for military renown, was one, Louis Givanetti Pellion, "ci-devant Garde du Corps de S. M. le Roi de Sardaigne, aujourd'hui Controlleur de la Cour de S. Mo susdite." "I know how," this gentleman wrote, "to accommodate myself to all climates, manners, circumstances, and times. I am passionately fond of travel, I love to see the great world, its armies and navies. Neither cards, nor wine nor women have any influence over me; but a ship, an army, long voyages, all these are Paradise to me."

It was also Franklin's lot to receive many letters of inquiry about the New World from individuals in Europe, who were thinking of migrating to America for peaceable purposes. What of its climate, its trade, its people, its laws? These were some of the questions relating to the New Eldorado which these individuals wished answered. To all who questioned him about the opportunities held out by America, when he did not simply refer the questioners to Crèvecœur's "Letters from an American Farmer," his answers were substantially the same. The emigrants to America would find a good climate, good air, good soil, good government, good laws and liberty there, but no Lotus Land. One Reuben Harvey wrote to him from Cork that about one hundred poor Irish tradesmen and husbandmen desired to settle in America. Franklin replied sententiously, "They will go to a Country where People do not Export their Beef and Linnen to import Claret, while the Poor at home live on Potatoes and wear Rags. Indeed America has not Beef and Linnen sufficient for Exportation because every man there, even the poorest, eats Beef and wears a Shirt."

Numerous letters came to him from authors inviting his literary criticism, or asking him to accord to them the honor of permitting them to dedicate their works to him. Allamand, the Warden of the forests and waters of the Island of Corsica, wished to know from him what canals there were in America. None, he replied, unless a short water-way, cut, it was said, in a single night across a loop formed by a long bend in Duck Creek, in the State of Delaware, could be called such. Projectors of all kinds solicited his views about their several projects, sane or crack-brained. Sheer beggars, as we have already seen, were likewise among his correspondents. One, La Baronne de Randerath, tells him that she has been advised by the doctors to take her husband to Aix, and, as her justification for requesting a loan from Franklin for the purpose, she mentions that her husband and Franklin are both Masons, though members of different lodges. Another letter requests him to exercise his influence with the Minister of Marine in behalf of the writer, a sea captain, who wishes to be discharged from the King's service. Dartmouth College, Brown University, Princeton College and Dickinson College all appealed to him for his aid in their efforts to secure money or other gifts abroad. In a word, he was not only world-famous but paid fully all the minor as well as major penalties of world-fame.

How curdled by the animosities of the Revolutionary War was the milk of human kindness even in such an amiable breast as that of Franklin, we have already had reason enough to know. His nature yielded slowly to the intense feelings, aroused by the long conflict between Great Britain and her Colonies, but it was equally slow to part with them when once inflamed. The most notable thing about his attitude towards Great Britain, after the first effusion of American blood at Lexington, was the inexorable firmness with which he repelled all advances upon the part of England that fell short of the recognition of American Independence. When the English Ministry fully realized that Great Britain was not waging war against a few rebellious malcontents but against a whole people in arms, overture after overture was informally made to Franklin by one English emissary or another, in the effort to dissolve the alliance between France and the United States, and to restore, as far as possible, the old connection between Great Britain and America. Among the first of these emissaries was Franklin's good friend, James Hutton. Franklin received him with the most affectionate kindness, but a letter, which he wrote to Hutton, after Hutton had returned to England, showed how entirely fruitless the journey of the latter had been. A peace, Franklin said, England might undoubtedly obtain by dropping all her pretensions to govern America, but, if she did not, with the peace, recover the affections of the American people, it would be neither a lasting nor a profitable one. To recover the respect and affection of America, England must tread back the steps that she had taken and disgrace the American advisers and promoters of the war, with all those who had inflamed the nation against America by their malicious writings; and all the ministers and generals who had prosecuted the war with such inhumanity. A little generosity, in the way of territorial concessions added to the counsels of necessity, would have a happy effect. For instance, Franklin said, if England would have a real friendly as well as able ally in America, and avoid all occasions of future discord, which would otherwise be continually arising along its American frontiers, it might throw in Canada, Nova Scotia and the Floridas.

