Benjamin Franklin
by Benjamin Franklin · English · Gutenberg #35508 · 1,655,532 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Benjamin Franklin
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Benjamin Franklin
Representative selections, with introduction, bibliograpy, and notes
Author: Benjamin Franklin
Editor: Chester E. Jorgenson
Frank Luther Mott
Release date: March 6, 2011 [eBook #35508]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35508
Credits: Produced by Mark C. Orton, Christine Aldridge and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BENJAMIN FRANKLIN ***
Produced by Mark C. Orton, Christine Aldridge and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_
Words with gesperrt (wide) letter spacing are surrounded with =equals=
2. The editor of the original book marked some mispelled words with
[_sic_], and these have been retained as written, uncorrected.
Additional words found to be mispelled have been corrected and are
listed under "Spelling Corrections" at the end of this e-text.
Additionally this work contains a large number of word spelling
variations found to be valid in Webster's English Dictionary as well
as several unverified spellings that appear multiple times and
inconsistant word capitalization and hyphenation, all of which have
been retained as printed. The interested reader will find an
alphabetic "Word Variations" list at the end of this e-text.
3. Numbered footnotes in Sections I-VII of the Introduction have been
relocated to the end of the Introduction and marked with an "i-".
Lettered footnotes in the "Selections" have been relocated directly
under the paragraph they pertain to.
4. Additional Transcriber's Notes are located at the "Poor Richards
Almanack" facsimile reproduction beginning on page 225, and at the
end of this e-text.
* * * * *
*
AMERICAN WRITERS SERIES
*
HARRY HAYDEN CLARK
_General Editor_
*
AMERICAN WRITERS SERIES
_Volumes of representative selections, prepared by American scholars
under the general editorship of Harry Hayden Clark, University of
Wisconsin._
_Volumes now ready are starred._
AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISTS, _Raymond Adams, University of North
Carolina_
*WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, _Tremaine McDowell, University of Minnesota_
*JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, _Robert E. Spiller, Swarthmore College_
*JONATHAN EDWARDS, _Clarence H. Faust, University of Chicago, and Thomas
H. Johnson, Hackley School_
*RALPH WALDO EMERSON, _Frederic I. Carpenter, Harvard University_
*BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, _Frank Luther Mott and Chester E. Jorgenson,
University of Iowa_
*ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND THOMAS JEFFERSON, _Frederick C. Prescott,
Cornell University_
BRET HARTE
*NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, _Austin Warren, Boston University_
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, _Robert Shafer, University of Cincinnati_
*WASHINGTON IRVING, _Henry A. Pochmann, Mississippi State College_
HENRY JAMES, _Lyon Richardson, Western Reserve University_
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
*HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, _Odell Shepard, Trinity College_
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, _Norman Foerster, University of Iowa, and Harry H.
Clark, University of Wisconsin_
HERMAN MELVILLE, _Willard Thorp, Princeton University_
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY
THOMAS PAINE, _Harry H. Clark, University of Wisconsin_
FRANCIS PARKMAN, _Wilbur L. Schramm, University of Iowa_
*EDGAR ALLAN POE, _Margaret Alterton, University of Iowa, and Hardin
Craig, Stanford University_
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT, _Claude Jones, Johns Hopkins University_
*SOUTHERN POETS, _Edd Winfield Parks, University of Georgia_
SOUTHERN PROSE, _Gregory Paine, University of North Carolina_
*HENRY DAVID THOREAU, _Bartholow Crawford, University of Iowa_
*MARK TWAIN, _Fred Lewis Pattee, Rollins College_
*WALT WHITMAN, _Floyd Stovall, University of Texas_
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
[Illustration: _Pen drawing by Kerr Eby, after an engraving by Mason
Chamberlin_
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
ÆT. 56]
Benjamin Franklin
REPRESENTATIVE SELECTIONS, WITH
INTRODUCTION, BIBLIOGRAPHY, AND NOTES
BY
FRANK LUTHER MOTT
_Director, School of Journalism
University of Iowa_
AND
CHESTER E. JORGENSON
_Instructor in English
University of Iowa_
[Illustration]
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
_New York_ · _Cincinnati_ · _Chicago_
_Boston_ · _Atlanta_
COPYRIGHT, 1936, BY
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
MOTT AND JORGENSON'S FRANKLIN
W.P.I.
MADE IN U.S.A.
_PREFACE_
Benjamin Franklin's reputation in America has been singularly
distorted by the neglect of his works other than his _Autobiography_
and his most utilitarian aphorisms. If America has contented herself
with appraising him as "the earliest incarnation of 'David Harum,'" as
"the first high-priest of the religion of efficiency," as "the first
Rotarian," it may be that this aspect of Franklin is all that an
America plagued by growing pains, by peopling and mechanizing three
thousand miles of frontier, has been able to see. That facet of
Franklin's mind and mien which allowed Carlyle to describe him as "the
Father of all Yankees" was appreciated by Sinclair Lewis's George F.
Babbitt: "Once in a while I just naturally sit back and size up this
Solid American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction." But
this is not the Franklin of "imperturbable common-sense" honored by
Matthew Arnold as "the very incarnation of sanity and clear-sense, a
man the most considerable ... whom America has yet produced." Nor is
this the Franklin who emerges from his collected works (and the
opinions of his notable contemporaries) as an economist, political
theorist, educator, journalist, scientific deist, and disinterested
scientist. If he wrote little that is narrowly belles-lettres, he need
not be ashamed of his voluminous correspondence, in an age which saw
the fruition of the epistolary art. The Franklin found in his
collected and uncollected writings is, as the following Introduction
may suggest, not the Franklin who too commonly is synchronized
exclusively with the wisdom and wit of _Poor Richard_.
Since the present interpretation of the growth of Franklin's mind, with
stress upon its essential unity in the light of scientific deism,
tempered by his debt to Puritanism, classicism, and neoclassicism, may
seem somewhat novel, the editors have felt it desirable to document
their interpretation with considerable fullness. It is hoped that the
reader will withhold judgment as to the validity of this interpretation
until the documentary evidence has been fully considered in its genetic
significance, and that he will feel able to incline to other
interpretations only in proportion as they can be equally supported by
other evidence. The present interpretation is also supported by the
Selections following--the fullest collection hitherto available in one
volume--which offer, the editors believe, the essential materials for a
reasonable acquaintance with the growth of Franklin's mind, from youth
to old age, in its comprehensive interests--educational, literary,
journalistic, economic, political, scientific, humanitarian, and
religious.
With the exception of the selections from the _Autobiography_, the works
are arranged in approximate chronological order, hence inviting a
necessarily genetic study of Franklin's mind. The _Dissertation on
Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain_, never before printed in an
edition of Franklin's works or in a book of selections, is here printed
from the London edition of 1725, retaining his peculiarities of italics,
capitalization, and punctuation. Attention is also drawn to the
photographically reproduced complete text of _Poor Richard Improved_
(1753), graciously furnished by Mr. William Smith Mason. _The Way to
Wealth_ is from an exact reprint made by Mr. Mason, and with his
permission here reproduced. One of the editors is grateful for the
privilege of consulting Mr. Mason's magnificent collection of Franklin
correspondence (original MSS), especially the Franklin-Galloway and
Franklin-Jonathan Shipley (Bishop of St. Asaph) unpublished
correspondence. With Mr. Mason's generous permission the editors
reproduce fragments of this correspondence in the Introduction.
The bulk of the selections have been printed from the latest, standard
edition, _The Writings of Benjamin Franklin_, collected and edited with
a Life and Introduction by Albert Henry Smyth (10 vols., 1905-1907). For
permission to use this material the editors are grateful to The
Macmillan Company, publishers. The editors are indebted to Dr. Max
Farrand, Director of the Henry E. Huntington Library, for permission to
reprint part of Franklin's MS version of the _Autobiography_.
Chester E. Jorgenson is preparing an analysis and interpretation of
Franklin's brand of scientific deism, its sources and relation to his
economic, political, and literary theories and practice. Fragments of
this projected study are included, especially in Section VII of the
following Introduction. For the past two years Mr. Jorgenson has enjoyed
the kindness and generosity of Mr. William Smith Mason, and has incurred
an indebtedness which cannot be expressed adequately in print.
The work of the editors has been vastly eased by Beata Prochnow
Jorgenson's assistance in typing, proofreading, et cetera. They are
extremely grateful to Professor Harry Hayden Clark for incisive
suggestions and valuable editorial assistance.
F. L. M.
C. E. J.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. Franklin's Milieu: The Age of Enlightenment, xiii
II. Franklin's Theories of Education, xxxii
III. Franklin's Literary Theory and Practice, xlvi
IV. Franklin as Printer and Journalist, lvii
V. Franklin's Economic Views, lxiv
VI. Franklin's Political Theories, lxxxii
VII. Franklin as Scientist and Deist, cx
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, cxlii
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Works, cli
II. Collections and Reprints, cliii
III. Biographies, clv
IV. Biographical and Critical Studies, clviii
V. The Age of Franklin, clxxiv
VI. Bibliographies and Check Lists, clxxxvi
SELECTIONS
_From the_ Autobiography, 3
Dogood Papers, No. I (1722), 96
Dogood Papers, No. IV (1722), 98
Dogood Papers, No. V (1722), 102
Dogood Papers, No. VII (1722), 105
Dogood Papers, No. XII (1722), 109
Editorial Preface to the _New England Courant_ (1723), 111
A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (1725), 114
Rules for a Club Established for Mutual Improvement (1728), 128
Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion (1728), 130
The Busy-Body, No. 1 (1728/9), 137
The Busy-Body, No. 2 (1728/9), 139
The Busy-Body, No. 3 (1728/9), 141
The Busy-Body, No. 4 (1728/9), 145
Preface to the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ (1729), 150
A Dialogue between Philocles and Horatio (1730), 152
A Second Dialogue between Philocles and Horatio (1730), 156
A Witch Trial at Mount Holly (1730), 161
An Apology for Printers (1731), 163
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1733), 169
A Meditation on a Quart Mugg (1733), 170
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1734), 172
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1735), 174
Hints for Those That Would Be Rich (1736), 176
To Josiah Franklin (April 13, 1738), 177
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1739), 179
A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British
Plantations in America (1743), 180
Shavers and Trimmers (1743), 183
To the Publick (1743), 186
Preface to Logan's Translation of "Cato Major" (1743/4), 187
To John Franklin, at Boston (March 10, 1745), 188
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1746), 189
The Speech of Polly Baker (1747), 190
Preface to _Poor Richard_ (1747), 193
To Peter Collinson (August 14, 1747), 194
Preface to _Poor Richard Improved_ (1748), 195
Advice to a Young Tradesman (1748), 196
To George Whitefield (July 6, 1749), 198
Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in
Pensilvania (1749), 199
Idea of the English School (1751), 206
To Cadwallader Colden Esq., at New York (1751), 213
Exporting of Felons to the Colonies (1751), 214
Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of
Countries, Etc. (1751), 216
To Peter Collinson (October 19, 1752), 223
_Poor Richard Improved_ (1753)--facsimile reproduction, 225
To Joseph Huey (June 6, 1753), 261
Three Letters to Governor Shirley (1754), 263
To Miss Catherine Ray, at Block Island (March 4, 1755), 270
To Peter Collinson (August 25, 1755), 272
To Miss Catherine Ray (September 11, 1755), 274
To Miss Catherine Ray (October 16, 1755), 277
To Mrs. Jane Mecom (February 12, 1756), 278
To Miss E. Hubbard (February 23, 1756), 278
To Rev. George Whitefield (July 2, 1756), 279
The Way to Wealth (1758), 280
To Hugh Roberts (September 16, 1758), 289
To Mrs. Jane Mecom (September 16, 1758), 291
To Lord Kames (May 3, 1760), 293
To Miss Mary Stevenson (June 11, 1760), 295
To Mrs. Deborah Franklin (June 27, 1760), 298
To Jared Ingersoll (December 11, 1762), 300
To Miss Mary Stevenson (March 25, 1763), 301
To John Fothergill, M.D. (March 14, 1764), 304
To Sarah Franklin (November 8, 1764), 307
_From_ A Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster
County (1764), 308
To the Editor of a Newspaper (May 20, 1765), 315
To Lord Kames (June 2, 1765), 318
Letter Concerning the Gratitude of America (January 6, 1766), 321
To Lord Kames (April 11, 1767), 325
To Miss Mary Stevenson (September 14, 1767), 330
On the Labouring Poor (1768), 336
To Dupont de Nemours (July 28, 1768), 340
To John Alleyne (August 9, 1768), 341
To the Printer of the _London Chronicle_ (August 18, 1768), 343
Positions to be Examined, Concerning National Wealth (1769), 345
To Miss Mary Stevenson (September 2, 1769), 347
To Joseph Priestley (September 19, 1772), 348
To Miss Georgiana Shipley (September 26, 1772), 349
To Peter Franklin (undated), 351
On the Price of Corn, and Management of the Poor (undated), 355
An Edict by the King of Prussia (1773), 358
Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small
One (1773), 363
To William Franklin (October 6, 1773), 371
Preface to "An Abridgment of the Book of Common Prayer" (1773), 374
A Parable against Persecution, 379
A Parable on Brotherly Love, 380
To William Strahan (July 5, 1775), 381
To Joseph Priestley (July 7, 1775), 382
To a Friend in England (October 3, 1775), 383
To Lord Howe (July 30, 1776), 384
The Sale of the Hessians (1777), 387
Model of a Letter of Recommendation (April 2, 1777), 389
To ---- (October 4, 1777), 390
To David Hartley (October 14, 1777), 390
A Dialogue between Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Saxony
and America, 394
To Charles de Weissenstein (July 1, 1778), 397
The Ephemera (1778), 402
To Richard Bache (June 2, 1779), 404
Morals of Chess (1779), 406
To Benjamin Vaughan (November 9, 1779), 410
The Whistle (1779), 412
The Lord's Prayer (1779?), 414
The Levée (1779?), 417
Proposed New Version of the Bible (1779?), 419
To Joseph Priestley (February 8, 1780), 420
To George Washington (March 5, 1780), 421
To Miss Georgiana Shipley (October 8, 1780), 422
To Richard Price (October 9, 1780), 423
Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout (1780), 424
The Handsome and Deformed Leg (1780?), 430
To Miss Georgiana Shipley (undated), 432
To David Hartley (December 15, 1781), 434
Supplement to the Boston _Independent Chronicle_ (1782), 434
To John Thornton (May 8, 1782), 443
To Joseph Priestley (June 7, 1782), 443
To Jonathan Shipley (June 10, 1782), 445
To James Hutton (July 7, 1782), 447
To Sir Joseph Banks (September 9, 1782), 448
Information to Those Who Would Remove to America (1782?), 449
Apologue (1783?), 458
To Sir Joseph Banks (July 27, 1783), 459
To Mrs. Sarah Bache (January 26, 1784), 460
An Economical Project (1784?), 466
To Samuel Mather (May 12, 1784), 471
To Benjamin Vaughan (July 26, 1784), 472
To George Whately (May 23, 1785), 479
To John Bard and Mrs. Bard (November 14, 1785), 481
To Jonathan Shipley (February 24, 1786), 481
To ---- (July 3, 1786?), 484
Speech in the Convention; On the Subject of Salaries (1787), 486
Motion for Prayers in the Convention (1787), 489
Speech in the Convention at the Conclusion of Its
Deliberations (1787), 491
To the Editors of the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ (1788), 493
To Rev. John Lathrop (May 31, 1788), 496
To the Editor of the _Federal Gazette_ (1788?), 496
To Charles Carroll (May 25, 1789), 500
An Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania,
viz. the Court of the Press (1789), 501
An Address to the Public (1789), 505
To David Hartley (December 4, 1789), 506
To Ezra Stiles (March 9, 1790), 507
On the Slave-Trade (1790), 510
Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America, 513
An Arabian Tale, 519
A Petition of the Left Hand (date unknown), 520
Some Good Whig Principles (date unknown), 521
The Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams, 523
NOTES, 529
_INTRODUCTION_
I. FRANKLIN'S MILIEU: THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Benjamin Franklin's reputation, according to John Adams, "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."[i-1]
The historical critic recognizes increasingly that Adams was not
thinking idly when he doubted whether Franklin's panegyrical and
international reputation could ever be explained without doing "a
complete history of the philosophy and politics of the eighteenth
century." Adams conceived that an explication of Franklin's mind and
activities integrated with the thought patterns of the epoch which
fathered him "would be one of the most important that ever was written;
much more interesting to this and future ages than the 'Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire.'" And such a historical and critical colossus is
still among the works hoped for but yet unborn. Too often, even in the
scholarly mind, Franklin has become a symbol, and it may be confessed,
not a winged one, of the self-made man, of New-World practicality, of
the successful tradesman, of the Sage of _Poor Richard_ with his
penny-saving economy and frugality. In short, the Franklin legend fails
to transcend an allegory of the success of the _doer_ in an America
allegedly materialistic, uncreative, and unimaginative.
It is the purpose of this essay to show that Franklin, the American
Voltaire,--always reasonable if not intuitive, encyclopedic if not
sublimely profound, humane if not saintly,--is best explained with
reference to the Age of Enlightenment, of which he was the completest
colonial representative. Due attention will, however, be paid to other
factors. And therefore it is necessary to begin with a brief survey of
the pattern of ideas of the age to which he was responsive. Not without
reason does one critic name him as "the most complete representative of
his century that any nation can point to."[i-2]
When Voltaire, "the patriarch of the _philosophes_," in 1726 took refuge
in England, he at once discovered minds and an attitude toward human
experience which were to prove the seminal factors of the Age of
Enlightenment. He found that Englishmen had acclaimed Bacon "the father
of experimental philosophy," and that Newton, "the destroyer of the
Cartesian system," was "as the Hercules of fabulous story, to whom the
ignorant ascribed all the feats of ancient heroes." Voltaire then paused
to praise Locke, who "destroyed innate ideas," Locke, than whom "no man
ever had a more judicious or more methodical genius, or was a more acute
logician." Bacon, Newton, and Locke brooded over the currents of
eighteenth-century thought and were formative factors of much that is
most characteristic of the Enlightenment.
To Bacon was given the honor of having distinguished between the
fantasies of old wives' tales and the certainty of empiricism. Moved by
the ghost of Bacon, the Royal Society had for its purpose, according to
Hooke, "To improve the knowledge of naturall things, and all useful
Arts, Manufactures, Mechanick practises, Engynes and Inventions by
Experiments."[i-3] The zeal for experiment was equaled only by its
miscellaneousness. Cheese making, the eclipses of comets, and the
intestines of gnats were alike the objects of telescopic or microscopic
scrutiny. The full implication of Baconian empiricism came to fruition
in Newton, who in 1672 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Bacon
was not the least of those giants upon whose shoulders Newton stood. To
the experimental tradition of Kepler, Brahe, Harvey, Copernicus,
Galileo, and Bacon, Newton joined the mathematical genius of Descartes;
and as a result became "as thoroughgoing an empiricist as he was a
consummate mathematician," for whom there was "no _a priori_
certainty."[i-4] At this time it is enough to note of Newtonianism, that
for the incomparable physicist "science was composed of laws stating the
mathematical behaviour of nature solely--laws clearly deducible from
phenomena and exactly verifiable in phenomena--everything further is to
be swept out of science, which thus becomes a body of absolutely certain
truth about the doings of the physical world."[i-5] The pattern of ideas
known as Newtonianism may be summarized as embracing a belief in (1) a
universe governed by immutable natural laws, (2) which laws constitute a
sublimely harmonious system, (3) reflecting a benevolent and all-wise
Geometrician; (4) thus man desires to effect a correspondingly
harmonious inner heaven; (5) and feels assured of the plausibility of an
immortal life. Newton was a believer in scriptural revelation. It is
ironical that through his cosmological system, mathematically
demonstrable, he lent reinforcement to deism, the most destructive
intellectual solvent of the authority of the altar.
