Franklin as a Statesman
The career of Franklin as a public official began in 1736, when he was
appointed Clerk of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. In this position,
he remained until his retirement from business precipitated so many
political demands upon him that he had to give it up for still higher
responsibilities.
The publick [he says in the _Autobiography_] now
considering me as a man of leisure, laid hold of me for
their purposes, every part of our civil government, and
almost at the same time, imposing some duty upon me.
The Governor put me into the commission of the peace;
the corporation of the city chose me of the common
council, and soon after an alderman; and the citizens
at large chose me a burgess to represent them in
Assembly.[10]
His legislative seat was all the more agreeable to him because he had grown
tired as clerk of listening to debates in which he could take no part, and
which were frequently so lifeless that for very weariness he had to amuse
himself with drawing magic squares or circles, or what not, as he sat at
his desk. The office of justice of the peace he withdrew from by degrees,
when he found that, to fill it with credit, more knowledge of the common
law was requisite than he possessed, and, in this connection, the belief
maybe hazarded that his influence in Congress and the Federal Convention of
1787 would have been still greater, if he had been a better lawyer, and,
therefore, more competent to cope in debate with contemporaries fitter than
he was to discuss questions which, true to the time-honored Anglo-Saxon
traditions, turned largely upon the provisions of charters and statutes.
That he was lacking in fluency of speech we have, as we have seen, his own
admission--a species of evidence, however, by no means conclusive in the
case of a man so little given to self-praise as he was. But there is
testimony to convince us that, as a debater, Franklin was, at least, not
deficient in the best characteristic of a good debater, that of placing the
accent upon the truly vital points of his case.
I served [declares Jefferson] with General Washington
in the legislature of Virginia, before the revolution,
and, during it, with Dr. Franklin in Congress. I never
heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor
to any but the main point, which was to decide the
question. They laid their shoulders to the great
points, knowing that the little ones would follow of
themselves.
What John Adams has to say about Franklin as a legislator is manifestly the
offspring of mere self-love. After taking a view of his own legislative
activity through the highly magnifying lens, which he brought to bear upon
everything relating to himself, he pictures Franklin in Congress as "from
day to day, sitting in silence, a great part of his time fast asleep in his
chair."
But whatever were the demerits of Franklin as a speaker, his influence was
very great in every legislative assembly in which he ever sat. To begin
with, he had the kind of eloquence that gives point to his own saying,
"Whose life lightens, his words thunder." Commenting in the latter part of
his career to Lord Fitzmaurice upon the stress laid by Demosthenes upon
action as the point of first importance in oratory, he said that he
thought another kind of action of more importance to an
orator, who would persuade people to follow his advice,
viz. such a course of action in the conduct of life, as
would impress them with an opinion of his integrity as
well as of his understanding; that, this opinion once
established, all the difficulties, delays, and
oppositions, usually occasioned by doubts and
suspicions, were prevented; and such a man, though a
very imperfect speaker, would almost always carry his
points against the most flourishing orator, who had not
the character of sincerity.
In the next place, Franklin's rare knowledge and wisdom made him an
invaluable counsellor for any deliberative gathering. He was the
protagonist in the Pennsylvania Assembly of the Popular Party, in its
contest with the Proprietary Party, and was for a brief time its Speaker.
As soon as he returned from Europe, at the beginning of the Revolution, he
was thrice honored by being elected to the Continental Congress, the
Pennsylvania Assembly, and the Convention to frame a constitution for
Pennsylvania. Besides appointing him Postmaster-General, Congress placed
him upon many of its most important committees; the Assembly made him
Chairman of its Committee of Safety, a post equivalent, for all practical
purposes, to the executive headship of the Province; and the Convention
made him its President. It is safe to say that, had there not been a
Washington, even his extreme old age and physical infirmities would not
have kept him from being the presiding officer of the Federal Convention of
1787 and the first President of the United States. The intellect of
Franklin was too solid to be easily imposed upon by mere glibness of
speech. "Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of
reason," remarks Poor Richard. Equally pointed is that other saying of his,
"The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise." But Franklin was fully
alive to the splendid significance of human eloquence, when enlisted in the
service of high-minded and far-seeing statesmanship. Speaking in a letter
to Lord Stanhope of Lord Chatham's speech in support of his motion for the
removal of the King's troops from Boston, he said, "Dr. F. is fill'd with
admiration of that truly great Man. He has seen, in the course of Life,
sometimes Eloquence without Wisdom, and often Wisdom without Eloquence; in
the present Instance he sees both united; and both, as he thinks, in the
highest Degree possible."
When Franklin took his seat in the Assembly, William Franklin was elected
its clerk in his place; for heredity as well as consanguinity was a feature
of the Franklin system of patronage. Once elected to the Assembly, he
acquired a degree of popularity and influence that rendered his re-election
for many years almost a matter of course. "My election to this trust," he
says in the _Autobiography_, "was repeated every year for ten years,
without my ever asking any elector for his vote, or signifying, either
directly or indirectly, any desire of being chosen." So eager were his
constituents to confer the honor upon him that they kept on conferring it
upon him year after year, even when he was abroad.[11] He proved himself
eminently worthy of this confidence. By nature and training, he was a true
democrat, profoundly conservative at the core, but keenly sensitive to
every rational and wholesome appeal to his liberal or generous instincts.
He loved law and order, stable institutions, and settled forms and
tendencies, rooted in the soil of transmitted wisdom and experience. He was
too much of an Englishman to have any sympathy with hasty changes or rash
innovations. Much as he loved France he could never have been drawn into
such a delirious outburst as the French Revolution. He loved liberty as
Hampden loved it, as Chatham loved it, as Gladstone loved it. John Wilkes,
though in some respects an ignoble, was in other respects an indubitable
champion of English freedom; yet Franklin utterly failed to see in him even
a case for the application of his reminder to his daughter that sweet and
clear waters come through very dirty earth. His happy nature and his faith
in individual thrift sometimes made him slow to believe that masses of men
had as much cause for political discontent as they claimed, and for such
mob violence, as attended the career of Wilkes, of whom he speaks in one of
his letters to his son as "an outlaw and an exile, of bad personal
character, not worth a farthing," it was impossible for his deep-seated
respect for law and order to have any toleration; though he did express on
one occasion the remarkable conviction that, if George the Third had had a
bad private character, and John Wilkes a good one, the latter might have
turned the former out of his kingdom.
It is certain, however, that few men have ever detested more strongly than
he did the baseness and meanness of arbitrary power. And he had little
patience at the same time with conditions of any sort that rested upon mere
precedent, or prescription. He welcomed every new triumph of science over
inert matter, every fresh victory of truth over superstition, bigotry, or
the unseeing eye, every salutary reform that vindicated the fitness of the
human race for its destiny of unceasing self-advancement. His underlying
instincts were firmly fixed in the ground, but his sympathies reached out
on every side into the free air of expanding human hopes and aspirations.
In his faith in the residuary wisdom and virtue of the mass of men, he is
more like Jefferson than any of his Revolutionary compeers. "The People
seldom continue long in the wrong, when it is nobody's Interest to mislead
them," he wrote to Abel James. The tribute, it must be confessed, is a
rather equivocal one, as it is always somebody's interest to mislead the
People, but the sanguine spirit of the observation pervades all his
relations to popular caprice or resentment. Less equivocal was his
statement to Galloway: "The People do not indeed always see their Friends
in the same favourable Light; they are sometimes mistaken, and sometimes
misled; but sooner or later they come right again, and redouble their
former Affection." Few were the public men of his age who looked otherwise
than askance at universal suffrage, but he was not one of them.
Liberty, or freedom [he declared in his _Some Good Whig
Principles_], consists in having _an actual share_ in
the appointment of those who frame the laws, and who
are to be the guardians of every man's life, property,
and peace; for the _all_ of one man is as dear to him
as the _all_ of another; and the poor man has an
_equal_ right, but _more_ need, to have representatives
in the legislature than the rich one.
For similar reasons he was opposed to entails, and favored the application
of the just and equal law of gavelkind to the division of intestate
estates.
It was impossible for such a man as this not to ally himself with the
popular cause, when he became a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly. At
that time, the Proprietary Government of Pennsylvania had proved as odious
to the people of the Province as the proprietary governments of South
Carolina and the Jerseys had proved to the people of those Colonies. Almost
from the time of the original settlement, the relations between the
Assembly and the Penns had been attended by mutual bickerings and
reproaches. First William Penn had scolded the Assembly in a high key, then
his sons; and, in resolution after resolution, the Assembly had, in true
British fashion, stubbornly asserted the liberties and privileges of their
constituents, and given the Proprietary Government, under thinly veiled
forms of parliamentary deference, a Roland for its every Oliver. The truth
was that a Proprietary Government, uniting as it did governmental
functions, dependent for their successful exercise upon the popular faith
in the disinterestedness of those who exercised them, with the selfish
concerns of a landlord incessantly at loggerheads with his vendees and
tenants over purchase money and quitrents, was utterly incompatible with
the dignity of real political rule,[12] and hopelessly repugnant to the
free English spirit of the Pennsylvanians. Under such circumstances, there
could be no such thing as a true commonwealth; nor anything much better
than a feudal fief. Political sovereignty lost its aspect of detachment and
legitimate authority in the eyes of the governed, and wore the appearance
of a mere organization for the transaction of private business. Almost as a
matter of course, the Proprietaries came to think and speak of the Province
as if it were as much their personal property as one of their household
chattels, refusing, as Franklin said, to give their assent to laws, unless
some private advantage was obtained, some profit got or unequal exemption
gained for their estate, or some privilege wrested from the people; and
almost, as a matter of course, the disaffected people of the Province
sullenly resented a situation so galling to their pride and self-respect.