Hutton was succeeded by William Pulteney, a member of Parliament. All of his propositions were predicated upon the continued dependence of America. Every proposition, Franklin let him know, which implied the voluntary return of America to dependence on Great Britain was out of the question. The proper course for Great Britain, in his judgment, was to acknowledge the independence of the United States, and to enter into such a treaty of peace, friendship and commerce with them as France itself had formed. The concluding words of Franklin's letter were hardly necessary to convince Pulteney of the hopelessness of his task. "May God at last," they ran, "grant that Wisdom to your national Councils, which he seems long to have deny'd them, and which only sincere, just, and humane Intentions can merit or expect." Ten days before this letter was written, the American envoys had been presented to the French King. Then followed David Hartley and Mr. George Hammond, the father of the George Hammond, who, many years afterwards, became Minister Plenipotentiary from England to the United States. When they arrived at Paris, it was only to find that the treaty of alliance between France and the United States had already been signed, and to learn soon afterwards that one of its clauses obliged the United States to make common cause with France, in case England declared war against her. How authentic were the credentials of the next emissary it is impossible to say, but Franklin was entirely confident that he came over to France under the direct patronage of George III. The circumstances were these. One morning, a lengthy letter was thrown into a window of Franklin's residence at Passy, written in English, dated at Brussels, and signed Charles de Weissenstein. The letter conjured Franklin in the name of the Just and Omniscient God, before whom all must soon appear, and by his hopes of future fame, to consider if some expedient could not be devised for ending the desolation of America and preventing the war imminent in Europe. It then declared that France would certainly at last betray America, and suggested a plan for the union of England and America. Under the plan, among other things, judges of the American courts were to be named by the King, and to hold their offices for life, and were to bear titles either as peers of America, or otherwise, as should be decided by his Majesty; there were to be septennial sessions of Congress, or more frequent ones, if his Majesty should think fit to call Congress together oftener, but all its proceedings were to be transmitted to the British Parliament, without whose consent no money was ever to be granted by Congress, or any separate State of America to the Crown; the chief offices of the American civil list were to be named in the plan, and the compensation attached to them was to be paid by America; the naval and military forces of the Union were to be under the direction of his Majesty, but the British Parliament was to fix their extent, and vote the sums necessary for their maintenance. It was also proposed by the letter that, to protect Franklin, Washington, Adams, Hancock and other leaders of the American Revolution from the personal enmity in England, by which their talents might otherwise be kept down, they were to have offices or pensions for life at their option. The promise was also made that, in case his Majesty, or his successors, should ever create American peers, then those persons, or their descendants, were to be among the first peers created, if they desired. Moreover, Mr. Washington was to have immediately a brevet of lieutenant-general, and all the honors and precedence incident thereto, but was not to assume or bear any command without a special warrant, or letter of service for that purpose, from the King.

The writer further asked for a personal interview with Franklin for the purpose of discussing the details of the project, or, he stated, if that was not practicable, he would be in a certain part of the Cathedral of Notre Dame on a certain day at noon precisely, with a rose in his hat, to receive a written answer from Franklin which he would transmit directly to the King himself. Franklin laid the letter before his colleagues, and it was agreed that it should be answered by him, and that both it and the answer should be laid before Vergennes, and that the answer should be sent or kept back as Vergennes believed best. The French Minister decided that it had best not be sent. At the hour fixed for the interview, however, an agent of the French police was on hand, and he reported that a gentleman, whose name he afterwards ascertained to be an Irish one by tracking him to his hotel, did appear at the appointed time, and, finding no one to meet him, wandered about the Cathedral, looking at the altars and pictures, but never losing sight of the place suggested for the tryst, and often returning to it, and gazing anxiously about him as if he expected some one. The scornful tone of the letter, drafted by Franklin, which is not unlike one of the scolding speeches, with which the Homeric heroes expressed their opinions of each other, leaves little room for doubt that he truly believed himself to be assailing no less a person than the bigoted King himself. After some savage thrusts, which remind us of those aimed by Hamlet at Polonius behind the arras, he bursts out into these exclamatory words:

This proposition of delivering ourselves, bound and gagged, ready for hanging, without even a right to complain, and without a friend to be found afterwards among all mankind you would have us embrace upon the faith of an act of Parliament! Good God! An act of your Parliament! This demonstrates that you do not yet know us, and that you fancy we do not know you; but it is not merely this flimsy faith, that we are to act upon; you offer us hope, the hope of places, pensions, and peerages. These, judging from yourselves, you think are motives irresistible. This offer to corrupt us, Sir, is with me your credential, and convinces me that you are not a private volunteer in your application. It bears the stamp of British court character. It is even the signature of your King.