Deists, as defined by their contemporary, Ephraim Chambers (in his
_Cyclopædia ..._, London, 1728), are those "whose distinguishing
character it is, not to profess any particular form, or system of
religion; but only to acknowledge the existence of a God, without
rendering him any external worship, or service. The Deists hold, that,
considering the multiplicity of religions, the numerous pretences to
revelation, and the precarious arguments generally advanced in proof
thereof; the best and surest way is, to return to the simplicity of
nature, and the belief of one God, which is the only truth agreed to by
all nations." They "reject all revelations as an imposition, and believe
no more than what natural light discovers to them...."[i-6] The
"simplicity of nature" signifies "the established order, and course of
natural things; the series of second causes; or the laws which God has
imposed on the motions impressed by him."[i-7] And attraction, a kind of
_conatus accedendi_, is the crown, according to the eighteenth century,
of the series of secondary causes. Hence, Newtonian physics became the
surest ally of the deist in his quest for a religion, immutable and
universal. The Newtonian progeny were legion: among them were Boyle,
Keill, Desaguliers, Shaftesbury, Locke, Samuel Clarke, 'sGravesande,
Boerhaave, Diderot, Trenchard and Gordon, Voltaire, Gregory, Maclaurin,
Pemberton, and others. The eighteenth century echoed Fontenelle's eulogy
that Newtonianism was "sublime geometry." If, as Boyle wrote,
mathematical and mechanical principles were "the alphabet, in which God
wrote the world," Newtonian science and empiricism were the lexicons
which the deists used to read the cosmic volume in which the universal
laws were inscribed. And the deists and the liberal political theorists
"found the fulcrum for subverting existing institutions and standards
only in the laws of nature, discovered, as they supposed, by
mathematicians and astronomers."[i-8]
Complementary to Newtonian science was the sensationalism of John Locke.
Conceiving the mind as _tabula rasa_, discrediting innate ideas, Lockian
psychology undermined such a theological dogma as total depravity--man's
innate and inveterate malevolence--and hence was itself a kind of
_tabula rasa_ on which later were written the optimistic opinions of
those who credited man's capacity for altruism. If it remained for the
French _philosophes_ to deify Reason, Locke honored it as the crowning
experience of his sensational psychology.[i-9] Then, too, as Miss Lois
Whitney has ably demonstrated, Lockian psychology "cleared the ground
for either primitivism or a theory of progress."[i-10] In addition, his
social compact theory, augmenting seventeenth-century liberalism,
furnished the political theorists of the Enlightenment with "the
principle of Consent"[i-11] in their antipathy for monarchial
obscurantism. Locke has been described as the "originator of a
psychology which provided democratic government with a scientific
basis."[i-12] The full impact of Locke will be felt when philosophers
deduce that if sensations and reflections are the product of outward
stimuli--those of nature, society, and institutions--then to reform man
one needs only to reform society and institutions, or remove to some
tropical isle. We remember that the French Encyclopedists, for example,
were motivated by their faith in the "indefinite malleability of human
nature by education and institutions."[i-13]
"With the possible exception of John Locke," C. A. Moore observes,
"Shaftesbury was more generally known in the mid-century than any other
English philosopher."[i-14] Shaftesbury's a priori "virtuoso theory of
benevolence" may be viewed as complementary to Locke's psychology to the
extent that both have within them the implication that through education
and reform man may become perfectible. Both tend to undermine social,
political, and religious authoritarianism. Shaftesbury's insistence upon
man's innate altruism and compassion, coupled with the deistic and
rationalistic divorce between theology and morality, resulted in the
dogma that the most acceptable service to God is expressed in kindness
to God's other children and helped to motivate the rise of
humanitarianism.
The idea of progress[i-15] was popularized (if not born) in the
eighteenth century. It has been recently shown that not only the
results of scientific investigations but also Anglican defenses of
revealed religion served to accelerate a belief in progress. In answer
to the atheists and deists who indicted revealed religion because
revelation was given so late in the growth of the human family and hence
was not eternal, universal, and immutable, the Anglican apologists were
forced into the position of asserting that man enjoyed a progressive
ascent, that the religious education of mankind is like that of the
individual. If, as the deists charged, Christ appeared rather belatedly,
the apologists countered that he was sent only when the race was
prepared to profit by his coming. God's revelations thus were adjusted
to progressive needs and capacities.[i-16]
Carl Becker has suggestively dissected the Enlightenment in a series of
antitheses between its credulity and its skepticism. If the
eighteenth-century philosopher renounced Eden, he discovered Arcadia in
distant isles and America. Rejecting the authority of the Bible and
church, he accepted the authority of "nature," natural law, and reason.
Although scorning metaphysics, he desired to be considered
philosophical. If he denied miracles, he yet had a fond faith in the
perfectibility of the species.[i-17]
Even as Voltaire had his liberal tendencies stoutly reinforced by
contact with English rationalism and deism,[i-18] so were the other
French _philosophes_, united in their common hatred of the Roman
Catholic church, also united in their indebtedness to exponents of
English liberalism, dominated by Locke and Newton. If, as Madame de
Lambert wrote in 1715, Bayle more than others of his age shook "the Yoke
of authority and opinion," English free thought powerfully reinforced
the native French revolt against authoritarianism. After 1730 English
was the model for French thought.[i-19] Nearly all of Locke's works had
been translated in France before 1700. Voltaire's affinity for the
English mind has already been touched on. D'Alembert comments, "When we
measure the interval between a Scotus and a Newton, or rather between
the works of Scotus and those of Newton, we must cry out with Terence,
_Homo homini quid præstat_."[i-20]
Any doctrine was intensely welcome which would allow the Frenchman to
regain his natural rights curtailed by the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, by the inequalities of a state vitiated by privileges, by an
economic structure tottering because of bankruptcy attending
unsuccessful wars and the upkeep of a Versailles with its dazzling
ornaments, and by a religious program dominated by a Jesuit rather than
a Gallican church.[i-21] Economic, political, and religious abuses were
inextricably united; the spirit of revolt did not feel obliged to
discriminate between the authority of the crown and nobles and the
authority of the altar. Graphic is Diderot's vulgar vituperation: he
would draw out the entrails of a priest to strangle a king!
Let us now turn to the American backgrounds. The bibliolatry of colonial
New England is expressed in William Bradford's resolve to study
languages so that he could "see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of
God in all their native beauty."[i-22] In addition to furnishing the new
Canaan with ecclesiastical and political precedent, Scripture provided
"not a partiall, but a perfect rule of Faith, and manners." Any dogma
contravening the "ancient oracle" was a weed sown by Satan and fit only
to be uprooted and thrown in the fire. The colonial seventeenth century
was one which, like John Cotton, regularly sweetened its mouth "with a
piece of Calvin." One need not be reminded that Calvinism was
inveterately and completely antithetical to the dogma of the
Enlightenment.[i-23] Calvinistic bibliolatry contended with "the sacred
book of nature." Its wrathful though just Deity was unlike the
compassionate, virtually depersonalized Deity heralded in the eighteenth
century, in which the Trinity was dissolved. The redemptive Christ
became the amiable philosopher. Adam's universally contagious guilt was
transferred to social institutions, especially the tyrannical forms of
kings and priests. Calvin's forlorn and depraved man became a creature
naturally compassionate. If once man worshipped the Deity through
seeking to parallel the divine laws scripturally revealed, in the
eighteenth century he honored his benevolent God, who was above
demanding worship, through kindnesses shown God's other children. The
individual was lost in society, self-perfection gave way to
humanitarianism, God to Man, theology to morality, and faith to reason.
The colonial seventeenth century was politically oligarchical: when
Thomas Hooker heckled Winthrop on the lack of suffrage, Winthrop with no
compromise asserted that "the best part is always the least, and of that
best part the wiser part is always the lesser."[i-24] If the
seventeenth-century college was a cloister for clerical education, the
Enlightenment sought to train the layman for citizenship.
With the turn of the seventeenth century several forces came into
prominence, undermining New England's Puritan heritage. Among those
relevant for our study are: the ubiquitous frontier, and the rise of
Quakerism, deism, Methodism, and science. The impact of the frontier was
neglected until Professor Turner called attention to its existence; he
writes that "the most important effect of the frontier has been in the
promotion of democracy here and in Europe.... It produces antipathy to
control, and particularly to any direct control.... The frontier
conditions prevalent in the colonies are important factors in the
explanation of the American Revolution...."[i-25] In the period included
in our survey the frontier receded from the coast to the fall line to
the Alleghenies: at each stage it "did indeed furnish a new field of
opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and
freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its
restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have
accompanied the frontier."[i-26] One recalls the spirited satire on
frontier conditions, as the above aspects give birth to violence and
disregard for law, in Hugh Brackenridge's _Modern Chivalry_. Under the
satire one feels the justness of the attack, intensified by our
knowledge that Brackenridge grew up "in a democratic Scotch-Irish
back-country settlement." If the frontiersmen during the eighteenth
century did not place their dirty boots on their governors' desks, they
were partially responsible for an inveterate spirit of revolt, shown so
brutally in the "massacres" provoked by the "Paxton boys" of
Pennsylvania. One is not unprepared to discover resentment against the
forms of authority in a territory in which a strong back is more
immediately important than a knowledge of debates on predestination.
Granting the importance of the frontier in opposing the theocratic Old
Way, it must be considered in terms of other and more complex factors.
Reinforcing Edwards's Great Awakening, George Whitefield, especially in
the Middle Colonies, challenged the growing complacence of colonial
religious thought with his insistence that man "is by nature half-brute
and half-devil." It has been suggested that Methodism in effect allied
itself with the attitudes of Hobbes and Mandeville in attacking man's
nature, and hence by reaction tended to provoke "a primitivism based on
the doctrine of natural benevolence."[i-27]
The "New English Israel" was harried by the Quakers,[i-28] who preached
the priesthood of all believers and the right of private judgment. They
denied the total depravity of the natural man and the doctrine of
election; they gloried in a loving Father, and scourged the
ecclesiastical pomp and ceremony of other religions. They were possessed
by a blunt enthusiasm which held the immediate private revelation
anterior to scriptural revelation. Faithful to the inner light, the
Quakers seemed to neglect Scripture. Although the less extreme Quakers,
such as John Woolman, did not blind themselves to the need for personal
introspection and self-conquest, Quakerism as a movement tended to place
the greater emphasis on morality articulate in terms of fellow-service,
and lent momentum to the rise of humanitarianism expressed in prison
reform and anti-slavery agitation. Also one may wonder to what extent
colonial Quakerism tended to lend sanction to the rising democratic
spirit.
In the person of Cotton Mather, until recently considered a bigoted
incarnation of the "Puritan spirit ... become ossified," are discovered
forces which, when divorced from Puritan theology, were to become the
sharpest wedges splintering the deep-rooted oak of the Old Way. These
forces were the authority of reason and science. In _The Christian
Philosopher_,[i-29] basing his attitude on the works of Ray, Derham,
Cheyne, and Grew,[i-30] Mather attempted to shatter the Calvinists'
antithesis between science and theology, asserting "that [Natural]
Philosophy is no Enemy, but a mighty and wondrous Incentive to
Religion."[i-31] He warned that since even Mahomet with the aid of
reason found the Workman in his Work, Christian theologians should fear
"lest a Mahometan be called in for thy Condemnation!"[i-32] Studying
nature's sublime order, one must be blind if his thoughts are not
carried heavenward to "admire that Wisdom itself!" Although Mather
mistrusted Reason, he accepted it as "the voice of God"--an experience
which enabled him to discover the workmanship of the Deity in nature.
Magnetism, the vegetable kingdom, the stars infer a harmonious order, so
wondrous that only a God could have created it. If Reason is no complete
substitute for Scripture it offers enough evidence to hiss atheism out
of the world: "A Being that must be superior to Matter, even the Creator
and Governor of all Matter, is everywhere so conspicuous, that there can
be nothing more monstrous than to deny the God that is above."[i-33] Sir
Isaac Newton with his mathematical and experimental proof of the sublime
universal order strung on invariable secondary causes, Mather confessed,
is "our perpetual Dictator."[i-34] Conceiving of science as a rebuke to
the atheist, and a natural ally to scriptural theology, Mather, like a
Newton himself, juxtaposed rationalism and faith in one pyramidal
confirmation of the existence, omnipotence, and benevolence of God. Here
were variations from Calvinism's common path which, when augmented by
English and French liberalism, by the influence of Quakerism and the
frontier, were to give rise to democracy, rationalism, and scientific
deism. The Church of England through the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries had "pursued a liberal latitudinarian policy which, as a mode
of thought, tended to promote deism by emphasizing rational religion and
minimizing revelation."[i-35] It was to be expected that in colonies
created by Puritans (or even Quakers), deism would have a less
spectacular and extensive success than it appears to have had in the
mother country. If militant deism remained an aristocratic cult until
the Revolution,[i-36] scientific rationalism (Newtonianism) long before
this, from the time of Mather, became a common ally of orthodoxy. If a
"religion of nature" may be defined with Tillotson as "obedience to
Natural Law, and the performance of such duties as Natural Light,
without any express and supernatural revelation, doth dictate to man,"
then it was in the colonies, prior to the Revolution, more commonly a
buttress to revealed religion than an equivalent to it.
Lockian sensism and Newtonian science were the chief sources of that
brand of colonial rationalism which at first complemented orthodoxy, and
finally buried it among lost causes. The Marquis de Chastellux was
astounded when he found on a center table in a Massachusetts inn an
"Abridgment of Newton's Philosophy"; whereupon he "put some questions"
to his host "on physics and geometry," with which he "found him well
acquainted."[i-37] Now, even a superficial reading of the eighteenth
century discloses countless allusions to Newton, his popularizers, and
the implications of his physics and cosmology. As Mr. Brasch suggests,
"From the standpoint of the history of science," the extent of the vogue
of Newtonianism "is yet very largely unknown history."[i-38]
In Samuel Johnson's retrospective view, the Yale of 1710 at Saybrook was
anything but progressive with its "scholastic cobwebs of a few little
English and Dutch systems."[i-39] The year of Johnson's graduation
(1714), however, Mr. Dummer, Yale's agent in London, collected seven
hundred volumes, including works of Norris, Barrow, Tillotson, Boyle,
Halley, and the second edition (1713) of the _Principia_ and a copy of
the _Optics_, presented by Newton himself. After the schism of 1715/6
the collection was moved to New Haven, at the time of Johnson's election
to a tutorship. It was then, writes Johnson, that the trustees
"introduced the study of Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton as fast as they
could and in order to this the study of mathematics. The Ptolemaic
system was hitherto as much believed as the Scriptures, but they soon
cleared up and established the Copernican by the help of Whiston's
Lectures, Derham, etc."[i-40] Johnson studied Euclid, algebra, and conic
sections "so as to read Sir Isaac with understanding." He gloomily
reviews the "infidelity and apostasy" resulting from the study of the
ideas of Locke, Tindal, Bolingbroke, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, and
Collins. That Newtonianism and even deism made progress at Yale is the
tenor of Johnson's backward glance. About 1716 Samuel Clarke's edition
of Rohault was introduced at Yale: Clarke's Rohault[i-41] was an attack
upon this standard summary of Cartesianism. Ezra Stiles was not certain
that Clarke was honest in heaping up notes "not so much to illustrate
Rohault as to make him the Vehicle of conveying the peculiarities of the
sublimer Newtonian Philosophy."[i-42] This work was used until 1743 when
'sGravesande's _Natural Philosophy_ was wisely substituted. Rector
Thomas Clap used Wollaston's _Religion of Nature Delineated_ as a
favorite text. That there was no dearth of advanced natural science and
philosophy, even suggestive of deism, is fairly evident.
Measured by the growth of interest in science in the English
universities, Harvard's awareness of new discoveries was not especially
backward in the seventeenth century. Since Copernicanism at the close of
the sixteenth century had few adherents,[i-43] it is almost startling to
learn that probably by 1659 the Copernican system was openly avowed at
Harvard.[i-44] In 1786 Nathaniel Mather wrote from Dublin: "I perceive
the Cartesian philosophy begins to obteyn in New England, and if I
conjecture aright the Copernican system too."[i-45] John Barnard, who
was graduated from Harvard in 1710, has written that no algebra was then
taught, and wistfully suggests that he had been born too soon, since
"now" students "have the great Sir Isaac Newton and Dr. Halley and some
other mathematicians for their guides."[i-46] Although Thomas Robie and
Nathan Prince are thought to have known Newton's physics through
secondary sources,[i-47] and, as Harvard tutors, indoctrinated their
charges with Newtonianism, it was left to Isaac Greenwood[i-48] to
transplant from London the popular expositions of Newtonian philosophy.
A Harvard graduate in 1721, Greenwood continued his theological studies
in London where he attended Desaguliers's lectures on experimental
philosophy, based essentially on Newtonianism. From Desaguliers
Greenwood learned how
By Newton's help, 'tis evidently seen
Attraction governs all the World's machine.[i-49]
He learned that Scripture is "to teach us Morality, and our Articles of
Faith" but not to serve as an instructor in natural philosophy.[i-50] In
fine, Greenwood became devoted to science, and science as it might serve
to augment avenues to the religious experience. In London he had come to
know Hollis, who in 1727 suggested to Harvard authorities that Greenwood
be elected Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural and Experimental
Philosophy.[i-51] Greenwood accepted, and until 1737 was at Harvard a
propagandist of the new science. In 1727 he advertised in the _Boston
News-Letter_[i-52] that he would give scientific lectures, revolving
primarily around "the Discoveries of the incomparable Sir Isaac Newton."
From 1727 through 1734 he was a prominent popularizer of Newtonianism in
Boston.[i-53]
It remained for Greenwood's pupil John Winthrop to be the first to teach
Newton at Harvard with adequate mechanical and textual materials.
Elected in 1738 to the Hollis professorship formerly held by Greenwood,
Winthrop adopted 'sGravesande's _Natural Philosophy_, at which time,
Cajori observes, "the teachings of Newton had at last secured a firm
footing there."[i-54] The year after his election he secured a copy of
the _Principia_ (the third edition, 1726, edited by Dr. Henry Pemberton,
friend of Franklin in 1725-1726). According to the astute Ezra Stiles,
Winthrop became a "perfect master of Newton's Principia--which cannot be
said of many Professors of Philosophy in Europe."[i-55] That he did not
allow Newtonianism to draw him to deism may be seen in Stiles's
gratification that Winthrop "was a Firm friend to Revelation in
opposition to Deism." Stiles "wish[es] the evangelical Doctors of Grace
had made a greater figure in his Ideal System of divinity," thus
inferring that Winthrop was a rationalist in theology, however
orthodox.[i-56]
A cursory view of the eighteenth-century pulpit discloses that if the
clergy did not become deistic they were not blind to a natural religion,
and often employed its arguments to augment scriptural authority. Aware
of the writings of Samuel Clarke, Wollaston, Whiston, Cudworth, Butler,
Hutcheson,[i-57] Voltaire, and Locke, Mayhew revolts against total
depravity[i-58] and the doctrines of election and the Trinity, arraigns
himself against authoritarianism and obscurantism, and though he draws
upon reason for revelation of God's will, he does not seem to have been
latitudinarian in respect to the holy oracles. Although he often wrote
ambiguously concerning the nature of Christ, he asserted: "That I ever
denied, or treated in a bold or ludicrous manner, the divinity of the
Son of God, as revealed in scripture, I absolutely deny."[i-59] He is
antagonistic toward the mystical in Calvinism, convinced that "The love
of God is a calm and rational thing, the result of thought and
consideration."[i-60] His biographer thinks that Mayhew was "the first
clergyman in New England who expressly and openly opposed the scholastic
doctrine of the trinity."[i-61] Coupling "natural and revealed
religion," he does not threaten but he urges that one "ought not to
leave the clear light of revelation.... It becomes us to adhere to the
holy Scriptures as our only rule of faith and practice, discipline and
worship."[i-62] In Mayhew one finds an impotent compromise between
Calvinism and the demands of reason, fostered by the Enlightenment. Like
Mayhew's, in the main, are the views of Dr. Charles Chauncy, who
reconciled the demands of reason and revelation, concluding that "the
voice of reason is the voice of God."[i-63] Jason Haven and Jonas Clarke
are typical of the orthodox rationalists who were alive to the
implications of science, and to such rationalists as Tillotson and
Locke. Haven affirms that "by the light of reason and nature, we are led
to believe in, and adore God, not only as the maker, but also as the
governor of all things."[i-64] "Revelation comes in to the assistance of
reason, and shews them to us in a clearer light than we could see them
without its aid." Clarke observes that "the light of nature teaches,
which revelation confirms."[i-65] Rev. Henry Cumings, illustrating his
indebtedness to scientific rationalism, honors "the gracious Parent of
the universe, whose tender mercies are over all his works ...,"[i-66] a
Deity "whose providence governs the world; whose voice all nature obeys;
to whose controul all second causes and subordinate agents are subject;
and whose sole prerogative it is to dispense blessings or calamities, as
to his wisdom seems best."[i-67] Simeon Howard discovers the
"perfections of the Deity, as displayed in the Creation" as well as in
the "government and redemption of the world."[i-68] Both Phillips
Payson[i-69] and Andrew Eliot[i-70] affirm the identity of "the voice of
reason, and the voice of God."
