In the second letter, Franklin states what in his opinion the people of the

Colonies were likely to say of the proposed plan, namely, that they were as

loyal as any other subjects of the King; that there was no reason to doubt

their readiness to grant such sums as they could for the defence of the

Colonies; that they were likely to be better judges of their own military

necessities than the remote English Parliament; that the governors, who

came to the Colonies, often came merely to make their fortunes, and to

return to England, were not always men of the best abilities or integrity,

had little in common with the colonists, and might be inclined to lavish

military expenditures for the sake of the profit to be derived from such

expenditures by them for themselves and their friends and dependents; that

members of colonial councils being appointed by the Crown, on the

recommendation of colonial governors, and being often men of small estates,

and dependent on such governors for place, were too subject to influence;

that Parliament was likely to be misled by such governors and councils; and

yet their combined influence would probably shield them against popular

resentment; that it was deemed an unquestionable right of Englishmen not to

be taxed but by their own consent, given through their representatives, and

that the Colonies had no representation in Parliament; that to tax the

people of the Colonies without such representation, and to exclude them

altogether from the proposed plan was a reflection on their loyalty, or

their patriotism, or their intelligence, and that to tax them without their

consent, was, indeed, more like raising contributions in an enemy's country

than the taxation of Englishmen. Such were some of the objections stated in

this letter to the imposition of taxes on the Colonies by the British

Parliament. There were others of a kindred nature, and still others, based

upon the claim that the Colonies were already paying heavy secondary taxes

to England. Taxes, paid by landholders and artificers in England, Franklin

declared, entered into the prices paid in America for their products, and

were therefore really taxes paid by America to Britain. The difference

between the prices, paid by America for these products, and the cheaper

prices, at which they could be bought in other countries, if America were

allowed to trade with them, was also but a tax paid by America to Britain

and, where the price was paid for goods which America could manufacture

herself, if allowed by Great Britain to do so, the whole of it was but such

a tax. Such a tax, too, was the difference between the price that America

received for its own products in Britain, after the payment of duties, and

the price that it could obtain in other countries, if allowed to trade with

them. In fine, as America was not permitted to regulate its trade, and

restrain the importation and consumption of British superfluities, its

whole wealth ultimately found its way to Great Britain, and, if the

inhabitants of Great Britain were enriched in consequence, and rendered

better able to pay their taxes, that was nearly the same thing as if

America itself was taxed. Of these kinds of indirect taxes America did not

complain, but to pay direct taxes, without being consulted as to whether

they should be laid, or as to how they should be applied, could not but

seem harsh to Englishmen, who could not conceive that by hazarding their

lives and fortunes in subduing and settling new countries, and in extending

the dominion and increasing the commerce of the mother country, they had

forfeited the native rights of Britons; which they thought that, on these

accounts, might well be given to them, even if they had been before in a

state of slavery. Another objection to the scheme, the letter asserted, was

the likelihood that the Governors and Councillors, not being associated

with any representatives of the people, to unite with them in their

measures, and to render these measures palatable to the people, would

become distrusted and odious; and thus would embitter the relations

between governors and governed and bring about total confusion. The letter,

short as it is, sums up almost all the main points of the more copious

argument that was, in a few years, to be made with so much pathos as well

as power by the Colonies against the resolve of the British Ministry to tax

them without their consent.

Franklin's third letter to Shirley is but the statement in embryo of the

sagacious and enlarged views of the policy of Great Britain, with respect

to the Colonies, which he subsequently expressed in so many impressive

forms. The letter is, first of all, interesting as showing that the subject

of promoting a closer union between Great Britain and her colonies by

allowing the latter to be represented in Parliament had already been

discussed by Shirley and Franklin in conversation. It is also an

indication, for all that was said later about the submissive loyalty of the

Colonies, that the sense of injustice and hardship worked by the repressive

effects of the existing British restrictions on American commerce and

manufactures was widely diffused in America. The proposal to allow America

representatives in Parliament would, Franklin thought, be very acceptable

to the Colonies, provided the presentation was a reasonable one in point of

numbers, and provided all the old acts of Parliament, limiting the trade,

or cramping the manufactures, of the Colonies, were, at the same time,

repealed and the cis-Atlantic subjects of Great Britain put on the same

footing of commercial and industrial freedom as its trans-Atlantic

subjects, until a Parliament, in which both were represented, should deem

it to be to the interest of the whole empire that some or all of the

obnoxious laws should be revived. Franklin also was too much of a

latter-day American not to believe that laws, which then seemed to the

colonists to be unjust to them, would be acquiesced in more cheerfully by

them, and be easier of execution, if approved by a Parliament in which they

were represented. The letter ended with a series of original reflections,

highly characteristic of the free play, which marked the mental operations

of the writer in dealing with any subject, encumbered by short-sighted

prejudices. Of what importance was it, he argued, whether manufacturers of

iron lived at Birmingham or Sheffield, or both, since they were still

within the bounds of Great Britain? Could the Goodwin Sands be laid dry by

banks, and land, equal to a large county thereby gained to England, and

presently filled with English inhabitants, would it be right to deprive

such inhabitants of the common privileges enjoyed by other Englishmen, the

right of vending their produce in the same ports, or of making their own

shoes, because a merchant or a shoemaker, living on the old land, might

fancy it more for his advantage to trade or make shoes for them? Would this

be right even if the land was gained at the expense of the State? And would

it seem less right if the charge and labor of gaining the additional

territory to Great Britain had been borne by the settlers themselves?

Now I look on the colonies [Franklin continued] as so

many counties gained to Great Britain, and more

advantageous to it than if they had been gained out of

the seas around its coasts, and joined to its land: For

being in different climates, they afford greater

variety of produce, and being separated by the ocean,

they increase much more its shipping and seamen; and

since they are all included in the British Empire,

which has only extended itself by their means; and the

strength and wealth of the parts are the strength and

wealth of the whole; what imports it to the general

state, whether a merchant, a smith, or a hatter, grow

rich in Old or New England?

To this question, of course, the nineteenth or twentieth century could only

have had one answer; but the eighteenth, blinded by economic delusions, had

many.

In the opinion of Franklin, expressed in his letters to Peter Collinson,

until the Albany plan of union, or something like it, was adopted, no

American war would ever be carried on as it should be, and Indian affairs

would continue to be mismanaged. But he was fair-minded and clear-sighted

enough to see that, if some such plan was not adopted, the fault would lie

with the Colonies rather than with Great Britain. In one of his letters to

Peter Collinson, he declared that, in his opinion, it was not likely that

any of them would agree to the plan, or even propose any amendments to it.

Every Body [he said] cries, a Union is absolutely

necessary; but when they come to the Manner and Form of

the Union, their weak Noddles are perfectly distracted.

So if ever there be an Union, it must be form'd at home

by the Ministry and Parliament. I doubt not but they

will make a good one, and I wish it may be done this

winter.

The essential features of the Albany plan of union were all outlined by

Franklin three or four years before the Albany Congress met, in a letter to

James Parker, his New York partner. A union of the colonies, under existing

conditions, was, he thought, impracticable. If a governor became impressed

with the importance of such a union, and asked the other colonial governors

to recommend it to their assemblies, the request came to nothing, either

because the governors were often on ill terms with their assemblies, and

were seldom the men who exercised the most influence over them, or because

they threw cold water on the request for fear that the cost of such a union

might make the people of their colonies less able or willing to give to

them, or simply because they did not earnestly realize the necessity for

it. Besides, under existing conditions, there was no one to back such a

request or to answer objections to it. A better course would be to select

half a dozen men of good understanding and address, and send them around,

as ambassadors to the different colonies, to urge upon them the expediency

of the union. It would be strange, indeed, Franklin thought, if the six

Iroquois tribes of ignorant savages could be capable of forming a union

which had lasted for ages, and yet ten or a dozen English colonies be

incapable of forming a similar one. These views were elicited by a pamphlet

on the importance of gaining and preserving the friendship of the Indians,

which had been sent to Franklin by Parker, and they constitute a natural

introduction to a brief review of the relations sustained by one of the

most reasonable of the children of men to perhaps the most unreasonable of

all the children of men, the Indian of the American forest.

With the Indians, their habits, characteristics, polity and trade Franklin

was very conversant. Repeatedly, during his lifetime, the frontiers of

Pennsylvania were harried by the tomahawk and scalping-knife. In a letter,

written a few months after Braddock's defeat to Richard Partridge, he

mentions, for instance, that the savages had just surprised and cut off

eight families near Shamokin, killing and scalping thirteen grown persons

and kidnapping twelve children. In another letter to Peter Collinson,

written the next year, he made this appalling summary of what, with the aid

of the French, the revenge of the Delawares for the imposition practised

upon them in the Walking Purchase was supposed to have cost the Province.

"Some Hundreds of Lives lost, many Farms destroy'd and near L100,000 spent,

yet," he added, "the Proprietor refuses to be taxed except for a trifling

Part of his Estate." During the incursions of this period, the Indian

war-parties pushed their outrages to a point only eighty miles from

Philadelphia. A diarist, Thomas Lloyd, who accompanied Franklin on his

expedition to Gnadenhutten, gives us this ghastly description of what they

found there:

Here all round appears nothing but one continued scene

of horror and destruction. Where lately flourished a

happy and peaceful village, it is now all silent and

desolate; the houses burnt; the inhabitants butchered

in the most shocking manner; their mangled bodies, for

want of funerals, exposed to birds and beasts of prey;

and all kinds of mischief perpetrated that wanton

cruelty can invent.