The next bearer of the olive branch, who came over to Paris, came under very different auspices. This was William Jones, afterwards Sir William Jones, who was at the time affianced to Anna Maria Shipley. He did not come as the representative of the King or his Ministers, but as the representative of the generous and patriotic Englishmen, who had cherished the same dream of world-wide British unity as Franklin himself, and whose sacrifices in behalf of their fellow-Englishmen in America should be almost as gratefully remembered by us as the Continental soldiers who perished at Monmouth or Camden. Draping his thoughts with academic terms, he submitted a paper to Dr. Franklin entitled A Fragment from Polybius in which England, France, the United States and Franklin are given names borrowed from antiquity, and various suggestions are made for the settlement of the existing controversy between Great Britain and America. England becomes Athens, France, Caria, America, the Islands, and Franklin, Eleutherion; and Jones himself is masked as an Athenian lawyer.

This I know [observes the latter-day Athenian] and positively pronounce, that, while Athens is Athens, her proud but brave citizens will never expressly recognize the independence of the Islands; their resources are, no doubt, exhaustible, but will not be exhausted in the lives of us and of our children. In this resolution all parties agree.

There should be, the writer suggested, "a perfect coordination between Athens and the Thirteen United Islands, they considering her not as a parent, whom they must obey, but as an elder sister, whom they can not help loving, and to whom they shall give pre-eminence of honor and co-equality of power." Other suggestions were that the new constitutions of the Islands should remain intact, but that, on every occasion, requiring acts for the general good, there should be an assembly of deputies from the Senate of Athens, and the Congress of the Islands, who should fairly adjust the whole business, and settle the ratio of the contributions on both sides; that this committee should consist of fifty Islanders and fifty Athenians, or of a smaller number chosen by them, and that, if it was thought necessary, and found convenient, a proportionate number of Athenian citizens should have seats, and the power of debating and voting on questions of common concern in the great assembly of the Islands, and a proportionable number of Islanders should sit with the like power in the Assembly at Athens. The whole reminds the reader of the classical fictions to which the first Parliamentary reporters were driven by press censorship. The paper, drafted by Jones, was little more than a mere literary exercise, prompted by ingenuous enthusiasm, but we may be sure that it kindled in Franklin very different feelings from those aroused in him by the insidious appeal of Charles de Weissenstein.

The shortcomings, which Franklin is supposed by his enemies to have exhibited in France with respect to the duties of his post, require but little attention. Apart from a lack of clerical neatness and system, such as might more justly be imputed as a serious reproach to a book-keeper or clerk, they rest upon evidence easily perverted by enmity or jealousy.⁴¹ Adams had no little to say about Franklin's love of ease and tranquillity, the social and academic distractions, to which he was subject, and the extent to which his time was consumed by curious visitors. It is a sufficient answer to all such disparagement to declare that he successfully dispatched an enormous amount of public business with but very little aid, and unflinchingly bore a load of responsibility only less weighty than that of Washington; that no spy, such as obtained secret access to the papers of Silas Deane and Arthur Lee for the purposes of the British Government, ever abstracted any valuable information from his papers; and that his position in the polite and learned world, and the popular curiosity, excited by his fame, were among the things which tended most effectually to recommend him to the favor of the French People and Ministry. The effort was also made by John Adams to create the impression that Franklin was unduly subservient to the influence of France, and that, but for the superior firmness of John Jay and himself, the United States would not have concluded a peace with England on terms anything like so favorable as those actually obtained from her.