No clergyman of the eighteenth century was more terribly conscious of
the polarity of colonial thought than was Ezra Stiles. Abiel Holmes has
told the graphic story of Stiles's struggles with deism after reading
Pope, Whiston, Boyle, Trenchard and Gordon, Butler, Tindal, Collins,
Bolingbroke, and Shaftesbury.[i-71] If he finally, as a result of his
trembling and fearful doubt, reaffirmed zealously his faith in the
bibliolatry and relentless dogma of Calvinism,[i-72] Newtonian
rationalism was a means to his recovery, and throughout his life a
complement to his Calvinism.[i-73] Turning from his well-worn Bible, the
chief source of his faith, he also kindled his "devotion at the stars."
It should be remembered, however, that this tendency among Puritan
clergy to call science to the support of theology had been inaugurated
by Cotton Mather as early as 1693,[i-74] and that it was the Puritan
Mather whom Franklin acknowledged as having started him on his career
and influenced him, by his _Essays to do Good_, throughout life.
Only against this complex and as yet inadequately integrated background
of physical conditions and ideas (the dogmas of Puritanism, Quakerism,
Methodism, rationalism, scientific deism, economic and political
liberalism[i-75]--against a cosmic, social, and individual attitude, the
result of Old-World thought impinging on colonial thought and
environment) can one attempt to appraise adequately the mind and
achievements of Franklin, whose life was coterminous with the decay of
Puritan theocracy and the rise of rationalism, democracy, and science.
II. FRANKLIN'S THEORIES OF EDUCATION
Franklin's penchant for projects manifests itself nowhere more fully
than in his schemes of education, both self and formal. One may deduce a
pattern of educational principles not undeservedly called Franklin's
_theories_ of education, theories which he successfully
institutionalized, from an examination of his Junto ("the best school of
philosophy, morality, and politics that then existed in the
province"[i-76]), his Philadelphia Library Company (his "first project
of a public nature"[i-77]), his _Proposal for Promoting Useful
Knowledge among the British Plantations in America_, calling for a
scientific society of ingenious men or virtuosi, his _Proposals Relating
to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania_ and _Idea of the English
School_, which eventually fathered the University of Pennsylvania, and
from his fragmentary notes in his correspondence.
Variously apotheosized, patronized, or damned for his practicality,
expediency, and opportunism, dramatized for his allegiance to
materiality, Franklin has commonly been viewed (and not only through the
popular imagination) as one fostering in the American mind an
unimaginative, utilitarian prudence, motivated by the pedestrian virtues
of industry, frugality, and thrift. Whatever the educational effect of
Franklin's life and writings on American readers, we shall find that his
works contain schemes and theories which _transcend_ the more mundane
habits and utilitarian biases ascribed to him.
Franklin progressively felt "the loss of the learned education" his
father had planned for him, as he realized in his hunger for knowledge
that he must repair the loss through assiduous reading, accomplished
during hours stolen from recreation and sleep.[i-78] Proudly he
confessed that reading was his "only amusement."[i-79] In 1727 he formed
the Junto, or Leather Apron Club, his first educational project.
Franklin was never more eclectic than when founding the Junto. To
prevent Boston homes from becoming "the porches of hell,"[i-80] Cotton
Mather had created mutual improvement societies through which neighbors
would help one another "with a rapturous assiduity."[i-81] Mather in his
_Essays to do Good_ proposed:
That a proper number of persons in a neighborhood, whose
hearts God hath touched with a zeal to do good, should form
themselves into a society, to meet when and where they shall
agree, and to consider--"what are the disorders that we may
observe rising among us; and what may be done, either by
ourselves immediately, or by others through our advice, to
suppress those disorders?"[i-82]
Since Franklin's father was a member of one of Mather's "Associated
Families" and since Franklin as a boy read Mather's _Essays_ with rapt
attention,[i-83] and since his _Rules for a Club Established for Mutual
Improvement_ are amazingly congruent with Mather's rules proposed for
his neighborly societies, it is not improbable that Franklin in part
copied the plans of this older club. One also wonders whether Franklin
remembered Defoe's suggestions in _Essays upon Several Projects_ (1697)
for the formation of "Friendly Societies" in which members covenanted to
aid one another.[i-84] In addition, M. Faÿ has observed that the "ideal
which this society [the Junto] adopted was the same that Franklin had
discovered in the Masonic lodges of England."[i-85] Then, too, in London
during the period of Desaguliers, Sir Hans Sloane, and Sir Isaac Newton,
he would have heard much of the ideals and utility of the Royal Society.
Many of the questions discussed by the Junto are suggestive of the
calendar of the Royal Society:
Is sound an entity or body?
How may the phenomena of vapors be explained?
What is the reason that the tides rise higher in the Bay of
Fundy, than the Bay of Delaware?
How may smoky chimneys be best cured?
Why does the flame of a candle tend upwards in a spire?[i-86]
The Junto members, like Renaissance gentlemen, were determined to
convince themselves that nothing valuable to the several powers of life
should be alien to them. They were urged to communicate to one another
anything significant "in history, morality, poetry, physic, travels,
mechanic arts, or other parts of knowledge."[i-87] Surely a humanistic
catholicity of interest! Schemes for getting on materially, suggestions
for improving the laws and protecting the "just liberties of the
people,"[i-88] efforts to aid the strangers in Philadelphia (an
embryonic association of commerce), curiosity in the latest remedies
used for the sick and wounded: all were to engage the minds of this
assiduously curious club. Above all, the members must be "serviceable to
_mankind_, to their country, to their friends, or to themselves."[i-89]
The intensity of the Junto's utilitarian purpose was matched only by its
humanitarian bias. Members must swear that they "love mankind in
general, of what profession or religion soever,"[i-90] and that they
believe no man should be persecuted "for mere speculative opinions, or
his external way of worship." Also they must profess to "love truth for
truth's sake," to search diligently for it and to communicate it to
others. Tolerance, the empirical method, scientific disinterestedness,
and humanitarianism had hardly gained a foothold in the colonies in
1728. On the other hand, the Junto members were urged, when throwing a
kiss to the world, not to neglect their individual ethical
development.[i-91] Franklin's humanitarian neighborliness is associated
with a rigorous ethicism. The members were invited to report "unhappy
effects of intemperance," of "imprudence, of passion, or of any other
vice or folly," and also "happy effects of temperance, of prudence, of
moderation." Franklin reflects sturdily here, and boundlessly elsewhere,
the Greek and English emphasis on the Middle Way. If this is prudential,
it is an elevated prudence.
The Philadelphia Library Company was born of the Junto and became "the
mother of all the North American subscription libraries, now so
numerous."[i-92] The colonists, "having no publick amusements to divert
their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in
a few years were observ'd by strangers to be better instructed and more
intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other
countries."[i-93] It is curious that although many articles have been
written describing the Library Company no one seems to include a study
of the climate of ideas represented in its volumes.[i-94] One must be
careful not to credit Franklin with solely presiding over the ordering
of books. At a meeting in 1732 of the company, Thomas Godfrey, probable
inventor of the quadrant and he who learned Latin to read the
_Principia_, notified the body that "Mr. Logan had let him know he would
willingly give his advice of the choice of the books ... the Committee
esteeming Mr. Logan to be a Gentleman of universal learning, and the
best judge of books in these parts, ordered that Mr. Godfrey should wait
on him and request him to favour them with a catalogue of suitable
books."[i-95] The first order included: Puffendorf's _Introduction_ and
_Laws of Nature_, Hayes upon Fluxions, Keill's _Astronomical Lectures_,
Sidney on Government, Gordon and Trenchard's _Cato's Letters_, the
_Spectator_, _Guardian_, _Tatler_, L'Hospital's _Conic Sections_,
Addison's works, Xenophon's _Memorabilia_, Palladio, Evelyn, Abridgement
of Philosophical Transactions, 'sGravesande's _Natural Philosophy_,
Homer's _Odyssey_ and _Iliad_, Bayle's _Critical Dictionary_, and
Dryden's _Virgil_. As a gift Peter Collinson included Newton's
_Principia_ in the order. The ancient phalanxes were thoroughly routed!
Then there is the MS "List of Books of the Original Philadelphia Library
in Franklin's Handwriting"[i-96] which lends recruits to the modern
battalions. Included in this list are: Fontenelle on Oracles, Woodward's
_Natural History of Fossils_ and _Natural History of the Earth_, Keill's
_Examination of Burnet's Theory of the Earth_, _Memoirs of the Royal
Academy of Surgery at Paris_, William Petty's _Essays_, Voltaire's
_Elements of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy_, Halley's _Astronomical
Tables_, Hill's _Review of the Works of the Royal Society_,
Montesquieu's _Spirit of Laws_, Burlamaqui's _Principles of Natural Law_
and _Principles of Politic Law_, Bolingbroke's _Letters on the Study and
Use of History_, and Conyer Middleton's _Miscellaneous Works_. From the
volumes owned by the Library Company in 1757 it would have been possible
for an alert mind to discover all of the implications, philosophic and
religious, of the rationale of science. No less could be found here the
political speculations which were later to aid the colonists in unyoking
themselves from England. The Library was an arsenal capable of
supplying weapons to rationalistic minds intent on besieging the
fortress of Calvinism. Defenders of natural rights could find ammunition
to wound monarchism; here authors could discover the neoclassic ideals
of _curiosa felicitas_, perspicuity, order, and lucidity reinforced by
the emphasis on clarity and correctness sponsored by the Royal Society
and inherent in Newtonianism as well as Cartesianism. In short, the
volumes contained the ripest fruition of scientific and rationalistic
modernity. One can only conjecture the extent to which this library
would perplex, astonish, and finally convert men to rationalism and
scientific deism, and release them from bondage to throne and altar.
In 1743 Franklin wrote and distributed among his correspondents _A
Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in
America_. From a letter (Feb. 17, 1735/6) of William Douglass, one-time
friend of Franklin's brother James, to Cadwallader Colden, we learn that
some years before 1736, Colden "proposed the forming a sort of Virtuoso
Society or rather Correspondence."[i-97] I. W. Riley suggests that
Franklin owes Colden thanks for having stimulated him to form the
American Philosophical Society.[i-98] There remains no convincing
evidence, however, to disprove A. H. Smyth's observation that Franklin's
_Proposal_ "appears to contain the first suggestions, in any _public
form_ [editors' italics] for an American Philosophical Society." P. S.
Du Ponceau has noted with compelling evidence that the philosophical
society formed in 1744 was the direct descendant of Franklin's
Junto.[i-99] That in part the Philadelphia Library Company was one of
the factors in the formation of the scientific society may be inferred
from Franklin's request that it be founded in Philadelphia, which,
"having the advantages of a good growing library," can "be the centre of
the Society."[i-100] The most important factor, however, was obviously
the desire to imitate the forms and ideals of the Royal Society of
London. Both societies had as their purpose the improvement of "the
common stock of knowledge"; neither was to be provincial or national in
interests, but was to have in mind the "benefit of mankind in general."
A study of Franklin's _Proposal_ will suggest the purpose of the Royal
Society as interpreted by Thomas Sprat:
Their purpose is, in short, to make faithful Records, of all
the Works of Nature, or Art, which can come within their
reach: that so the present Age, and posterity, may be able to
put a mark on the Errors, which have been strengthened by
long prescription: to restore the Truths, that have lain
neglected: to push on those, which are already known, to more
various uses: and to make the way more passable, to what
remains unreveal'd.[i-101]
The Royal Society, no less than Franklin's _Proposal_, stressed the
usefulness of its experimentation. Even as it sought "to overcome the
mysteries of all the Works of Nature"[i-102] through experimentation and
induction, the Baconian empirical method, so Franklin urged the
cultivation of "all philosophical experiments that let light into the
nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter, and
multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life."[i-103] Though Franklin
may have stopped short of theoretical science,[i-104] he was not only
interested in making devices but also in discovering immutable natural
laws on which he could base his mechanics for making the world more
habitable, less unknown and terrifying. Interpreting natural phenomena
in terms of gravity and the laws of electrical attraction and repulsion
is to detract from the terror in a universe presided over by a
providential Deity, exerting his wrath through portentous comets,
"fire-balls flung by an angry God."
Franklin's program is no more miscellaneous, or seemingly pedestrian,
than the practices of the Royal Society. As a discoverer of nature's
laws and their application to man's use, Franklin, the Newton of
electricity, appealed to fact and experiment rather than authority and
suggested that education in science may serve, in addition to making the
world more comfortable, to make it more habitable and less terrifying.
The ideals of scientific research and disinterestedness were dramatized
picturesquely by the Tradesman Franklin, who aided the colonist in
becoming unafraid.
Although his _Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in
Pensilvania_ (1749) furnished the initial suggestion which created the
Philadelphia Academy, later the college, and ultimately the University
of Pennsylvania, it is easy to overestimate the real significance of
Franklin's influence in these schemes unless we remember that political
quarrels separated him from those who were nurturing the school in the
1750's. In 1759 Franklin wrote from London to his friend, Professor
Kinnersley, concerning the cabal in the Academy against him: "The
Trustees have reap'd the full Advantage of my Head, Hands, Heart and
Purse, in getting through the first Difficulties of the Design, and when
they thought they could do without me, they laid me aside."[i-105]
After Franklin failed to secure Samuel Johnson,[i-106] Rev. William
Smith was made Provost and Professor of Natural Philosophy of the
Academy in 1754. He quoted Franklin as saying that the Academy had
become "a narrow, bigoted institution, put into the hands of the
Proprietary party as an engine of government."[i-107]
With Milton, Locke, Fordyce, Walker, Rollin, Turnbull, and "some
others" as his sources, Franklin adapted the works of these pioneers in
education to provincial uses. (One finds it difficult to discover any
original ideas in the _Proposals_.) Like Locke and Milton, he urged that
education "supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the
Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country."[i-108] Here he
was unlike President Clap, who in 1754 explained that "the Original End
and design of Colleges was to instruct and train up persons for the Work
of the ministry.... The great design of founding this school [Yale] was
to educate ministers in our own way."[i-109] As early as 1722, in
_Dogood Paper_ No. IV, Franklin caricatured sardonically the narrow
theological curriculum of Harvard College.[i-110] Existing for the
citizenry rather than the clergy, offering instruction in English as
well as Latin and Greek, in mechanics, physical culture, natural
history, gardening, mathematics, and arithmetic rather than in sectarian
theology, Franklin's Academy was to be more secular and utilitarian than
any other school in the provinces. Indeed, Rev. George Whitefield
lamented the want of "_aliquid Christi_" in the curriculum, "to make it
as useful as I would desire it might be."
Franklin stressed the need for the acquisition of a clear and concise
literary style. He observed: "Reading should also be taught, and
pronouncing, properly, distinctly, emphatically; not with an even Tone,
which _under-does_, nor a theatrical, which _over-does_ Nature." Hence
he reflected the virtues of neoclassic perspicuity and correctness.
(These plans he more fully expressed in his _Idea of the English
School_, published in 1751.) As he grew older he apparently became less
tolerant of the teaching of the ancient languages in colonial schools:
in _Observations Relative to the Intentions of the Original Founders of
the Academy of Philadelphia_ (1789), he charged that the Latin school
had swallowed the English and that he was hence "surrounded by the
Ghosts of my dear departed Friends, beckoning and urging me to use the
only Tongue now left us, in demanding that Justice to our Grandchildren,
that our Children has [_sic_] been denied."[i-111] The Latin and Greek
languages he considered "in no other light than as the _Chapeau bras_ of
modern Literature."[i-112] Like Emerson's, his opposition was to
linguistic study rather than to the classical ideas.
Although he emphasized the study of science and mechanics, it is
important to observe that he kept his balance. He warned Miss Mary
Stevenson in 1760: "There is ... a prudent Moderation to be used in
Studies of this kind. The Knowledge of Nature may be ornamental, and it
may be useful; but if, to attain an Eminence in that, we neglect the
Knowledge and Practice of essential Duties, we deserve
Reprehension."[i-113] Not without reserve did he champion the Moderns;
remembering several provocative scientific observations in Pliny, he
wrote to William Brownrigg (Nov. 7, 1773): "It has been of late too much
the mode to slight the learning of the ancients."[i-114] He would not
agree with the enthusiastic and trenchant disciple of the moderns, M.
Fontenelle, that "We are under an obligation to the ancients for having
exhausted almost all the false theories that could be found."[i-115]
Although he would agree that the empirical method of acquiring knowledge
is more reasonable than authoritarianism reared on syllogistic
foundations, and with Cowley that
Bacon has broke that scar-crow Deity ["Authority"],[i-116]
he was not blithely confident that science and the knowledge gained from
experimentation would create a more rigorously moral race. He wrote to
Priestley in 1782: "I should rejoice much, if I could once more recover
the Leisure to search with you into the Works of Nature; I mean the
_inanimate_, not the _animate_ or moral part of them, the more I
discover'd of the former, the more I admir'd them; the more I know of
the latter, the more I am disgusted with them."[i-117] He often
suggested, "As Men grow more enlightened," but seldom did this clause
carry more than an intellectual connotation. Progress in
knowledge[i-118] did not on the whole suggest to Franklin progress in
morals or the general progress of mankind.
Essentially classical in morality, extolling a temperance like that of
Xenophon, Epictetus, Cicero, Socrates, and Aristotle, Franklin could not
cheerily champion the moderns without serious reservations. Considering
only progress in knowledge, man may be considered as _pedetentim
progredientes_, but, Franklin thought, man seemed to have found it
easier to conquer lightning than himself. If science and other
contemporaneous knowledge detracted from cosmic terror, it did not solve
the problem of the mystery of evil and sin: like Shakespeare, Franklin
was perplexed by the inexplicability and ruthlessness of Man's potential
and actual malevolence.[i-119] Thus in stressing utility and vocational
adaptiveness, Franklin did not forget to stress the need for development
of character, man's internal self, and here he did not find the ancients
dispensable.[i-120] If unlike Socrates in his studies of physical
nature, he was like the Athenian gadfly in his quest for moral
perfection in the teeth of "perpetual temptation," in his strenuous and
sober effort to know himself. Too little attention has been paid
Franklin's Hellenic sobriety--even as it has had too meagre an
influence. Let Molière challenge, "The ancients are the ancients, we are
the people of today"; Franklin, although confident that he could learn
more of physical nature from Newton than from Aristotle, was not
convinced that the wisdom of Epictetus or the Golden Verses of
Pythagoras were less salutary than the wit of his own age. A modern in
his confidence in the progress of knowledge, Franklin, approaching the
problem of morality, wisely saw the ancients and moderns as
complementary. Aware of the continuity of the mind and race, he was not
willing to dismiss the ancients as fit to be imitated. Yet he failed to
discover in the welter of egoistic men any continuous moral progress,
although, unlike the determinists, he thought that the individual could
improve himself through self-knowledge and self-control. Unlike
contemporary exponents of the "original genius" cult who scorned
industrious rational study and conformity, Franklin as an educational
theorist was the exponent of reason and of conscious intellectual
industry and thrift; he would mediate between the study of nature and of
man, and, like Aristotle, he would rely not so much upon individualistic
self-expression as upon a purposeful _imitation_ of those men in the
past who had led useful and happy lives.
III. FRANKLIN'S LITERARY THEORY AND PRACTICE[i-121]
Uniting the "wit of Voltaire with the simplicity of Rousseau," Franklin
achieved a style "only surpassed by the unimprovable Hobbes of
Malmesbury, the paragon of perspicuity." Characterized by simplicity,
order, and a trenchant pointedness, his prose style was "a principal
means" of his "advancement."[i-122]
He was "extreamly ambitious ... to be a tolerable English writer." In
the _Autobiography_ he recalls that he read books in "polemic divinity,"
Plutarch's _Lives_ (probably Dryden's translation), _Pilgrims Progress_,
Defoe's _Essays upon Several Projects_, Mather's _Essays to do Good_,
Xenophon's _Memorabilia_,[i-123] the _Spectator_ papers, and the
writings of Shaftesbury and Collins.
Born in Boston, he knew the Bible,[i-124] characterized by the apostle
of Augustan correctness, Jonathan Swift, as possessing "that simplicity,
which is one of the greatest perfections in any language." If Franklin
did not achieve its "sublime eloquence," he approximated at intervals
its directness and simplicity. In reading Defoe's _Essays_ he learned
that Queen Anne's England urged that writers be "as concise as possible"
and avoid all "superfluous crowding in of insignificant words, more than
are needful to express the thing intended." (It is possible that Defoe's
efforts "to polish and refine the English tongue," to avoid "all
irregular additions that ignorance and affectation have introduced,"
influenced Franklin in favor of "correctness" and against
provincialisms.) Defoe's "explicit, easy, free, and very plain" rhetoric
is Franklin's.