Not even a Rizpah left to brood over the scalpless forms, and to drive away

the buzzard and the wild things of the forest! In this scene, and the

pettier but similarly tragic scenes of death and havoc, furnished, from

time to time, over a wide range of frontier territory, by lonely fields and

cabins, upon which the tomahawk had ruthlessly descended, is to be found

the psychology of the furious passions, which hurried the wretched

Conestoga Indians out of existence, and of the outspoken or covert

sympathy, which made a mockery of the attempt to bring their butchers to

justice. Even men cooler than the Paxton Boys, hardened by revolting

cruelties, not distinguishable from those inflicted by talon or tooth,

except in their atrocious refinements of torture, and yet brought home in

some form or other to almost every fireside in Pennsylvania, came to think

of killing and mutilating an Indian with no more compunction than if he

were a rattlesnake. James Parton mentions with a natural shudder the fact

that Governor John Penn, after the retirement of the Paxton Boys from

Philadelphia, offered the following bounties: For every captive male Indian

of any hostile tribe one hundred and fifty dollars; for every female

captive one hundred and thirty-eight dollars, for the scalp of a male

Indian one hundred and thirty-four dollars, for the scalp of a female

Indian fifty dollars. To Franklin himself, when on the Gnadenhutten

expedition, fell the duty of instructing a Captain Vanetta, who was about

to raise a company of foot-soldiers for the protection of upper Smithfield,

while its inhabitants were looking after their corn, that forty dollars

would be allowed and paid by the Provincial Government for each Indian

scalp produced by one of his men with the proper attestations. How

accustomed even Franklin became to the ever-repeated story of Indian

barbarities, and to occasional reprisals by the whites, hardly less

shocking, is revealed by a brief letter from him to Peter Collinson in

1764, in which, with the dry conciseness of an old English chronicler, he

reports the narratives of a British soldier, Owens, who had deserted to the

Indians, and a white boy, whom Owens had brought back with him from

captivity, together with five propitiatory Indian scalps, when he returned

to his former allegiance.

The Account given by him and the Boy [wrote Franklin]

is, that they were with a Party of nine Indians, to

wit, 5 men, 2 Women, and 2 Children, coming down

Susquehanah to fetch Corn from their last Year's

Planting Place; that they went ashore and encamp'd at

Night and made a Fire by which they slept; that in the

Night Owens made the White Boy get up from among the

Indians, and go to the other side of the Fire; and then

taking up the Indians' Guns, he shot two of the Men

immediately, and with his Hatchet dispatch'd another

Man together with the Women and Children. Two men only

made their escape. Owens scalp'd the 5 grown Persons,

and bid the White Boy scalp the Children; but he

declin'd it, so they were left.

Franklin, however, was not the man to say, as General Philip Sheridan was

many years afterwards to be reputed to have said, that the only good Indian

is a dead Indian. In the course of his varied life, he had many

opportunities for becoming familiarly acquainted with the history and

character of the Indians, and forming a just judgment as to how far their

fiendish outbreaks were due to sheer animal ferocity, and how far to the

provocation of ill-treatment by the whites; and he was too just not to know

and declare that almost every war between the Indians and the whites in his

time had been occasioned by some injustice of the latter towards the

former. As far back as 1753, he and Isaac Norris, the Speaker of the

Assembly, were appointed commissioners by it to unite with Richard Peters,

the Secretary of the Proprietary Government, in negotiating a treaty with

the western Indians at Carlisle, and the manner, in which this treaty was

conducted, is told in the _Autobiography_ in his lively way. In 1756, he

again served as a commissioner, this time with William Logan and Richard

Peters, two members of the Governor's Council, and Joseph Fox, William

Masters and John Hughes, three members of the Assembly, for the purpose of

negotiating a treaty at Easton with Teedyuscung, the King of the Delawares.

At this conference, Governor Denny himself was likewise present. In 1763,

he was appointed one of the commissioners to expend the money appropriated

by the Assembly for levying a military force to defend the Pennsylvania

frontier against the Indians. The Albany Congress, as we have seen, brought

him into direct personal contact with the Iroquois who, to a fell savagery

only to be compared with that of the most ferocious beasts of the jungle,

united a capacity for political cohesion and the rudiments of civilized

life which gave them quite an exceptional standing in the history of the

American Indian. By virtue of these circumstances, to say nothing of other

sources of knowledge and information, Franklin obtained an insight, at once

shrewd and profound, into everything that related to the American Indian,

including the best methods by which his good will could be conciliated and

his trade secured. The following remarks in his Canada Pamphlet give us a

good idea of the mobility and special adaptation to his physical

environment which made the Indian, in proportion to his numbers, the most

formidable foe that the world has ever seen:

They go to war, as they call it, in small parties, from

fifty men down to five. Their hunting life has made

them acquainted with the whole country, and scarce any

part of it is impracticable to such a party. They can

travel thro' the woods even by night, and know how to

conceal their tracks. They pass easily between your

forts undiscovered; and privately approach the

settlements of your frontier inhabitants. They need no

convoys of provisions to follow them; for whether they

are shifting from place to place in the woods, or lying

in wait for an opportunity to strike a blow, every

thicket and every stream furnishes so small a number

with sufficient subsistence. When they have surpriz'd

separately, and murder'd and scalp'd a dozen families,

they are gone with inconceivable expedition through

unknown ways, and 'tis very rare that pursuers have any

chance of coming up with them. In short, long

experience has taught our planters, that they cannot

rely upon forts as a security against _Indians_: The

inhabitants of _Hackney_ might as well rely upon the

tower of _London_ to secure them against highwaymen and

housebreakers.

This is the Indian seen from the point of view of the soldier and colonial

administrator. He is fully as interesting, when considered by Franklin in a

letter to Richard Jackson from the point of view of the philosopher:

They visit us frequently, and see the advantages that

arts, sciences, and compact societies procure us. They

are not deficient in natural understanding; and yet

they have never shown any inclination to change their

manner of life for ours, or to learn any of our arts.

When an Indian child has been brought up among us,

taught our language, and habituated to our customs,

yet, if he goes to see his relatives, and makes one

Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him

ever to return. And that this is not natural to them

merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that

when white persons, of either sex, have been taken

prisoners by the Indians, and lived a while with them,

though ransomed by their friends, and treated with all

imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay

among the English, yet in a short time they become

disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and

pains that are necessary to support it, and take the

first opportunity of escaping again into the woods,

from whence there is no redeeming them. One instance I

remember to have heard, where the person was brought

home to possess a good estate; but, finding some care

necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a

younger brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun

and a match-coat, with which he took his way again into

the wilderness.

So that I am apt to imagine that close societies,

subsisting by labour and art, arose first not from

choice but from necessity, when numbers, being driven

by war from their hunting grounds, and prevented by

seas, or by other nations, from obtaining other hunting

grounds, were crowded together into some narrow

territories, which without labour could not afford them

food.

A man had to be humorous, indeed, to see anything humorous in the American

Indian, but Franklin's sense of the ludicrous was equal to even that

supreme achievement. We have already referred to the image of hell that he

saw in the nocturnal orgies of the drunken Indians at Carlisle. Prudently

enough, they were not allowed by the Provincial Commissioners to have the

rum that was in store for them until they had ratified the treaty entered

into on that occasion; an artifice that doubtless proved quite as effective

in hastening its consummation as the one adopted by Chaplain Beatty of

distributing the rum before, instead of after, prayers, did in securing the

punctual attendance of Franklin's soldiers at them. But diabolical as were

the gestures and yells of the drink-crazed Indians, men and women, at

Carlisle, Franklin contrived to bring away a facetious story from the

conference for the _Autobiography_. The orator, who called on the

Commissioners the next day, after the debauch, for the purpose of

apologizing for the conduct of himself and his people,

laid it upon the rum; and then endeavoured to excuse

the rum by saying, "_The Great Spirit, who made all

things, made everything for some use, and whatever use

he design'd anything for, that use it should always be

put to. Now, when he made rum, he said 'Let this be for

the Indians to get drunk with'; and it must be so._"...

And indeed [adds Franklin] if it be the design of

Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make

room for cultivators of the earth, it seems not

improbable that rum may be the appointed means. It has

already annihilated all the tribes who formerly

inhabited the seacoast.

There is another good Indian story in the letter from Franklin to Richard

Jackson from which we have recently quoted. When everything had been

settled at a conference between the Six Nations and some of the Colonies,

and nothing remained to be gone through with but a mutual exchange of

civilities, the English Commissioners told the Indians that they had in

their country a college for the instruction of youth in the various

languages, arts and sciences, and that, if the Indians were willing, they

would take back with them a half-dozen of their brightest lads and bring

them up in the best manner. The Indians, after weighing the proposal,

replied that they remembered that some of their youths had formerly been

educated at that college, but that it had been observed that for a long

time, after they returned to their friends, they were absolutely good for

nothing; being neither acquainted with the true methods of killing deer,

catching beaver, or surprising an enemy. The proposition, however, they

regarded as a mark of kindness and good will on the part of the English,

which merited a grateful return, and therefore, if the English gentlemen

would send a dozen or two of their children to Opondago, the Great Council

would take care of their education, bring them up in what was really the

best manner, and make men of them.[17]

That the whites had much to answer for in their intercourse with the

Indians Franklin saw clearly. The Canada Pamphlet speaks of the goods sold

to them by French and English traders as loaded with all the impositions

that fraud and knavery could contrive to enhance their value, and in one of

Franklin's notes on the Albany plan of union he referred many Indian wars

to cheating, practised by Indian traders on Indians, whom they had first

made drunk. These traders he termed on another occasion, "the most vicious

and abandoned Wretches of our Nation." "I do not believe we shall ever have

a firm peace with the Indians," he wrote to Thomas Pownall in 1756, "till

we have well drubbed them." This was the natural language of a man who had

no toleration for wanton applications of force but did not shrink from

applying it, when nothing else would answer. But no man could have been

more fearless than he in denouncing outrages committed by the whites upon

inoffensive Indians, or Indians of any sort, when not on the war path. "It

grieves me," he wrote to Sir William Johnson in 1766, "to hear that our

Frontier People are yet greater Barbarians than the Indians, and continue

to murder them in time of peace."