In what respects Franklin can be truly said to have been servile to French influence, it is impossible to see. If by this is meant that he did not share the prejudices of Adams and Jay against the French people, did not harbor their keen distrust of the motives of the French ministry and did not feel as free as they to ignore the proprieties, arising out of the profound obligations of America to France, the reflection is just enough. Neither Adams nor Jay ever succeeded in making himself sufficiently acceptable to the French people or ministry, or obtained sufficient benefits from them for his countrymen, to feel any sense of personal indebtedness to them, or to be inclined to show any unusual degree of consideration to them. This was true of Jay, if for no other reason, because his intercourse with them was but limited in point of time. Franklin, on the other hand, was the idol of the French people, and received from Vergennes as decisive proofs of confidence as one individual can confer upon another. No one could have been in a better position than he was to know that the French alliance was hardly more the fruit of selfish policy upon the part of the French ministry, or of a desire upon its part to avenge historic injuries, than of the generous sensibility of the French people to the liberal and democratic impulses, which were hurrying them on to the fiercest outbreak of uncalculating enthusiasm that the world has ever seen. He had never entered the cabinet of the French Minister to sue for pecuniary aid without coming away with a fresh cordial for the drooping energies of his people. That upright and able minister, he wrote to Samuel Huntington, on one occasion, had never promised him anything which he did not punctually perform.⁴² No matter how dark were the thick clouds that enveloped the fate of his country, no matter how acute was the pecuniary distress of France herself, there was always another million at the bottom of the stocking of the French tax-payer for the land of freedom and opportunity. Franklin had even known what it was to beg for a loan from the French King and to receive it as a gracious gift. He would have been fashioned of ignoble materials, indeed, if he had been too quick, in seeking the selfish advantage of his country, to forget the extraordinary magnanimity of her ally, and to suspect a disposition upon her part to deprive the United States of the just rewards of the triumph, which they might never have achieved but for her. And he, at any rate, with his strong sense of justice, was not likely to commit himself with unhesitating alacrity to a coldblooded scramble for concessions from England to America which took no account of the fact that France not only had the interests of America, but also her own necessities to consult, and that it was as essential to her interests that America should not make peace with England before she did, as it was to the interests of America that France should not make peace with England before America did. In the Treaty of Alliance, France had assumed no obligation to the United States except that of continuing to wage war against England until their independence was acknowledged, and of not concluding any peace with England that did not include them. She had never bound herself to secure to America the right of fishery on the Newfoundland Banks, or to oppose every restriction upon the extension of her western boundaries. In the course of the war, there was a time when the situation of America was so desperate that Vergennes was, with perfect fidelity to the American cause, brought to the conclusion that the Thirteen States might well afford to surrender a part of their territory to England as the price of independence; and this was a conclusion to which any honest American mind might have been brought under the circumstances. And, even after this crisis had passed, and negotiations for peace were pending between Great Britain and the Allies, it is not surprising that he should not have foreseen that he would ever have occasion to say, as he did after England and America came to terms, that England had bought rather than made a peace, but should have thought that England might still hold out stubbornly enough to cause even America to feel that she could be reasonably expected by France to forego more than one minor expectation to make certain of her independence. There was also the fact, which could hardly escape the attention of a man so deferential to the authority of his principals as Franklin always was, that Congress had positively instructed its Commissioners to make the most candid and confidential communications upon all subjects to the minister of its generous ally, the King of France, to undertake nothing in the negotiations for peace or a truce without the knowledge and concurrence of the Minister and King, and ultimately to govern themselves by their advice and opinion.

And there was also the fact that Franklin had always had such marked success in influencing the conclusions of Vergennes, that he might well have confided in his ability to bring the French minister over to any reasonable views that he might form about the results that America had the right to expect from the Peace; particularly as Vergennes had long been possessed with a haunting fear that America might be detached from her alliance with France.

In the light of all these circumstances, it is not strange that Franklin should have been reluctant, in the first instance, to unite with Adams and Jay in signing the preliminary treaty of peace with England without previously consulting with Vergennes; for that is the only tangible foundation for the claim that he was too submissive to the selfish designs of France; and there is no substantial evidence that any real point was gained by America by the act, or that it awakened any feeling in Vergennes profounder than the passing disappointment, born of realized distrust and affronted pride, which led him to write to M. de la Luzerne, the French Minister to the United States, immediately after it as follows:

I think it proper that the most influential members of Congress should be informed of the very irregular conduct of their Commissioners in regard to us. You may speak of it not in the tone of complaint. I accuse no person; I blame no one, not even Dr. Franklin. He has yielded too easily to the bias of his colleagues, who do not pretend to recognize the rules of courtesy in regard to us. All their attentions have been taken up by the English whom they have met in Paris. If we may judge of the future from what has passed here under our eyes, we shall be but poorly paid for all that we have done for the United States, and for securing to them a national existence.

When we recollect how faithfully France had rejected every effort upon the part of England to treat for peace with her separately, and insisted that the treaty of peace between England and France, on the one hand, and the treaty of peace between England and the United States, on the other, should go hand in hand, how entirely Vergennes had refrained from inquiring into the course of the pending negotiations between England and our commissioners, which resulted in the signing of the preliminary treaty of peace between England and the United States; and how singularly limited was the measure of concession that France asked for herself from England, these words cannot be read by any true American without a highly painful impression.