After Franklin's father warned him that his arguments were not
well-ordered and trenchantly expressed, he desperately sought to acquire
a convincing prose style. In 1717 James, Franklin's elder brother,
returned from serving a printer's apprenticeship in London. James had
known and been attracted to Augustan England, the England of the
_Tatler_, _Spectator_, and _Guardian_. Familiar is Franklin's narrative
of how he patterned his fledgling style on the pages of the _Spectator_
papers, and learned to satisfy his father--and himself. Like the
neoclassicists, Franklin learned to write by imitation, by respectfully
subordinating himself to those he recognized as masters, and not, like
the romanticists, by expressing his own ego in revolt against convention
and conformity to traditional standards. The group who supplied copy for
James's _New England Courant_, we are told, were trying to write like
the _Spectator_. "The very look of an ordinary first page of the
_Courant_ is like that of the _Spectator_ page."[i-125] In the _Dogood
Papers_ (1722) and the _Busy-Body_ series (1728) Franklin's writings
show a literal indebtedness to the style and even substance of the
_Spectator_.[i-126] If, after the _Busy-Body_ essays, Franklin's
writings bear little resemblance to the elegance and glow of the
_Spectator_, he did learn from it a long-remembered lesson in
orderliness. From the _Spectator_ he may have learned to temper wit with
morality and morality with wit; he may have learned the neoclassic
objection to the "unhappy Force of an Imagination, unguided by the Check
of Reason and Judgment";[i-127] he may have acquired his distrust of
foreign phrases when English ones were as good, or better, insisting on
the use of native English undefiled. It is interesting but perhaps
futile to conjecture to what degree Franklin at this time, on reading
_Spectator_ No. 160, "On Geniuses" (warning against a servile imitation
of ancient authors, a warning which anticipates the cult of original
geniuses of later decades), would have been predisposed against ancient
literature and languages. If the _Spectator_ was partially responsible
for his pleasantries at the expense of Greek in _Dogood Paper_ No. IV,
his attitude toward the ancients is more ostensibly the result of his
later preoccupation with the sciences,[i-128] and of contact with
representatives of the deistic time-spirit whose faith in progress led
them to underrate the past.
When Franklin went to live in London in 1724-1726, and became familiar
with such men of science as Dr. Henry Pemberton and others, he must have
become aware of ideals of prose style not a little unlike those
practised by the preachers of his Boston. In Boston he had heard (and in
the polemical works in his father's library, read) sermons couched in a
style satirized in _Hudibras_ as a "Babylonish dialect ... of patched
and piebald languages" (ll. 93 ff.). Sensing the disparity between the
seventeenth-century prose styles and the empirical, logical, and
orderly method of science, the Royal Society not long after its
inception inaugurated a campaign for a clarity akin to the pattern urged
by Hobbes: "The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, _Reason_ is
the Pace, Encrease of _Science_ the _way_; and the benefit of man-kind
the _end_. And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senseless and ambiguous
words, are like _ignes fatui_; and reasoning upon them, is wandering
among innumerable absurdities."[i-129] Summarizing the intent of the
stylistic reformations instituted by the Royal Society, Thomas Sprat
urged writers "to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and
swellings of style: to return back to the primitive purity, and
shortness, when men deliver'd so many things, almost in an equal number
of words ... a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive
expressions; clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as
near the Mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the
language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of Wits,
or Scholars."[i-130] It is asserted that the program of the Royal
Society "called for stylistic reform as loudly as for reformation in
philosophy. Moreover, this attitude was in the public mind indissolubly
associated with the Society."[i-131] It is only reasonable to infer that
Franklin (as a member of the Royal Society and as founder of the
American Philosophical Society) was alive to the movement toward
"undefiled plainness" which had for half a century been gathering
momentum.[i-132]
Even as Cartesianism[i-133] in France is said to have fostered logic and
lucidity of detail, and that which is universally valid and recognized
by all men, and that art which is aloof to the non-human world, so in
England may Newtonianism (which overthrew Cartesianism) have conditioned
writers to develop a uniform style, purged of tenuous rhetorical
devices. An age characterized by a worship of reason, which was supposed
to be identical in all men, an age deferring to the general mind of man,
would be hostile to the rhetorical caprices of those expressing their
private, idiosyncratic enthusiasms. If the neoclassic apotheosis of
simplicity and freedom from intricacy was the result of a "rationalistic
anti-intellectualism,"[i-134] expressed in terms of hostility to
belabored proof of ideas known to the general will, then it would seem
that one of the factors sturdily conditioning this hostility was
Newtonian science. Admitting that _reason_ leads to uniformitarianism,
one may recall that the processes of science are discoverable by reason,
and that such a cosmologist as Newton illustrated mathematically and
empirically a system, grand in its lucidity, and capable of being
apprehended by all through reason. If the deistic fear of "enthusiasm"
in religion--the individual will prevailing against the _consensus
gentium_--parallels, according to Professor Lovejoy, the neoclassic fear
of feeling and the unrestrained play of imagination in art, then
Newtonian science, as it reinforced deism, was no negligible factor in
discrediting enthusiasm, and hence indirectly militating against
originality, emotion, and the unchecked imagination. Is it not
conceivable that the Newtonian[i-135] cosmology, popularized by a vast
discipleship, challenged the scientists and men of letters alike to
achieve a corresponding order, clarity, and simplicity in poetry and
prose?
After Franklin's return from London, he reinforced his Addison-like
style with the rhetorical implications of science and Newtonianism: in
his _Preface_ (1729) to the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ he observed that an
editor ought to possess a "great Easiness and Command of Writing and
Relating Things clearly and intelligibly, and in few Words."[i-136] Good
writing, in Franklin's opinion, "should proceed regularly from things
known to things unknown [surely the method of all inductive reasoning
and science] distinctly and clearly without confusion. The words used
should be the most expressive that the language affords, provided that
they are the most generally understood. Nothing should be expressed in
two words that can be as well expressed in one; that is, no synonyms
should be used, or very rarely, but the whole should be as short as
possible, consistent with clearness; the words should be so placed as to
be agreeable to the ear in reading; summarily it should be smooth,
clear, and short, for the contrary qualities are displeasing."[i-137]
Like the members of the Royal Society, Franklin would bring the words of
written discourse "as near as possible to the spoken."[i-138] In 1753 he
observed: "If my Hypothesis [concerning waterspouts] is not the Truth
itself it is [at] least as naked: For I have not with some of our
learned Moderns, disguis'd my Nonsense in Greek, cloth'd it in Algebra
or adorn'd it with Fluxions. You have it in puris naturalibus."[i-139]
He briefly summarized his rhetorical ideal, in a letter to Hume: "In
writings intended for persuasion and for general information, one
cannot be too clear; and every expression in the least obscure is a
fault."[i-140]
Unlike Jefferson, "no friend to what is called _purism_, but a zealous
one" to neology, Franklin had an inveterate antipathy toward the use of
colloquialisms, provincialisms, and extravagant innovations.[i-141] In
another letter to Hume, he hoped that "we shall always in America make
the best English of this Island [Britain] our standard."[i-142] If he
did not hold the typical eighteenth-century view that "English must be
subjected to a process of classical regularizing,"[i-143] neither did
he, with his friend Joseph Priestley, espouse the idea of correctness,
dependent only on usage. In general, he seems to have had a tendency
toward purism; it is not unlikely that as a youth he was influenced by
Swift's _Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the
English Tongue_.[i-144] Striving for correctness, and the avoidance of
"affected Words or high-flown Phrases"[i-145] he approximated the
_curiosa felicitas_ of the neoclassicists.[i-146]
A solid neoclassicist[i-147] in style. Franklin accepted the canon of
imitation as it was imperfectly understood in the eighteenth century. To
the extent, however, that the models were conceived of as approximating
the _consensus gentium_, fragments illustrating universal reason, there
may be little disparity between neoclassic imitation and Aristotle's use
of the term in the sense of imitating a higher ethical reality. His own
life, Franklin thought, (with the exception of a few "errata") was "fit
to be imitated."[i-148] A. H. Smyth notes, perhaps extravagantly,
"Nothing but the 'Autobiography' of Benvenuto Cellini, or the
'Confessions' of Rousseau, can enter into competition with it."[i-149]
This may suggest a clue to the durable nature of Franklin's life-tale.
Cellini, it is true, was tremendously alive to Benvenuto, even as Michel
de Montaigne was interested in his own whims, but neither Cellini, nor
Montaigne, nor Franklin, could have penned the _Confessions_, the thesis
of which is that if Rousseau is not better than other men at least he is
different. Cellini, Montaigne, and Franklin, on the other hand, while
allowing us to see their fancies and singular biases, tended to
emphasize those qualities which they held in common with their age,
nation, and even the continuity of mankind. Montaigne, it will be
remembered, sought to express _la connaissance de l'homme en général_.
With no aspirations to become an original genius, Franklin, both in his
prose style and his yearning for perfection, sought the guidance of
models, which he conceived as embodying universal reason. Had he been a
writer of epics[i-150] he would with Pope have acquired "from ancient
rules a just esteem"--when the rules were, in his mind, "according to
nature."
Likewise Franklin is representative of the Enlightenment in his
description of the province of the imagination. It is an axiom that "the
belief that the imagination ought to be kept in check by reason,
pervades the critical literature of the first half of the eighteenth
century."[i-151] Franklin observes that poetasters above all need
instruction on how to govern "Fancy [Imagination] with
Judgement."[i-152] He implies that imagination is a power lending an air
of unreality to a creation, often like "the Effect of some melancholy
Humour."[i-153] He feared that the unchecked fancy would vitiate his
ideals of simplicity and correctness, and a sober and practical
argument.
Posing as no original genius independent of the wisdom of the
ages,[i-154] confessing that "from a child" he "was fond of reading" and
that as a youth "reading was the only amusement" he allowed himself,
Franklin was not backward in cataloguing many of the authors who helped
to motivate his thought. He seems to have been acquainted with portions
of Plato, Aesop, Pliny, Xenophon, Herodotus, Epictetus, Vergil, Horace,
Tacitus, Seneca, Sallust, Cicero, Tully, Milton, Jeremy Taylor, Bacon,
Dryden, Tillotson, Rabelais,[i-155] Bunyan, Fénelon, Chevalier de
Ramsay,[i-156] Pythagoras, Waller, Defoe, Addison and Steele, William
Temple, Pope, Swift, Voltaire, Boyle, Algernon Sidney, Trenchard and
Gordon,[i-157] Young, Mandeville, Locke, Shaftesbury, Collins,
Bolingbroke, Richardson, Whiston, Watts, Thomson, Burke, Cowper, Darwin,
Rowe, Rapin, Herschel, Paley, Lord Kames, Adam Smith, Hume, Robertson,
Lavoisier, Buffon, Dupont de Nemours, Whitefield, Pemberton, Blackmore,
John Ray, Petty, Turgot, Priestley, Paine, Mirabeau, Quesnay, Raynal,
Morellet, and Condorcet, to suggest only the more prominent.[i-158] Such
a catalogue tends to discredit the all too common idea that the
untutored tradesman was torpid to the information and wisdom found in
books.
If his prose style shows none of the delicate rhythms and haunting
imagery of the prose born of the romantic movement, it is nevertheless
far from pedestrian. If it seems devoid of imaginative splendor, it is
not lacking in force and persuasion.[i-159] After one has noted
Franklin's canon of simplicity and order, his insistence on
correctness, his assumed role as _Censor Morum_, his acceptance of the
doctrine of imitation and the use of imagination guided by reason, one
returns to the question of the degree to which the ideals of rhetoric
fostered by the men of science may have helped to motivate Franklin's
prose style, and to what degree his acceptance of deism augmented by
Newtonianism may have furnished him with a rationale which lent sanction
to his demand for a simple style.
Sir Humphrey Davy found in Franklin's scientific papers a language lucid
and decorous, "almost as worthy of admiration as the doctrine"[i-160]
they contain. S. G. Fisher buoyantly maintained that Franklin's "is the
most effective literary style ever used by an American." After reading
Franklin's paper on stoves he was "inclined to lay down the principle
that the test of literary genius is the ability to be fascinating about
stoves."[i-161] Whether he writes soberly (albeit tempered by Gallic
fancy) of the mutability of life, as in _The Ephemera_, or of
sophisticated social amenities, as in the letters to Madame Brillon and
Madame Helvétius, or in his memoirs, in which solid fact follows solid
fact, sifted by the years of good fortune, Franklin's style never loses
its compelling charm and vigor. If he never wrote (or uttered) less than
was demanded by the nature of his subject, neither would he have
disgusted the Clerk of Oxenford who
Nought o word spak he more than was nede.
He was no formal literary critic such as Boileau, Lessing, or Coleridge,
and no acknowledged arbiter of taste, such as Dr. Johnson. Yet Franklin,
in voluminous practice, enjoying tremendous international vogue, proved
that his theories bore the acid test of effectiveness. Indirectly he
challenged his readers to honor principles of rhetoric which could so
trenchantly serve the demands of his catholic pen, and make him one of
the most widely read of all Americans.
IV. FRANKLIN AS PRINTER AND JOURNALIST
Franklin was a printer chiefly because of two proclivities which were
basic in his personality from childhood to old age--a bent toward
practical mechanics ("handiness") and a fondness for reading
(bookishness). Further, he was a journalist and publisher chiefly
because he was a printer.
A thorough printer is both an artisan and an artist; he has both the
manual dexterity of a good workman and the aesthetic appreciation of the
amateur of beauty. Franklin always took pride in his ability to handle
the printer's tools, from the time when, at the age of twelve, he became
"a useful hand"[i-162] in the print shop of his brother James, until the
very end of his life. One of the pleasantest anecdotes of the old
printer is that which tells of his visit to the famous Didot printing
establishment in Paris, when he stepped up to a press, and motioning the
printer aside, himself took possession of the machine and printed off
several sheets. Then the American ambassador smiled at the gaping
printers and said, "Do not be astonished, Sirs, it is my former
business."[i-163]
Even in his boyhood, it was a pleasure to Franklin "to see good workmen
handle their tools," and he tells in his autobiography how much this
feeling for tools meant to him throughout his life.[i-164] His flair for
invention, though founded on this same "handiness," was not always
directed toward the production of tools; but in the two fields of
"philosophical" experimentation and the printing trade, his dexterity
and cleverness in making needful instruments and devices were
invaluable.
Partly because of the fact that printers' supplies must be imported from
England, and partly because of his natural tool-mindedness, Franklin
manufactured more of his own supplies than any other American commercial
printer before or since. He cast type, made paper molds, mixed inks,
made contributions to press building, did engraving, forwarded
experiments in stereotyping, and worked at logotypy. Long after he had
retired from the printing business. Franklin continued to influence
developments in that field. It is a common saying among printers that
one never forgets the smell of printer's ink. Franklin kept touch with
his former business through various partnerships, through correspondence
with printer friends, through the establishment of a private press in
his home at Passy during his ambassadorship to France, and through his
personal supervision of the education of his grandson in "the art
preservative of arts." "I am too old to follow printing again myself,"
he wrote to a friend, "but, loving the business, I have brought up my
grandson Benjamin to it, and have built and furnished a printing-house
for him, which he now manages under my eye."[i-165]
As to just how adept Franklin was on the distinctively aesthetic side of
printing, critics must differ. It has been customary to assume that the
output of his shop was far superior to that of the several other
printing houses in the colonies.[i-166] Such broad generalizations are
misleading, however; and it is certainly possible to find Parks and
even Bradford imprints which compare favorably enough with some of
Franklin's. In typography, the phase of printing which affords the
widest aesthetic scope, Franklin was by no means a genius. William
Parks, of Annapolis and later of Williamsburg, was at least Franklin's
peer during the seventeen-thirties and 'forties in the artistic
arrangement of type; and William Goddard, who practiced the art a little
later in several of the colonies, was his superior. Yet Franklin was an
outstanding printer in a region blessed with few good presses. The
difference between him and most of the other colonial printers may be
stated thus: Franklin maintained a high average of workmanlike (though
not inspired) performance, while his contemporaries were inclined to be
slovenly, inaccurate, and generally careless.
In the later years of his life Franklin gave no little attention to fine
printing, though as a dilettante rather than as a commercial printer. In
France he was friendly with François Ambroise Didot, the greatest French
printer of his times, and put his grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache to
school in Didot's establishment. With Pierre Simon Fournier, who ranked
next to Didot among French printers, Franklin corresponded from time to
time. In England the American printer maintained touch with prominent
practitioners of his craft from the time of his first visit abroad until
his death. Samuel Palmer, Franklin's first London employer, was but a
mediocre printer; but John Watts, to whose house the young American went
after a year at Palmer's, stood much higher in his vocation.[i-167] Both
Watts and Palmer were patrons of William Caslon, from whom Franklin
later bought type. But John Baskerville, Caslon's rival, was the founder
whom Franklin did most to encourage and to bring to the attention of
discriminating printers. The English printer with whom Franklin was upon
the terms of greatest intimacy--and that for many years--was William
Strahan, member of Parliament, King's Printer, and a successful
publisher. Strahan was a man of parts, a great letter writer, and a
friend of David Hume and Samuel Johnson. The latter referred to the
Strahan shop as "the greatest printing house in London."[i-168] Another
correspondent was John Walter, logotyper, press builder, and founder of
the London _Times_.[i-169] In all his letters to his printer friends,
Franklin shows not only a lively interest in improvements and inventions
for the trade, but also an increasing interest in the artistic side of
printing and type-founding.
The "bookish inclination" which Franklin credits in the _Autobiography_
with being the quality that decided his father to make a printer of him,
appertained to the trade because printers were commonly publishers and
sellers of books and pamphlets, and often editors and publishers of
newspapers. How the young Franklin satisfied his literary urge in the
print shop of his brother James is a familiar story, and his theories of
writing are traced in another section of this Introduction. The
contribution to literature which he made as a publisher of original
books is negligible, but he did his part both as publisher and
bookseller to spread that bookishness to which he felt that he owed much
of his own success. Like all publishers before and since, he was forced
by his customers to issue books of a lower sort than he could fully
approve in order to float editions of more desirable works: he tells
plaintively of his public's preference for "Robin Hood's Songs" over the
Psalms of his beloved Watts.[i-170] In still another way, Franklin
promoted the bookishness of his community: he founded the first of
American circulating libraries, and he built up for himself one of the
largest private libraries in the country.[i-171]
Journalism was a common by-product of the printing trade. When Franklin
and Meredith took over Keimer's _The Universal Instructor in all Arts
and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette_ in 1729, there were six other
newspapers being published in the colonies--three in Boston and one each
in New York, Philadelphia, and Annapolis. The Williamsburg press had a
newspaper a few years later, but the other two printing towns in the
colonies had to wait some thirty years for journalistic ventures--a
newspaper in New London and a magazine in Woodbridge.[i-172]
The fundamental question to be asked in analyzing a newspaper may be
stated thus: What is the editorial conception of the primary function of
the press? Franklin had received his early newspaper training on his
brother's _New England Courant_, which frankly acknowledged
entertainment as its primary function and relegated news to a minor
place. Of his contemporaries in 1729, the oldest, the _Boston
News-Letter_, held the publication of news to be its sole function;
while the _Boston Gazette_, the _New York Gazette_, and the _Maryland
Gazette_ took much the same attitude. In the main, they were rather
dreary reprints of stale European news. Bradford's _American Weekly
Mercury_, in Philadelphia, gave somewhat more attention to local news;
but with the exception of the Franklin-Breintnal _Busy-Body_ papers,
contributed in 1728-1729 in order to bring Keimer to his knees, the
_Mercury_ gave very little attention to the entertainment function. Only
the _New England Weekly Journal_, carrying on something of the tradition
of the old _Courant_, dealt largely in entertainment as well as in news.
This bi-functional policy was the one adopted by Franklin's
_Pennsylvania Gazette_, which was always readable and amusing at the
same time that it was newsy.
Of the editorial or opinion-forming function of newspapers there was
little evidence in Franklin's paper,[i-173] at least in the field of
politics. The obvious reason was the active governmental censorship. It
remained for John Peter Zenger to introduce that function into colonial
journalism in the _New York Weekly Journal_ in 1733: his struggle for
the freedom of the press is well known.[i-174] But the _Pennsylvania
Gazette_ never became in any degree a political organ while Franklin
edited it; and his first political pronouncement was published not in
his paper but in a pamphlet, _Plain Truth_, issued just before his
retirement from editorial duties.