Franklin saw all this with his usual clearness. After conceding in his
_Cool Thoughts_ that it was not unlikely that there were faults on both
sides, "every glowing Coal being apt to inflame its Opposite," he expressed
the opinion that the cause of the contentions was
radical, interwoven in the Constitution, and so become
of the very Nature, of Proprietary Governments. And [he
added] as some Physicians say, every Animal Body brings
into the World among its original Stamina the Seeds of
that Disease that shall finally produce its
Dissolution; so the Political Body of a Proprietary
Government, contains those convulsive Principles that
will at length destroy it.
The Proprietary Government of Pennsylvania was bad enough in principle; it
was made still worse by the unjust and greedy manner in which it was
administered by Thomas and Richard Penn, who were the Proprietaries, when
Franklin became a member of the Assembly. The vast estate of William Penn
in Pennsylvania, consisting of some twenty-six million acres of land, held
subject to the nominal obligation of the owner to pay to the King one fifth
of such gold and silver as the Province might yield, descended upon the
death of Penn to his sons John, Thomas and Richard, in the proportion of
one half to John, as the eldest son, and in the proportion of one fourth
each to Thomas and Richard. John died in 1746, after devising his one half
share to Thomas; thus making Thomas the owner of three out of the four
shares.[13] The political powers of the Proprietaries were exercised by a
deputy-governor whose position was in the highest degree vexatious and
perplexing. He held his office by appointment of the Proprietaries, who
resided in England, and the mode in which he was to discharge his duties
was prescribed by rigid "instructions," issued to him by them. His salary,
however, was derived from the Assembly, which was rarely at peace with the
Proprietary Government. If he obeyed his instructions, he ran the risk of
losing his salary; if he disobeyed them, he was certain to lose his place.
Incredible as it may now seem, the main duty imposed upon him by his
instructions was that of vetoing every tax bill enacted by the Assembly
which did not expressly exempt all the located, unimproved and unoccupied
lands of the Proprietaries, and all the quitrents, fines and purchase money
out at interest, to which they were entitled, that is to say, the greater
part of their immense estate. This was the axis about which the bitter
controversy between the Popular and Proprietary parties, in which Franklin
acquired his political training and reputation, revolved like one of the
lurid waterspouts with which a letter that his correspondent John Perkins
received from him has been illustrated. The Assembly insisted that they
should not be required to vote money for the support of the Proprietary
Government, unless the proprietary estate bore its proper share of the
common burden. The Governor did not dare to violate his instructions for
fear of being removed by his masters, and of being sued besides on the bond
by which he had bound himself not to violate them. At times, the feud was
so intense and absorbing, that, like a pair of gamecocks, too intent on
their own deadly encounter to hear an approaching footstep, the combatants
almost lost sight of the fact that, under the shelter of their dissensions,
the Indian was converting the frontiers of Pennsylvania into a charred and
blood-stained wilderness. Occasionally the Assembly had to yield the point
with a reservation asserting that its action was not to be taken as a
precedent, and once, when England as well as America was feeling the shock
of Braddock's defeat, the pressure of public opinion in England was
sufficient to coerce the Proprietaries into adding five thousand pounds to
the sum appropriated by the Assembly for the defence of the Province. But,
as a general thing, there was little disposition on either side to
compromise. The sharpness of the issue was well illustrated in the bill
tendered by the Assembly to Governor Morris for his signature after
Braddock's defeat. Both before, and immediately after that catastrophe, he
had, in reliance upon the critical condition of the public safety,
endeavored to drive the Assembly into providing for the defence of the
Province without calling upon the proprietary estate for a contribution.
The bill in question declared "that all estates, real and personal, were to
be taxed, those of the proprietaries _not_ excepted." "His amendment," says
Franklin in his brief way, "was, for _not_ read _only_; a small, but very
material alteration."[14]
This dependence of the Governor upon the Assembly for his salary and the
dependence of the Assembly upon the Governor for the approval of its
enactments brought about a traffic in legislation between them which was
one of the most disgraceful features of the Proprietary regime; though it
became so customary that even the most honorable Governor did not scruple
to engage in it. This traffic is thus described by Franklin in his stirring
"Preface to the Speech of Joseph Galloway, Esq.":
Ever since the Revenue of the Quit-rents first, and
after that the Revenue of Tavern-Licenses, were settled
irrevocably on our Proprietaries and Governors, they
have look'd on those Incomes as their proper Estate,
for which they were under no Obligations to the People:
And when they afterwards concurr'd in passing any
useful Laws, they considered them as so many Jobbs, for
which they ought to be particularly paid. Hence arose
the Custom of Presents twice a Year to the Governors,
at the close of each Session in which Laws were past,
given at the Time of Passing. They usually amounted to
a Thousand Pounds per Annum. But when the Governors and
Assemblies disagreed, so that Laws were not pass'd, the
Presents were withheld. When a Disposition to agree
ensu'd, there sometimes still remain'd some Diffidence.
The Governors would not pass the Laws that were wanted,
without being sure of the Money, even all that they
call'd their Arrears; nor the Assemblies give the Money
without being sure of the Laws. Thence the Necessity of
some private Conference, in which mutual Assurances of
good Faith might be receiv'd and given, that the
Transactions should go hand in hand.
This system of barter prevailed even before Franklin became a member of the
Assembly, and how fixed and ceremonious its forms sometimes were we can
infer from what happened on one of the semi-annual market days during
Governor Thomas' administration. Various bills were lying dormant in his
hands. Accordingly the House ordered two of its members to call upon him
and acquaint him that it had long "waited for his Result" on these bills,
and desired to know when they might expect it. They returned and reported
that the Governor was pleased to say that he had had the bills long under
consideration, and "_waited the Result_" of the House. Then, after the
House had resolved itself into a committee of the whole, for the purpose of
taking the "Governor's support" into consideration, there was a further
interchange of communications between the House and the Governor; the
former reporting "some progress" to the Governor, and the Governor replying
that, as he had received assurances of a "_good disposition_," on the part
of the House, he thought it incumbent upon him to show _the like_ on his
part by sending down the bills, which lay before him, without any
amendment. The manifestation of a good disposition was not the same thing
as an actual promise to approve the bills; so the wary assembly simply
resolved that, on the passage of such bills as then lay before the
Governor, and of the Naturalization Bill, and such other bills as might be
presented to him during the pending session, there should be paid to him
the sum of five hundred pounds; and that, on the passage of the same bills,
there should be paid to him the further sum of one thousand pounds for the
current year's support. Agreeably with this resolution, orders were drawn
on the Treasurer and Trustees of the Loan-Office, and, when the Governor
was informed of the fact, he appointed a time for passing the bills which
was done with one hand, while he received the orders in the other.
Thereupon with the utmost politeness he thanked the House for the fifteen
hundred pounds as if it had been a free gift, and a mere mark of respect
and affection. "_I thank you_, Gentlemen," he said, "for this _Instance_ of
_your Regard_; which I am the more pleased with, as it gives an agreeable
Prospect of _future Harmony_ between me and the Representatives of the
People."
Despicably enough, while this treaty was pending, the Penns had a written
understanding with the Governor, secured by his bond, that they were to
receive a share of all money thus obtained from the people whom they sought
to load with the entire weight of taxation. Indeed, emboldened as Franklin
said by the declining sense of shame, that always follows frequent
repetitions of sinning, they later in Governor Denny's time had the
effrontery to claim openly, in a written reply to a communication from the
Assembly, with respect to their refusal to bear any part of the expenses
entailed on the Province by the Indians, that the excess of these donatives
over and above the salary of the Governor should belong to them. By the
Constitution, they said, their consent was essential to the validity of the
laws enacted by the People, and it would tend the better to facilitate the
several matters, which had to be transacted with them, for the
representatives of the People to show a regard to them and their interest.
The Assembly hotly replied that they hoped that they would always be able
to obtain needful laws from the goodness of their sovereign without going
to the market for them to a subject. But the hope was a vain one, and to
that market, directly or indirectly, the People of Pennsylvania still had
to go, for some time to come. To use Franklin's language, there was no
other market that they could go to for the commodity that they wanted.
Do not, my courteous Reader [he exclaims with fine
scorn in the "Preface to the Speech of Joseph Galloway,
Esq."] take Pet at our Proprietary Constitution, for
these our Bargain and Sale Proceedings in Legislation.
'Tis a happy Country where Justice, and what was your
own before, can be had for Ready Money. 'Tis another
Addition to the Value of Money, and of Course another
Spur to Industry. Every Land is not so bless'd. There
are Countries where the princely Proprietor claims to
be Lord of all Property; where what is your own shall
not only be wrested from you, but the Money you give to
have it restor'd, shall be kept with it, and your
offering so much, being a Sign of your being too Rich,
you shall be plunder'd of every Thing that remain'd.
These Times are not come here yet: Your present
Proprietors have never been more unreasonable hitherto,
than barely to insist on your Fighting in Defence of
their Property, and paying the Expences yourselves; or
if their estates must, (ah! _must_) be tax'd towards
it, that the _best_ of their Lands shall be tax'd no
higher than the _worst_ of yours.
Governor Hamilton, who succeeded Governor Thomas, so far departed from the
vicious practice of buying and selling laws as to sign them without
prepayment, but, when he observed that the Assembly was tardy in making
payment, and yet asked him to give his assent to additional laws, before
prior ones had been paid for, he stated his belief to it that as many
useful laws had been enacted by him as by any of his predecessors in the
same space of time, and added that, nevertheless, he had not understood
that any allowance had been made to him for his support, as had been
customary in the Province. The hint proved effective, the money was paid
and the bills were approved.