When Franklin appealed, after the peace, to both Adams and Jay to deny the statement, current in America, that he had not stood up stoutly for American rights, when the peace was being concluded, Jay complied with unreserved emphasis, and Adams with a reluctant note which rendered his testimony but the stronger. The truth is that, if Franklin's conduct during the peace negotiations was not admirable in every respect, it was only because he found that he could not decline to unite with his colleagues in violating the instruction of Congress without breaking with them and hazarding discord that might be fatal to the interests of his country. He did not, of course, believe that France, after the enormous sacrifices that she had made for American independence, was engaged in a treacherous effort to shackle the growth of the United States. He could not readily have entertained such a totally ungrounded suspicion as that which led Jay, when he learnt that De Rayneval was going over to London to have an interview with Shelburne, to leap to the conclusion that it was for the purpose of confounding American aspirations, and to inform Shelburne that now was the time for England to outbid France for the favor of America by executing at once preliminary articles of peace, conceding to America the points about which she was most concerned. The overture was a bold one, but if it had not been accepted in the manner that it was, and had been communicated by Shelburne to Vergennes, it might have been attended by consequences inimical to the Alliance which even the personal influence of Franklin might not have been able to prevent. Franklin was too prudent to risk rashly the support of an ally, from which the United States still found it necessary to borrow money, even after their independence was acknowledged, and too grateful to risk lightly the friendship of an ally which had not only aided the United States with soldiers, ships and money to secure their independence, but had repeatedly declined to treat with England except on the basis of American independence. His inclination naturally and properly enough was to maintain with Vergennes until the last the frank and intimate relations that he had always maintained with him; to avoid everything that might have the least savor of faithlessness or sharp practice in the opinion of our ally, and to rely upon our growing importance and the ordinary appeals of argument and persuasion for a peace at once fair and just to both the United States and France. But never once from the time that he wrote to Lord Shelburne the brief letter, that initiated the negotiations for peace between England and the United States, until the day that he threw himself, after the consummation of peace, into the arms of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, saying, "My friend! Could I have hoped at my age to enjoy such a happiness," was he animated by any purpose except that of securing for his countrymen the most generous terms that he could. It is by no means improbable that, if he had been our sole negotiator, he would not only have obtained for us all that was secured by his Fellow-Commissioners and himself but Canada besides, and would, moreover, have saved the United States the reproach that justly attached to them because of the precipitate signature of the preliminary articles of peace. As we have already seen, the acquisition of Canada by the United States was something that he had definitely in mind even before the negotiations for peace began, and, when they did begin, this was one of the things that he specified in a memorandum that he gave to Oswald, the British envoy, as concessions that it was advisable for England to make, and we also know from the correspondence of Oswald that it was a topic to which his conversation frequently turned. With such address did he ply Oswald upon this point that the latter went so far as to say that it might be conceded. To compass it, he was even willing to agree that the Loyalists should be compensated by the United States for their losses; which was the point upon which the English Ministry was most earnestly bent, and the one which aroused in him feelings of the deepest antagonism. What a trifling recompense the compensation of the Loyalists would have been for such an addition to our national domain as Canada we hardly need say; nor need we dilate upon the far-sighted statesmanship which so surely foresaw what futurity held in store for a country which, as late as 1760, had been gravely proposed to be exchanged with France for the Island of Guadeloupe. It is to be regretted by the United States, if the present happy lot of Canada is to be the subject of regret at all, that the desire of Franklin to secure Canada for them was not more urgently seconded by Adams and Jay. The former was enthusiastically resolved, as was but proper, to secure for New England the right to fish on the Newfoundland Banks, and the latter was especially eager, as any statesman with the slightest glow of imagination might well have been, to remove every obstacle in our pathway westward. Neither appears to have been zealously alive to the considerations, which led Franklin to cast a covetous eye upon Canada, and to make it one of the primary objects of his efforts to promote the interests of America during the peace negotiations. On the other hand, Franklin was not less impressed than they were with the importance of our North Eastern Fisheries and our Western Destiny; and was quite as stiff as they in maintaining our rights with respect to them. Moreover, when the insistence of the English Ministry upon compensation for the Loyalists threatened to be the only rock, upon which the negotiations were likely to split, it was his suggestiveness which relieved the situation by proposing, as an offset to the losses of the Loyalists, the payment by England of the pecuniary losses wantonly inflicted by her upon the inhabitants of such towns as Fairfield and Norfolk on our Atlantic seaboard. After this timely counter-claim, a compromise was soon reached, under which it was agreed that the Loyalists should be referred to the justice of the individual States with a favorable recommendation from the Commissioners. This was but a diplomatic way of disposing of the proposition adversely without seeming to do so, for Shelburne as well as the American Commissioners must have realized that the recommendation was the only form of indemnity that the Loyalists were likely to obtain.