His views about the proper methods of controlling the Indians and securing

their trade were worthy of his liberal and enlightened mind. Their

friendship he deemed to be of the greatest consequence to the Colonies, and

the best way to make sure of it, he thought, was to regulate trade between

the whites and the Indians in such a way as to convince the latter that, as

between France and England, the English goods were the best and cheapest,

and the English merchants the most honorable, and to form a union between

the Colonies strong enough to make the Indians feel that they could depend

on it for protection against the French, or that they would suffer at its

hands if they should break with it. The Indian trade, for which the

colonists had sacrificed so much blood and treasure, was, he boldly

reminded his auditors, in his famous examination before the House of

Commons, not an American but a British interest, maintained with British

manufactures for the profit of British merchants and manufacturers. In a

letter to Cadwallader Colden, he even suggested that the Government should

take it over, and furnish goods to the Indians at the cheapest prices,

without regard to profit, as Massachusetts had done.

Other suggestions of Franklin with respect to the conduct of the Indian

trade were hardly less interesting. Pittsburg, he contended, after the

restoration of peace in 1759, should be retained by the English, with a

small tract of land about it for supplying the fort with provisions, and

with sufficient hunting grounds in its vicinity for the peculiar needs of

their Indian friends. A fort, and a small population of sober, orderly

people there, he thought, would help to preserve the friendship of the

Indians by bringing trade and the arts into close proximity to them, and

would bridle them, if seduced from their allegiance by the French, or

would, at least, stand in the gap, and be a shield to the other American

frontiers.

Another suggestion of his was that, in time of peace, parties should be

allowed to issue from frontier garrisons on hunting expeditions, with or

without Indians, and enjoy the profits of the peltry that they brought

back. In this way, a body of wood-runners would be formed, well acquainted

with the country and of great value in time of war as guides and scouts.

Every Indian was a hunter, every Indian was a disciplined soldier. They

hunted in precisely the same manner as they made war. The only difference

was that in hunting they skulked, surprised and killed animals, and, in

making war, men. It was just such soldiers that the colonies needed; for

the European military discipline was of little use in the woods. These

words were penned four or five years before the battle of the Monongahela

confirmed so bloodily their truth. Franklin also thought that a number of

sober, discreet smiths should be encouraged to reside among the Indians.

The whole subsistence of Indians depended on their keeping their guns in

order. They were a people that thought much of their temporal, but little

of their spiritual interests, and, therefore, a smith was more likely to

influence them than a Jesuit. In a letter to his son, he mentions that he

had dined recently with Lord Shelburne, and had availed himself of the

occasion to urge that a colony should be planted in the Illinois country

for furnishing provisions to military garrisons more cheaply, clinching the

hold of the English upon the country, and building up a strength which, in

the event of a future war, might easily be poured down the Mississippi upon

the lower country, and into the Bay of Mexico, to be used against Cuba or

Mexico itself.

The reader has already had brought to his attention the provisions of the

Albany plan of union which were intended to vest in the government sketched

by it the control of Indian treaties, trade and purchases.

The ignorance of the Indian character, which prevailed in England, often,

we may be sure, brought a smile to the face of Franklin. Among his writings

are remarks made at the request of Lord Shelburne on a plan for regulating

Indian affairs submitted to him by the latter. It is to be regretted that

the circumstances of the case were such that it was impossible for Franklin

to escape the restraints of official gravity even when he was assigning the

rambling habits of the Indians as his reason for believing that an Indian

chief would hardly be willing to reside permanently with one of the

functionaries, who was to aid in carrying the plan into effect, or when he

was giving the high value, that the Indian attached to personal liberty,

and the low value, that he attached to personal property, as his reason for

thinking that imprisonment for debt was scarcely consistent with aboriginal

ideas of equity. The plan was of a piece with the suggestion attributed to

Dean Tucker that the colonies should be protected from Indian incursions by

clearing away the trees and bushes from a tract of land, a mile in width,

at the back of the colonies. As Benjamin Vaughan said, this brilliant idea

not only involved a first cost (not to mention the fact that trees and

bushes grow again when cut down) of some L128,000 for every hundred miles

but quite overlooked the fact that the Indians, like other people, knew the

difference between day and night. He forgot, said Franklin, "that there is

a night in every twenty-four hours."

The distinction, which Franklin enjoyed in England, during his first

mission to that country, was due to his philosophical and literary

reputation, but his second mission to England and the colonial agencies,

held by him while it lasted, afforded him an opportunity for playing a

conspicuous part in the stirring transactions, which ushered in the

American Revolution. Apart from all other considerations, his place in the

history of these transactions will always be an extraordinary one because

of the consummate wisdom and self-restraint exhibited by him in his

relations to the controversy that finally ended in a fratricidal war

between Great Britain and her colonies, which should never have been

kindled. To the issues, involved in this controversy, he brought a vision

as undimmed by political bigotry and false economic conceptions of colonial

dependence as that of a British statesman of the present day. It is easy to

believe that, if his counsels had been heeded, Great Britain and the

communities, which make up the American Union, would now be connected by

some close organic or federative tie. It is, at least, certain that no

other Englishman on either side of the Atlantic saw as clearly as he did

the true interests of both parties to the fatal conflict, or strove with

such unerring sagacity and sober moderation of purpose to avert the breach

between the two great branches of the English People. In no way can the

extreme folly, which forced independence upon the colonies, be better

measured than by contrasting the heated vehemence of Franklin's later

feelings about the King and Parliament with his earlier sentiments towards

the country that he did not cease to call "home" until to call it so would

have been mockery. Devoted attachment to England, the land endeared to him

by so many ties of family, intellectual sympathy and friendship, profound

loyalty to the British Crown, deep-seated reverence for the laws,

institutions and usages of the noble people, in whose inheritance of

enlightened freedom he vainly insisted upon having his full share as an

Englishman, were all characteristics of his, before the alienation of the

colonies from Great Britain.[18]

His earlier utterances breathe a spirit of ingrained loyalty to the British

Crown. The French were "mischievous neighbors," France "that perfidious

nation." "I congratulate you on the defeat of Jacobitism by your glorious

Duke," he wrote to Strahan in 1746, after the Duke of Cumberland had earned

his title of "The Butcher" at Culloden. "I pray God to preserve long to

Great Britain the English Laws, Manners, Liberties, and Religion," was an

exclamation seven years later in one of his letters to Richard Jackson.

"Wise and good prince," "the best of Kings," "Your good King," are some of

the terms in which he expressed his opinion of his royal master. In the

light of later events, there is something little short of amusing about the

horoscope which he framed of the reign of George the Third in a letter to

Strahan a year or so before the passage of the Stamp Act. Replying to

forebodings of Strahan, Franklin said of the Prince, whom he styled "Our

virtuous young King":

On the contrary, I am of Opinion that his Virtue and

the Consciousness of his sincere Intentions to make his

People happy will give him Firmness and Steadiness in

his Measures and in the Support of the honest Friends

he has chosen to serve him; and when that Firmness is

fully perceiv'd, Faction will dissolve and be

dissipated like a Morning Fog before the rising Sun,

leaving the rest of the Day clear with a Sky serene and

cloudless. Such after a few of the first Years will be

the future course of his Majesty's Reign, which I

predict will be happy and truly glorious.

In his letter to Polly about the French King and Queen, whom he had seen

dining in state, which was written the year after the repeal of the Stamp

Act, he declared, in his fear that he might seem to be too well pleased

with them, that no Frenchman should go beyond him in thinking his own King

and Queen, "the very best in the World, and the most amiable." The popular

commotions in the succeeding year, with their watch cry of Wilkes and

Liberty, seemed to him to indicate that some punishment was preparing for a

people, who were ungratefully abusing the best Constitution and the best

King that any nation was ever blessed with. As late as 1770, he wrote to

Dr. Samuel Cooper, "Let us, therefore, hold fast our Loyalty to our King,

who has the best Disposition towards us, and has a Family Interest in our

Prosperity." Indeed, even two years later than this, he complacently wrote

to his son, "The King, too, has lately been heard to speak of me with great

regard." Strangely enough it was not until two years before the battle of

Bunker Hill that he awoke sufficiently from his fool's paradise to write to

his son, "Between you and I, the late Measures have been, I suspect, very

much the King's own, and he has in some Cases a great Share of what his

Friends call _Firmness_." Even then he hazarded the opinion that by

painstaking and proper management the wrong impression of the colonists

that George the Third had received might be removed. Down to this time so

secretly had the King pursued the insidious system of corruption by which

he kept his Parliamentary majority unmurmuringly subservient to his system

of personal government, that Franklin does not appear to have even

suspected that his was the master hand, or rather purse, which shaped all

its proceedings against America. When the whole truth, however, was made

manifest to Franklin, his awakening was correspondingly rude and

unforgiving. How completely reversed became the current of all his feelings

towards George the Third, after the Revolution began, we have already seen

in some of our references to letters written by him to his English friends,

in which the King, whom he once revered, was scored in terms of passionate

reprobation.

Tenacious, too, was the affection with which Franklin clung to England and

the English people. Some years before the passage of the Stamp Act, he

wrote to Lord Kames from London that he purposed to give form to the

material that he had been gathering for his _Art of Virtue_ when he

returned to his _other_ country, that is to say, America.

Of all the enviable Things England has [he wrote a few

years later to Polly], I envy it most its People. Why

should that petty Island, which compar'd to America, is

but like a stepping Stone in a Brook, scarce enough of

it above Water to keep one's Shoes dry; why, I say,

should that little Island enjoy in almost every

Neighbourhood, more sensible, virtuous, and elegant

Minds, than we can collect in ranging 100 Leagues of

our vast Forests?

How eagerly even when he was in the New World he relished the observations

of his friend Strahan on current English politics, we have already seen. We

have also already seen how seriously he entertained even the thought of

transferring his family for good to England. Indeed his intense loyalty to

English King and People, together with his remoteness from the contagious

excitement of the Colonies over the passage of the Stamp Act, caused him

for a time, with a curious insensibility to the real state of public

opinion in America, to lag far behind the revolutionary movement in that

country. Not only, before he was fully aroused to the stern purpose of his

fellow-countrymen to resist the collection of the stamp tax to the last

extremity, did he recommend his friend John Hughes to the British Ministry

as a stamp-tax collector, and send to his partner Hall a large quantity of

paper for the use of the _Gazette_, of such dimensions as to secure a

saving in stamps for its issues, but he wrote to Hughes in these terms

besides:

If it (the Stamp Act) continues, your undertaking to

execute it may make you unpopular for a Time, but your

acting with Coolness and Steadiness, and with every

Circumstance in your Power of Favour to the People,

will by degrees reconcile them. In the meantime, a firm

Loyalty to the Crown & faithful Adherence to the

Government of this Nation, which it is the Safety as

well as Honour of the Colonies to be connected with,

will always be the wisest Course for you and I to take,

whatever may be the Madness of the Populace or their

blind Leaders, who can only bring themselves and

Country into Trouble and draw on greater Burthens by

Acts of Rebellious Tendency.