Two common misconceptions in regard to Franklin's newspaper call for
correction: (1) The _Pennsylvania Gazette_ was not connected as
forerunner or ancestor with the _Saturday Evening Post_. The _Gazette_,
a newspaper to the end, closed its file in 1815;[i-175] the _Post_, a
story paper, issued its Volume I, Number 1, in 1821. Throughout much of
the latter half of the nineteenth century, the _Post_ carried the legend
"Founded in 1821" on its front page; and not until after the Curtis
Publishing Company bought it in 1897 did it begin to print the words
"Founded A.D. 1728 by Benjamin Franklin" on its cover. The sole
connection of the _Post_ with Franklin lies in the fact that it was
first issued from an office at 53 Market Street which Franklin had once
occupied.[i-176] (2) Franklin did not publish a "chain" of newspapers. A
"chain" implies some kind of co-operative connection between the various
members, but the several papers which Franklin helped to finance had no
such relationship. In some he was a six-years partner,[i-177] keeping
his interest until the resident publisher, usually a former employee,
was established; to some he made loans or, in the case of relatives,
gifts.[i-178]
One of his journalistic ventures which is not mentioned in the
_Autobiography_ is the _General Magazine_, of 1741. It missed by three
days being the first of American magazines: Andrew Bradford had learned
of Franklin's project and, with his _American Magazine_, beat him in the
race for priority. But the _American Magazine_ was a failure in three
monthly numbers, while Franklin's periodical, though more readable, died
after its sixth issue.[i-179] As an initial episode in the history of
American magazines, the _General Magazine_ has a certain eminence; but
Franklin's neglect of it when writing his _Autobiography_, after the
events of nearly fifty busy years had apparently crowded it out of his
memory, is sufficient commentary on its unimportance.
To the end of his life Franklin was proud of his trade of printing, with
its handmaiden journalism. His last will and testament begins: "I,
Benjamin Franklin, Printer...." Though clearly not the chief interest of
his life, it was one to which he was fundamentally and consistently
attached.
V. FRANKLIN'S ECONOMIC VIEWS
An eighteenth-century colonial who wrote on paper money, interest,
value, and insurance, who discussed a theory of population and the
economic aspects of the abolition of slavery, who championed free trade,
and who probably lent Adam Smith some information used in his _Wealth of
Nations_, who was an empirical agriculturist, who was "half physiocratic
before the rise of the physiocratic school"--such a colonial has,
indeed, claims to being America's pioneer economist.
Franklin's hatred of negro slavery was conditioned by more than his
humanitarian bias. It may be seen that his indictments of black cargoes
were the resultant of an interplay of his convictions that economically
slavery was enervating and dear and of his abstract sense of religious
and ethical justice. One should not minimize, however, his distrust of
slavery on other than economic bases. He was acutely influenced by the
Quakers of his colony who, like gadflies, were stinging slaveholders to
an awareness of their blood traffic, and by the rise of English
humanitarianism. In his youth he had published (first edition, 1729;
second, 1730), with no little danger to himself and his business, Ralph
Sandiford's _A Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times_, an
Amos-like vituperative attack on the "unrighteous Gain" of slaveholding.
He also published works of Benjamin Lay and John Woolman.[i-180] Friend
of Anthony Benezet, Benjamin Rush, Fothergill, and Granville Sharp, and
after 1760 a member of Dr. Bray's Associates, he lent his voice and pen
to denouncing slavery on religious and ethical grounds; and in England,
after the James Sommersett trial (1772), he "began to agitate for
parliamentary action" toward the abolishing of slavery in all parts of
the British Empire.[i-181] Following the Sommersett verdict, Franklin
contributed a brief article to the _London Chronicle_ (June 18-20, 1772)
in which he denounced the "constant butchery of the human species by
this pestilential detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of
men."[i-182] Losing his temperamental urbanity when observing "the
diabolical Commerce,"[i-183] "the abominable African Trade," he
recollects approvingly that a certain French moralist[i-184] could "not
look on a piece of sugar without conceiving it stained with spots of
human blood!"[i-185] Conditioned by Quakerism, by his deism, which
suggested that "the most acceptable Service we render him [God] is doing
good to his other Children," and by the eighteenth century's growing
repugnance toward suffering and pain,[i-186] Franklin (although he took
little part in legislating against slavery in Pennsylvania) became
through his writing a model to be imitated, especially in France, by a
people more intent on becoming humane than saintly.
His letter to Anthony Benezet (London, July 14, 1773), however, clearly
indicates that for economic, as well as humanitarian reasons, he had
sought freedom for slaves:
I am glad to hear that such humane Sentiments prevail so much
more generally than heretofore, that there is Reason to hope
our Colonies may in time get clear of a Practice that
disgraces them, and, without producing any equivalent
Benefit, is dangerous to their very Existence.[i-187]
Franklin's view of the economic disabilities of slavery is best
expressed in _Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling
of Countries, Etc._ (1751). Arguing against British restraint of
colonial manufactures, he observed that "'tis an ill-grounded Opinion
that by the Labour of slaves, _America_ may possibly vie in Cheapness of
Manufactures with _Britain_. The Labour of Slaves can never be so cheap
here as the Labour of working Men is in _Britain_."[i-188] With
arithmetic based on empirical scrutiny of existing conditions,
resembling the mode of economists following Adam Smith, he charged that
slaves are economically unprofitable due to the rate of interest in the
colonies, their initial price, their insurance and maintenance, their
negligence and malevolence.[i-189] In addition, "Slaves ... pejorate the
Families that use them; the white Children become proud, disgusted with
Labour, and being educated in Idleness, are rendered unfit to get a
Living by Industry."[i-190] Slaves are hardly economical investments in
terms of colonial character. Looking to the "_English_ Sugar _Islands_"
where Negroes "have greatly diminish'd the Whites," and deprived the
poor of employment, "while a few Families acquire vast Estates," he
realized that "population was limited by means of subsistence,"[i-191]
which foreshadowed the more pessimistic progressions of Malthus. Having
just maintained that "our People must at least be doubled every 20
Years,"[i-192] and intuitively suspecting that the means for subsistence
progress more slowly, he exclaimed, "Why increase the Sons of _Africa_,
by planting them in _America_, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by
excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and
Red?"[i-193] He saw mere economic extravagance as the short-time effect
of slavery; he feared that the long-time effect would be to create an
aristocracy subsisting at the head of a vast brood of slaves and poor
whites.[i-194]
It was inevitable in a state having no staple crop, such as rice, sugar,
tobacco, or cotton, which offered at least economic justification for
negro slavery, that abolition of slaves should be urged partially on
purely economic grounds, and that Pennsylvania should have been the
first colony to legislate in favor of abolition, in 1780. Although one
may feel that economic determinism is overly simple and audacious in its
doctrinaire interpretations, one can not refuse to see the extent to
which economics tended to buttress humane and religious factors in
Franklin's mind to make him a persuasive champion of abolition.[i-195]
_A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper
Currency_[i-196] has been appraised as "by far the ablest and most
original treatise that had been written on the subject up to 1728 and
was probably the most widely read work on paper currency that appeared
in colonial America."[i-197] That Franklin's interest in paper money was
not unique, one may gather from the fact that between 1714 and 1721
"nearly thirty pamphlets appeared" on this subject in Massachusetts
alone.[i-198] One of the 1728 theses at Harvard, answered in the
affirmative, was: "Does the issue of paper money contribute to the
public good?"[i-199] "Since there was a scarcity of circulating medium,
caused by the constant drain of specie for export," explains Mr. D. R.
Dewey, "it is not strange that projects for converting credit into
wealth should have sprung up in the colonies."[i-200] Franklin argued in
his _Modest Enquiry_[i-201] that (1) "A plentiful Currency will occasion
Interest to be low," (2) it "will occasion the Trading Produce to bear a
good Price," (3) it "will encourage great Numbers of labouring and
Handicrafts Men to come and settle in the Country," and (4) it "will
occasion a less consumption of European Goods, in proportion to the
Number of the People." Thus he saw paper money as a "Morrison's Pill,"
promising to cure all economic ills.[i-202] It has been suggested that
as a printer Franklin naturally would favor issues of paper money. In
view of his later apostasy one should note that in this essay Franklin
apparently accepted the current mercantilist notions, best expressed
here in his conviction that paper money will secure a favorable balance
of trade. Demands for emissions of paper money were inevitable in a
colony in the grip of such a restrictive commercial policy as British
mercantilism. It must be observed, however, that Franklin differed from
the proper mercantilists to the extent that simple valuable metals were
not to be measures of value. Deriving his idea from Sir William Petty,
Franklin took labor as the true measure of value,[i-203]--a position
later held by Karl Marx. In his preoccupation with the growth of
manufactures and favorable balances of trade, Franklin gave no
suggestions that at least by 1767 he was to become an exponent of
agrarianism and free trade. One wonders to what extent his warnings
against the purchase of "unnecessary Householdstuff, or any superfluous
thing," his inveterate emphasis on industry and frugality, were
conditioned by his view that such indulgence would essentially cause a
preponderance of imports, hence casting against them an unfavorable
trade balance.[i-204]
In 1751 Parliament passed an act regulating in the New England colonies
the issue of paper money and preventing them "from adding a legal tender
clause thereto"; in 1764 Parliament forbade issue of legal tender money
in any of the colonies. As a member of the Pennsylvania assembly,
Franklin had successfully sponsored issues of paper money; in London,
following the 1764 act, he urged that one of the causes breeding
disrespect for Parliament was "the prohibition of making paper money
among [us]."[i-205] Economics blends into politics when we remember that
the 1764 restraining legislation was "one of the factors in the
subsequent separation, for it caused some of the suffering that
inevitably follows in the wake of an unsound monetary policy whose
onward course is suddenly checked."[i-206] In 1766 Franklin was yet an
ardent imperialist, who sought politically and economically to keep
whole "that fine and noble China Vase, the British Empire." His _Remarks
and Facts Concerning American Paper Money_ (1767), in answer to Lord
Hillsborough's Board of Trade report circulated among British merchants,
is an ardent plea for legal tender paper money. He argued that British
merchants (since yearly trade balances had regularly been in their
favor) had not been deprived of gold and silver, that paper money _had
worked_ in the Colonies,[i-207] and that British merchants had lost no
more in their colonial dealings than was inevitable in war times.
Franklin concluded that since there were no mines in the colonies, paper
money was a necessity (arguing here very shrewdly that even English
silver "is obliged to the legal Tender for Part of its Value"). Hence,
at least for colonies deserving it, the mother country should take off
the restraint on legal tender. What Franklin seems not to have known and
what the merchants had actually felt (they had their accounts staring at
them) was that in the past, especially after 1750, much of the legal
tender was in effect nothing but inconvertible fiat money. Mr. Carey
quotes from an uncollected item, Franklin's "The Legal Tender of Paper
Money in America," in which he threatened that "if the colonies were not
allowed to issue legal-tender notes there was no way in which they could
retain hard money except by boycotting English goods."[i-208] Franklin
suggested (to S. Cooper, April 22, 1779) that depreciation may not be
unmixed evil, since it may be viewed as a tax: "It should always be
remembered, that the original Intention was to sink the Bills by Taxes,
which would as effectually extinguish the Debt as an actual
Redemption."[i-209] Not a little Machiavellian for one who was not blind
to the sanctity of contracts!
With the Revolution and the attendant depreciation in currency, Franklin
tended to warn against over-issues.[i-210] Like Governor Hutchinson, who
said that "the morals of the people depreciate with the currency,"
Franklin confessed in 1783 "the many Mischiefs, the injustices, the
Corruption of Manners, &c., &c., that attended a depreciating
Currency."[i-211] There is no evidence to show that Franklin dissented
from the conservative prohibition in the Constitutional Convention of
1787 against issues of legal tender paper.[i-212]
Deborah Logan (in a letter in 1829) stated that Franklin "once told Dr.
Logan that the celebrated Adam Smith, when writing his 'Wealth of
Nations,' was in the habit of bringing chapter after chapter as he
composed it, to himself, Dr. Price and others of the literati; then
patiently hear [_sic_] their observations, and profit by their
discussion and criticism--even sometimes submitting to write whole
chapters anew, and even to reverse some of his propositions."[i-213]
James Parton observed that the allusions to the colonies which
"constitute the experimental evidence of the essential truth of the
book" were supplied by Franklin.[i-214] But Rae reasonably counters: "It
ought of course to be borne in mind that Smith had been in the constant
habit of hearing much about the American Colonies and their affairs
during his thirteen years in Glasgow from the intelligent merchants and
returned planters of that city."[i-215]
In general, we may conclude that Franklin and Smith were exponents of
free trade in proportion as they were reactionaries against British
mercantilism. Each in his reaction tended to elevate the function of
agriculture beyond reasonable limits. Unlike the physiocrats and
Franklin, however, Adam Smith did not hold that, in terms of
wealth-producing, manufacturers were sterile. Even if Franklin saw only
agriculture as _productive_, he was not blind to the utility of
manufactures, especially after the break with the mother country, when
he realized that home industry must be developed to supply the colonial
needs formerly satisfied by British exports.[i-216]
Finally, each was, in varying degrees, an exponent of laissez
faire.[i-217] Since we shall discover that politically Franklin was less
a democrat than is often supposed, we may feel that his belief in free
trade led him to embrace reservedly the principle of laissez faire,
rather than that free trade, an economic concept, was but a fragment of
a larger dogma, namely, that government should be characterized by its
passivity, frugality, and maximum negligence. V. L. Parrington
quotes[i-218] from George Whately's _Principles of Trade_, which
contained views congenial to Franklin:
When Colbert assembled some wise old merchants of France, and
desired their advice and opinion, how he could best serve and
promote commerce, their answer, after consultation, was, in
three words only, _Laissez-nous faire_: "Let us alone." It is
said by a very solid writer of the same nation, that he is
well advanced in the science of politics, who knows the full
force of that maxim. _Pas trop gouverner_: "Not to govern too
much!" _which, perhaps, would be of more use when applied to
trade, than in any other public concern_. (Present editors'
italics.)
Laissez faire in Franklin's as in Whately's view tended to be synonymous
with free trade. Laissez faire was suggested by his insistence on free
trade, as he progressively expressed his antipathy for mercantilism,
rather than that free trade was simply a natural deduction from a more
inclusive economic-political dogma.
Writing to the pro-colonial Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, whose
"sweet Retirement" at Twyford he had long enjoyed, Franklin, seeing no
hopes of a reconciliation between the colonies and Great Britain,
uttered what marked him as the first American disciple of Quesnay's
school of economic thought: "Agriculture is the great Source of Wealth
and Plenty. By cutting off our Trade you have thrown us _to the Earth_,
whence like _Antaeus_ we shall rise yearly with fresh Strength and
Vigour."[i-219] Upon learning of the colonists' "Resolutions of
Non-Importation" he wrote to "Cousin" Folger that they must promote
their own industries, especially those of the "Earth and their Sea, the
true Sources of Wealth and Plenty."[i-220] Learning that the colonists
had threatened to boycott English manufacturers by creating their own
basic industries, Franklin demurred in a letter to Cadwallader Evans:
"Agriculture is truly _productive of new wealth_; manufacturers only
change forms, and whatever value they give to the materials they work
upon, they in the mean time consume an equal value in provisions, &c. So
that riches are not _increased_ by manufacturing; the only advantage is,
that provisions in the shape of manufactures are more easily carried for
sale to foreign markets."[i-221] _Positions to be Examined, Concerning
National Wealth_[i-222] affords a succinct statement of Franklin's
agrarianism. "There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire
wealth. The first is by _war_, as the Romans did, in plundering their
conquered neighbours. This is _robbery_. The second by _commerce_, which
is generally _cheating_. The third by _agriculture_, the only _honest
way_, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the
ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in
his favour, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous
industry."[i-223] Dupont de Nemours, as early as 1769, had written: "Who
does not know that the English have today their Benjamin Franklin, who
has adopted the principles and the doctrines of our French
economists?"[i-224] Before attempting to appraise the real indebtedness
of Franklin to the physiocrats, it is well to seek to learn how he came
in contact with their ideas, and especially why by the year 1767 he was
acutely susceptible to their doctrine. In the summer of 1767, in the
company of Sir John Pringle, Franklin went to Paris, not an unknown
figure to the French savants, who were acquainted with his scientific
papers already translated into French by D'Alibard. That he was feted by
the Newtons of the physiocrats, François Quesnay and the elder Mirabeau,
as "le Savant, le Geomètre, le Physicien, l'homme à qui la nature permet
de dévoiler ses secrets,"[i-225] we are assured, when to De Nemours
(July 28, 1768) he writes regretfully: "Be so good as to present my
sincere respect to that venerable apostle, Dr. Quesnay, and to the
illustrious Ami des Hommes (of whose civilities to me at Paris I retain
a grateful remembrance)...."[i-226] Having missed Franklin in Paris
(1767), De Nemours had sent Franklin "un recueil des principaux traités
économiques du Docteur Quesnay" and his own _Physiocratie_ (1768), which
cast him in the role "of a propagandist of Physiocratie
doctrines."[i-227] Franklin admitted, "I am perfectly charmed with them,
and wish I could have stayed in France for some time, to have studied
in your school, that I might by conversing with its founders have made
myself quite a master of that philosophy."[i-228] That Franklin was not
before 1767 unacquainted with the Économistes we learn when he tells
Dupont de Nemours that Dr. Templeman had shown him the De
Nemours-Templeman correspondence when the latter was Secretary of the
London Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and
Commerce. A second trip to Paris (in 1769) to confer with Barbeu
Dubourg, an avowed physiocrat, concerning his forthcoming translation of
Franklin's works, served to acquaint him still further with the
doctrines of the new school.
Franklin's agrarianism[i-229] is congruent with physiocracy[i-230] in as
far as he observed that agriculture alone, of the many industries,
produced a surplus of wealth after all of the expenses of production had
been paid.[i-231] Each laborer produced more than enough to satisfy his
own needs. This surplus the Économistes termed the _produit net_. A
worker in manufactures, it was assumed, consumed foodstuffs and other
materials in proportion to the value he created in his manufacturing
process. Hence there obviously could be no _produit net_ accruing from
manufactures. Like the physiocrats, Franklin felt that manufactures were
_sterile_, to the extent that no new wealth was created. The physiocrats
believed, however, that laborers in manufacturing industries _could_
create a _produit net_ if they stinted themselves in consuming
foodstuffs, et cetera, but it was argued that this prudential asceticism
was not a characteristic habit. To this extent at least the physiocrats
were empirical.
Free trade no less than agrarianism characterized physiocracy. Although
Franklin indicated his antagonism toward governmental restraint of
trade, internal and among nations, in his antipathy toward British
mercantilism, it was not until after he became impregnated with French
doctrine that he began to express very fully his advocacy of free trade.
After Connecticut imposed a 5% duty on goods imported from neighboring
colonies, Franklin wrote to Jared Eliot in 1747 that it was likely that
the duty would devolve on the consumer and be "only another mode of
Taxing" the purchaser. In addition he recognized that smuggling,
virtually a colonial art, would cause the "fair Trader" to "be undersold
and ruined."[i-232] He urged that the import duty might suggest
selfishness, and might also tend to deter Connecticut commerce. Here, it
must be admitted, Franklin did not sanction free trade with a priori
appeals to the "natural order," the key in the arch of physiocracy. He
rather appealed to the instincts and observations of the prudential
tradesman. His _Plan for Regulating Indian Affairs_ (1766), unlike his
1747 letters, _suggested_ (if it did not express concretely) inviolable
laws of commerce in the words: "It seems contrary to the Nature of
Commerce, for Government to interfere in the Prices of Commodities....