Friendly as Franklin was to the French Court, it was only where some treaty stipulation was involved, or some definite rule of courtesy was to be observed, that he recognized the right of France to influence the course of the negotiations between England and the American Commissioners. He knew as well as Adams and Jay that French policy, partly because of considerations, peculiar to France herself, and partly because of obligations, that France owed to Spain, differed in some very material respects from American policy. But he entertained the belief, and justly entertained the belief, that this was no reason why Vergennes should necessarily be moved by the settled, perfidious purpose of arresting an agreement between England and America until the negotiations between England and France and Spain had gone too far for the United States to be any longer in the position to insist effectively upon their fishery and boundary claims. The disposition of the French Minister to contemplate contingencies, in which concessions would have to be made by America, was in Franklin's judgment "due to the moderation of the minister and to his desire of removing every obstacle to speedy negotiations for peace"; and there is no real reason to believe that he was not right. It is quite true that Marbois, when he was the French Secretary of Legation in the United States, in his famous letter to Vergennes, which the English were at pains to bring to the notice of John Jay, suggested to Vergennes that he should let the Americans know that their pretensions to the Newfoundland fisheries were not well founded, and that the French King did not mean to support them; but, as Vergennes wrote to M. de la Luzerne, the successor of Gérard, the opinion of Marbois was not necessarily that of the King, and, moreover the views of his letter had not been followed. When Franklin made his suggestion to Oswald in respect to Canada, he did not bring it to the knowledge of Vergennes. In the very commencement of the negotiations between England and the United States, he let it be known to Grenville, the envoy of Charles James Fox, that, when Great Britain acknowledged the independence of America, the treaty, that America had made with France for gaining it, ended, and no conventional tie remained between America and France but that of the treaty of commerce which England, too, might establish between America and herself, if she pleased. Indeed, Vergennes himself clearly recognized the right of the American Commissioners to make the best terms that they could for themselves in the matter of the fisheries, the western boundaries or any other object of American policy.

We are [he wrote Luzerne on April 9, 1782], and shall always be, disposed to consent that the American plenipotentiaries in Europe should treat according to their instructions directly and without our intervention with those of the Court of London, while we on our side shall treat in the same way, provided that the two negotiations continue at the same rate, and that the two treaties shall be signed the same day, and shall not be good the one without the other.

The hesitation of Franklin about executing the preliminary articles of peace between England and the United States was not due to any doubt as to the technical right of the American Commissioners to sign it, aside from the instruction of Congress that they were not to take any important step without the advice of the French Ministry. He hesitated to sign it because he was subject to this instruction, and also because he felt that for the Commissioners to sign such a treaty, without taking Vergennes into their confidence, was hardly compatible with the scrupulous deference due to such a timely, generous and powerful ally as France had proved herself to be and might be again. His reason for disregarding the instruction of Congress, and uniting with his colleagues in signing the articles doubtless was that he deemed it unwise, in any view of the case, not to subordinate his own judgment, after full discussion, to that of the majority of the Commission in a case where, if the French Minister were acting in bad faith, it was but proper that his bad faith should be anticipated, and where, if he were acting in good faith, his resentment was not likely to be more serious than that which is usually visited upon a mere breach of diplomatic decorum. The execution of the articles was expressly made subject to the proviso that they were to have no force, if England did not reach an understanding with France also. Without such a proviso, the action of our Commissioners, of course, would have merited the contempt of the world. With it, Franklin was left free to say, disingenuously it must be confessed, to Vergennes that, in signing the articles, the Commissioners had at the most been guilty of neglecting a point of bienséance. No one knew better than he that no such soothing pretence could be set up by Adams and Jay, and that, even as respected himself, though the extent of his offence consisted, as Vergennes truly divined, in yielding to the bias of his colleagues, he had been drawn into a position in which it was impossible for him to separate himself wholly from either the motives or the moral responsibilities of his colleagues. In transmitting with them to Congress a copy of the articles, he united with them in this statement:

As we had reason to imagine that the Articles respecting the boundaries, the refugees and fisheries, did not correspond with the policy of this court, we did not communicate the preliminaries to the Minister until after they were signed, and not even then the separate Article. We hope that these considerations will excuse our having so far deviated from the spirit of our instructions. The Count de Vergennes, on perusing the Articles, appeared surprised, but not displeased, at their being so favorable to us.