From the time that Franklin became a member of the Assembly until the time
that the minor controversy between the Proprietary Party and the Popular
Party in Pennsylvania was obscured by the larger controversy between the
Crown and all the American Colonies, he was engaged in an almost
uninterrupted struggle with the Proprietaries, first, for the annulment of
their claim to exemption from taxation, and, secondly, for the displacement
of their government by a Royal Government. If there was ever an interlude
in this struggle, it was only because, in devising measures for the defence
of the Province, a Proprietary Governor found it necessary, at some trying
conjuncture, to rely upon the management of Franklin to quiet the Quakers,
who constituted a majority of the Assembly and detested both war and the
Proprietaries, or upon the general abilities and popularity of Franklin to
strengthen his own feeble counsels. If there was any political tranquillity
in the Province during this time, it was, to employ one of Franklin's own
comparisons, only such tranquillity as exists in a naval engagement between
two broadsides. On the one hand were ranged the official partisans and
dependents of the Proprietary Government and other adherents of the kind,
whose allegiance is likely to be won by the social prestige and political
patronage of executive authority. To this faction, in the latter stages of
the conflict, was added a large body of Presbyterians whose sectarian
sympathies had been excited by the Scotch-Irish uprising against the
Indians, of which we have previously spoken. On the other hand were ranged
the Quakers, upon whom the burden of resisting the Proprietary
encroachments upon the popular rights had mainly rested from the origin of
the Province, and middle-class elements of the population whose views and
sympathies were not highly colored by any special influences. The task of
preparing resolutions, addresses and remonstrances, voicing the popular
criticism of the Proprietaries, was mainly committed to Franklin by the
Assembly. It was with him, too, as the ablest and most influential
representative of the popular interest that the various Proprietary
Governors usually dealt.
We first find him high in favor with Governor Thomas and his Council at the
time of the Association because of his activity, when still only Clerk of
the Assembly, in providing for the defence of the Province and arousing a
martial spirit in its people. This was the period when the Quaker found it
necessary to help his conscience out a little with his wit, and when
Franklin made good use of the principle that men will countenance many
things with their backs that they will not countenance with their faces.
The Quaker majority in the Assembly did not relish his intimacy at this
time with the members of the Council who had so often trod on their
punctilio about military expenditures, and it might have been pleased, he
conjectured, if he had voluntarily resigned his clerkship; "but," he
declares in the _Autobiography_, "they did not care to displace me on
account merely of my zeal for the association, and they could not well give
another reason."
Governor Hamilton became so sick of the broils, in which he was involved by
the Proprietary instructions, that he resigned. His successor was the
Governor Morris whose father loved disputation so much that he encouraged
his children to practise it when he was digesting his dinner. Franklin met
him at New York when he was on his way to Boston, and Morris was on his way
to Philadelphia to enter upon his duties as Governor. So ready for a war of
words was the new Governor that, when Franklin returned from Boston to
Philadelphia, he and the House had already come to blows, and the conflict
never ceased as long as he remained Governor. In the conflict, Franklin
was his chief antagonist. Whenever a speech or message of the Governor was
to be answered, he was made a member of the Committee appointed to answer
it, and by such committees he was invariably selected to draft the answer.
"Our answers," he says, "as well as his messages, were often tart, and
sometimes indecently abusive." But the Governor was at heart an amiable
man, and Franklin, resolute as he was, when his teeth were fairly set, had
no black blood in his veins. Though one might have imagined, he says, that
he and the Governor could not meet without cutting throats, so little
personal ill-will arose between them that they even often dined together.
One afternoon [he tells us in the _Autobiography_] in
the height of this public quarrel, we met in the
street. "Franklin," says he, "you must go home with me
and spend the evening; I am to have some company that
you will like"; and, taking me by the arm, he led me to
his house. In gay conversation over our wine, after
supper, he told us, jokingly, that he much admir'd the
idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give
him a government, requested it might be a government of
_blacks_, as then, if he could not agree with his
people, he might sell them. One of his friends, who sat
next to me, says, "Franklin, why do you continue to
side with these damn'd Quakers? Had you not better sell
them? The Proprietor would give you a good price." "The
Governor," says I, "has not yet _blacked_ them enough."
He, indeed, had laboured hard to blacken the Assembly
in all his messages, but they wip'd off his colouring
as fast as he laid it on, and plac'd it, in return,
thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely
to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton,
grew tir'd of the contest, and quitted the Government.
All these disputes originated in the instructions given by the
Proprietaries to their Governors not to approve any tax measure enacted by
the Assembly that did not expressly exempt their estates; conduct which
Franklin justly terms in the _Autobiography_ "incredible meanness."
The ability of Governor Morris to keep on good terms with Franklin in spite
of the perpetual wrangling between the Assembly and himself Franklin
sometimes thought was due to the fact that the Governor was bred a lawyer
and regarded him as simply the advocate of the Assembly and himself as
simply the advocate of the Proprietaries. However this was, he sometimes
called upon Franklin in a friendly way to advise with him on different
points; and occasionally, though not often, Franklin tells us, took his
advice. But when the miserable fugitives, who escaped from the _Aceldama_
on the Monongahela, brought back to the settlements their awful tale of
carnage and horror, and Dunbar and his rout were cravenly seeking the
protection of those whom they should have protected, Governor Morris was
only too glad to consult, and take the advice of, the strongest man on the
American Continent, except the gallant Virginian, young in years, but from
early responsibilities and hardships, as well as native wisdom and
intrepidity, endowed with a calm judgment and tempered courage far beyond
his years, whom Providence almost seemed to have taken under its direct
guardianship for its future purposes on the day that Braddock fell. Later,
when it appeared as if the Indians would carry desolation and death into
the very bowels of Pennsylvania, the Governor was equally glad to place
Franklin in charge of its Northwestern Frontier, and to thrust blank
military commissions into his hands to be filled up by him as he pleased.
And later still, when the desire of the Governor to consult with Franklin
about the proper measures for preventing the desertion of the back counties
of Pennsylvania had brought the latter home from the Northwestern Frontier,
the Governor did not hesitate, in planning an expedition against Fort
Duquesne, to offer Franklin a commission as general. If Franklin had
accepted the offer, we are justified, we think, in assuming that he would
have won at least as high a degree of credit as that which he accorded to
Shirley. "For tho' Shirley," he tells us in the _Autobiography_, "was not a
bred soldier, he was sensible and sagacious in himself, and attentive to
good advice from others, capable of forming judicious plans, and quick and
active in carrying them into execution." No mean summary of the military
virtues of Franklin himself as a citizen soldier. But Franklin knew the
limitations of his training too well to be allured by such a deceitful
honor. There were few civil tasks to which he was not equal, but, when it
came to being a military commander, he had the good sense to make an
admission like that which Shirley made to him. When a banquet was given to
Lord Loudon by the city of New York, Shirley was present, though the
occasion was due to the fact that the command previously held by him had
just been transferred to Loudon. Franklin noticed that he was sitting in a
very low seat. "They have given you, sir, too low a seat," he said. "No
matter, Mr. Franklin," replied Shirley, "I find _a low seat_ the easiest."
When Governor Morris saw that, disputatious as he was, he was no match in
that respect for the Assembly, he was succeeded by Governor Denny, who
brought over with him from England the gold medal awarded by the Royal
Society to Franklin for his electrical discoveries. This honor as well as
the political experience of his predecessors was calculated to impress upon
the Governor the importance of being on good terms with Franklin. At all
events, when the medal was delivered by him to Franklin at a public dinner
given to himself, after his arrival at Philadelphia, he added to the gift
some very polite expressions of his esteem, and assured Franklin that he
had long known him by reputation. After dinner, he left the diners with
their wine, and took Franklin aside into another room, and told him that he
had been advised by his friends in England to cultivate a friendship with
him as the man who was best able to give him good advice, and to make his
task easy. Much also was said by the Governor about the good disposition of
the Proprietary towards the Province and the advantage that it would be to
everyone and to Franklin particularly if the long opposition to the
Proprietary was abandoned, and harmony between him and the people restored.
No one, said the Governor, could be more serviceable in bringing this about
than Franklin himself, who might depend upon his services being duly
acknowledged and recompensed. "The drinkers," the _Autobiography_ goes on,
"finding we did not return immediately to the table, sent us a decanter of
Madeira, which the Governor made liberal use of, and in proportion became
more profuse of his solicitations and promises."
To these overtures Franklin replied in a proper strain of mingled
independence and good feeling, and concluded by expressing the hope that
the Governor had not brought with him the same unfortunate instructions as
his predecessors. The only answer that the Governor ever gave to this
inquiry was given when he settled down to the duties of his office. It then
became plain enough that he was under exactly the same instructions as his
predecessors; the old ulcer broke out afresh, and Franklin's pen was soon
again prodding Proprietary selfishness. But through it all he contrived to
maintain the same relations of personal amity with Governor Denny that he
had maintained with Governor Morris. "Between us personally," he says, "no
enmity arose; we were often together; he was a man of letters, had seen
much of the world, and was very entertaining and pleasing in conversation."
But the situation, so far as the Province was concerned, was too grievous
to be longer borne without an appeal for relief to the Crown. The Assembly
had enacted a bill, appropriating the sum of sixty thousand pounds for the
King's use, ten thousand pounds of which were to be expended on Lord
Loudon's orders, and the Governor, in compliance with his instructions, had
refused to give it his approval. This brought things to a head, the House
resolved to petition the King to override the instructions and Franklin was
appointed its agent to go over to England and present the petition. His
passage was engaged, his sea-stores were actually all on board, when Lord
Loudon himself came over to Philadelphia for the express purpose of
bringing about an accommodation between the jarring interests. The Governor
and Franklin met him at his request, and opened their minds fully to him;
Franklin revamping all the old popular arguments, so often urged by him,
and the Governor pleading his instructions, the bond that he had given and
the ruin that awaited him if he disregarded it. "Yet," says Franklin,
"seemed not unwilling to hazard himself if Lord Loudon would advise it."
This his Lordship did not choose to do, though Franklin once thought that
he had nearly prevailed on him to do it; and finally he entreated Franklin
to use his influence with the Assembly to induce it to yield, promising, if
it did, to employ unsparingly the King's troops for the defence of the
frontiers of Pennsylvania, but stating that, if it did not, those frontiers
must remain exposed to hostile incursion. The result was that the packet,
in which Franklin engaged passage, sailed off with his sea-stores, while
the parties were palavering, and the Assembly, after entering a formal
protest against the duress, under which it gave way, abandoned its bill,
and enacted another with the hateful exemption in it which was promptly
approved by the Governor.