The rashness of the Virginia Assembly in relation to the Stamp Act he

thought simply amazing.

Much better known is the letter that he wrote about the same time to

Charles Thomson. After stating that he had done everything in his power to

prevent the passage of the Stamp Act, he said:

But the Tide was too strong against us. The nation was

provoked by American Claims of Independence, and all

Parties joined in resolving by this act to settle the

point. We might as well have hindered the sun's

setting. That we could not do. But since 'tis down, my

Friend, and it may be long before it rises again, let

us make as good a night of it as we can. We may still

light candles. Frugality and Industry will go a great

way toward indemnifying us. Idleness and Pride tax with

a heavier hand than Kings and Parliaments; if we can

get rid of the former, we may easily bear the latter.

Six months later, when the loud and fierce protest of his fellow-countrymen

against the Stamp Act had reached his ear, and convinced him that they were

more likely to light camp-fires than candles, he held a very different

language. Asked, during his famous examination before the House of Commons,

whether he thought that the people of America would submit to pay the Stamp

Tax, if it were moderated, he replied, "No, never, unless compelled by

force of arms." Public leaders, after all, to use Gladstone's happy image

with regard to the orator, do little more than give back in rain what they

receive in mist from the mass of men. But with the repeal of the Stamp Act,

and part of the duties imposed upon America, Franklin would readily have

lapsed in every respect into his old affectionate relations to England, if

Parliament had not, by its unwise reservation of its right to tax America,

fallen into the bad surgery, to use his own words, of leaving splinters in

the wound that it had inflicted. It now seems strange enough that, after

the turbulent outbreak in America, which preceded the repeal, he should

have been willing to accept a post under the Duke of Grafton, and to remain

in England for some time longer if not for the rest of his life; yet such

is the fact. When he heard through a friend that the Duke had said that, if

he chose rather to reside in England than to return to his office as Deputy

Postmaster-General for America, it would not be the Duke's fault, if he was

not well provided for, he declared in the polished phrases of a courtier

that there was no nobleman, to whom he could from sincere respect for his

great abilities and amiable qualities so cordially attach himself, or to

whom he should so willingly be obliged for the provision mentioned, as to

the Duke of Grafton, if his Grace should think that he could in any

station, where he might be placed, be serviceable to him and to the public.

To any one who knows what a profligate the Duke was, during the most

scandalous part of his career, this language sounds not a little like the

conventional phrases in which Franklin, during his mission to France,

assured Crocco, the blackmailing emissary of the piratical emperor of

Morocco that he had no doubt but that, as soon as the affairs of the United

States were a little settled, they would manifest equally good dispositions

as those of his master and take all the proper steps to cultivate and

secure the friendship of a monarch, whose character, Franklin knew, they

had long esteemed and respected.

But in the same letter to his son, in which the declaration about the Duke

of Grafton was recalled, Franklin made it clear that he was unwilling, by

accepting office, to place himself in the power of any English Minister

committed to the fatuous policy of taxing America. It was not until

forbearance had ceased to be a virtue, and an American Whig could no longer

hold an English office without reproach, that his innate conservatism of

character yielded to the forces which were slowly but certainly rending the

two countries apart. Three years after the repeal of the Stamp Act, which

he dubbed "the mother of mischief," he wrote to Jean Baptiste Le Roy of the

popular disturbances in Boston as "sudden, unpremeditated things, that

happened only among a few of the lower sort." A month later, he wrote to

Dr. Cooper:

I have been in constant Pain since I heard of Troops

assembling at Boston, lest the Madness of Mobs, or the

Insolence of Soldiers, or both, should, when too near

each other, occasion some Mischief difficult to be

prevented or repaired, and which might spread far and

wide. "I hope however," he added, "that Prudence will

predominate, and keep all quiet."

A little later still, in another letter to the same correspondent, after

saying that he could scarcely conceive a King of better dispositions, of

more exemplary virtues, or more truly desirous of promoting the welfare of

all his subjects than was George the Third, he further and truly said: "The

Body of this People, too, is of a noble and generous Nature, loving and

honouring the Spirit of Liberty, and hating arbitrary Power of all sorts.

We have many, very many, friends among them."

As late as the autumn of 1774 he was grieved to hear of mobs and violence

and the pulling down of houses in America, which the friends of America in

England could not justify, and which gave a great advantage to the enemies

of America in that country. He was in perpetual anxiety, he wrote Thomas

Cushing, lest the mad measures of mixing soldiers among a people whose

minds were in such a state of irritation might be attended with some

mischief, for an accidental quarrel, a personal insult, an imprudent order,

an insolent execution of even a prudent one, or twenty other things might

produce a tumult, unforeseen, and, therefore, impossible to be prevented,

in which such a carnage might ensue as to make a breach that could never

afterwards be healed. That the insults of Wedderburn, heaped upon Franklin

in the Privy Council Chamber, under circumstances, calculated to make him

feel as if all England were pillorying him, and his subsequent dismissal

from the office of Deputy Postmaster-General for America, exerted some

degree of corrosive influence upon his mind cannot be denied; but he still

kept up his counsels of patience to his people upon the other side of the

Atlantic until patience no longer had any meaning, and, when his last

efforts, just before he left England for Independence Hall, to bring about

a satisfactory adjustment of the quarrel between Great Britain and her

colonies finally came to nothing, the tears that Priestley tells us wet his

cheeks, as he was leaving England, were proof enough that even a nature,

little given to weakness, might well grow faint at the thought of such a

tragic separation as that of England and the thirteen colonies nurtured at

her breast. But no one can read the life of Franklin without feeling that

there never was a time when his heart was not wholly true to the just

rights of America. In America, he might miss the companionship of the

learned and distinguished friends from whose conversation he derived so

much profit and pleasure in England and France. Only such a capital as

London or Paris could fully gratify the social and intellectual wants of a

man whose survey of human existence was so little subject to cramping

restrictions of any kind. But it was the very breadth of Franklin's

character which made him first of all an American, instinct with the free

spirit of the New World, and faithful to the democratic institutions and

ideals, which throve on its freshness and exemption from inherited

complications. Over and over again, when he is abroad, he compares the

economic and political conditions of his own country with those of foreign

countries to the marked disadvantage of the latter. The painful

impression, left upon his mind by the squalor and misery of the lower

orders of the Irish people, is manifest enough in his correspondence.

Ireland is in itself [he declared in a letter to Thomas

Cushing] a poor Country, and Dublin a magnificent City;

but the appearances of general extreme poverty among

the lower people are amazing. They live in wretched

hovels of mud and straw, are clothed in rags, and

subsist chiefly on potatoes. Our New England farmers,

of the poorest sort, in regard to the Enjoyment of all

the Comforts of life, are princes when compared to

them. Such is the effect of the discouragements of

industry, the non-residence not only of pensioners, but

of many original landlords, who lease their lands in

gross to undertakers that rack the tenants and fleece

them skin and all to make estates to themselves, while

the first rents, as well as most of the pensions, are

spent out of the country. An English gentleman there

said to me, that by what he had heard of the good

grazing in North America, and by what he saw of the

plenty of flax-seed imported in Ireland from thence, he

could not understand why we did not rival Ireland in

the beef and butter trade to the West Indies, and share

with it in its linen trade. But he was satisfied when I

told him that I supposed the reason might be, _our

people eat beef and butter every day, and wear shirts

themselves_.

In short, the chief exports of Ireland seem to be

pinched off the backs and out of the bellies of the

miserable inhabitants.

Darker and more forbidding still glooms the background of the joyous hours

spent by Franklin in Ireland, Scotland and England in these painful words

which he wrote to Dr. Joshua Babcock in the early part of 1772:

I have lately made a Tour thro' Ireland and Scotland.

In those Countries a small Part of the Society are

Landlords, great Noblemen, and Gentlemen, extreamly

opulent, living in the highest Affluence and

Magnificence: The Bulk of the People Tenants, extreamly

poor, living in the most sordid Wretchedness, in dirty

Hovels of Mud and Straw, and cloathed only in Rags.

I thought often of the Happiness of New England, where

every Man is a Freeholder, has a Vote in publick

Affairs, lives in a tidy, warm House, has plenty of

good Food and Fewel, with whole cloaths from Head to

Foot, the Manufacture perhaps of his own Family. Long

may they continue in this Situation! But if they should

ever envy the Trade of these Countries, I can put them

in a Way to obtain a Share of it. Let them with three

fourths of the People of Ireland live the Year round on

Potatoes and Buttermilk, without shirts, then may their

Merchants export Beef, Butter, and Linnen. Let them,

with the Generality of the Common People of Scotland,

go Barefoot, then may they make large exports in Shoes

and Stockings: And if they will be content to wear

Rags, like the Spinners and Weavers of England, they

may make Cloths and Stuffs for all Parts of the World.

Farther, if my Countrymen should ever wish for the

honour of having among them a gentry enormously

wealthy, let them sell their Farms & pay rack'd Rents;

the Scale of the Landlords will rise as that of the

Tenants is depress'd, who will soon become poor,

tattered, dirty, and abject in Spirit. Had I never been

in the American Colonies, but was to form my Judgment

of Civil Society by what I have lately seen, I should

never advise a Nation of Savages to admit of

Civilization: For I assure you, that, in the Possession

& Enjoyment of the various Comforts of Life, compar'd

to these People every Indian is a Gentleman: And the

Effect of this kind of Civil Society seems only to be,

the depressing Multitudes below the Savage State that a

few may be rais'd above it.