The separate article was one fixing the northern boundary of West Florida, in case Great Britain, at the conclusion of the war, should recover, or be put in possession of, that Province. In reply to a letter from Robert R. Livingston, disapproving the manner, in which the articles had been signed, Franklin said that they had done what appeared to all of them best at the time, and, if they had done wrong, the Congress would do right, after hearing them, to censure them. The nomination by Congress of five persons to the service, he further said, seemed to mark that they had some dependence on their joint judgment, since one alone could have made a treaty by direction of the French Ministry, as well as twenty. But there can be no doubt that the individual views of Franklin about the aims of the French Court, in relation to the United States, are to be found not in the letter of the Commissioners to Congress, but in his own words in this same reply to Livingston:

I will only add [he said] that, with respect to myself, neither the Letter from M. de Marbois, handed us thro' the British Negociators (a suspicious Channel) nor the Conversations respecting the Fishery, the Boundaries, the Royalists, &c., recommending Moderation in our Demands, are of Weight sufficient in my Mind to fix an Opinion, that this Court wish'd to restrain us in obtaining any Degree of Advantage we could prevail on our Enemies to accord; since those Discourses are fairly resolvable, by supposing a very natural Apprehension, that we, relying too much on the Ability of France to continue the War in our favour, and supply us constantly with Money, might insist on more Advantages than the English would be willing to grant, and thereby lose the Opportunity of making Peace, so necessary to all our friends.

It is impossible, however, to believe that Franklin could have taken such a step except with grave misgivings as to its effect on the mind of Vergennes. This is shown by the reserve which he, as well as his fellow-commissioners, maintained towards Vergennes, while the preliminary articles were being matured.

According to the injunctions of Congress [Vergennes wrote to Luzerne], they should have done nothing without our participation. I have pointed out to you, Sir, that the King would not have sought to interest himself in the negotiations, save in so far as his offices might be necessary to his friends. The American Commissioners will not say that I have sought to intervene in their business, still less that I have wearied them by my curiosity. They have kept themselves carefully out of my way.

It must have taxed even the nice judgment of Franklin to calculate precisely the degree of resentment that the act of the Commissioners would excite. He took the precaution of sending a copy of the articles to Vergennes the day after they were signed. His receipt of them was followed by an ominous silence. Some days later, Franklin called upon Vergennes, and the latter took pains to let him perceive that the signing of the articles had little in it which could be agreeable to the King, and Franklin advanced such excuses for his colleagues and himself as the case permitted. According to Vergennes, the conversation was amicable, but for a time it did not efface the impression that his mind had received. A week or so later, when Franklin proposed to send the preliminary articles to America by a ship, for which an English passport had been provided, and was soliciting a loan of twenty millions of francs from France, Vergennes gave him a bad quarter of an hour.

I am at a loss sir [he said] to explain your conduct, and that of your colleagues on this occasion. You have concluded your preliminary articles without any communication between us, although the instructions from Congress prescribe that nothing shall be done without the participation of the King. You are about to hold out a certain hope of peace to America, without even informing yourself on the state of the negotiation on our part. You are wise and discreet, sir; you perfectly understand what is due to propriety; you have all your life performed your duties. I pray you to consider how you propose to fulfill those, which are due to the King! I am not desirous of enlarging these reflections; I commit them to your own integrity. When you shall be pleased to relieve my uncertainty, I will entreat the King to enable me to answer your demands.

The reply of Franklin was almost abject.

Nothing [he said] has been agreed in the preliminaries contrary to the interests of France; and no peace is to take place between us and England, till you have concluded yours. Your observation is, however, apparently just, that, in not consulting you before they were signed, we have been guilty of neglecting a point of bienséance. But, as this was not from want of respect for the King, whom we all love and honour, we hope it will be excused, and that the great work, which has hitherto been so happily conducted, is so nearly brought to perfection, and is so glorious to his reign, will not be ruined by a single indiscretion of ours. And certainly the whole edifice sinks to the ground immediately, if you refuse on that account to give us any further assistance.

Again, unpromising as the conditions were, there was no resisting the voice of the seductive mendicant. France did not lend the twenty millions of francs to the United States because she did not have that much to lend; but she did lend six. If any loss of dignity or self-respect was suffered on this occasion it was not by her.