It therefore seems to me, that Trade will best find and make its own
Rates; and that Government cannot well interfere, unless it would take
the whole Trade into its own hands ... and manage it by its own Servants
at its own Risque."[i-233] To Dupont de Nemours he admitted that British
mercantilism had not achieved "that wisdom which sees the welfare of the
parts in the prosperity of the whole."[i-234] To Sir Edward Newenham,
representing the County of Dublin, he expressed admiration for Irish
efforts to secure freedom of commerce, "which is the right of all
mankind." "To enjoy all the advantages of the climate, soil, and
situation in which God and nature have placed us, is as clear a right as
that of breathing; and can never be justly taken from men but as a
punishment for some atrocious crime."[i-235] Three years before he met
Quesnay (though after he had read Dupont de Nemours's letters to
Templeman), Franklin sanctioned free trade through appeal to other than
utilitarian prudence: first he admitted that British restraint of
colonial commerce, for example with the West Indies, will tend to
prevent colonists from making remittances for British manufactured
goods, since "The Cat can yield but her skin." Then with a suggestion of
philosophic generalization he hoped that "In time perhaps Mankind may be
wise enough to let Trade take its own Course, find its own Channels, and
regulate its own Proportions, etc."[i-236] Restraint of manufactures
"deprive[s] us of the Advantage God & Nature seem to have intended
us.... So selfish is the human Mind! But 'tis well there is One above
that rules these Matters with a more equal Hand. He that is pleas'd to
feed the Ravens, will undoubtedly take care to prevent a Monopoly of the
Carrion."[i-237] Glorifying the husbandman and suggesting that trade
restrictions disturb a natural order, Franklin wrote to David Hartley in
1783 that Great Britain has tended to impede "the mutual communications
among men of the gifts of God, and rendering miserable multitudes of
merchants and their families, artisans, and cultivators of the earth,
the most peaceable and innocent part of the human species."[i-238]
That Franklin was not without his influence in eighteenth-century
economic thought we may gather from Dugald Stewart's opinion that "the
expressions _laissez-faire_ and, _pas trop gouverner_ are indebted
chiefly for their extensive circulation to the short and luminous
comments of Franklin, which had so extraordinary an influence on public
opinion in the old and new world."[i-239] Mr. Carey maintains that
Franklin, unlike the physiocrats, inveighed against trade regulations
because they led to smuggling rather than because to any important
degree they violated the "natural order." The physiocrats are tenuous,
amorphous, and ambiguous when they seek to define _L'Ordre naturel_. At
times Dupont de Nemours seems to identify it with a primitivistic
past.[i-240] Quesnay, on the other hand, says: "Natural right is
indeterminate in a state of nature. The right only appears when justice
and labour have been established."[i-241] Again, he asserts: "By
entering society and making conventions for their mutual advantage men
increase the scope of natural right without incurring any restriction of
their liberties, for this is just the state of things that enlightened
reason would have chosen."[i-242] Natural order is a "providential
order": "Its laws are irrevocable, pertaining as they do to the essence
of matter and the soul of humanity. They are just the expression of the
will of God."[i-243] According to the physiocrats, the laws of the
natural order are "unique, eternal, invariable, and universal."[i-244]
Now it is true that nowhere did Franklin assert that his advocacy of
laissez faire and agrarianism was neatly dependent on these a priori
bases. Even though this is true, there are references (quoted above)
which seem to suggest that trade restrictions are violations of the very
nature of things. It is not wholly fanciful (bearing in mind Franklin's
adoration of a Deity who is the creator and sustainer of immutable,
universal physical laws which together present the mind with the concept
of a vast, wonderfully harmonized physical machine) to conjecture to
what extent this matchless physical harmony tended to challenge him with
the possibility of discovering a parallel economic machine operating
according to immutable laws capable of proof and human adaptability.
O. H. Taylor has shown that "The evolution of the idea of 'laws' in
economics has closely paralleled its evolution in the natural
sciences."[i-245] In searching for these economic constants, "the
economic mechanism was regarded as a wise device of the Creator for
causing individuals, while pursuing only their own interests, to promote
the prosperity of society; and for causing the right adjustment to one
another of supplies, demand, prices, and incomes, to take place
automatically, in consequence of the free action of all
individuals."[i-246] After giving due weight to the fact that Franklin
saw in the doctrine of the physiocrats trenchant arguments to buttress
his attacks on British mercantilism, one has cogent evidence for at
least raising the question, To what extent may his apprehension of a
demonstrable physical harmony have suggested to his speculative mind an
economic analogy?[i-247]
VI. FRANKLIN'S POLITICAL THEORIES
Plague of the Pennsylvania proprietaries, propagandist of the American
Revolution, moderator of the Constitutional Convention, Franklin was all
through his life a politician and statesman in an age characterized
above all by political speculations and changes in the destiny of
states. Colonial patriot, "arch rebel of King George III," "idol of the
court of Versailles," Franklin was a cyclopedia of political strategy
and principles. Only through a genetic survey of Franklin the political
theorist can one hope to understand his mind as he changed from
imperialist, to revolutionist, to the patriarch of the Constitutional
Convention who, like a balance wheel, moderated the extreme party
factions.
In the early 1720's, Franklin had breathed a Boston air saturated with
discontent between the royal governor and the governed. By 1730 he was
printer to the Pennsylvania Assembly and in 1736 was appointed clerk to
that body. Yet one learns little of his political biases until 1747,
when he published _Plain Truth_. In 1729 he genially asserted that he
was "no Party-man,"[i-248] and in 1746 temperately stated,
Free from the bitter Rage of Party Zeal,
All those we love who seek the publick Weal.[i-249]
His _Plain Truth_ (November, 1747), directed against the proprietary
governor as well as against the Quaker assembly, showed Franklin a party
man only if one dedicated to "the publick weal" was a party man. With
all respect for the Quaker conscience which checks military activity,
Franklin could not, however, condone its virtually prohibiting others
from defending the province's border. And the proprietaries had shown
an inveterate unwillingness to arm Pennsylvania--a reluctance which did
not, however, prevent them from collecting taxes and quitrents. On other
questions the governor and his chiefs had to contend with the opposition
of the assembly. Without opposition, the proprietary government could
serenely kennel itself in its medieval privilege of remaining dumb to an
urgent need: one remembers that eighteenth-century proprietary colonies
were "essentially feudal principalities, upon the grantees of which were
bestowed all the inferior regalities and subordinate powers of
legislation which formerly belonged to the counts palatine, while
provision was also made for the maintenance of sovereignty in the king
[the king paid little attention to Pennsylvania], and for the
realization of the objects of the grant."[i-250] While the government
remained inert, Pennsylvania would be a pawn in the steeled hands of the
French and their rum-subsidized Indian mercenaries. Appealing to
Scripture and common sense, Franklin pleaded for "Order, Discipline, and
a few Cannon."[i-251] Not untruthfully he warned that "we are like the
separate Filaments of Flax before the Thread is form'd, without
Strength, because without Connection, but UNION would make us strong,
and even formidable."[i-252] Since war existed, there was no need to
consider him a militarist because he challenged, "The Way to secure
Peace is to be prepared for War."[i-253] In the midst of _Plain Truth_
Franklin uttered what only _before_ the time of Locke could be
interpreted in terms of feudal _comitatus_: he entreated his readers to
consider, "if not as Friends, at least as Legislators, that _Protection_
is as truly due from the Government to the People, as _Obedience_ from
the People to the Government."[i-254] Suggestive of the contract theory,
this is revolutionary only in a very elementary way. With the French
writhing under the Treaty of Paris, with appeals to natural rights and
the right of revolution, this once harmless principle took on Gargantuan
significance. But Thomas Penn anticipated wisely enough the ultimate
implication of Franklin's paper; Penn intuitively saw the march of time:
"Mr. Franklin's doctrine that obedience to governors is no more due them
than protection to the people, is not fit to be in the heads of the
unthinking multitude. He is a dangerous man and I should be glad if he
inhabited any other country, as I believe him of a very uneasy spirit.
However, as he is a sort of tribune of the people, he must be treated
with regard."[i-255] It is difficult to see how Franklin's passion for
order and provincial union,[i-256] obviously necessary, could have been
considered so illiberally subversive of the government. By 1747 Franklin
had read in _Telemachus_ that kings exist for the people, not the people
for the kings; he must have read Locke's justification of the "Glorious
Revolution" and have become aware of the impetus it gave to the British
authority of consent in its subsequent constitutional history.
After his first political pamphlet, he widened his horizon from
provincial to colonial affairs. Two years before the London Board of
Trade demanded that colonial governors hold a conference with the
Iroquois, Franklin seems to have devised plans for uniting the several
colonies. He was aware of the narrow particularism shown by the
provinces; he knew also that since "Governors are often on ill Terms
with their Assemblies," no concerted military efforts could be achieved
without a military federation.[i-257] One remembers that as soon as he
could think politically he was an imperialist, a lesser William Pitt,
and in his _Increase of Mankind_ (1751) could gloat over an envisioned
thickly populated America--"What an Accession of Power to the _British_
Empire by Sea as well as Land!"[i-258] When the Board of Trade, after
British efforts to bring the colonies together had failed, demanded that
something be done, Franklin was appointed one of the commissioners to
meet at Albany in 1754. Like Franklin, Governor Glen had admitted that
the colonies were "a Rope of Sand ... loose and inconnected."[i-259]
Franklin's plan, adopted by the commissioners, called for a
Governor-General "appointed by the king" and a Grand Council made up of
members chosen by the Assembly of each of the colonies, the Governor "to
have a negation on all acts of the Grand Council, and carry into
execution whatever is agreed on by him and that Council."[i-260] Surely
not a very auspicious beginning for one who later was to favor the
legislative over the executive functions of state. The plan included the
powers of making Indian treaties of peace and war, of regulating Indian
trade and Indian purchases, of stimulating the settling of new lands, of
making laws to govern new areas, of raising soldiers, of laying general
duties, et cetera.[i-261] But Franklin did not minimize the lack of
cohesion of the colonies. We recollect that "in 1755, at a time when
their very existence was threatened by the French, Massachusetts and New
York engaged in a bitter boundary controversy leading to riot and
bloodshed."[i-262] The colonies refused to ratify the plan--"their weak
Noddles are perfectly distracted,"[i-263] wrote Franklin. He was
probably right when he observed in 1789 that had the plan been adopted
"the subsequent Separation of the Colonies from the Mother Country might
not so soon have happened."[i-264] The sending of British regulars to
America and the resulting efforts at taxation were not least among the
sparks which set off the Revolution.
Franklin's _Three Letters to Governor Shirley_ (1754), while expressing
no credulous views of the wisdom of the people, maintained in one breath
that the colonists were loyal to the Constitution and Crown as ever
colonists were and in another that "it is supposed an undoubted right of
Englishmen, not to be taxed but by their own consent given through their
representatives."[i-265] (Shirley had apparently written that the
Council in the Albany Plan should be appointed by England, and not by
the colonial assemblies.) Franklin held for the colonists' right to
English civil liberty and the right to enjoy the Constitution. Here
again we find a factor later magnified into one of the major causes of
the Revolution.
In addition to being lethargic in the defense of the Pennsylvania
borders, the proprietor refused "to be taxed except for a trifling Part
of his Estate, the Quitrents, located unimprov'd Lands, Money at
Interest, etc., etc., being exempted by Instructions to the
Governor."[i-266] Thereupon Franklin turned from colonial affairs
(which had indeed proved obstinate) to pressing local matters, when in
1757 he was appointed agent to go to London to demand that the
proprietor submit his estates to be taxed. In the _Report of the
Committee of Aggrievances of the Assembly of Pennsylvania_[i-267] (Feb.
22, 1757) it was charged that the proprietor had violated the royal
charter and the colonists' civil rights as Englishmen, and had abrogated
their natural rights, rights "inherent in every man, antecedent to all
laws."[i-268] Later it was but a short step from provincial matters to
colonial rights of revolution. In this _Report_ we see Franklin
associated for the first time expressly with the
throne-and-altar-defying concept of natural rights.
Although we have yet to review the evidence which shows that Franklin at
one stage in his political career was an arch-imperialist, we need to
digress to observe an intellectual factor which, if only fragmentarily
expressed in his political thought during his activities in behalf of
Pennsylvania liberties, was to become a momentous sanction when during
the war he became a diplomat of revolution. From the Stoics, from
Cicero, Grotius, Puffendorf, Burlamaqui, and as Rev. Jonathan
Mayhew[i-269] observes, from Plato and Demosthenes, from Sidney, Milton,
Hoadley, and Locke; in addition, from Gordon and Trenchard (see _Cato's
Letters_ and _The Independent Whig_), Blackstone, Coke--from these and
many others, the colonists derived a pattern of thought known as natural
rights, dependent on natural law.[i-270] There is no better summary of
natural rights than the Declaration of Independence; and of it John
Adams remarked: "There is not an idea in it but what has been hackneyed
in Congress for two years before."[i-271] Carl Becker pointedly
observes: "Where Jefferson got his ideas is hardly so much a question as
where he could have got away from them."[i-272] A characteristic summary
of natural law may be found in Blackstone's _Commentaries_:[i-273]
This law of nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by
God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any
other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and
at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary
to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force
and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this
original.[i-274]
Discoverable only by reason, natural laws are immutable and universal,
apprehensible by all men. As Hamilton wrote,
The origin of all civil government, justly established, must
be a voluntary compact between the rulers and the ruled, and
must be liable to such limitations as are necessary for the
security of the _absolute rights_ of the latter; for what
original title can any man, or set of men, have to govern
others, except their own consent? To usurp dominion over a
people in their own despite, or to grasp at a more extensive
power than they are willing to intrust, is to violate that
law of nature which gives every man a right to his personal
liberty, and can therefore confer no obligation to
obedience.[i-275]
In a pre-social state, real or hypothetical, men possess certain
natural rights, the crown of them, according to Locke,[i-276] being "the
mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call
by the general name, property." In entering the social state men through
free consent are willing to sacrifice fragments of their natural rights
in order to gain civil rights. This process would seem tyrannical were
one to forget that the surrender is sanctioned by the principle of
consent. Men in sacrificing their rights expect from society (i.e., the
governors) civil rights and, in addition, protection of their
unsurrendered natural rights. A voluntary compact is achieved between
the governor and the governed. If laws are fabricated which contravene
these, the governed have retained for themselves the right of forcible
resistance. A natural inference from these premises is that sovereignty
rests with the people. In the colonies this secular social compact was
buttressed by the principle of covenants and natural rights within the
churches. Sermons became "textbooks of politics."[i-277] Miss Baldwin
has ably illustrated how before 1763 the clergy in Franklin's native New
England had popularized the "doctrines of natural right, the social
contract, and the right of resistance" as well as "the fundamental
principle of American constitutional law, that government, like its
citizens, is bounded by law and when it transcends its authority it acts
illegally."[i-278]
In an oration commemorating the Boston massacre Dr. Benjamin Church
stated the principle of the compact: "A sense of their wants and
weakness in a state of nature, doubtless inclined them to such
reciprocal aids and support, as eventually established society."[i-279]
Defining liberty as "the happiness of living under laws of our own
making by our personal consent or that of our representatives,"[i-280]
he warned that any breach of trust in the governor "effectually absolves
subjects from every bond of covenant and peace."[i-281]
Then, too, Newtonian science buttressed the principle of natural rights.
Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated mathematically that the universe was
governed by a fagot of immutable, universal, and harmonious physical
laws. These were capable of being apprehended through reason. Now even
as reason discovered the matchless physical harmony, so could reason,
men argued, ferret out unvarying, universal principles of
social-political rights. These principles constituted natural rights,
natural to the extent that all men had the power, if not the capacity,
to discover and learn them through use of their native reason. Newton
demonstrated the validity of physical law: Locke sanctioned the
supremacy of reason. Since Franklin was himself motivated by Newtonian
rationalism and was a student of Locke, there is reason to believe that
he was vibrantly aware of the extent to which the
scientific-rationalistic ideology lent sanction to man's timeless quest
for the certitude of "natural rights," antecedent to all laws.
Franklin's mission to London in 1757 as Pennsylvania agent may be
understood through an examination of _An Historical Review of the
Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania_ (London, 1759).[i-282] If
not written by him, at least "the ideas are his." Convinced that the
proprietors "seem to have no regard to the Publick Welfare, so the
private Point may be gained--'Tis like Firing a House to have
Opportunity of stealing a Trencher,"[i-283] Franklin knew that a
brilliant attack had to be made were he to intimidate the proprietary
government into assuming its charter responsibilities and granting the
colonists what they considered to be inviolable rights. By 1758 his
"Patience with the Proprietors is almost tho' not quite spent."[i-284] A
few months later, impatient with unresponsive officials, he wrote to
Joseph Galloway: "God knows when we shall see it finish'd, and our
Constitution settled firmly on the Foundation of Equity and English
Liberty: But I am not discouraged; and only wish my Constituents may
have the Patience that I have, and that I find will be absolutely
necessary."[i-285] In 1759 Franklin still found the proprietors
"obscure, uncertain and evasive," and was acutely virulent in despising
Rev. William Smith, who was in London attacking him and the Quaker
Assembly's demands.[i-286] In the same letter to Galloway he uttered a
thought which he sought to develop during his second trip to London as
Assembly agent in 1764: "For my part, I must own, I am tired of
Proprietary Government, and heartily wish for that of the Crown."
Turning to _An Historical Review_ to learn the political principles
sanctioning the Assembly's grievances against its feudal lords, one
finds that the colonists conceived it "our duty to defend the rights and
privileges we enjoy under the royal charter."[i-287] Secondly, they
reminded the lords that the laws agreed upon in England (prior to the
settling of Pennsylvania) were "of the nature of an original compact
between the proprietary and the freemen, and as such were reciprocally
received and executed."[i-288] Thirdly, they demanded the right to
exercise the "birthright of every British subject," "to have a property
of [their] own, in [their] estate, person, and reputation; subject only
to laws enacted by [their] own concurrence, either in person or by
[their] representatives."[i-289] Fourthly, they resisted the proprietors
on basis of their possession of natural rights, "antecedent to all
laws."[i-290] The editor of the protest charged that "It is the cause of
every man who deserves to be free, everywhere."[i-291] It is ironic that
this grievance should have enjoyed the sanction of one who, like Lord
Chatham, was an empire builder, one who proudly wrote, "I am a Briton,"
and even during the time he sought to retrieve the Pennsylvania
colonists' lost natural rights, entertained the ideas of a British
imperialist. Franklin little saw that the internal Pennsylvania struggle
was to be contagious, that the provincial revolt was motivated partially
at least by political theories which were to be given expression _par
excellence_ when a discontented minority created the Declaration of
Independence. In 1760 Franklin had the satisfaction of witnessing the
victory of the Assembly over the Proprietors, although he was not
unaware that the right to tax feudal lands was less than that right he
had already envisioned--the right to become a royal colony.[i-292]
But Franklin's pleas for charter, constitutional, and natural rights may
be misleading if one considers his position as suggestive of doctrinaire
republicanism, of Paine's "Government is the badge of our lost
innocence," or of Shelley's
Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower.
His political activities assert the rights of the governed against the
governor; his writings often indirectly suggest the intemperance of the
governed, and the need for something more lasting than mere outer
freedom. Like Coleridge, who wrote:
[Man] may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within,
white-locked Father Abraham harangued:
The Taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the
Government were the only Ones we had to pay, we might more
easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more
grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our
_Idleness_, three times as much by our _Pride_, and four
times as much by our _Folly_; and from these Taxes the
Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an
Abatement.[i-293]
With solid good sense Franklin acknowledged that "happiness in this
life rather depends on internals than externals."[i-294]
His purpose for being in London accomplished, Franklin wrote _The
Interest of Great Britain Considered with Regard to Her Colonies, and
the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe_ (1760). Since "there is
evidence that the pamphlet created much contemporary interest,"[i-295]
Franklin undoubtedly had some influence in causing the retention of
Canada, a retention which "made the American Revolution
inevitable."[i-296] If the release from French terrorism caused the
colonists to become myopic toward advantages lent them as a British
colony, it is appropriate in view of Franklin's later advocacy of
independence and ironic in view of his then imperialistic principles,
that he should have written _The Interest of Great Britain_. Here
Franklin, later to be a propagandist of revolution, cast himself in the
role of architect of a vast empire. For economic reasons, and for
colonial safety, he urged the retention, ridiculing the charge that the
colonies were lying in wait to declare their independence from England,
if the French were cast out from Canada.
Back in Pennsylvania in 1764 he declared the provincial government
"running fast into anarchy and confusion."[i-297] In his _Cool Thoughts
on the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs_ (1764) he set up a
sturdy antagonism between "Proprietary Interest and Power, and Popular
Liberty." Unlike the "lunatic fringe" of liberals who see "Popular
Liberty compatible only with a tendency toward anarchy" Franklin urged
that the Pennsylvania government lacked "Authority enough to keep the
common Peace."[i-298] The constitutional nature of proprietary
government had lost dignity and hence "suffers in the Opinion of the
People, and with it the Respect necessary to keep up the Authority of
Government." Almost Burkean in his apology for change, he suggested that
the popular party demand "rather and only a Change of Governor, that is,
instead of self-interested Proprietaries, a gracious King!" His
_Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County_[i-299] is a bloody
tribute to the lack of authority and police power of the current regime.