America on the other hand, as Franklin pictured it, was the land of neither

the very rich nor the very poor, but one in which "a general happy

mediocrity" prevailed. It was not a Lubberland, nor a Pays de Cocagne,

where the streets were paved with half-peck loaves, and the houses tiled

with pancakes, and where the fowls flew about ready roasted, crying Come

eat me! These were all wild imaginations. On the contrary, it was a land

of labor, but also a land where multitudes of emigrants from foreign lands,

who would never have emerged from poverty, if they had remained at home,

had, with savings out of the wages, earned by them, after they arrived in

America, acquired land, and, in a few years, become wealthy farmers. It was

a land, too, where religious infidelity was unknown, and where all the

means of education were plenteous, the general manners simple and pure, and

the temptations to vice and folly fewer than in England.

The contrast between political conditions in Great Britain and political

conditions in America was in Franklin's opinion equally unfavorable to

Great Britain. Loyal as he was to the King, attached as he was to the

English people, he harbored a deep feeling of aversion and contempt for the

Parliament which he did not realize was but the marionette of the King.

When certain residents of Oxford, after being confined for some days in

Newgate for corrupt practices, knelt before the Speaker of the House of

Commons, and received his reprimand, Franklin wrote to Galloway:

The House could scarcely keep countenances, knowing as

they all do, that the practice is general. People say,

they mean nothing more than to _beat down the price_ by

a little discouragement of borough jobbing, now that

their own elections are all coming on. The price indeed

is grown exorbitant, no less than _four thousand

pounds_ for a member.

In the same letter, a grim story is told of the callous levity with which

the Parliamentary majority regarded its own debasement. It was founded upon

a bill brought in by Beckford for preventing bribery and corruption at

elections, which contained a clause obliging every member to swear, on his

admission to the House, that he had not directly or indirectly given any

bribe to any elector. This clause was so generally opposed as answering no

end except that of inducing the members to perjure themselves that it was

withdrawn. Commenting on the incident, Franklin said:

It was indeed a cruel contrivance of his, worse than

the gunpowder plot; for that was only to blow the

Parliament up to heaven, this to sink them all down to

----. Mr. Thurlow opposed his bill by a long speech.

Beckford, in reply, gave a dry hit to the House, that

is repeated everywhere. "The honourable gentleman,"

says he, "in his learned discourse, gave us first one

definition of corruption, then he gave us another

definition of corruption, and I think he was about to

give us a third. Pray does that gentleman imagine

_there is any member of this House that does not_ KNOW

what corruption is?" which occasioned only a roar of

laughter, for they are so hardened in the practice,

that they are very little ashamed of it.

Later Franklin wrote to Galloway that it was thought that near two million

pounds would be spent in the Parliamentary election then pending, but that

it was computed that the Crown had _two millions a year in places and

pensions to dispose of_. On the same day, he wrote to his son, "In short,

this whole venal nation is now at market, will be sold for about two

millions, and might be bought out of the hands of the present bidders (if

he would offer half a million more) by the very Devil himself." To Thomas

Cushing he wrote that luxury brought most of the Commons as well as Lords

to market, and that, if America would save for three or four years the

money she spent in the fashions and fineries and fopperies of England, she

might buy the whole Parliament, minister and all.

Over against these depraved electoral conditions he was in the habit of

placing the simpler and purer conditions of his native land. In most of the

Colonies, he declared in his _Rise and Progress of the Differences between

Great_ _Britain and her American Colonies_, there was no such thing as

standing candidate for election. There was neither treating nor bribing. No

man expressed the least inclination to be chosen. Instead of humble

advertisements, entreating votes and interest, one saw before every new

election requests of former members, acknowledging the honor done them by

preceding elections, but setting forth their long service and attendance on

the public business in that station, and praying that in consideration

thereof some other person might be chosen in their room. After a

dissolution, the same representatives might be and usually were re-elected

without asking a vote or giving even a glass of cider to an elector. On the

eve of his return to America in 1775, the contrast between the extreme

corruption prevalent in the old rotten state and the glorious public

virtue, so predominant in rising America, as he expressed it, assumed a

still more aggravated form. After mentioning in his last letter to his

friend Galloway the "Numberless and needless Places, enormous Salaries,

Pensions, Perquisites, Bribes, groundless Quarrels, foolish Expeditions,

false Accounts or no Accounts, Contracts and Jobbs," which in England

devoured all revenue, and produced continual necessity in the midst of

natural plenty, he said:

I apprehend, therefore, that to unite us intimately

will only be to corrupt and poison us also. It seems

like Mezentius's coupling and binding together the dead

and the living.

"Tormenti genus, et sanie taboque fluentes,

Complexu in misero, longa sic morte necabat."

However [he added with his readily re-awakened loyalty

to the mother country], I would try anything, and bear

anything that can be borne with Safety to our just

Liberties, rather than engage in a War with such near

relations, unless compelled to it by dire Necessity in

our own Defence.

Nor was any American of Franklin's time more profoundly conscious than he

of the growing power and splendid destiny of the Colonies. His familiarity

with America was singularly minute and accurate. He had supped at its inns

and sojourned in its homes, been delayed at its ferries and crippled on its

roads. In one way or another, he had acquired a correct and searching

insight into almost everything that related to its political, social and

industrial life. His answers to the questions put to him during his famous

examination before the House of Lords have been justly reputed to be among

the most striking of all the proofs of ability that he ever gave, marked as

they were by great wisdom and acuteness, marvellous conciseness as well as

clearness of statement, invincible tact and dexterity. But in no respect

are these answers more remarkable than in the knowledge that they display

of colonial America in all its relations. Accompanying this knowledge, too,

was unquestionably a powerful feeling of affection for the land of his

birth which renders us more or less skeptical as to whether he was at all

certain of himself on the different occasions when he expressed his

willingness to die in some other land than his own.

I have indeed [he wrote to his son from England in

1772] so many good kind Friends here, that I could

spend the Remainder of my Life among them with great

Pleasure, if it were not for my American connections, &

the indelible Affection I retain for that dear Country,

from which I have so long been in a State of Exile.

At all times the tread of those coming millions of human beings, which the

family fecundity of America made certain, sounded majestically in his ears.

Referring to America in a letter to Lord Kames in the year after the repeal

of the Stamp Act, he employed these significant words:

She may suffer at present under the arbitrary power of

this country; she may suffer for a while in a

separation from it; but these are temporary evils that

she will outgrow. Scotland and Ireland are differently

circumstanced. Confined by the sea, they can scarcely

increase in numbers, wealth and strength, so as to

overbalance England. But America, an immense territory,

favoured by Nature with all advantages of climate,

soil, great navigable rivers, and lakes, &c. must

become a great country, populous and mighty; and will,

in a less time than is generally conceived, be able to

shake off any shackles that may be imposed on her, and

perhaps place them on the imposers. In the mean time,

every act of oppression will sour their tempers, lessen

greatly, if not annihilate the profits of your commerce

with them, and hasten their final revolt; for the seeds

of liberty are universally found there, and nothing can

eradicate them.

Even, if confined westward by the Mississippi and northward by the St.

Lawrence and the Lakes, he thought that, in some centuries, the population

of America would amount to one hundred millions of people.

Such were the prepossessions brought by Franklin to the controversy between

Great Britain and her colonies. In his view he was none the less an

Englishman because he was an American, and, as the controversy gained in

rancor, his dual allegiance to the two countries led to no little

misconstruction. To an unknown correspondent he wrote several years after

the repeal of the Stamp Act that he was becoming weary of talking and

writing about the quarrel, "especially," he said, "as I do not find that I

have gained any point, in either country, except that of rendering myself

suspected by my impartiality; in England of being too much an American, and

in America, of being too much an Englishman."

His view of the legal tie between England and the Colonies was very simple.

How, he wrote to William Franklin, the people of Boston could admit that

the General Court of Massachusetts was subordinate to Parliament, and yet,

in the same breath, deny the power of Parliament to enact laws for them, he

could not understand; nor could he understand what bounds the Farmer's

Letters set to the authority in Parliament, which they conceded, to

"regulate the trade of the Colonies." It was difficult, he thought, to draw

lines between duties for regulation and those for revenue; and, if

Parliament was to be the judge, it seemed to him that the distinction would

amount to little. Two years previously, however, when examined before the

House of Commons; he had stated that, while the right of a Parliament in

which the colonies were not represented to impose an internal tax upon them

was generally denied in America, he had never heard any objection urged in

America to duties laid by Parliament to regulate commerce; and, when he was

asked whether there was any kind of difference between the two taxes to the

colonies on which they might be laid, he had a prompt answer:

I think the difference is very great. An external tax

is a duty laid on commodities imported; that duty is

added to the first cost and other charges on the

commodity, and, when it is offered to sale, makes a

part of the price. If the people do not like it at that

price, they refuse it; they are not obliged to pay it.

But an internal tax is forced from the people without

their consent, if not laid by their own

representatives.

And then, when asked immediately afterwards whether, if the external tax or

duty was laid on the necessaries of life imported into Pennsylvania, that

would not be the same thing in its effects as an internal tax, he doubtless

filled the minds of his more insular auditors with astonishment by

replying, "I do not know a single article imported into the Northern

Colonies, but what they can either do without, or make themselves."

Another neat answer in the examination was his answer when asked whether

there was any kind of difference between a duty on the importation of goods

and an excise on their consumption:

Yes, a very material one; an excise, for the reasons I

have just mentioned, they (the colonists) think you can

have no right to lay within their country. But the sea

is yours; you maintain, by your fleets, the safety of

navigation in it, and keep it clear of pirates; you may

have therefore a natural and equitable right to some

toll or duty on merchandizes carried through that part

of your dominions, towards defraying the expence you

are at in ships to maintain the safety of that

carriage.