The definitive treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States was signed at Paris on September 3, 1783, and was ratified a few months later by both the contracting powers. Several weeks after it was signed, Franklin again tendered his resignation to Congress, but it was not accepted until March 7, 1785. Three days later, Jefferson, who had been in France ever since August, 1784, for the purpose of co-operating with Franklin and Adams in the negotiation of commercial treaties with England and other European countries, was appointed the American plenipotentiary at the Court of Versailles in the place of Franklin.

Shortly after the return of Franklin to Philadelphia, he was elected President of the Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and, in 1787, he was elected a member of the convention which adopted the Federal Constitution. There was only one man in the United States whose claims to the Presidency of the Convention could possibly be deemed paramount to his; and that was Washington. The nomination of Washington to the position was to have been made by him, but the weather on the day, fixed for it, was too bad to permit him at his advanced age, and in his infirm condition, to venture abroad. The honor of making the nomination, therefore, fell to Robert Morris, another member of the Pennsylvania delegation. It was thought becoming and graceful in Pennsylvania, Madison tells us, to pass by her own distinguished citizen as President, and to take the lead in giving that pre-eminence to the late Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, which the country felt to be his due.⁴³ At the next session of the Convention, Franklin was present, and thereafter he attended its sessions regularly for five hours each day for more than four months. His stone made it impossible for him to stand long upon his feet, and, when he participated on any important occasion in the discussions of the body, it was his habit to reduce his thoughts to writing, and to have them read to the body by one of his colleagues, usually James Wilson. Copies of these speeches were made by Madison from the original manuscripts for his reports of the debates of the Convention, and, unlike the speeches of the other leading members of the Assembly, the speeches of Franklin have consequently come down to us in their entirety. Of his general course in the Convention, it is enough to say that it was strongly marked by liberalism, faith in the popular intelligence and virtue, and the aversion to arbitrary power which was always such a prominent feature of his conduct in every relation. He had a quick eye to the abuses of authority, and it is probable that, if he had been a younger man, when the Convention met, and had lived until the clash between the Federalists and the Republicans arose, he would have been a Republican. Inane idealism, lack of energy and resolution did not belong to his character, but, to say nothing more, what he had seen of the workings of monarchical and aristocratic institutions, during the long dispute between England and her colonies, was not calculated to prejudice him in their favor.⁴⁴

The compensation that should be paid to the Chief Magistrate of the Union was the first topic to which he formally addressed himself as a member of the Convention. In his opinion, no pecuniary compensation should be paid to him. The argument that he pursued in support of his proposition was one that he had often made with respect to the Government of Great Britain.

Sir [he said] there are two Passions which have a powerful Influence in the Affairs of Men. These are Ambition and Avarice; the Love of Power and the Love of Money. Separately, each of these has great Force in prompting Men to Action; but when united in View of the same Object, they have in many Minds the most violent Effects. Place before the Eyes of such Men a Post of Honour, that shall at the same time be a Place of Profit, and they will move Heaven and Earth to obtain it. The vast Number of such Places it is that renders the British Government so tempestuous. The Struggles for them are the true source of all those Factions which are perpetually dividing the Nation, distracting its Councils, hurrying it sometimes into fruitless and mischievous Wars, and often compelling a Submission to dishonorable Terms of Peace.

The argument, of course, fell upon deaf ears. It really presupposes a numerous class, at once sufficiently free from pecuniary anxieties to give its exclusive attention to public duties, and sufficiently qualified to discharge them with the requisite degree of success. Such a class was not to be found in America, at any rate, and, even if it was, it would have been invidious in the eyes of a democratic community to limit the enjoyment of public office to it. The subsequent history of the Republic showed that, in the beginning of our national existence, even moderate salaries did not suffice to keep some of the ablest men in the United States from declining or resigning federal office. The long journeys and the bad roads and taverns of that day were probably responsible for this state of things. In the first thirty years after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, no less than one hundred and ten seats in the United States Senate were resigned, and Washington experienced great difficulty in inducing lawyers to accept positions even on the Supreme Bench of the United States. It is a remarkable fact that, during the first thirty years after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, ten persons either declined to serve as associate justices of the Supreme Court, or resigned the office. It is a still more remarkable fact that both Jay and Ellsworth resigned as Chief Justice after brief terms of office. There was, however, undoubtedly an element of expediency in the views of Franklin, for it is no uncommon thing in the United States to see the supervisory functions of certain offices, connected with the educational or eleemosynary systems of the country, more efficiently and faithfully exercised, when exercised without pay by men, in whom public spirit or philanthropic zeal is highly developed, than they would be, if exercised by the very different kind of men who would be attracted to them, if salaried.