The _Petition to the King_ for a royal governor maintained that, torn by
"armed Mobs," the government was "weak, unable to support its own
Authority, and maintain the common internal Peace of the
Province."[i-300]
While petitioning for a crown colony, he found himself in 1765 faced
with a larger than provincial interest--Lord Grenville's Stamp Act
forced him into the role of one seeking definition of colonial status.
Such was his position in his examination (1766) before the House of
Commons relative to the repeal of the Stamp Act. Almost brusquely he
told his catechizers that even a moderated stamp act could not be
enforced "unless compelled by force of arms."[i-301] With a preface
asserting that colonials before 1763 were proud to be called Old-England
men, he summarized: "The authority of parliament was allowed to be valid
in all laws, except such as should lay internal taxes. It was never
disputed in laying duties to regulate commerce."[i-302] Parliament, in
the colonial view, had no right to lay internal taxes because "we are
not represented there." Mr. Merriam observes that in advancing this
legal and constitutional issue, the colonists "had in short an
antiquated theory as to the position and power of Parliament, and a
premature theory of Parliamentary representation."[i-303]
Franklin referred to the Pennsylvania colonial charter to prove that all
that was asked for was the "privileges and liberties of Englishmen."
When the examiners asked whether the colonists appealing to the Magna
Charta and constitutional rights of Englishmen could not with equal
force "object to the parliament's right of external taxation," Franklin
with cautious ambiguity declared: "They never have hitherto."[i-304]
Franklin's skill in upholding tenuous, almost "metaphysical,"
constitutional grievances (grievances, however, which were not upheld by
constitutional legalists in England) captivated Edmund Burke's
imagination: Franklin appeared to him like a schoolmaster catechizing a
pack of unruly schoolboys. Conservative in his omission of any appeal to
"natural rights," he was radical in his legalistic distinctions between
parliamentary rights to levy certain kinds of taxes. His position in
1766 and for several years following was one of seeking legal
definitions of the colonial status. Considering the popular excesses in
the colonies, Franklin's view was anything but illiberally radical.
Trying to counteract "the general Rage against America, artfully work'd
up by the Grenville Faction,"[i-305] fearful that the unthinking rabble
in the colonies might demonstrate too lustily against duties and the
redcoats,[i-306] Franklin saw, as a result of the constitutional
dilemma, the true extent of the fracture:
But after all, I doubt People in Government here will never
be satisfied without some Revenue from America, nor America
ever satisfy'd with their imposing it; so that Disputes will
from this Circumstance besides others, be perpetually
arising, till there is a consolidating union of the
whole.[i-307]
His chief demand was for a less ambiguous relation between the mother
and her offspring, for a unified, pacific commonwealth empire. Until he
left for the colonies in 1775, he tirelessly sought through
conversation, conference, and articles[i-308] sent to the British press
(in addition he "reprinted everything from America" that he "thought
might help our Common Cause") to reiterate patiently the colonies'
"Charter liberties,"[i-309] their abhorrence of Parliament-imposed
internal taxes, and the quartering of red-coated battalions. Constantly
hoping for a favorable Ministry (of a Lord Rockingham or a Shelburne),
and bemoaning the physical infirmities of Pitt which rendered him
politically impotent, Franklin felt almost romantically confident at
first of a change that must come. All the while, like Merlin's gleam,
visions of a world-encircling British empire haunted the Pennsylvania
tradesman. A letter to Barbeu Dubourg discloses at once his belief in an
imperial federation[i-310] and in the sovereignty of the colonial
assemblies: "In fact, the British empire is not a single state; it
comprehends many; and, though the Parliament of Great Britain has
arrogated to itself the power of taxing the colonies, it has no more
right to do so, than it has to tax Hanover. We have the same King, but
not the same legislatures."[i-311] Marginalia by Franklin's hand in an
anti-colonial pamphlet written by Dean Tucker indicate how completely
he (and here he represented colonial, not private, opinion) had failed
to see the growth of parliamentary power: "These Writers against the
Colonies all bewilder themselves by supposing the Colonies _within the
Realm_, which is not the case, nor ever was."[i-312]
By 1774 Franklin had discovered the futility of his imperialistic
illusions: ministries, fearing the siren colonies, had blocked their
ears with wax. The Pennsylvanian knew that "Divine Providence first
infatuates the power it designs to ruin."[i-313] He who had wished for
an empire as harmoniously companied as the orbited harmony of celestial
bodies lamented while on his way to America in 1775 that "so glorious a
Fabric as the present British Empire [was] to be demolished by these
Blunderers."[i-314] Broken was "that fine and noble China Vase, the
British Empire."[i-315] In 1774 he would have gained little cheer from
William Livingston's opinion (uttered in 1768): "I take it that clamour
is at present our best policy."[i-316]
His sense of defeat was aggravated by that ugly scene in the Cockpit in
1774 when Wedderburn bespattered the taciturn colonial agent with foul
invective. It had been charged that Franklin, the postmaster, had
purloined[i-317] letters of Governor Hutchinson and Lieutenant Governor
Oliver of Massachusetts and had sent them back to the colonies as proof
of the colonists' contention that the royal governors were hostile to
their colonial subjects. He whom (as Lord Chatham said) "all Europe held
in high Estimation for his Knowledge and Wisdom, and rank'd with our
Boyles and Newtons," was decked by Wedderburn "with the choicest flowers
of Billingsgate." In the presence of Lord Shelburne, Lord North, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, and Priestley,
Franklin, "motionless and silent," bore the harangue of the solicitor
general for a full three hours.[i-318] Franklin's eloquent mock humility
inspired Horace Walpole 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.
As propagandist for legislative freedom, Franklin, appealing for
sanction to legalistic and constitutional liberty more than to natural
rights, was no more radical than Edmund Burke. If ever an extreme
democrat, Franklin had yet by 1775 to become one. Temperamentally
hostile to "drunken electors," the "madness of mobs," he held a
patrician attitude toward authority. Earlier, in 1768, he had written
from London: "All respect to law and government seems to be lost among
the common people, who are moreover continually inflamed by seditious
scribblers, to trample on authority and every thing that used to keep
them in order."[i-319] To Georgiana Shipley he sent (_Epitaph_ on
Squirrel Mungo's death) this Miltonic and unrepublican sentiment:
Learn hence,
Ye who blindly seek more liberty,
Whether subjects, sons, squirrels or daughters,
That apparent restraint may be real protection
Yielding peace and plenty
With security.[i-320]
In 1771 he indicted Parliament in a letter to Joseph Galloway: "Its
Censures are no more regarded than Popes' Bulls. It is despis'd for its
Venality, and abominated for its Injustice." But he hastened to show
that he had no illusions that men are natively pure, that only
governments are wicked. With almost a Hamiltonian distrust of the public
ranks he wrote: "And yet it is not clear that the People deserve a
better Parliament, since they are themselves full as corrupt and venal:
witness the Sums they accept for their Votes at almost every
Election."[i-321]
Back in the colonies, Franklin remained just long enough to help form a
constitution for Pennsylvania,[i-322] and to aid Jefferson in writing
the Declaration of Independence.[i-323] After the royal governors had
dissolved the assemblies and the Continental Congress urged the colonies
to form their own constitutions, Franklin assumed leadership in his
state and helped to compose a constitution less conservative than those
of most of the other colonies.[i-324] Created between July 15 and Sept.
28, 1776, essentially by one who had just worked on and signed the
Declaration of Independence, it is not strange that the dominant
ideology of this constitution--that of natural rights, the compact
theory, and consent of the governed--should be like that of the
Declaration. The new constitution has been called the "most democratic
constitution yet seen in America."[i-325] The unicameral legislature,
the assembly of representatives, the plan of judicial review of laws
every seven years, and other features have been looked upon as
demonstrating the dangerous ultra-democratic tendencies of Franklin. The
revolutionary Benjamin Rush, who had helped Paine with _Common Sense_,
was dismayed because, in his view, Pennsylvania "has substituted mob
government for one of the happiest governments in the world.... A single
legislature is big with tyranny. I had rather live under the government
of one man than of seventy-two."[i-326] One wonders to what extent
Franklin was responsible for the unicameral legislature when we know
that it "was the natural outcome of Penn's ideas of government as
embodied in his various charters."[i-327] The plural executive, the
right of freemen to form their militia and elect their own officers,
the extension of male suffrage, and other innovations in this
constitution were of a radical nature in as far as the populace were
given greater liberties and responsibilities than ever before in the
colonies. It seems almost incredible that the patrician-minded Franklin,
with his Puritan heritage, should have thus almost hurriedly cast
himself at the feet of the people. Certain extenuating factors may be
mentioned in an attempt not to gloss over but to understand the violent
antithesis between Franklin the imperialist and Franklin the
revolutionist. To what extent did his antipathy for proprietary
governors, as well as the general colonial experience with governors,
suggest a joint executive of a council and governor?[i-328] Since his
experience as a Whig propagandist had been to exalt colonial
legislatures, to what extent did he see in the unicameral form a plan
which would give freest movement to the legislative activity? Prior to
1776 there is little that would suggest that Franklin had any confidence
in men, _unchecked_.[i-329] Yet it is difficult to show that, in the
first flush of indignation against England and revolutionary enthusiasm,
Franklin did not favor for a time distinctly radical tendencies.
In 1776 he left, as he wrote to Jan Ingenhousz, "to procure those aids
from European powers, for enabling us to defend our freedom and
independence."[i-330] He who had "been a Servant to many publicks, thro'
a long life" went to Passy, where from the Hôtel de Valentinois of M.
Roy de Chaumont he was to direct financial efforts calculated, with
Washington's generalship, and the assiduous loyalty of a minority group,
to win the Revolution. Welcomed as the apotheosis of "les
Insurgens,"[i-331] he was virtually deified; as Turgot expressed it,
_Eripuit caelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis_. The universality of his
vogue in France was primarily due to his deistic naturalism, his wily
pleading and activities in behalf of colonial independence, the
receptivity of the Gallic mind for any marten-capped child of the New
World, and to his scientific thought and experimentation which had
fortified Reason in purging the unknown of its terror, helping thus to
make the _philosophe_ at home in his reasonable world. Three weeks after
Franklin arrived in France, one Frenchman said that "it is the mode
today for everybody to have an engraving of M. Franklin over the
mantelpiece."[i-332] France overnight became Franklinist when the savant
came to dwell at Passy. Even before the victory of Yorktown he became
_la mode_. It was to be his success to convert France's unrecognized
alliance with the colonies to an open and undisguised alliance, perhaps
even to war with England.[i-333] But even for one who enjoyed, as John
Adams wrote, a reputation "more universal than that of Leibnitz or
Newton, Frederick or Voltaire,"[i-334] it was to be a difficult task to
manipulate a Beaumarchais, a Vergennes, and others, in spite of the
well-known and inveterate economic and political grievances which the
French held for the English. The virtues he stressed in the _Morals of
Chess_ he was able to translate into a diplomatic mien, uniting
"perfect silence" with a "generous civility." As a result, his record as
minister to France is marked by complete success; but for this "it is by
no means certain that American independence would have been achieved
until many years later."[i-335]
Plagued by Frenchmen desiring places in the colonial army, feted by the
_philosophes_, sorely vexed by the need for settling countless maritime
affairs, embracing and embraced by the venerable Voltaire, corresponding
with Hartley concerning exchange of prisoners, shaping alliances and
treaties, conducting scientific experiments, investigating Mesmer,
intrigued by balloon ascensions, made the darling of several salons,
associating in the Lodge of the Nine Sisters with Bailly, Bonneville,
Warville, Condorcet, Danton, Desmoulins, D'Auberteuil, Pétion,
Saint-Étienne, Sieyès, and others, all men who helped to give shape (or
shapelessness) to the French Revolution,[i-336] Franklin found little
time to search for that philosophic repose which he had long coveted. It
may be extravagant to say that Franklin was the "Creator of
Constitutionalism in Europe,"[i-337] but we know that in 1783 he printed
the colonial constitutions for continental distribution.[i-338] It has
been suggested that Franklin was an important formative factor in
Condorcet's faith in universal suffrage, a unicameral legislature, and
the liberties guaranteed by constitutional law.[i-339] Then, too,
Franklin had signed the Declaration of Independence--a document which
the French hailed as the "restoration of humanity's title
deeds."[i-340] The Duc de la Rochefoucauld eulogized the unicameral
legislature of Pennsylvania, identifying "this grand idea" and its
"maximum of simplicity" as Franklin's creation.[i-341] Fauchet eulogized
him as "one of the foremost builders of our sacred constitution."[i-342]
Along with Helvétius, Mably, Rousseau, and Voltaire, Franklin was
considered as one who laid the foundations for the French
revolution.[i-343] Franklin's taciturnity, his "art of listening," his
diplomatic reserve, do not suggest a volatile iconoclast doing anything
consciously to bring about a republican France. This did not prevent him
from becoming a symbol of liberty by his mere presence in the land,
stimulating patriots to examine the foundations of the tyrannical
authority which they saw or imagined enslaving them. Holding no brief
for natural equality, Franklin suggested that "quiet and regular
Subordination" is "so necessary to Success."[i-344] Realist that he was,
he became almost obsessed with the innate depravity of men until he was
doubtful whether "the Species were really worth producing or
preserving."[i-345] One would not be considered excessively republican
who inveighed against the "collected passions, prejudices, and private
interests" of collective legislative bodies.[i-346] He wrote to Caleb
Whitefoord: "It is unlucky ... that the Wise and Good should be as
mortal as Common People and that they often die before others are found
fit to supply their Places."[i-347] The great proportion of mankind,
weak and selfish, need "the Motives of Religion to restrain them from
Vice."[i-348] No less extreme than J. Q. Adams's retort to Paine's
_Rights of Man_, that it is anarchic to trust government "to the custody
of a lawless and desperate rabble," was Franklin's distrust of the
unthinking majority.[i-349]
Having helped to free the colonies, Franklin fittingly became, if not
one of the fathers of the Constitution, then, due to the serenity with
which he helped to moderate the plans of extremists on both sides, at
least its godfather. If, as Mr. James M. Beck asserts, the success of
the Constitution has been the result of its approximation of the golden
mean, between monarchy and anarchy, the section and the nation, the
small and the large state, then its success may be attributed not a
little to Franklin's genius.[i-350] After small and large states had
waged a fruitless struggle over congressional representation, Franklin
spoke:
The diversity of opinion turns on two points. If a
proportional representation takes place, the small States
contend that their liberties will be in danger. If an
equality of votes is to be put in its place, the large States
say their money will be in danger. When a broad table is to
be made, and the edges <of planks do not fit> the artist takes
a little from both, and makes a good joint.[i-351]
The former imperialist could not logically become a state rights
advocate. Engrossed essentially in "promoting and securing the common
Good,"[i-352] he derided the advantage the greater state would have,
asserting that he "was originally of Opinion it would be better if every
Member of Congress, or our national Council, were to consider himself
rather as a Representative of the whole, than as an Agent for the
Interests of a particular State." When Mr. Randolph considered,
To negative all laws, passed by the several States,
contravening, in the opinion of the national legislature, the
articles of union: (the following words were added to this
clause on motion of Mr. Franklin, "or any Treaties subsisting
under the authority of the union.")[i-353]
This is anything but the corollary of a defender of state rights.
Franklin was convinced that the permanence of the national view alone
could prevent federal anarchy. Addressing himself to the problem of
delegated authority Madison observed: "This prerogative of the General
Govt. is the great pervading principle that must controul the
centrifugal tendency of the States; which, without it, will continually
fly out of their proper orbits and destroy the order & harmony of the
political system."[i-354] One is tempted to see here Newton's principle
of gravity translated into terms of political nationalism; one wonders
whether it is probable that (like Madison's) Franklin's emphasis on the
harmony of the whole could have been partly conditioned by the
cohesiveness and harmony of universal physical laws incarnate in
Newtonian physics, of which he was a master.
Franklin was "apprehensive ...--perhaps too apprehensive,--that the
Government of these States may in future times end in a
Monarchy."[i-355] He suggested that moderate rather than kingly salaries
paid the chief executive would tend to allay this danger. Between
Randolph, who belabored a single executive as the "foetus of monarchy,"
and Wilson, who harbored it as the "best safeguard against tyranny,"
stood Franklin, who saw it as subversive of democratic sovereignty but
not necessarily fatal. He declared himself emphatically against the
motion that the executive have a complete negative.[i-356] Extolling
popular sovereignty, he warned that "In free Governments the rulers are
the servants, and the people their superiors & sovereigns."[i-357] He
refused to consider a plan which sought to establish a franchise only
for freeholders: "It is of great consequence that we shd. not depress
the virtue & public spirit of our common people; of which they displayed
a great deal during the war, and which contributed principally to the
favorable issue of it."[i-358] Pinckney had made a motion that rulers
should have unencumbered estates:
Doctr Franklin expressed his dislike of every thing that
tended to debase the spirit of the common people. If honesty
was often the companion of wealth, and if poverty was exposed
to peculiar temptation, it was not less true that the
possession of property increased the desire of more
property--[i-359].... This Constitution will be much read and
attended to in Europe, and if it should betray a great
partiality to the rich--will not only hurt us in the esteem
of the most liberal and enlightened men there, but discourage
the common people from removing to this Country.[i-360]
Pinckney's motion was rejected. Franklin within the Convention did not
seem to fear Gerry's threat--"the evils we experience flow from the
excess of democracy."[i-361]
Franklin suggested the adoption of a unicameral legislature, but does
not seem to have made any struggle for it. His article of 1789 in
defense of the Pennsylvania (unicameral) legislature, however, shows
that he clung to the principle as firmly as he had in 1776.[i-362] He
questioned: "The Wisdom of a few Members in one single Legislative Body,
may it not frequently stifle bad Motions in their Infancy, and so
prevent their being adopted?" In addition the bicameral house is
cumbersome and provocative of delay.
Little is known of Franklin's attitude toward the violent controversy
attendant upon efforts toward ratification. In his _Ancient Jews and
Anti-Federalists_[i-363] he warned the traducers of the new Constitution
against voiding an instrument which in his opinion was as sound as the
frailty of human reason would allow it to be. In fact, said he, it
"astonishes me, ... to find this system approaching so near to
perfection as it does."[i-364] He may be said to have been
anti-federalistic to the extent that he feared a strong executive,
guarded jealously the legislative sphere, worried little about checks
and balances, sought to accelerate popular sovereignty; he was
federalistic to the extent that he opposed state localism with national
sovereignty, was not blind to the depravity of human nature and hence
felt the need for a vigorous coercive government. To M. Le Veillard he
confessed an almost Hamiltonian distrust of the multitude: The
Constitution "has ... met with great opposition in some States, for we
are at present a nation of politicians. And, though there is a general
dread of giving too much power to our _governors_, I think we are more
in danger from too little obedience in the _governed_."[i-365] He made
the same complaint a year later: "We have been guarding against an evil
that old States are most liable to, _excess of power_ in the rulers,
but our present danger seems to be _defect of obedience_ in the
subjects."[i-366] It is difficult to reconcile his inveterate distrust
of men with his activity in behalf of an almost universal franchise,
reluctance to sanction the principle of checks and balances, and belief
in a unicameral legislature; it is difficult to reconcile the Plutarchan
fervor with which he advocated the wisdom of following great leaders
with his fear of a vigorous executive. It is not improbable that those
ideas which are generally anti-federalistic in Franklin's political view
are in part the result of his hatred of proprietary abuses which he
witnessed as a provincial statesman during his middle age.
VII. FRANKLIN AS SCIENTIST AND DEIST
Jan Ingenhousz, the celebrated physician to Maria Theresa of Austria,
wrote a letter to Franklin on May 3, 1780, which doubtless caused the
patriarch of Passy to reflect--not without sadness of heart--on the
diversified fortune which time and circumstance had devised for him. The
physician (no friend to the American revolution) implored Franklin not
to abandon "entirely the world Nature whose laws made by the supreme
wisdom and is constant and unalterable as its legislature himself
[_sic_]." Ingenhousz lamented that Franklin, "a Philosopher so often and
so successfully employed in researches of the most intricate and the
most mysterious operations of Nature,"[i-367] should have given his time
to politics.
Franklin is now most commonly viewed as a utilitarian moralist, a
successful tradesman and printer, a shrewd propagandist and financier,
the diplomat of the Revolution, and if at all as a scientist, then only
as a virtuoso, fashioning devices, such as open stoves, bifocal
spectacles, and lightning rods, for practical uses. Probably few
general readers are aware that Franklin was a disinterested scientist in
the sense that he interrogated nature with an eye to discovering its
immutable laws. It is conversely supposed that Franklin himself was
unaware of any inclination to pursue natural science to the exclusion of
those political achievements which have identified him as one of the
wiliest and sagest diplomats of the Enlightenment.