Franklin was now free to embark upon his voyage, whenever he could find a
ship ready to sail, but, unfortunately for him, all the packets by which he
could sail were at the beck of Lord Loudon, who was the most vacillating of
human beings. When Franklin, before leaving Philadelphia, inquired of him
the precise time at which a packet boat, that he said would be off soon,
would sail, he replied: "I have given out that she is to sail on Saturday
next; but I may let you know, _entre nous_, that if you are there by Monday
morning, you will be in time, but do not delay longer." Because of
detention at a ferry, Franklin did not reach New York before noon on
Monday, but he was relieved, when he arrived, to be told that the packet
would not sail until the next day. This was about the beginning of April.
In point of fact, it was near the end of June when it got off. At the time
of Franklin's arrival in New York, it was one of the two packets, that were
being kept waiting in port for the dispatches, upon which his Lordship
appeared to be always engaged. While thus held up, another packet arrived
only to be placed under the same embargo. Each had a list of impatient
passengers, and many letters and orders for insurance against war risks
from American merchants, but, day after day, his Lordship, entirely
unmindful of the impatience and anxiety that he was creating, sat
continually at his desk, writing his interminable dispatches. Calling one
morning to pay his respects, Franklin found in his ante-chamber Innis, a
Philadelphia messenger, who had brought on a batch of letters to his
Lordship from Governor Denny, and who told Franklin that he was to call the
next day for his Lordship's answer to the Governor, and would then set off
for Philadelphia at once. On the strength of this assurance, Franklin the
same day placed some letters of his own for delivery in that city in Innis'
hands. A fortnight afterwards, he met the messenger in the same
ante-chamber. "So, you are soon return'd, Innis" he said. "_Return'd!_"
replied Innis, "No, I am not _gone_ yet." "How so?" "I have called here by
order every morning these two weeks past for his lordship's letter, and it
is not yet ready." "Is it possible, when he is so great a writer? for I see
him constantly at his escritoire." "Yes," says Innis, "but he is like St.
George on the signs, _always on horseback, and never rides on_." Indeed, so
purely rotatory was all his Lordship's epistolary energy, unremitting as it
seemed to be, that one of the reasons given by William Pitt for
subsequently removing him was that "_the minister never heard from him, and
could not know what he was doing_." Finally, the three packets dropped down
to Sandy Hook to join the British fleet there. Not knowing but that they
might make off any day, their passengers thought it safest to board them
before they dropped down. The consequence was that they found themselves
anchored at Sandy Hook for about six weeks, "as idle as a painted ship upon
a painted ocean," and driven to the necessity of consuming all their
sea-stores and buying more. At length, when the fleet did weigh anchor,
with his Lordship and all his army on board, bound for the reduction of
Louisburg, the three packets were ordered to attend it in readiness to
receive the dispatches which the General was still scribbling upon the
element that was not more mutable than his own purposes. When Franklin had
been five days out, his packet was finally released, and stood off beyond
the reach of his Lordship's indefatigable pen, but the other two packets
were still kept in tow by him all the way to Halifax, where, after
exercising his men for some time in sham attacks on sham forts, he changed
his mind about besieging Louisburg, and returned to New York with all his
troops and the two packets and their passengers. In the meantime, the
French and their savage friends had captured Fort George, and butchered
many of the garrison after its capitulation. The captain of one of the two
packets, that were brought back to New York, afterwards told Franklin in
London that, when he had been detained a month by his Lordship, he
requested his permission to heave his ship down and clear her bottom. He
was asked how long that would require. He answered three days. His Lordship
replied, "If you can do it in one day, I give leave; otherwise not; for
you must certainly sail the day after tomorrow." So he never obtained
leave, though detained afterwards, from day to day, during full three
months. No wonder that an irate passenger, who represented himself as
having suffered considerable pecuniary loss, swore after he finally reached
London in Franklin's presence, that he would sue Lord Loudon for damages.
As Oxenstiern's son was enjoined by his father to do, Franklin had gone out
into the world and seen with what little wisdom it is ruled. "On the
whole," he says in the _Autobiography_, "I wonder'd much how such a man
came to be intrusted with so important a business as the conduct of a great
army; but, having since seen more of the great world, and the means of
obtaining, and motives for giving places, my wonder is diminished."
The _Autobiography_ makes it evident enough that for Loudon Franklin came
to entertain the heartiest contempt.[15] His Lordship's movements in 1757
he stigmatized as frivolous, expensive and disgraceful to the nation beyond
conception. He was responsible, Franklin thought, for the loss of Fort
George, and for the foundering of a large part of the Carolina fleet,
which, for lack of notice from him, remained anchored in the worm-infested
waters of Charleston harbor for three months, after he had raised his
embargo on the exportation of provisions. Nor does Franklin hesitate to
charge that this embargo, while laid on the pretence of cutting off the
enemy from supplies, was in reality laid for the purpose of beating down
the price of provisions in the interest of the contractors, in whose
profits, it was suspected, that Loudon had a share. Not only did his
Lordship decline, on the shallow pretext that he did not wish to mix his
accounts with those of his predecessors, to give Franklin the order that he
had promised him for the payment of the balance, still due him on account
of Braddock's expedition, though liquidated by his own audit, but, when
Franklin urged the fact that he had charged no commission for his services,
as a reason why he should be promptly paid, his Lordship cynically replied,
"O, Sir, you must not think of persuading us that you are no gainer; we
understand better those affairs, and know that everyone concerned in
supplying the army finds means, in the doing it, to fill his own pockets."
Franklin and his son arrived in London on July 27, 1757. Shortly after he
had settled down in his lodgings, he called upon Dr. Fothergill, whose
counsel he had been advised to obtain, and who thought that, before an
application was made to the British Government, there should be an effort
to reach an understanding with the Penns themselves. Then took place the
interview between Franklin and Lord Granville, at which his Lordship, after
some preliminary discourse, expressed this alarming opinion:
You Americans have wrong ideas of the nature of your
constitution; you contend that the King's instructions
to his governors are not laws, and think yourselves at
liberty to regard or disregard them at your own
discretion. But those instructions are not like the
pocket instructions given to a minister going abroad,
for regulating his conduct in some trifling point of
ceremony. They are first drawn up by judges learned in
the laws; they are then considered, debated, and
perhaps amended in Council, after which they are signed
by the king. They are then, so far as they relate to
you, the _law of the land_, for the King is the
LEGISLATOR OF THE COLONIES.
The correctness of this opinion was combated by Franklin. He told his
Lordship that this was new doctrine to him, and that he had always
understood from the American charters that the colonial laws were to be
enacted by the assemblies of the Colonies, and that, once enacted and
assented to by the King, the King could not repeal or alter them, and that,
as the colonial assemblies could not make laws for themselves without his
assent, so he could not make laws for them without their assent. The great
man's reply was as brief as a great man's reply is only too likely to be
when his opinions are questioned by his inferiors. It was merely that
Franklin was totally mistaken. Franklin did not think so, and, concerned
for fear that Lord Granville might be but expressing the sentiment of the
Court, he wrote down what had been said to him as soon as he returned to
his lodgings. The utterance reminded him that some twenty years before a
bill had been introduced into Parliament by the ministry of that time
containing a clause, intended to make the King's instructions laws in the
Colonies, but that the clause had been stricken out of it by the House of
Commons. For this, he said, the Colonies adored the Commons, as their
friends and the friends of liberty, until it afterwards seemed as if they
had refused the point of sovereignty to the King only that they might
reserve it for themselves.
A meeting between the Proprietaries and Franklin was arranged by Doctor
Fothergill. It assumed the form that such meetings are apt to assume, that
is of mutual professions of an earnest desire to agree, repetition of the
old antagonistic reasonings and a disagreement as stubborn as before.
However, it was agreed that Franklin should reduce the complaints against
the Proprietaries to writing, and that the Proprietaries were to consider
them. When the paper was drawn, they submitted it to their solicitor,
Ferdinand John Paris, who had represented them in the celebrated litigation
between the Penns and the Lords Baltimore over the boundary line between
Pennsylvania and Maryland, and had written all their papers and messages
in their disputes with the Pennsylvania Assembly. "He was," says Franklin,
"a proud, angry man, and as I had occasionally in the answers of the
Assembly treated his papers with some severity, they being really weak in
point of argument and haughty in expression, he had conceived a mortal
enmity to me." With Paris, Franklin refused to discuss the points of his
paper, and the Proprietaries then, on the advice of Paris, placed it in the
hands of the Attorney- and Solicitor-Generals for their opinion and advice.
By them no answer was given for nearly a year, though Franklin frequently
called upon the Proprietaries for an answer only to be told that they had
not yet received the opinion of their learned advisers. What the opinion
was when it was finally rendered the Proprietaries did not let Franklin
know, but instead addressed a long communication, drawn and signed by
Paris, to the Assembly, reciting the contents of Franklin's paper,
complaining of its lack of formality as rudeness, and justifying their
conduct. They would be willing, they said, to compose the dispute, if the
Assembly would send out _some person of candor_ to treat with them.
Franklin supposed that the incivility imputed to him consisted in the fact
that he had not addressed the Proprietaries by their assumed title of True
and Absolute Proprietaries of the Province of Pennsylvania.