Finally he grew weary of the repeated effort to fix the reproach of

inconsistency upon the colonies because of their acquiescence in

Parliamentary regulation of their commerce; and, when asked whether

Pennsylvania might not, by the same interpretation of her charter, object

to external as well as internal taxation without representation, he

replied:

They never have hitherto. Many arguments have been

lately used here to show them, that there is no

difference, and that, if you have no right to tax them

internally, you have none to tax them externally, or

make any other law to bind them. At present they do not

reason so; but in time they may possibly be convinced

by these arguments.

Nearly ten years later, Franklin had in a conversation with Lord Chatham at

his country seat a notable opportunity to say something further with

respect to Parliamentary regulations of American commerce. On this

occasion, the great English statesman, then earnestly engaged in a last

effort to avert the approaching rupture, observed that the opinion

prevailed in England that America aimed at setting up for itself as an

independent state; or at least getting rid of the Navigation Acts; and

Franklin assured him that, having more than once travelled almost from one

end of the continent to the other, and kept a great variety of company,

eating, drinking and conversing with them freely, he never had heard in any

conversation from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a

wish for a separation, or hint that such a thing would be advantageous to

America. And, as to the Navigation Act, he said that the main material part

of it, that of carrying on trade in British or Plantation bottoms,

excluding foreign ships from colonial ports, and navigating with three

fourths British seamen was as acceptable to America as it could be to

Britain. Indeed, he declared, America was not even against regulations of

the general commerce by Parliament, provided such regulations were _bona

fide_ for the benefit of the whole empire, not for the small advantage of

one part to the great injury of another, such as obliging American ships to

call in England with their wine and fruit from Portugal or Spain, the

restraints on American manufactures in the woollen and hat-making branches,

the prohibiting of slitting-mills, steel-works and the like.

In the opinion of Franklin, Great Britain and America were legally

connected as England and Scotland were before the Union by having one

common sovereign. He denied that the instructions of the King had the force

of law in the Colonies, as Lord Granville had contended, or that the King

and Parliament had any legislative authority over them. "Something," he

told his son, "might be made of either of the extremes; that Parliament has

a power to make _all laws_ for us, or that it has a power to make _no laws_

for us; and I think the arguments for the latter more numerous and weighty

than those for the former." The King with his Plantation Parliaments was,

in his opinion, the sole legislator of his American subjects, and, in that

capacity, was, and ought to be, free to exercise his own judgment,

unrestrained and unlimited by the English Parliament.[19] That the

Colonies were originally constituted distinct states and intended to be

continued such, was clear to him, he wrote to Dr. Cooper, from a thorough

consideration of their first charters and the whole conduct of the crown

and nation towards them until the Restoration. Since that time Parliament

had usurped an authority of making laws for them which before it had not,

and America had for some time submitted to the usurpation partly through

ignorance and inattention and partly from its weakness and inability to

contend. He wished therefore that such expressions as "the supreme

authority of Parliament," "the subordinacy of our Assemblies to the

Parliament" and the like were no longer employed in the colonies. These

opinions were formed at a time when he labored under the egregious error of

supposing that, in spite of the wicked machinations of his Parliament, the

King regarded his colonies with the eye of mild paternal favor; but they

remained his opinions long after he ceased to be the cheat of this

delusion.

How far Franklin's idea of the legal bond between Great Britain and the

Colonies was a correct one is a technical inquiry that we need not discuss;

but his conception of the solidarity of interests which should exist

between all parts of the British Empire was as generous and glowing as any

federal rhapsodist of the present day could form. When he expounded it to

Lord Chatham at Hayes, the latter in his grand way declared that it was a

sound one, worthy of a great, benevolent and comprehensive mind. And such

it was. The truth is that Franklin was an Imperialist, and the union which

he saw was that of a vast English-speaking empire, made up of parts, held

in harmony with each other not only by their common English heritage but

also by a measure of self-government liberal enough to assure to each of

them an intelligent and sympathetic administration of its particular

interests. Until the colonial history of England began, all great empires,

he told Lord Chatham, had crumbled first at their extremities, because

Countries remote from the Seat and Eye of Government

which therefore could not well understand their Affairs

for want of full and true Information, had never been

well governed but had been oppress'd by bad Governors,

on Presumption that Complaint was difficult to be made

and supported against them at such a distance.

Had this process of disintegration not been invited in recent years by

wrong politics (which would have Parliament to be omnipotent, though it

ought not to be so unless it could at the same time be omniscient) they

might have gone on extending their Western Empire, adding Province to

Province, as far as the South Sea.

It has long appeared to me [he said in his _Tract

relative to the Affair of Hutchinson's Letters_], that

the only true British Politicks were those which aim'd

at the Good of the _Whole British Empire_, not that

which sought the Advantage of _one Part_ in the

Disadvantage of the others; therefore all Measures of

procuring Gain to the Mother Country arising from Loss

to her Colonies, and all of Gain to the Colonies

arising from or occasioning Loss to Britain, especially

where the Gain was small and the Loss great, every

Abridgment of the Power of the Mother Country, where

that Power was not prejudicial to the Liberties of the

Colonists, and every Diminution of the Privileges of

the Colonists, where they were not prejudicial to the

Welfare of the Mo. Country, I, in my own Mind,

condemned as improper, partial, unjust, and

mischievous; tending to create Dissensions, and weaken

that Union, on which the Strength, Solidity, and

Duration of the Empire greatly depended; and I opposed,

as far as my little Powers went, all Proceedings,

either here or in America, that in my Opinion had such

Tendency.

But in no words of Franklin is his inspiring idea of British unity more

strikingly expressed than in one of his letters to Lord Howe during the

Revolutionary War.

Long did I endeavour, with unfeigned and unwearied Zeal

[was his touching language] to preserve from breaking

that fine and noble China Vase, the British Empire; for

I knew, that, being once broken, the separate Parts

could not retain even their Shares of the Strength and

Value that existed in the Whole, and that a perfect

Reunion of those Parts could scarce ever be hoped for.

Your Lordship may possibly remember the tears of Joy

that wet my Cheek, when, at your good Sister's in

London, you once gave me Expectations that a

Reconciliation might soon take place.

That there was only one way in which the fair vase upon which his eye

lingered so fondly and proudly could for certainty be preserved from

irreparable ruin, namely, by admitting the colonies to representation in

the British Parliament, Franklin saw with perfect clearness. Repeatedly the

thought of such a union emerges from his correspondence only to be

dismissed as impracticable. As far back as 1766, he wrote from London to

Cadwallader Evans these pregnant words:

My private opinion concerning a union in Parliament

between the two countries is, that it would be best for

the whole. But I think it will never be done. For

though I believe, that, if we had no more

representatives than Scotland has, we should be

sufficiently strong in the House to prevent, as they do

for Scotland, anything ever passing to our

disadvantage; yet we are not able at present to furnish

and maintain such a number, and, when we are more able,

we shall be less willing than we are now. The

Parliament here do at present think too highly of

themselves to admit representatives from us, if we

should ask it; and, when they will be desirous of

granting it, we shall think too highly of ourselves to

accept of it. It would certainly contribute to the

strength of the whole, if Ireland and all the dominions

were united and consolidated under one common council

for general purposes, each retaining its particular

council or parliament for its domestic concerns. But

this should have been more early provided for. In the

infancy of our foreign establishments it was neglected,

or was not thought of. And now the affair is nearly in

the situation of Friar Bacon's project of making a

brazen wall round England for its eternal security. His

servant, Friar Bungey, slept while the brazen head,

which was to dictate how it might be done, said _Time

is_, and _Time was_. He only waked to hear it say,

_Time is past_. An explosion followed, that tumbled

their house about the conjuror's ears.

In a subsequent letter to his son in 1768, Franklin again indulges the same

day dream, and again reaches the conclusion that such a union would be the

best for the whole, and that, though particular parts might find particular

disadvantages in it, they would find greater advantages in the security

arising to every part from the increased strength of the whole. But such a

union, he concluded, was not likely to take place, while the nature of the

existing relation was so little understood on both sides of the water, and

sentiments concerning it remained so widely different.

Nothing, therefore, remained for Franklin to do except to fall back upon

this relation and to make the best of it, to insist that the only

constitutional tie between England and the Colonies was the King, and that

Parliament had no more right to tax America than to tax Hanover, though the

legislative assemblies of the colonies would always be ready in the future

as they had been in the past to honor the requisitions for pecuniary aids

made upon them by the King, through his Secretary of State; to combat the

political and economic dogmas and the national prejudices which stood in

the way of the full recognition by England of the fact that her true

interest was to be found in the liberal treatment of the Colonies; to warn

the Colonies that their connection with England was attended with too many

obligations and advantages to be hastily or prematurely forfeited by rash

resentments, so long as there was any definite prospect of their appeal to

English self-interest and good-feeling not proving in vain; and finally to

couple the warning with the suggestion that they should unceasingly keep up

the assertion of their just rights, and be prepared, all else failing, to

maintain them with an unabated military spirit. It was not to be expected

of a man so conservative and constant in nature, and bound to England by so

many strong and endearing associations, that he should wage a solitary

combat for American rights on English soil before he or any man had reason

to know how bitterly the Stamp Act would be returned upon the head of

Parliament by America, but never, after the temper of his countrymen in

regard to it, was made manifest to him, were his elbows again out of touch

with those of his compatriots in America. To their assistance and to the

assistance as well of the great body of wise and generous Englishmen, who

loved liberty too much at home to begrudge it to Englishmen in America, he

brought his every resource, his scientific fame, his social gifts, his

personal popularity, his knowledge of the world and the levers by which it

is moved, the sane, searching mind, too full of light for bigotry,

superstition, or confusion, the pen that enlisted satirical point as

readily as grave dissertation in the service of instruction. It cannot be

doubted that his exertions should be reckoned among the potent influences

that secured the repeal of the Stamp Act. To Charles Thomson he wrote that

he had reprinted everything from America that he thought might help their

common cause. His examination before the House of Commons was published and

had a great run. "You guessed aright," he wrote to Lord Kames with regard

to the repeal, "in supposing that I would not be a _mute in that play_. I

was extremely busy, attending Members of both Houses, informing,

explaining, consulting, disputing, in a continual hurry from morning to

night, till the affair was happily ended."