It may be learned, however (not without astonishment), that Franklin
almost from the beginning of his participation in politics resented the
time given over to such activities, as so much time lost to his
speculations and research in natural science. As early as 1752 he
wistfully (though realistically) confessed that "business sometimes
obliges one to postpone philosophical amusements."[i-368] A month after
this, he wrote to Cadwallader Colden: "I congratulate you on the
prospect you have, of passing the remainder of life in philosophical
retirement."[i-369] In the midst of investigating waterspouts, he
observed to John Perkins: "How much soever my Inclinations lead me to
philosophical Inquiries, I am so engag'd in Business, public and
private, that those more pleasing pursuits [of natural science] are
frequently interrupted...."[i-370] He urged Dr. John Fothergill to give
himself "repose, delight in viewing the Operations of nature in the
vegetable creation."[i-371] In 1765, upon completing his negotiations in
behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly, he promised Lord Kames that he
would "engage in no other" political affairs.[i-372] To the notable
professor of physics of the University of Turin, Giambatista Beccaria,
he wrote in 1768 from London (where he had sought to have the Stamp Act
rescinded) that he had to "take away entirely" his "attention from
philosophical matters, though I have constantly cherished the hope of
returning home where I could find leisure to resume the studies that I
have shamefully put off from time to time."[i-373] Again, in 1779, he
confessed to Beccaria: "I find myself here [Passy] immers'd in Affairs,
which absorb my Attention, and prevent my pursuing those Studies in
which I always found the highest Satisfaction; and I am now grown so
old, as hardly to hope for a Return of that Leisure and Tranquillity so
necessary for Philosophical Disquisitions."[i-374] He longed (in 1782)
to have Congress release him so that he might "spend the Evening of Life
more agreeably in philosophic [devoted to natural science]
Leisure."[i-375] He who, John Winthrop claimed, "was good at starting
Game for Philosophers,"[i-376] acknowledged that he had thrown himself
on the public, which, "having as it were eaten my flesh, seemed now
resolved to pick my bones."[i-377] Reverend Manasseh Cutler visited
Franklin a few months before the patriarch's death. They ardently
discussed botany, Franklin boyish in his eagerness to show the Reverend
Mr. Cutler a massive book, containing "the whole of Linnaeus' Systema
Vegetabilies." "The Doctor seemed extremely fond, through the course of
the visit, of dwelling on Philosophical subjects, and particularly that
of natural History, while the other Gentlemen were swallowed up with
politics."[i-378] In a fictitious (?) conversation between Joseph II of
Austria and Franklin, the Newton of electricity is reported as
explaining that he was early in life attracted by natural philosophy:
"Necessity afterwards made me a politician.... I was Franklin, the
_Philosopher_ to the world, long after I had in fact, become Franklin
the Politician."[i-379] After reviewing the evidence, it seems
incredulous to doubt that, regardless of his achievements in other
fields, Franklin sought his greatest intellectual pleasure in scientific
research and speculation, and that his doctrines of scientific deism
antedated and conditioned his political, economic, and humanitarian
interests.
If Franklin's inventions have been justly praised, his affections for
the empirical scientific method and his philosophic interest in Nature's
laws have been unjustly ignored. He observed to Ebenezer Kinnersley
"that a philosopher cannot be too much on his guard in crediting their
["careless observers'"] relations of things extraordinary, and should
never build an hypothesis on any thing but clear facts and experiments,
or it will be in danger of soon falling ... like a house of
cards";[i-380] and to Abbé Soulavie, "You see I have given a loose to
imagination; but I approve much more your method of philosophizing,
which proceeds upon actual observation, makes a collection of facts, and
concludes no farther than those facts will warrant."[i-381] In 1782 he
wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, that he
longed to "sit down in sweet Society with my English philosophic
Friends, communicating to each other new Discoveries, and proposing
Improvements of old ones; all tending to extend the Power of Man over
Matter, avert or diminish the Evils he is subject to, or augment the
Number of his Enjoyments."[i-382] A careful study of his scientific
papers discloses that he was not untrained in the method of hypotheses
sustained or rejected by patient and laborious experimentation: not
fortuitously did he arrive at conclusions in electricity, which were
epochal in (1) "His rejection of the two-fluid theory of electricity
and substitution of the one-fluid theory; (2) his coinage of the
appropriate terms _positive_ and _negative_, to denote an excess or a
deficit of the common electric fluid; (3) his explanation of the Leyden
jar, and, notably, his recognition of the paramount rôle played by the
glass or dielectric; (4) his experimental demonstration of the identity
of lightning and electricity; and (5) his invention of the lightning
conductor for the protection of life and property, together with his
clear statement of its preventive and protective functions."[i-383] Not
only an inventor, Franklin inductively observed natural phenomena, and
drew conclusions until he had created a virtual _Principia_ of
electricity. His contemporaries were not loath to honor him as a second
Newton. Franklin, however, was in all of his researches under a
self-confessed yoke which doubtless tended to deny him access to the
profoundest reaches of scientific inquiry: from Philadelphia he wrote in
1753 to Cadwallader Colden, eminent mathematician (as well as versatile
scientist): "Your skill & Expertness in Mathematical Computations, will
afford you an Advantage in these Disquisitions [among them, researches
in electricity], that I lament the want of, who am like a Man searching
for some thing in a dark Room where I can only grope and guess; while
you proceed with a Candle in your Hand."[i-384]
In an effort to learn the _modus operandi_ of Franklin's philosophic
thought, let us now review its genetic development, its probable
sources, its relation to scientific deism, and the degree to which he
achieved that serene repose for which he ever strove. A pioneer American
rationalist, not without his claims to being "another Voltaire,"
Franklin as a youth read those works which were forming or interpreting
the thought patterns of the age. Born in an epoch presided over by a
Locke and a Newton, an epoch of rationalism and "supernatural"
rationalism, alike fed by physico-mathematical speculation. Franklin,
barely beyond adolescence, felt the impacts of the age of reason.
Scholars before and since M. M. Curtis have explained that "in religion
he was a Deist of the type of Lord Herbert of Cherbury."[i-385] M. Faÿ
has sought, without convincing documentary evidence, to interpret
Franklin's philosophic mind in terms of Pythagoreanism.[i-386] We may
find that these views are over simple and historically inadequate--even
wrong.
Franklin was reared "piously in the Dissenting way"[i-387] by a "pious
and prudent" Calvinistic father who died as he lived, with "entire
Dependence on his Redeemer."[i-388] "Religiously educated as a
Presbyterian,"[i-389] young Benjamin was taught that _Major est
Scripturae auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenü capacitas_. He was
nurtured on the Bible and "books in polemic divinity," and he regularly
attended services at the Old South Church. Doubtless without reflection
he was led to identify goodness with the church and its worship. He was
a part of New England's bibliolatry. Not long before he was apprenticed
to his brother James he read Cotton Mather's _Bonifacius--An Essay upon
the Good that is to be Devised and Designed by those who desire to
Answer the Great End of Life, and to do good while they live_, and
Defoe's _Essays upon Several Projects: or Effectual Ways for Advancing
the Interests of the Nation_. He confessed in 1784 that _Bonifacius_
"gave me such a turn of thinking, as to have an influence on my conduct
through life; for I have always set a greater value on the character of
a _doer of good_ than on any other kind of reputation."[i-390] Mather,
as an exponent of Christian charity, urged that man help his neighbors
"with a rapturous assiduity,"[i-391] that he may discover the "ravishing
satisfaction which he might find in relieving the distresses of a poor
miserable neighbor."[i-392] It is ironic that Mather should have
apparently aided a young man to divorce himself from the strenuous
subtleties of theology. (Franklin was too young to gather that Mather
circumspectly warned against a covenant of works, and hence was Pauline
in his advocacy of _charity_ rather than of humanitarianism.) And from
Defoe's _Essays_ Franklin received more than a penchant for projects.
Like Mather, Defoe observed that "God Almighty has commanded us to
relieve and help one another in distress."[i-393] Defoe seemed to young
Franklin to dwell on fellow-service--to promise that the good man need
not have understood all of the dogma of Old South meetinghouse.
Apprenticed to James, Franklin admitted that he "now had access to
better books."[i-394] Whatever the extent of James's library in 1718, by
1722 the _New England Courant_ collection included Burnet's _History of
the Reformation_, _Theory of the Earth_, the _Spectator_ papers, _The
Guardian_, _Art of Thinking_ [Du Port Royal], _The Tale of a Tub_, and
the writings of Tillotson.[i-395] After reading most probably in these,
and, as we are told, in Tryon's _Way to Health_, Xenophon's
_Memorabilia_, digests of some of Boyle's lectures, Anthony Collins,
Locke, and Shaftesbury, Franklin became in his Calvinist religion a
"real doubter."[i-396] He became at the age of sixteen, as a result of
reading Boyle's Lectures,[i-397] a "thorough Deist."[i-398] We cannot be
certain of the Lectures read by Franklin, but we may observe Bentley's
_Folly of Atheism_ (1692) and Derham's _Physico-Theology_ (1711-1712),
which are representative of the series provided for by Boyle. Like
Mather's _The Christian Philosopher_ (1721)[i-399] they both employ
science and rationalism to reinforce (never as equivalent to or
substitute for) scriptural theology. Fed by Newtonian physics, Bentley
discovers in gravity "the great basis of all mechanism," the "immediate
_fiat_ and finger of God, and the executions of the divine law."[i-400]
Gravity, "the powerful cement which holds together this magnificent
structure of the world,"[i-401] is the result of the Deity "who _always
acts geometrically_." Borrowing from Cockburne, Ray, Bentley, and
Fénelon, Derham offers likewise to prove the existence and operations of
the Workman from his Work.[i-402]
It is unlikely that Boyle's Lectures (characterized by orthodox
rationalism, augmented by Newtonianism) would alone have precipitated in
Franklin a "thorough deism." Not improbably Locke, Shaftesbury, and
Anthony Collins (whom Franklin mentions reading) were most militant in
overthrowing his inherited bibliolatry. Although he does not say exactly
which of Collins's works he read, Collins's rationale is repeated
clearly enough in any one of his pieces. Warring against "crack-brain'd
Enthusiasts," the "prodigious Ignorance" and "Impositions of Priests,"
against defective scriptural texts, Collins defends "our natural
Notions" against the authoritarianism of priests. Vilifying the
authority of the surplice, he apotheosizes the authority of
reason.[i-403] He intensifies the English tradition of
every-man-his-own-priest, and exclaims "How uncertain Tradition
is!"[i-404] From this militant friend of John Locke, Franklin was
doubtless impregnated with an _odium theologicum_ and an exalted idea of
the sanctity of Reason.
Having read _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding_,[i-405] Franklin
may have remembered that Locke there observed, "Nothing that is contrary
to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of
reason, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith,
wherein reason hath nothing to do."[i-406] Like Collins, Locke urged a
deistic rationale:
Since then the precepts of Natural Religion are plain, and
very intelligible to all mankind, and seldom to come to be
controverted; and other revealed truths, which are conveyed
to us by books and languages, are liable to the common and
natural obscurities and difficulties incident to words;
methinks it would become us to be more careful and diligent
in observing the former, and less magisterial, positive, and
imperious, in imposing our own sense and interpretations of
the latter.[i-407]
In addition Franklin may have been influenced by Locke's implied
Newtonianism; he would suspect the subtleties of the Old South Church
when he read: "For the visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power
appear so plainly in all the works of the creation, that a rational
creature, who will but seriously reflect on them, cannot miss the
discovery of a Deity."[i-408] Like Newton, Locke inferred an infinite
and benevolent Geometrician from "the magnificent harmony of the
universe."
Franklin also read Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, which Warburton
quotes Pope as saying "had done more harm to revealed religion in
England than all the works of infidelity put together."[i-409] Although
he may have pondered over Shaftesbury's "virtuoso theory of
Benevolence," he was not one to be readily convinced of the innate
altruism of man. His Puritan heritage linked with an empirical realism
prevented him from becoming prey to Shaftesbury's a priori optimism. He
was aware of the potential danger of a complacent trust in natural
impulses, which often lead to
The love of sweet security in sin.
To what extent did Franklin's nascent humanitarianism--mildly provoked
by the neighborliness of Mather and Defoe--receive additional sanction
from Shaftesbury's doctrine that "compassion is the supreme form of
moral beauty, the neglect of it the greatest of all offenses against
nature's ordained harmony"?[i-410] Identifying self-love and social,
Shaftesbury saw the divine temper achieved through affection for the
public, the "universal good."[i-411] Born among men who were convinced
of the supremacy of scripture, Franklin would at first be astonished
(then perhaps liberated) upon reading in the _Characteristics_ that
"Religion excludes only perfect atheism."[i-412] From such a piece as
Shaftesbury's _An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit_ Franklin learned
that not all men preserved a union between theology and ethics,
scripture and religion. Although Shaftesbury occasionally indicated a
reverence for sacred scriptures, the totality of his thought was cast in
behalf of natural religion. He was convinced that the "Deity is
sufficiently revealed through natural Phenomena."[i-413] Extolling the
apprehension of the Deity through man's uniform reason, Shaftesbury
urbanely lampooned enthusiasm, that private revelation which threatened
to prevail against the _consensus gentium_.
By 1725 Franklin had divorced theology from morality and morality from
conscience, having punctuated his youth with faunish "errata."[i-414]
Although he was as a youth too much at ease in Zion, he did not lose
substantial (if then a theoretic) faith in the struggle between the law
of the spirit and the law of the members. Nurtured by the Bible, Bunyan,
Addison and Steele, Tryon, Socrates, and Xenophon--a blend of Christian
and classical traditions--he felt the reasonableness, if not the
saintliness, of curbing the resolute sway of his natural self.[i-415]
After five years with James, a year in Philadelphia where part of the
time he worked with Samuel Keimer,[i-416] a fanatic and bearded
Camisard, Franklin, through the duplicity of Governor Keith, found
himself in November, 1724, aboard the _London-Hope_, England-bound. It
would be unfair to Franklin were we to think him a primitive colonist to
whom England was an unreal, incalculable land. We remember that James
knew the London of Anne, Addison, Steele, Locke, and Newton. And we have
seen that the _New England Courant_ library was one of which no London
gentleman and scholar need have been ashamed. As a worker on this
newspaper Franklin had set up the names and some indications of the
thoughts of such men as Fénelon, Tillotson, Defoe, Swift, Butler, Bayle,
Isaac Watts, Blount, Burnet, Whiston, Temple, Trenchard and Gordon,
Denham, Garth, Dryden, Milton, Locke, Flamstead, and Newton.[i-417]
During his two years in London, working successively in the printing
houses of Samuel Palmer and James Watts, he mingled with many of the
leaders of the day. Probably because he had, while yet in America, read
(in the transactions of the Royal Society) of the virtuosi's interest in
asbestos, he wrote to Sir Hans Sloane, offering to show him purses made
of that novel stuff.[i-418] And we know that Sir Hans Sloane received
Franklin in his home at Bloomsbury Square. Before he met other notables
he published (what he called later an "erratum") _A Dissertation on
Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain_ (1725).[i-419] Franklin
himself said this work was the result of his setting up Wollaston's _The
Religion of Nature Delineated_[i-420] at Palmer's and his not agreeing
with the author's "reasonings." Coming to Wollaston's work (with
Franklin's _Dissertation_ and _Articles of Belief_ in mind) we can,
however, see much that Franklin agreed with, general principles which do
little more than reflect the current patterns of thought. Like Franklin,
Wollaston saw Reason as "the great law of our nature."[i-421] With Locke
he denied innate ideas.[i-422] That part of _The Religion of Nature
Delineated_ in which he searched with laborious syllogistic reasoning
for the Ultimate Cause (which could not produce itself) may have been
boring to the less agile mind of the young printer. Wollaston, however,
apologized for his syllogistic gymnastics offered in proof of Deity
since "much more may those greater motions we see in the world, and the
phenomena attending them" afford arguments for such a proof:
I mean the motions of the planets and the heavenly bodies.
For _these_ must be put into motion, either by one Common
mighty Mover, acting upon them immediately, or by causes and
laws of His Appointment; or by their respective movers, who,
for reasons to which you can by this time be no stranger,
must depend upon some _Superior_, that furnished them with
the power of doing this.[i-423]
With Newtonian rapture he marveled at "the grandness of this fabric of
the world,"[i-424] at "the chorus of planets moving periodically, by
uniform laws." Rapt in wonder, he gazed "up to the fixt stars, that
radiant numberless host of heaven." Like a Blackmore, Ray, Fontenelle,
or Newton, he felt that they were "probably all possest by proper
inhabitants."[i-425] He wondered at the "just and geometrical
arrangement of things."[i-426] These are all sentiments that Franklin
expressed in his philosophical juvenilia.[i-427] But then, Franklin
(after reading this sublimated geometry which reduced the parts of
creation to an equally sublime simplicity) noted in Wollaston that man
must be a free agent,[i-428] that good and evil are as black and white,
distinguishable,[i-429] that empirically the will is free, the author
urging with Johnsonian good sense, "The short way of knowing this
certainly is to try."[i-430] Franklin's _Dissertation_ was dedicated to
his friend James Ralph and prefaced by a misquotation from Dryden and
Lee's _Oedipus_. It purports, as Franklin wrote in 1779, "to prove the
doctrine of fate, from the supposed attributes of God ... that in
erecting and governing the world, as he was infinitely wise, he knew
what would be best; infinitely good, he must be disposed, and infinitely
powerful, he must be able to execute it: consequently all is
right."[i-431] With confidence lent him by his a priori method, he
proposed: "I. There is said to be a First Mover, who is called God,
Maker of the Universe. II. He is said to be all-wise, all-good,
all-powerful."[i-432] With the nonchalance of an abstractionist, he
concluded, "Evil doth not exist."[i-433] Transcending the sensational
necessitarianism[i-434] of Anthony Collins and John Locke, Franklin
observed (with an eye on Newton's law of gravitation) that man has
liberty, the "Liberty of the same Nature with the Fall of a heavy Body
to the Ground; it has Liberty to fall, that is, it meets with nothing to
hinder its Fall, but at the same Time it is necessitated to fall, and
has no Power or Liberty to remain suspended."[i-435] As a disciple of
Locke's psychology, Franklin reflected his concept of the _tabula rasa_
in describing an infant's mind which "is as if it were not." "All our
Ideas are first admitted by the Senses and imprinted on the Brain,
increasing in Number by Observation and Experience; there they become
the Subjects of the Soul's Action."
In the _Dissertation_ one can discover the extent to which Franklin had
absorbed (if not from Newton's own works, then from his popularizers and
intellectual sons such as Pemberton, Franklin's friend) several of the
essential tenets of Newtonianism. Here we see his belief in a universe
motivated by immutable natural laws comprising a sublimely harmonious
system reflecting a Wise Geometrician; a world in which man desires to
affect a corresponding inner heaven. Enraptured by the order of the
natural laws of Newtonianism, and like a Shaftesbury searching for a
demonstrable inner harmony, Franklin (carrying his a priorism to logical
absurdity) was unable to reconcile free will with Omniscience,
Omnipotence, and Goodness. (In how far was this partly the result of his
having been steeped in Calvinism's doctrine of Election?)
The _Dissertation_ is as appreciative of Newton's contribution to
physics and thought as Thomson's[i-436] _To the Memory of Sir Isaac
Newton_. Not unlike Franklin's framework is Shaftesbury's thought in
_An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit_.[i-437] Since Franklin
acknowledged his reading of Shaftesbury and since as late as 1730 he
borrowed heavily from the _Characteristics_, it seems probable that
Shaftesbury lent Franklin in this case some sanction for his only
metaphysical venture.[i-438]
As one result of his printing _A Dissertation_ he made the acquaintance
of Lyons, author of _The Infallibility of Human Judgement_[i-439] who
introduced him to Mandeville[i-440] and Dr. Henry Pemberton, who in
turn "Promis'd to give me an opportunity, some time or other, of seeing
Sir Isaac Newton, _of which I was extreamly desirous_; but this never
happened [the italics are the editors']."[i-441] Dr. Pemberton,
physician and mathematician, met Newton in 1722, and during the time
Franklin enjoyed his friendship was helping Newton to prepare the third
edition of the _Principia_. As a result of his aiding Newton "to
discover and understand his writings,"[i-442] Pemberton in 1728
published _A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy_. It is obvious that
Fr
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/35508