The letter of the Proprietaries was not answered by the Assembly. While
they were pretending to treat with Franklin, Governor Denny had been unable
to withstand the pressure of his situation, and, at the request of Lord
Loudon, had approved an act subjecting the estates of the Penns to
taxation. When this Act was transmitted to England, the Proprietaries, upon
the advice of Paris, petitioned the King to withhold his assent from it,
and, when the petition came on for hearing, the parties were represented by
counsel. On the one hand it was contended that the purpose of the Act was
to impose an oppressive burden upon the Proprietary estates, and that the
assessment under it would be so unequal because of the popular prejudice
against the Penns that they would be ruined. To this it was replied that
the Act was not conceived with any such purpose, and would not have any
such effect, that the assessors were honest and discreet men under oath,
and that any advantage that might inure to them individually from
over-assessing the property of the Proprietaries would be too trifling to
induce them to perjure themselves. It was also urged in opposition to the
petition that the money, for which the Act provided, had been printed and
issued, and was now in the hands of the inhabitants of the Province, and
would be deprived of all value, to their great injury, if the Act did not
receive the royal assent merely because of the selfish and groundless fears
of the Proprietaries. At this point, Lord Mansfield, one of the counsel for
the Proprietaries, led Franklin off into a room nearby, while the other
lawyers were still pleading, and asked him if he was really of the opinion
that the Proprietary estate would not be unfairly taxed if the Act was
executed. "Certainly," said Franklin. "Then," said he, "you can have little
objection to enter into an engagement to assure that point." "None at all,"
replied Franklin. Paris was then called in, and, after some discussion, a
paper, such as Lord Mansfield suggested, was drawn up and signed by
Franklin and Mr. Charles, who was the agent of Pennsylvania for ordinary
purposes, and the law was given the royal assent with the further
engagement, upon the part of Franklin and Mr. Charles, that it should be
amended in certain respects by subsequent legislation. This legislation,
however, the Assembly afterwards declined to enact when a committee,
appointed by it, upon which it was careful to place several close friends
of the Proprietaries, brought in an unanimous report stating that the
yearly tax levied before the order of the Council reached Pennsylvania had
been imposed with perfect fairness as between the Proprietaries and the
other tax-payers.
In the most important respect, therefore, Franklin's mission to England had
resulted in success. The principle was established by the Crown that the
estate of the Proprietaries was subject to taxation equally with that of
the humblest citizen of Pennsylvania; and the credit of the paper money,
then scattered throughout the province, was saved. The Assembly rewarded
its servant, when he returned to Pennsylvania, with its formal thanks and
the sum of three thousand pounds. He responded in the happy terms which he
always had at his command on occasions of this sort. "He made answer," says
the official report, "that he was thankful to the House, for the very
handsome and generous Allowance they had been pleased to make him for his
Services; but that the Approbation of this House was, in his Estimation,
far above every other kind of Recompense."
The Proprietaries punished their servant, Governor Denny, by removing him
and threatening him with suit for the breach of his bond, but it is a
pleasure to be told in the _Autobiography_ that his position was such that
he could despise their threats.
While the duel was going on between the Proprietaries and the Assembly,
Franklin had some significant things at times to say about it in his
familiar letters. As far as we can see, his political course, during this
period, was entirely candid and manly. He was on agreeable personal terms
with all the colonial governors, he seems to have cherished an honest
desire to be helpful to the Proprietaries, so far as their own illiberality
and folly would allow him to be, and it is very plain that he was not
without the feeling that the demands of the Popular Party itself were
occasionally immoderate. He was quite willing for the sake of peace to
concede anything except the essential points of the controversy, but when
it came to these he was immovable as men of his type usually are when they
realize that a claim upon them is too unjust or exorbitant even for their
pacific temper.
I am much oblig'd to you for the favourable Light you
put me in, to our Proprietor, as mention'd in yours of
July 30 [he wrote to Peter Collinson in 1754], I know
not why he should imagine me not his Friend, since I
cannot recollect any one Act of mine that could
denominate me otherwise. On the contrary if to concur
with him, so far as my little Influence reach'd in all
his generous and benevolent Designs and Desires of
making his Province and People flourishing and happy be
any Mark of my Respect and Dutyful Regard to him, there
are many who would be ready to say I could not be
suppos'd deficient in such Respect. The Truth is I have
sought his _Interest_ more than his _Favour_; others
perhaps have sought both, and obtain'd at least the
latter. But in my Opinion great Men are not always best
serv'd by such as show on all Occasions a blind
Attachment to them: An Appearance of Impartiality in
general gives a Man sometimes much more Weight when he
would serve in particular instances.
To the friend to whom these words were written Franklin was disposed to
unbosom himself with unusual freedom, and, in the succeeding year, in
another letter to Collinson, he used words which showed plainly enough that
he thought that the Assembly too was at times inclined to indulge in more
hair-splitting and testiness than was consistent with the public welfare.
You will see [he said] more of the same Trifling in
these Votes in both sides. I am heartily sick of our
present Situation; I like neither the Governor's
Conduct, nor the Assembly's; and having some Share in
the Confidence of both, I have endeavour'd to reconcile
'em but in vain, and between 'em they make me very
uneasy. I was chosen last Year in my Absence and was
not at the Winter Sitting when the House sent home that
Address to the King, which I am afraid was both
ill-judg'd and ill-tim'd. If my being able now and then
to influence a good Measure did not keep up my Spirits
I should be ready to swear never to serve again as an
Assembly Man, since both Sides expect more from me than
they ought, and blame me sometimes for not doing what I
am not able to do, as well as for not preventing what
was not in my Power to prevent. The Assembly ride
restive; and the Governor tho' he spurs with both
heels, at the same time reins in with both hands, so
that the Publick Business can never move forward, and
he remains like St. George on the Sign, Always a
Horseback and never going on. Did you never hear this
old Catch?
_Their was a mad Man--He had a mad Wife,
And three mad Sons beside;
And they all got upon a mad Horse
And madly they did ride._
Tis a Compendium of our Proceedings and may save you
the Trouble of reading them.
In a still later letter to the same correspondent, Franklin asserted that
there was no reason for excluding Quakers from the House, since, though
unwilling to fight themselves, they had been brought to unite in voting the
sums necessary to enable the Province to defend itself. Then, after
referring to the defamation, that was being heaped upon him by the
Proprietary Party, in the place of the court paid to him when he had
exerted himself to secure aids from the House for Braddock and Shirley, he
said, "Let me know if you learn that any of their Slanders reach England. I
abhor these Altercations and if I did not love the Country and the People
would remove immediately into a more quiet Government, Connecticut, where I
am also happy enough to have many Friends."
However, there was too much fuel for the fire to die down. The claim of the
Proprietaries to exemption from taxation was only the most aggravated
result of their efforts, by their instructions to their Governors, to
shape the legislation of the Province in accordance with their own personal
aims and pecuniary interests instead of in the spirit of the royal charter,
which gave to William Penn, and his heirs, and his, or their, deputies or
lieutenants, free, full and absolute power, for the good and happy
government of Pennsylvania, to make and enact any laws, according to their
best discretion, by and with the advice, assent and approbation of the
freemen of the said country, or of their delegates or deputies. In the
report of the Committee of Aggrievances of the Assembly, drawn by Franklin,
the case of the freemen of the Province against the Penns, which led to
Franklin's first mission to England, is clearly stated. They are arraigned
not only for seeking to exempt the bulk of their estate from the common
burden of taxation, but also, apart from this, for stripping, by their
instructions, their governors, and thereby the People themselves, of all
real discretion in fixing by legislation the measure and manner in which,
and the time at which, aids and supplies should be furnished for the
defence of the Province. They had even, the report charged, prohibited
their governors, by their instructions, from assenting to laws disposing of
interest arising from the loan of bills of credit or money raised by excise
taxes--forms of revenue to which the Proprietary estate did not contribute
at all--unless the laws contained a clause giving their governors the right
to negative a particular application of the sums. Another grievance was the
issuance by the governor of commissions to provincial judges, to be held
during the will and pleasure of the governors instead of during good
behavior, as covenanted by William Penn--a practice which gave the
Proprietaries control of the judicial as well as the executive Branch of
the provincial government.
For a time, after Franklin returned to Pennsylvania in 1762, there was
something like peace between the Proprietaries and the people. When a
nephew of Thomas Penn was appointed governor, the Assembly accepted him as
a family pledge of restored good feeling.
The Assembly [Franklin wrote to Dr. Fothergill]
received a Governor of the Proprietary family with open
arms, addressed him with sincere expressions of
kindness and respect, opened their purses to them, and
presented him with six hundred pounds; made a Riot Act
and prepared a Militia Bill immediately, at his
instance, granted supplies, and did everything that he
requested, and promised themselves great happiness
under his administration.
And no governor was ever so dependent upon the good will of the Assembly.
It was during his administration that the Scotch-Irish inhabitants of the
frontier, inflamed by Indian outrages, imbrued their hands in the blood of
the Conestoga Indians, and, so far from being intimidated by the public
proclamations issued by the Governor for their arrest and punishment,
marched to the very threshold of Philadelphia itself with the purpose of
destroying the Moravian Indians huddled there in terror of their lives. The
whole Province outside of the City of Philadelphia was given over to
lawlessness and disorder. In the contagious excitement of the hour, a
considerable portion of its population even believed that the Quakers had
gained the friendship of the Indians by presents, supplied them secretly
with arms and ammunition, and engaged them to fall upon and kill the whites
on the Pennsylvania frontier. Under these circumstances, the Governor
simply did what Governor Morris and Governor Denny had been compelled to do
before him, namely, call in the aid of the man who could in a letter to
Peter Collinson truthfully sum up all that there was in the military
demonstration which angered Thomas Penn so deeply with the simple
utterance, "The People happen to love me." The whole story was told by
Franklin to Dr. Fothergill in the letter from which we have just quoted.
More wonders! You know that I don't love the
Proprietary and that he does not love me. Our totally
different tempers forbid it. You might therefore expect
that the late new appointments of one of his family
would find me ready for opposition. And yet when his
nephew arrived, our Governor, I considered government
as government, and paid him all respect, gave him on
all occasions my best advice, promoted in the Assembly
a ready compliance with everything he proposed or
recommended, and when those daring rioters, encouraged
by general approbation of the populace, treated his
proclamation with contempt, I drew my pen in the cause;
wrote a pamphlet (that I have sent you) to render the
rioters unpopular; promoted an association to support
the authority of the Government and defend the Governor
by taking arms, signed it first myself, and was
followed by several hundreds, who took arms
accordingly. The Governor offered me the command of
them, but I chose to carry a musket and strengthen his
authority by setting an example of obedience to his
order. And would you think it, this proprietary
Governor did me the honour, in an alarm, to run to my
house at midnight, with his counsellors at his heels,
for advice, and made it his head-quarters for some
time. And within four and twenty hours, your old friend
was a common soldier, a counsellor, a kind of dictator,
an ambassador to the country mob, and on his returning
home, nobody again. All this has happened in a few
weeks.