Some years after the repeal of the Stamp Act, he wrote to Jane Mecom that,

at the time of the repeal, the British Ministry were ready to hug him for

the assistance that he had afforded them in bringing it about. From the

time of the repeal until he returned to America in 1775, his one absorbing

object was to create a better understanding between England and her

colonies, and to avert the possibility of war between them. Among the

things with which he had to contend in accomplishing his aims was the

haughty spirit in which the English people were disposed to look down upon

the colonists, and to resent any manifestation of independence upon their

part as insolent. It was this spirit which made him feel that the assent of

England would never be obtained to the representation of America in

Parliament.

I am fully persuaded with you [he wrote to Lord Kames],

that a _Consolidating Union_, by a fair and equal

representation of all the parts of this Empire in

Parliament, is the only firm basis on which its

political grandeur and prosperity can be founded.

Ireland once wished it, but now rejects it. The time

has been, when the colonies might have been pleased

with it; they are now _indifferent_ about it; and if it

is much longer delayed, they too will _refuse it_. But

the pride of this people can not bear the thought of

it, and therefore it will be delayed. Every man in

England seems to consider himself as a piece of a

sovereign over America; seems to jostle himself into

the throne with the King, and talks of _our subjects in

the Colonies_.

This was the sentiment of England in general. In the guard-room and

barracks, it assumed at times the grosser form of such contempt as that

which led General Clarke to believe as we have seen that the emasculation

of all the male Americans would be little more than a holiday task for a

handful of British grenadiers. Along with this haughty spirit went a crass

ignorance of America and Americans which Franklin despaired of ever

enlightening except by good-natured ridicule. An illustration of the manner

in which he employed this agency is found in his letter to the Editor of a

Newspaper. It had been claimed, he said, that factories in America were

impossible because American sheep had but little wool, and the dearness of

American labor rendered the profitable working of iron and other materials,

except in some few coarse instances, impracticable.

Dear Sir [was his reply], do not let us suffer

ourselves to be amus'd with such groundless Objections.

The very Tails of the American Sheep are so laden with

Wooll, that each has a little Car or Waggon on four

little Wheels, to support & keep it from trailing on

the Ground. Would they caulk their Ships, would they

fill their Beds, would they even litter their Horses

with Wooll, if it were not both plenty and cheap? And

what signifies Dearness of Labour, when an English

shilling passes for five and Twenty? Their engaging 300

Silk Throwsters here in one Week, for New York, was

treated as a Fable, because, forsooth, they have "no

Silk there to throw." Those, who made this Objection,

perhaps did not know, that at the same time the Agents

from the King of Spain were at Quebec to contract for

1000 Pieces of Cannon to be made there for the

Fortification of Mexico, and at New York engaging the

annual Supply of woven Floor-Carpets for their West

India Houses, other Agents from the Emperor of China

were at Boston treating about an Exchange of raw Silk

for Wooll, to be carried in Chinese Junks through the

Straits of Magellan.

Another thing, with which Franklin had to contend, was the

misrepresentations that the colonial governors were constantly making about

American conditions. These misrepresentations were in keeping with the

unworthy character of some of them and with the transitory relation that

almost all of them bore to the Colonies, of which they were the executives.

What the Americans truly thought of them is pointedly expressed in

Franklin's _Causes of the American Discontents_.

They say then as to Governors [he declared], that they

are not like Princes whose posterity have an

inheritance in the Government of a nation, and

therefore an interest in its prosperity; they are

generally strangers to the Provinces they are sent to

govern, have no estate, natural connexion, or relation

there, to give them an affection for the country; that

they come only to make money as fast as they can; are

sometimes men of vicious characters and broken

fortunes, sent by a Minister merely to get them out of

the way; that as they intend staying in the country no

longer than their government continues, and purpose to

leave no family behind them, they are apt to be

regardless of the goodwill of the people, and care not

what is said or thought of them after they are gone.

That such men were biased and untrustworthy witnesses touching American

conditions goes without saying, but, when discontent became deeply

implanted in the breasts of the colonists, their partisan and perverted

reports to the English Government as to the state of America did much to

mislead their masters. The burden of these reports as a rule was that the

disaffected were few in numbers and persons of little consequence, that

the colonists of property and social standing were satisfied, and inclined

to submit to Parliamentary taxation, that it was impossible to establish

manufacturing industries in America, and that, if Parliament would only

steadily persist in the exercise of its legislative authority over America,

the non-importation agreements and other defensive measures adopted by its

people would be abandoned.

But the most intractable of all the obstacles with which Franklin had to

contend was the policy of commercial and industrial restriction, partly the

result of economic purblindness, peculiar to the time, and partly the

result of sheer selfishness, which England relentlessly pursued in her

relations to the colonies. Every suggestion that this policy should be

relaxed was met by its more extreme champions, such as George Grenville,

with the statement that the Acts of Navigation were the very Palladium of

England. On no account were the Colonies to be allowed to import wine, oil

and fruit directly from Spain and Portugal, or to even import iron directly

from foreign countries. Enlarged as was the understanding of Lord Chatham

himself, it could not tolerate the thought that America should be permitted

to convert any form of crude material into manufactured products. Every hat

made in America, every shipload of emigrants that left the shores of

England for America, was jealously regarded as signifying so much pecuniary

loss to England. The colonists were to be mere _adscripti glebae_, mere

tillers of the American soil for the purpose of wringing from it the price

of the manufactured commodities, with which they were to be exclusively

supplied by the factories and shops of the mother country. The idea that,

in any other sense, the expanding numbers and wealth of America could inure

to the benefit of England, was one that seemed to be wholly foreign to its

consciousness. To this Little England Franklin steadfastly opposed his

conception of an Imperial England, based upon the freedom of all its parts

to contribute to the wealth and importance of the whole by the full

enjoyment of all their peculiar natural gifts and advantages.

No one can more sincerely rejoice than I do [he wrote

to Lord Kames in 1760], on the reduction of Canada; and

this is not merely as I am a colonist, but as I am a

Briton. I have long been of opinion, that the

_foundations of the future grandeur and stability of

the British Empire lie in America_; and though, like

other foundations, they are low and little seen, they

are, nevertheless, broad and strong enough to support

the greatest political structure human wisdom ever yet

erected.

These words, splendid as was the vision by which they were illumined, were

but the utterance in another form of the thought that he had expressed nine

years before in America in his essay on the _Increase of Mankind_. Speaking

of the population of the colonies at that time he said:

This Million doubling, suppose but once in 25 years,

will, in another Century, be more than the People of

_England_, and the greatest Number of _Englishmen_ will

be on this Side the Water. What an Accession of Power

to the _British Empire_ by Sea as well as Land! What

Increase of Trade and Navigation! What Numbers of Ships

and Seamen! We have been here but little more than 100

years, and yet the Force of our Privateers in the late

War, united, was greater, both in Men and Guns, than

that of the whole _British_ Navy in Queen _Elizabeth's_

time.

Indeed so fully possessed was he even as late as 1771 with the federative

spirit, which has brought recruits from Canada and Australia to the side of

England in recent wars that, after urging upon Thomas Cushing the

importance of a well-disciplined militia being maintained by

Massachusetts, for her protection against invasion by a foreign foe, he

added, "And what a Glory would it be for us to send, on any trying

Occasion, ready and effectual Aid to our Mother Country!" It is only by

reading such words as these that we can begin to divine what the divulsion

of England and America has really meant to the vast host of human beings

throughout the world who speak the English tongue.

To all the shallow sophistries or sottish errors, that tended to falsify

his glorious dream of world-wide British unity, Franklin presented a

merciless intellect. With regard to the intention of Parliament to tax the

colonies, he had these pointed words to say in a letter to Peter Collinson

in 1764: "What we get above a Subsistence we lay out with you for your

Manufactures.

"Therefore what you get from us in Taxes you must lose in Trade. The Cat

can yield but her skin."

Even more acute was his letter to the _Public Advertiser_ on a proposed Act

to prevent emigration from England. Such an Act, he declared, was

unnecessary, impracticable, impolitic and unjust. What is more, with an

insight into the laws governing population, superior to that of any man of

his time, he made his assertions good. To illustrate this claim in part, we

need go no further than what he had to say about the necessity of the Act.

As long as the new situation shall be _far_ preferable

to the old [he said], the emigration may possibly

continue. But when many of those, who at home

interfered with others of the same rank (in the

competition for farms, shops, business, offices, and

other means of subsistence), are gradually withdrawn,

the inconvenience of that competition ceases; the

number remaining no longer half starve each other; they

find they can now subsist comfortably, and though

perhaps not quite so well as those who have left them,

yet, the inbred attachment to a native country is

sufficient to overbalance a moderate difference; and

thus the emigration ceases naturally. The waters of

the ocean may move in currents from one quarter of the

globe to another, as they happen in some places to be

accumulated, and in others diminished; but no law,

beyond the law of gravity, is necessary to prevent

their abandoning any coast entirely. Thus the different

degrees of happiness of different countries and

situations find, or rather make, their level by the

flowing of people from one to another; and where that

level is once found, the removals cease. Add to this,

that even a real deficiency of people in any country,

occasioned by a wasting war or pestilence, is speedily

supplied by earlier and more prolific marriages,

encouraged by the greater facility of obtaining the

means of subsistence. So that a country half

depopulated would soon be repeopled, till the means of

subsistence were equalled by the population. All

increase beyond that point must perish, or flow off

into more favourable situations. Such overflowings

there have been of mankind in all ages, or we should

not now have had so many nations. But to apprehend

absolute depopulation from that cause, and call for a

law to prevent it, is calling for a law to stop the

Thames, lest its waters, by what leave it daily at

Gravesend, should be quite exhausted.

Twenty-three years before he had stated the same truths more sententiously

in his essay on the _Increase of Mankind_.

In fine [he said in that essay] a Nation well regulated

is like a Polypus; take away a Limb, its Place is soon

supply'd; cut it in two, and each deficient Part shall

speedily grow out of the Part remaining. Thus if you

have Room and Subsistence enough, as you may by

dividing, make ten Polypes out of one, you may of one

make ten Nations, equally populous and powerful; or

rather increase a Nation ten fold in Numbers and

Strength.

Franklin clearly saw that, with the increase of population in the colonies,

the demand for British manufactures would increase _pari passu_, and that,

with the increased demand for them, the population of Great Britain would

increase, perhaps, tenfold. Much as he made of the economic conditions that

tended to give a purely agricultural direction to the energies of America,

he laughed to scorn the idea that America would always remain in a state of

industrial subjection to England.

Only consider _the rate of our Increase_ [he wrote to

Peter Collinson, after stating that it was folly to

expect that America would always be supplied with cloth

by England] and tell me if you can increase your Wooll

in that Proportion, and where, in your little Island

you can feed the Sheep. Nature has put Bounds to your

Abilities, tho' none to your Desires. Britain would, if

she could, manufacture & trade for all the World;

England for all Britain;--London for all England;--and

every Londoner for all London. So selfish is the human

Mind! But 'tis well there is One above that rules these

Matters with a more equal Hand.

The agency that Franklin held for Pennsylvania in the first instance, and

the agencies that he afterwards held for Massachusetts, New Jersey and

Georgia, too, afforded him a solid standing for influencing public opinion

both in England and America. He was actually in England, and, at the same

time, in incessant correspondence with the popular leaders in America. With

the beginning of the agitation for the repeal of the Stamp Act he entered

upon a course of political activity which added greatly, in another form,

to the reputation already acquired by him as a man of science. For his

services in securing the repeal, including the flood of light that his

answers, when examined before the House of Commons, shed upon the points at

issue between the two countries, he was repaid by the English Ministry with

attentions which he describes by a term as strong as "caress." Even when

the dust of the conflict had thickened, and popular sentiment in England

had ranged itself more and more on the side of the King and Parliament,

his advice was still eagerly sought by Chatham, Camden, Shelburne and Burke

and other liberal and sagacious English statesmen, when they were vainly

striving in opposition to restore sanity to the distracted counsels that

were menacing the security of the Empire.[20] Those must have been proud

moments for Franklin, when the elder Pitt, whom he had come to regard in

the earlier stages of his maturer life in England as an "inaccessible,"

received him as an honored guest under his roof at Hayes, or conferred with

him at No. 7 Craven Street, or delivered him to the doorkeepers in the

House of Lords, saying aloud, "This is Dr. Franklin, whom I would have

admitted into the House." There have been few men who might not have envied

the privilege of intimate communion with a man not greater, when he was

making his country the mistress of the world, than, when decrepit, and in a

hopeless minority, he rose in the House of Lords to plead with a voice,

inspired not only by his own matchless eloquence but by all that was best

in the history and temper of England for the removal of His Majesty's

troops from the town of Boston. On the other side of the Atlantic, too, as

the final catastrophe drew nearer, Franklin acquired a position, as the

champion of the Colonies, which led Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts to

say of the memorable report, made by a committee to the town meeting, held

in Boston on November 20, 1772, that "although at its first appearance it

was considered as their own work, yet they had little more to do than to

make the necessary alterations in the arrangement of materials prepared for

them by their great director in England, whose counsels they obeyed, and in

whose wisdom and dexterity they had an implicit faith."

And with entire truth it can be said that, until war became inevitable,

Franklin used his influence in both countries with the unwavering purpose

of promoting the best interests of both. The representation of America in

Parliament at that time he saw was impracticable, and it is hard to

believe, though the imbecility of a government without a sanction had not

yet been forced upon his attention by the Articles of Confederation, that

so practical a man could have had much faith in the steady efficacy of mere

requisitions for aids by the Crown on the colonial assemblies. But, within

the limits set him by the insurmountable barriers of the hour, it can not

be doubted, bold as such an assertion may be, that the wisest thing that

both England and the Colonies could have done, if such an idea is

conceivable, would have been to leave the controversy between them to his

sole arbitration. The most striking tribute that can be paid to the wisdom

and open-mindedness of Franklin is to say that, if this had been done, an

accommodation would unquestionably have been reached with due regard to the

honor, dignity and essential interests of both countries. His attitude in

England was that of a loyal friend to both parties to the controversy, who,

as he viewed it, had no cause for disagreement that a temperate and

sensible man would not know how to readily remove. To the British public he

addressed with numerous variations the following arguments: Notwithstanding

the rapid increase of population in America, its area was so vast, and

contained so much vacant land, that even such artisans as it had soon

drifted into the possession and cultivation of land. The danger, therefore,

of industrial competition between the two countries was very remote. The

people of America, however, would multiply so rapidly that, in the course

of a brief time, the demand for manufactures would increase to such an

extent that Great Britain would be powerless alone to supply it. He had

satisfied himself by an inspection of the cloth factories in Yorkshire

that, with a population doubling as did that of America every twenty-five

years, Great Britain would in the future be unable to keep the Americans

clothed. It was not right that the interests of a particular class of

British merchants, tradesmen or artificers should outweigh those of all the

King's subjects in the Colonies. Iron was to be found everywhere in

America, and beaver furs were the natural productions of that country;

hats, nails and steel were wanted there as well as in England. It was of no

importance to the common welfare of the empire whether a subject of the

King got his living by making hats on one or the other side of the water,

whether he grew rich on the Thames or the Ohio, in Edinburgh or Dublin. Yet

the hatters of England had obtained an act in their own favor, restraining

that manufacture in America in order to oblige the Americans to send their

beaver to England to be manufactured, and to purchase back the hats loaded

with the charges of a double transportation. In the same manner, had a few

nail-makers and a still smaller body of steel-makers (perhaps there were

not a half-dozen of these in England) been able to totally forbid by an Act

of Parliament the erecting of slitting mills or steel-furnaces in America.

All money made by America in trade, or derived by it from fisheries, the

produce of the soil or commerce, finally centred in England; yet, though

America was drained of all its specie in the purchase of English goods,

often mere luxuries and superfluities, she was not even allowed to issue

paper money, however carefully safeguarded, to take its place. The idea

that the numerous and separate colonies might become dangerous to the

mother country was visionary. They were so jealous of each other that they

had been wholly unable to agree upon a union for their common defence or to

unite in requesting the mother country to establish one for them. The truth

was that they loved England much more than they loved each other. There

remained among them so much respect, veneration and affection for Britain,

that, if cultivated prudently, with kind usage, and tenderness for their

privileges, they might be easily governed still for ages, without force, or

any considerable expense. Parliament had no constitutional right to levy a

direct tax of any kind on America. The King was the only bond between

America and Great Britain. In the beginning, no claim had been made by

Parliament of a right to even regulate American commerce, but the power had

long been exercised by it without any objection on the part of the

colonies, and could, at any rate, be reasonably defended on the ground that

Great Britain was put to a great expense in policing the seas over which

American commerce moved. If England felt that she could not rely upon the

voluntary grants of America, to defray the charges imposed upon her by

America, then the logical and proper thing to do before she levied direct

taxes upon America was to provide for the representation of the Colonies in

Parliament. Until that was done, if it was practicable to do it, she should

confine herself to the old constitutional practice of requisitions for

pecuniary aid, issued by the Secretary of State, at the instance of the

Crown, to the Legislative Assemblies of America. These requisitions of a

gracious King had been freely honored in the past. Indeed, the pecuniary

burden of the wars, which had been carried on in America, though they were

not of her kindling, had been borne by America in a larger proportion to

her means than England. But to impose a stamp or tea duty upon America by

Act of Parliament was simple madness. No taxes of that sort would ever be

collected in America except such as were stained with blood. If Parliament,

in which America was not represented, had the right to take from her a

penny in a pound, what was there to hinder it from calling, whenever it

pleased, for the other nineteen shillings and eleven pence? The only

result of a continued attempt to tax America would be the complete loss of

her respect and affection, and all the political and commercial advantages

that accompanied them. It was a mistake to heed the statements of the

Colonial Governors as to the limited extent of popular disaffection in

America and the inability of the Colonies to dispense with English

manufactures. Their dependence was such as to render them more eager to

conciliate court than colonial favor. It was also a mistake to suppose that

America could not either make or forego any articles whatsoever that she

was in the habit of buying from England. Men would tax themselves as

heavily to gratify their resentment as their pride. The Americans had

resolved to wear no more mourning, and it was now totally out of fashion

with near two millions of people. They had resolved to eat no more lamb,

and not a joint of lamb had since been seen on any of their tables, but the

lambs themselves were all alive with the prettiest of fleeces on their

backs imaginable. Look, too, at the pitiful sum of eighty pounds which was

all that the odious tea duty banned by America had produced in a year to

defray the expense of some hundreds of thousands of pounds incurred by

England in maintaining armed ships and soldiers to support the innumerable

officeholders charged with the duty of enforcing the tax.

The argument addressed by Franklin to America was equally earnest. The

protection that England could afford her, the office of umpire that England

could perform for her, in case of disputes between the Colonies, so that

they could go on without interruption with their improvements, and increase

their numbers, were the advantages that America enjoyed in her connection

with England.

By the Exercise of prudent Moderation on her part,

mix'd with a little Kindness [Franklin wrote to Thomas

Cushing], and by a decent Behaviour on ours, excusing

where we can excuse from a Consideration of

Circumstances, and bearing a little with the

Infirmities of her Government, as we would with those

of an aged Parent,[21] tho' firmly asserting our

Privileges, and declaring that we mean at a proper time

to vindicate them, this advantageous Union may still be

long continued. We wish it, and we may endeavour it;

but God will order it as to His Wisdom shall seem most

suitable. The Friends of Liberty here, wish we may long

preserve it on our side the Water, that they may find

it there if adverse Events should destroy it here. They

are therefore anxious and afraid, lest we should hazard

it by premature Attempts in its favour. They think we

may risque much by violent Measures and that the Risque

is unnecessary, since a little Time must infallibly

bring us all we demand or desire, and bring it us in

Peace and Safety. I do not presume to advise. There are

many wiser men among you, and I hope you will be

directed by a still superior Wisdom.