With the retirement of the backwoodsmen from Philadelphia to their homes,
sprang up one of the angriest factional contests that Pennsylvania had ever
known. Every malignant passion, political or sectarian, that lurked in the
Province was excited into the highest degree of morbid life. The
Presbyterians, the Churchmen, even some of the Quakers, acclaimed the
Paxton Boys as instruments of a just vengeance, and they constituted a
political force, which the Governor was swift to utilize for the purpose of
strengthening his party. He dropped all efforts to apprehend the murderers
of the Conestoga Indians, granted a private audience to the insurgents,
and accused the Assembly of disloyalty, and of encroaching upon the
prerogatives of the Crown, only because it had been presumptuous enough to
make an appointment to a petty office in a bill tendered to him for his
assent. It was during his administration, too, that the claim was made
that, even if the Proprietary estate had been subjected to taxation by the
Lords in Council, under the terms of one of the amendments, proposed by
them, "_the best and most valuable_," of the Proprietary lands "should be
tax'd no higher than the _worst and least valuable_ of the People's."
When the conflict was reopened, the Assembly boldly brought it to an issue.
One of its committees, with Franklin at its head, reported a series of
resolutions censuring the proprietaries, condemning their rule as too weak
to maintain its authority and repress disorder, and petitioning the King to
take over the Government of the Province, after such compensation to the
Proprietaries as was just. The Assembly then adjourned to sound the temper
of their constituents, and their adjournment was the signal for a pamphlet
war attended by such a hail of paper pellets as rarely marked any contest
so early in the history of the American Colonies. Among the best of them
was the pamphlet written by Franklin, and entitled _Cool Thoughts on the
Present Situation of our Public Affairs_, which has already been mentioned,
and which denounced in no uncertain terms the "insolent Tribunitial VETO,"
with which the Proprietaries were in the habit of declaring that nothing
should be done, unless their private interests in certain particulars were
served.
On May 14, 1764, the Assembly met again, and was soon deeply engaged in a
debate as to whether an address should be sent to the King, praying the
abolition of the Proprietary Government. Long did the debate last; Joseph
Galloway making the principal argument in support of the proposition, and
John Dickinson the principal one against it. When the vote was taken, the
affirmative prevailed, but, as Isaac Norris, who had been a member of the
body for thirty years, and its speaker for fifteen, was about to be bidden
by it to sign the address, he stated that, since he did not approve it, and
yet would have to sign it as speaker, he hoped that he might have time to
draft his objections to it. A short recess ensued, and when the members
convened again, Norris sent word that he was too sick to be present, and
requested that another person should be chosen as speaker. The choice of
the body then fell upon Franklin, who immediately signed the paper.
The next sitting of the Assembly was not to be held until the succeeding
October, and before that time the annual election for members of the
Assembly was to take place. For the purpose of influencing public opinion,
Dickinson, upon its adjournment, published his speech with a long preface
by Dr. William Smith. Galloway followed suit by publishing his speech with
a long preface by Franklin. This preface is one of Franklin's masterpieces,
marked it is true by some quaint conceits and occasional relaxations of
energy, but full of power and withering sarcasm. Preceded by such a lengthy
and brilliant preface, Galloway must have felt that his speech had little
more than the secondary value of an appendix. With the consummate capacity
for pellucid statement, which was one of Franklin's most remarkable gifts,
it narrated the manner in which the practice of buying legislation from the
Proprietaries had been pursued. With equal force and ingenuity, it
demonstrated that five out of the six amendments, proposed by the Lords in
Council to the Act, approved by Governor Denny, did not justify the charge
that the circumstances, in which they originated, involved any real
injustice to the Proprietaries, and that the sixth, which forbade the
tender to the Proprietaries of paper bills of fluctuating value, in payment
of debts payable to them, under the terms of special contracts, in coin,
if a measure of justice to them, would be also a measure of justice to
other creditors in the same situation, who were not mentioned in the
amendment.
Referring to the universal practice in America of making such bills a legal
tender and the fact that the bills in question would have been a legal
tender as respects the members of the Assembly and their constituents as
well as the Proprietaries, Franklin's preface glows like an incandescent
furnace in these words:
But if he (the reader) can not on these Considerations,
quite excuse the Assembly, what will he think of those
_Honourable_ Proprietaries, who when Paper Money was
issued in their Colony for the Common Defence of their
vast Estates, with those of the People, and who must
therefore reap, at least, equal Advantages from those
Bills with the People, could nevertheless _wish_ to be
exempted from their Share of the unavoidable
Disadvantages. Is there upon Earth a Man besides, with
any Conception of what is honest, with any Notion of
Honor, with the least Tincture in his Veins of the
Gentleman, but would have blush'd at the Thought; but
would have rejected with Disdain such undue Preference,
if it had been offered him? Much less would he have
struggled for it, mov'd Heaven and Earth to obtain it,
resolv'd to ruin Thousands of his Tenants by a Repeal
of the Act, rather than miss of it, and enforce it
afterwards by an audaciously wicked Instruction,
forbidding Aids to his King, and exposing the Province
to Destruction, unless it was complied with. And
yet,--these are _Honourable Men_.... Those who study
Law and Justice, as a Science [he added in an indignant
note] have established it a Maxim in Equity, "Qui
sentit commodum, sentire debet et onus." And so
consistent is this with the _common_ Sense of Mankind,
that even our lowest untaught Coblers and Porters feel
the Force of it in their own Maxim, (which _they_ are
_honest enough_ never to dispute) "Touch Pot, touch
Penny."
Other passages in the Preface were equally scorching. Replying to the
charge of the Proprietaries that the Quaker Assembly, out of mere malice,
because they had conscientiously quitted the Society of Friends for the
Church, were wickedly determined to ruin them by throwing the entire burden
of taxation on them, Franklin had this to say:
How foreign these Charges were from the Truth, need not
be told to any Man in _Pennsylvania_. And as the
Proprietors knew, that the Hundred Thousand Pounds of
paper money, struck for the defence of their enormous
Estates, with others, was actually issued, spread thro'
the Country, and in the Hands of Thousands of poor
People, who had given their Labor for it, how base,
cruel, and inhuman it was, to endeavour by a Repeal of
the Act, to strike the Money dead in those Hands at one
Blow, and reduce it all to Waste Paper, to the utter
Confusion of all Trade and Dealings, and the Ruin of
Multitudes, merely to avoid paying their own just
Tax!--Words may be wanting to express, but Minds will
easily conceive, and never without Abhorrence!
But fierce as these attacks were, they were mild in comparison with the
shower of stones hurled by Franklin at the Proprietaries in the Preface in
one of those lapidary inscriptions which were so common in that age. The
prefacer of Dickinson's Speech had inserted in his introduction a lapidary
memorial of William Penn made up of tessellated bits of eulogy, extracted
from the various addresses of the Assembly itself. This gave Franklin a
fine opportunity to retort in a similar mosaic of phrases and to contrast
the meanness of the sons with what the Assembly had said of the father.
That these Encomiums on the Father [he said] tho'
sincere, have occurr'd so frequently, was owing,
however, to two Causes; first, a vain Hope the
Assemblies entertain'd, that the Father's Example, and
the Honors done his Character, might influence the
Conduct of the Sons; secondly, for that in attempting
to compliment the Sons on their own Merits, there was
always found an extreme Scarcity of Matter. Hence _the
Father, the honored and honorable Father_, was so
often repeated, that the Sons themselves grew sick of
it; and have been heard to say to each other with
Disgust, when told that A, B, and C. were come to wait
upon them with Addresses on some public Occasion,
"_Then I suppose we shall hear more about our Father._"
So that, let me tell the Prefacer, who perhaps was
unacquainted with this Anecdote, that if he hop'd to
curry more Favor with the Family, by the Inscription he
has fram'd for that great Man's Monument, he may find
himself mistaken; for,--there is too much in it of _our
Father_.
If therefore, he would erect a Monument to the Sons,
the Votes of Assembly, which are of such Credit with
him, will furnish him with ample Materials for his
Inscription.
To save him Trouble, I will essay a Sketch for him, in
the Lapidary Style, tho' mostly in the Expressions, and
everywhere in the Sense and Spirit of the Assembly's
Resolves and Messages.
Be this a Memorial
Of T-- and R-- P--,
P-- of P,--
Who, with Estates immense,
Almost beyond Computation,
When their own Province,
And the whole _British_ Empire
Were engag'd in a bloody and most expensive War,
Begun for the Defence of those Estates,
Could yet meanly desire
To have those very Estates
Totally or Partially
Exempted from Taxation,
While their Fellow-Subjects all around them, Groan'd
Under the Universal Burthen.
To gain this Point,
They refus'd the necessary Laws
For the Defence of their People,
And suffer'd their Colony to welter in its Blood,
Rather than abate in the least
Of these their dishonest Pretensions.
The Privileges granted by their Father
Wisely and benevolently
To encourage the first Settlers of the Province,
They,
Foolishly and cruelly,
Taking Advantage of public Distress,
Have extorted from the Posterity of those Settlers;
And are daily endeavouring to reduce them
To the most abject Slavery:
Tho' to the Virtue and Industry of those People
In improving their Country,
They owe all that they possess and enjoy.
A striking Instance
Of human Depravity and Ingratitude;
And an irrefragable Proof,
That Wisdom and Goodness
Do not descend with an Inheritance;
But that ineffable Meanness
May be connected with unbounded Fortune.
It may well be doubted whether any one had ever been subjected to such
overwhelming lapidation as this since the time of the early Christian
martyrs.
There are many other deadly thrusts in the Preface, and nowhere else are
the issues between the Proprietaries and the People so clearly presented,
but the very completeness of the paper renders it too long for further
quotation.
Franklin, however, was by no means allowed to walk up and down the field,
vainly challenging a champion to come out from the opposing host and
contend with him. At his towering front the missiles of the Proprietary
Party were mainly directed. Beneath one caricature of him were these lines:
"Fight dog, fight bear! You're all my friends:
By you I shall attain my ends,
For I can never be content
Till I have got the government.
But if from this attempt I fall,
Then let the Devil take you all!"
Another writer strove in his lapidary zeal to fairly bury Franklin beneath
a whole cairn of opprobrious accusations, consuming nine pages of printed
matter in the effort to visit his political tergiversation, his greed for
power, his immorality and other sins, with their proper deserts, and ending
with this highly rhetorical apostrophe:
"Reader, behold this striking Instance of
Human Depravity and Ingratitude;
An irrefragable Proof
That neither the Capital services of _Friends_
Nor the attracting Favours of the Fair,
Can fix the Sincerity of a Man,
_Devoid of Principles_ and
Ineffably mean:
Whose ambition is
POWER,
And whose intention is
TYRANNY."
The illegitimacy of William Franklin, of course, was freely used during the
conflict as a means of paining and discrediting Franklin. In a pamphlet
entitled, _What is sauce for a Goose is also Sauce for a Gander_, the
writer asserted that the mother of William was a woman named Barbara, who
worked in Franklin's house as a servant for ten pounds a year, that she
remained in this position until her death and that Franklin then stole her
to the grave in silence without pall, tomb or monument. A more refined
spirit, which could not altogether free itself from the undertow of its
admiration for such an extraordinary man, penned these lively lines
entitled, "Inscription on a Curious Stove in the Form of An Urn, Contrived
in such a Manner As To Make The Flame Descend Instead of Rising from the
Fire, Invented by Dr. Franklin."
"Like a Newton sublimely he soared
To a summit before unattained,
New regions of science explored
And the palm of philosophy gained.
"With a spark which he caught from the skies
He displayed an unparalleled wonder,
And we saw with delight and surprise
That his rod could secure us from thunder.
"Oh! had he been wise to pursue
The track for his talents designed,
What a tribute of praise had been due
To the teacher and friend of mankind.
"But to covet political fame
Was in him a degrading ambition,
The spark that from Lucifer came
And kindled the blaze of sedition.
"Let candor then write on his urn,
Here lies the renowned inventor
Whose fame to the skies ought to burn
But inverted descends to the centre."
The election began at nine o'clock in the morning on October 1, 1764.
Franklin and Galloway headed the "Old Ticket," and Willing and Bryan the
"New." The latter ticket was supported by the Dutch Calvinists, the
Presbyterians and many of the Dutch Lutherans and Episcopalians; the former
by the Quakers and Moravians and some of the McClenaghanites. So great was
the concourse of voters that, until midnight, it took fifteen minutes for
one of them to work his way from the end of the line of eager electors to
the polling place. Excitement was at white heat, and, while the election
was pending, hands were busy scattering squibs and campaign appeals in
English and German among the crowd. Towards three the next morning, the
new-ticket partisans moved that the polls be closed, but the motion was
opposed by their old-ticket foes, because they wished to bring out a
reserve of aged or lame retainers who could not stand long upon their feet.
These messengers were dispatched to bring in such retainers from their
homes in chairs and litters, and, when the new-ticket men saw the success,
with which the old-ticket men were marshalling their recruits, they, too,
began to scour the vicinage for votes, and so successful were the two
parties in mobilizing their reserves that the polls did not close until
three o'clock in the afternoon of the second day. Not until the third day
were the some 3900 real and fraudulent votes cast counted; and, when the
count was over, it was found that Franklin and Galloway had been defeated.
"Franklin," said an eye-witness of the election, "died like a philosopher.
But Mr. Galloway agonized in death like a mortal deist, who has no hopes of
a future life."
As for Franklin, his enemies had simply kicked him upstairs. A majority of
the persons returned as elected belonged to his faction, and, despite the
indignant eloquence of Dickinson, who declared him to be the most bitterly
disliked man in Pennsylvania, the Assembly, by a vote of nineteen to
eleven, selected him as the agent of the Province to go over to England,
and assist Richard Jackson, its standing agent, in "representing,
soliciting and transacting the affairs" of the Province for the ensuing
year.
The minority protested; and moved that its protest be spread upon the
minutes, and, when this motion was denied, it published its remonstrance in
the newspapers. This act provoked a pamphlet in reply from Franklin
entitled _Remarks on a Late Protest_. Though shorter it is as good, as far
as it goes, as the preface to Galloway's speech. He tosses the protestants
and their reasons for believing him unfit for the agency on his horns with
astonishing ease and strength, calls attention to the trifling majority of
some twenty-five votes by which he was returned defeated, and chills the
habit that we often indulge of lauding the political integrity and decorum
of our American ancestors at our own expense by inveighing against the
"many Perjuries procured among the wretched Rabble brought to swear
themselves intitled to a Vote" and roundly saying to the protestants to
their faces, "Your Artifices did not prevail everywhere; nor your double
Tickets, and Whole Boxes of Forged Votes. A great Majority of the
new-chosen Assembly were of the old Members, and remain uncorrupted."
Apart from the reference to the illegitimacy of William Franklin, Franklin
had passed through the heated contest with the Proprietaries without the
slightest odor of fire upon his garments. With his hatred of contention, it
is natural enough that he should have written to Collinson, when the pot of
contention was boiling so fiercely in Pennsylvania in 1764: "The general
Wish seems to be a King's Government. If that is not to be obtain'd, many
talk of quitting the Province, and among them your old Friend, who is tired
of these Contentions & longs for philosophic Ease and Leisure." But he did
not overstate the case when he wrote to Samuel Rhoads in the succeeding
year from London, "The Malice of our Adversaries I am well acquainted with,
but hitherto it has been Harmless; all their Arrows shot against us, have
been like those that Rabelais speaks of which were headed with Butter
harden'd in the Sun."
Franklin was a doughty antagonist when at bay, but he had few obdurate
resentments, and was quick to see the redeeming virtues of even those who
had wronged him. He assisted in the circulation of John Dickinson's famous
Farmer's Letters, and curiously enough when Dickinson was the President of
the State of Pennsylvania at the close of the Revolution, and the 130,000
pounds which that State had agreed to pay for the vacant lots and
unappropriated wilderness lands of the Penns was claimed to be an
inadequate consideration by some of them, he gave to John Penn, the son of
Thomas Penn, a letter of recommendation to "the Civilities and Friendship"
of Dickinson.
I would beg leave to mention it to your Excellency's
Consideration [he said], whether it would not be
reputable for the Province, in the cooler Season of
Peace to reconsider that Act, and if the Allowance made
to the Family should be found inadequate, to regulate
it according to Equity, since it becomes a Virgin State
to be particularly careful of its Reputation, and to
guard itself not only against committing Injustice, but
against even the suspicion of it.
But nothing better proves what a selfish cur Thomas Penn was than the fact
that, more than twenty years after the election, of which we have been
speaking, so magnanimous a man as Franklin could express this sober
estimate of his conduct and character in a letter to Jan Ingenhousz:
In my own Judgment, when I consider that for near 80
Years, viz., from the Year 1700, William Penn and his
Sons receiv'd the Quit-rents which were originally
granted for the Support of Government, and yet refused
to support the Government, obliging the People to make
a fresh Provision for its Support all that Time, which
cost them vast Sums, as the most necessary Laws were
not to be obtain'd but at the Price of making such
Provision; when I consider the Meanness and cruel
Avarice of the late Proprietor, in refusing for several
Years of War, to consent to any Defence of the
Frontiers ravaged all the while by the Enemy, unless
his Estate should be exempted from paying any Part of
the Expence, not to mention other Atrocities too long
for this letter, I can not but think the Family well
off, and that it will be prudent in them to take the
Money and be quiet. William Penn, the First Proprietor,
Father of Thomas, the Husband of the present Dowager,
was a wise and good Man, and as honest to the People as
the extream Distress of his Circumstances would permit
him to be, but the said Thomas was a miserable Churl,
always intent upon Griping and Saving; and whatever
Good the Father may have done for the Province was
amply undone by the Mischief received from the Son, who
never did anything that had the Appearance of
Generosity or Public Spirit but what was extorted from
him by Solicitation and the Shame of Backwardness in
Benefits evidently incumbent on him to promote, and
which was done at last in the most ungracious manner
possible. The Lady's Complaints of not duly receiving
her Revenues from America are habitual; they were the
same during all the Time of my long Residence in
London, being then made by her Husband as Excuses for
the Meanness of his Housekeeping and his Deficiency in
Hospitality, tho' I knew at the same time that he was
then in full Receipt of vast Sums annually by the Sale
of Lands, Interest of Money, and Quit-rents. But
probably he might conceal this from his Lady to induce
greater Economy as it is known that he ordered no more
of his Income home than was absolutely necessary for
his Subsistence, but plac'd it at Interest in
Pennsylvania & the Jerseys, where he could have 6 and 7
per Cent, while Money bore no more than 5 per cent in
England. I us'd often to hear of those Complaints, and
laugh at them, perceiving clearly their Motive. They
serv'd him on other as well as on domestic Occasions.
You remember our Rector of St. Martin's Parish, Dr.
Saunders. He once went about, during a long and severe
Frost, soliciting charitable Contributions to purchase
Coals for poor Families. He came among others to me,
and I gave him something. It was but little, very
little, and yet it occasion'd him to remark, "You are
more bountiful on this Occasion than your wealthy
Proprietary, Mr. Penn, but he tells me he is distress'd
by not receiving his Incomes from America." The Incomes
of the family there must still be very great, for they
have a Number of Manors consisting of the best Lands,
which are preserved to them, and vast Sums at Interest
well secur'd by Mortgages; so that if the Dowager does
not receive her Proportion, there must be some Fault in
her Agents. You will perceive by the length of this
Article that I have been a little _echauffe_ by her
making the Complaints you mention to the Princess
Dowager of Lichtenstein at Vienna. The Lady herself is
good & amiable, and I should be glad to serve her in
anything just and reasonable; but I do not at present
see that I can do more than I have done.
And Thomas Penn, too, like St. Sebastian, will never be drawn without
_that_ arrow in _his_ side.
When Franklin was appointed agent, the provincial treasury was empty, but
so deeply aroused was public sentiment, in favor of the substitution of a
royal for the proprietary government, that the merchants of Philadelphia in
a few hours subscribed a sum of eleven hundred pounds, to defray his
expenses. Of this amount, however, he refused to accept but five hundred
pounds, and, after a trying passage of thirty days, he found himself again
at No. 7 Craven Street.
So far as the immediate object of his mission was concerned, it proved a
failure. Before he left Pennsylvania, George Grenville, the Prime Minister
of England, had called the agents of the American Colonies, resident at
London, together and informed them that a debt of seventy-three millions
sterling had been imposed upon England by the recent war, and that he
proposed to ask Parliament to place a part of it upon the American
Colonies. In the stream of events, which began with this proposal, the
proprietary government in Pennsylvania and the royal governments in other
American Colonies were alike destined to be swept away.
After the arrival of Franklin in England, the local struggle in
Pennsylvania was of too secondary importance to command serious attention;
and, beyond a few meagre allusions to it, there is no mention made of it in
his letters. The temper of the English Ministry was not friendly to such a
revolutionary change as the abolition of the proprietary government, and
Franklin, after he had been in England a few years, had too many matters of
continental concern to look after to have any time left for a single phase
of the general conflict between the Colonies and the mother country.
Before passing to his share in this conflict, a word should be said about
the Albany Congress, in which he was the guiding spirit. In 1754, when
another war between England and France was feared, a Congress of
Commissioners from the several Colonies was ordered by the Lords of Trade
to be held at Albany. The object of the call was to bring about a
conference between the Colonies and the Chiefs of the Six Nations as to the
best means of defending their respective territories from invasion by the
French. When the order reached Pennsylvania, Governor Hamilton communicated
it to the Assembly, and requested that body to provide proper presents for
the Indians, who were to assemble at Albany; and he named Franklin and
Isaac Norris, the Speaker of the Assembly, as the Commissioners from
Pennsylvania, to act in conjunction with Thomas Penn and Richard Peters,
the Secretary of the Proprietary Government. The presents were provided,
and the nominations confirmed by the Assembly, and Franklin and his
colleagues arrived at Albany in the month of June, 1754.
He brought his usual zeal to the movement. Before he left Philadelphia,
with a view to allaying the jealousies, which existed between the different
colonies, he published an article in his _Gazette_ pointing out the
importance of unanimity, which was accompanied by a woodcut representing a
snake severed into as many sections as there were colonies. Each section
bore the first letter of the name of a colony, and beneath the whole, in
capital letters, were the words, "Join or die." On his way to Albany, he
drafted a plan of union, looking to the permanent defence of the colonies,
which closely resembled a similar plan of union, put forward thirty-two
years before by Daniel Coxe in a tract entitled _A Description of the
English Province of Carolina_. The Congress was attended by Commissioners
from all the Colonies except New Jersey, Virginia, the Carolinas and
Georgia. One of its members was Thomas Hutchinson, of Massachusetts, who
was to bring down on Franklin's head the most trying crisis in his career.
James De Lancey, the Lieutenant-Governor of New York, was chosen to be its
presiding officer. Mingled with the Commissioners and the inhabitants of
Albany, as they walked its streets, were the representatives of the
Iroquois, whose tribes had cherished an unappeasable hatred for the French
ever since the fatal day when Frontenac had thrown in his fortunes with
those of their traditional enemies, the Hurons. Much time had to be
expended by the Commissioners in distributing among them the presents that
they had brought for them, and in conducting with ceremonious and tedious
formality the long powwows in which the Indian heart, if there was such a
thing, so dearly delighted. When the assembly entered upon its
deliberations, a committee of seven was appointed by it to consider the
objects of the Congress, and it was composed of one commissioner from each
colony; Franklin being the member from Pennsylvania, and Thomas Hutchinson
the member from Massachusetts. After the Commissioners gathered at Albany,
it was found that plans of union had been framed by other members of the
Congress besides Franklin. All the plans were compared and considered by
the committee, and Franklin's was adopted, amended and reported to the
Congress, and was by it, after a long debate, approved, and recommended to
the favorable consideration of Parliament and the King whose assent, it was
conceded, was essential to its efficacy.
It was a simple but comprehensive scheme of government. The several
colonies were to remain independent except so far as they surrendered their
autonomy for purposes of mutual defence; there were to be a
President-General, appointed and paid by the King, who was to be the
executive arm of the Union, and a Grand Council of forty-eight members,
elected by the different Colonial Assemblies, which was to be its
legislative organ. The first meeting of the Council was to be at
Philadelphia[16]; it was to meet once a year or oftener, if there was need,
at such times and places as it should fix on adjournment, or as should be
fixed, in case of an emergency, by the call of the President-General, who
was authorized to issue such a call, with the consent of seven members of
the Council; the tenure of members of the Council was to be for three
years, and, on the death or resignation of a member, the vacancy was to be
filled by the Assembly of his colony at its next sitting; after the
election of the first members of the Council, the representation of the
colonies in it was to be in proportion to their respective contributions to
the Treasury of the Union, but no colony was to be represented by more than
seven nor less than two members; the Council was to have the power to
choose its Speaker, and was to be neither dissolved, prorogued nor
continued in session longer than six weeks at one time without its consent,
or the special command of the Crown; its members were to be allowed for
their services ten shillings sterling a day, whether in session or
journeying to or from the place of meeting; twenty-five members were to
constitute a quorum, provided that among this number was at least one
member from a majority of the Colonies; the assent of the President General
was to be essential to the validity of all acts of the Council, and it was
to be his duty to see that they were carried into execution, and the
President-General and Council were to negotiate all treaties with the
Indians, declare war and make peace with them, regulate all trade with
them, purchase for the Crown from them all lands sold by them, and not
within the limits of the old Colonies; and make and govern new settlements
on such lands until erected into formal colonies. They were also to enlist
and pay soldiers, build forts and equip vessels for the defence of the
Colonies, but were to have no power to impress men in any colony without
the consent of its assembly; all military and naval officers of the Union
were to be named by the President-General with the approval of the Council,
and all civil officers of the Union were to be named by the Council with
the approval of the President-General; in case of vacancies, resulting from
death or removal, in any such offices, they were to be filled by the
Governors of the Provinces in which they occurred until appointments could
be made in the regular way; and the President-General and Council were also
to have the power to appoint a General Treasurer for the Union and a Local
Treasurer for the Union in each colony, when necessary. All funds were to
be disbursed on the joint order of the President-General and the Council,
except when sums had been previously appropriated for particular purposes,
and the President-General had been specially authorized to draw upon them;
the general accounts of the Union were to be each year communicated to the
several Colonial Assemblies; and, for the limited purposes of the Union,
the President-General and the Council were authorized to enact laws, and to
levy general duties, imposts and taxes; the laws so enacted to be
transmitted to the King in Council for his approbation, and, if not
disapproved within three years, to remain in force. A final feature of the
plan was the provision that each Colony might in a sudden emergency take
measures for its own defence, and call upon the President-General and
Council for reimbursement.
The Albany plan of union was one of the direct lineal antecedents of the
Federal Constitution. In other words, it was one of the really significant
things in our earlier history that tended to foster the habit of union,
without which that constitution could never have been adopted. But, when
considered in the light of the jealousy with which the mother country then
regarded the Colonies, and with which the Colonies regarded each other, it
is not at all surprising that the plan recommended by it should have to
come to nothing. "Its fate was singular," says Franklin in the
_Autobiography_. "The assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought
there was too much _prerogative_ in it, and in England it was judg'd to
have too much of the _democratic_." Even in Pennsylvania, though the
Governor laid it before the Assembly with a handsome tribute to "the great
clearness and strength of judgment," with which it had been drawn up, that
body, when Franklin was absent, condemned it without giving it any serious
consideration. In England it met with the disapproval of the Board of
Trade, and "another scheme," to recur to the _Autobiography_, "was form'd,
supposed to answer the same purpose better, whereby the governors of the
provinces, with some members of their respective councils, were to meet and
order the raising of troops, building of forts, etc., and to draw on the
treasury of Great Britain for the expense, which was afterwards to be
refunded by an act of Parliament laying a tax on America."
The Albany plan was an eminently wise one, and Franklin was probably
justified in forming the favorable view of it which he expressed in these
words in the _Autobiography_:
The different and contrary reasons of dislike to my
plan makes me suspect that it was really the true
medium; and I am still of opinion it would have been
happy for both sides the water if it had been adopted.
The colonies, so united, would have been sufficiently
strong to have defended themselves; there would then
have been no need of troops from England; of course,
the subsequent pretence for taxing America, and the
bloody contest it occasioned, would have been avoided.
But such mistakes are not new; history is full of the
errors of states and princes.
"Look round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!"
Those who govern, having much business on their hands,
do not generally like to take the trouble of
considering and carrying into execution new projects.
The best public measures are therefore seldom _adopted
from previous wisdom, but forc'd by the occasion_.
In the autumn of 1754, Franklin made a journey to Boston. There he met
Shirley, and was apprised by him of the plan formed in England for the
defence of the Colonies. This intelligence elicited three notable letters
from him to Shirley in which he succinctly but luminously and vigorously
stated his objections to the plan. In the first letter, he deprecated in
brief but grave general terms a scheme of colonial administration, in which
the people of the Colonies were to be excluded from all share in the choice
of the Grand Council contemplated by the scheme, and were to be taxed by a
Parliament in which they were to have no representation. Where heavy
burdens are laid on the people, it had been found useful, he said, to make
such burdens as much as possible their own acts. The people bear them
better when they have, or think they have, some share in the direction;
and, when any public measures are generally grievous, or even distasteful
to the people, the wheels of government move more heavily.