This proposition of delivering ourselves, bound and

gagged, ready for hanging, without even a right to

complain, and without a friend to be found afterwards

among all mankind you would have us embrace upon the

faith of an act of Parliament! Good God! An act of your

Parliament! This demonstrates that you do not yet know

us, and that you fancy we do not know you; but it is

not merely this flimsy faith, that we are to act upon;

you offer us _hope_, the hope of PLACES, PENSIONS, and

PEERAGES. These, judging from yourselves, you think are

motives irresistible. This offer to corrupt us, Sir, is

with me your credential, and convinces me that you are

not a private volunteer in your application. It bears

the stamp of British court character. It is even the

signature of your King.

The next bearer of the olive branch, who came over to Paris, came under

very different auspices. This was William Jones, afterwards Sir William

Jones, who was at the time affianced to Anna Maria Shipley. He did not come

as the representative of the King or his Ministers, but as the

representative of the generous and patriotic Englishmen, who had cherished

the same dream of world-wide British unity as Franklin himself, and whose

sacrifices in behalf of their fellow-Englishmen in America should be

almost as gratefully remembered by us as the Continental soldiers who

perished at Monmouth or Camden. Draping his thoughts with academic terms,

he submitted a paper to Dr. Franklin entitled _A Fragment from Polybius_ in

which England, France, the United States and Franklin are given names

borrowed from antiquity, and various suggestions are made for the

settlement of the existing controversy between Great Britain and America.

England becomes Athens, France, Caria, America, the Islands, and Franklin,

Eleutherion; and Jones himself is masked as an Athenian lawyer.

This I _know_ [observes the latter-day Athenian] and

positively pronounce, that, while Athens is Athens, her

proud but brave citizens will never _expressly_

recognize the independence of the Islands; their

resources are, no doubt, exhaustible, but will not be

exhausted in the lives of us and of our children. In

this resolution all parties agree.

There should be, the writer suggested, "a perfect coordination between

Athens and the Thirteen United Islands, they considering her not as a

parent, whom they must obey, but as an elder sister, whom they can not help

loving, and to whom they shall give pre-eminence of honor and co-equality

of power." Other suggestions were that the new constitutions of the Islands

should remain intact, but that, on every occasion, requiring acts for the

general good, there should be an assembly of deputies from the Senate of

Athens, and the Congress of the Islands, who should fairly adjust the whole

business, and settle the ratio of the contributions on both sides; that

this committee should consist of fifty Islanders and fifty Athenians, or of

a smaller number chosen by them, and that, if it was thought necessary, and

found convenient, a proportionate number of Athenian citizens should have

seats, and the power of debating and voting on questions of common concern

in the great assembly of the Islands, and a proportionable number of

Islanders should sit with the like power in the Assembly at Athens. The

whole reminds the reader of the classical fictions to which the first

Parliamentary reporters were driven by press censorship. The paper, drafted

by Jones, was little more than a mere literary exercise, prompted by

ingenuous enthusiasm, but we may be sure that it kindled in Franklin very

different feelings from those aroused in him by the insidious appeal of

Charles de Weissenstein.

The shortcomings, which Franklin is supposed by his enemies to have

exhibited in France with respect to the duties of his post, require but

little attention. Apart from a lack of clerical neatness and system, such

as might more justly be imputed as a serious reproach to a book-keeper or

clerk, they rest upon evidence easily perverted by enmity or jealousy.[41]

Adams had no little to say about Franklin's love of ease and tranquillity,

the social and academic distractions, to which he was subject, and the

extent to which his time was consumed by curious visitors. It is a

sufficient answer to all such disparagement to declare that he successfully

dispatched an enormous amount of public business with but very little aid,

and unflinchingly bore a load of responsibility only less weighty than that

of Washington; that no spy, such as obtained secret access to the papers of

Silas Deane and Arthur Lee for the purposes of the British Government, ever

abstracted any valuable information from his papers; and that his position

in the polite and learned world, and the popular curiosity, excited by his

fame, were among the things which tended most effectually to recommend him

to the favor of the French People and Ministry. The effort was also made by

John Adams to create the impression that Franklin was unduly subservient to

the influence of France, and that, but for the superior firmness of John

Jay and himself, the United States would not have concluded a peace with

England on terms anything like so favorable as those actually obtained from

her.

In what respects Franklin can be truly said to have been servile to French

influence, it is impossible to see. If by this is meant that he did not

share the prejudices of Adams and Jay against the French people, did not

harbor their keen distrust of the motives of the French ministry and did

not feel as free as they to ignore the proprieties, arising out of the

profound obligations of America to France, the reflection is just enough.

Neither Adams nor Jay ever succeeded in making himself sufficiently

acceptable to the French people or ministry, or obtained sufficient

benefits from them for his countrymen, to feel any sense of personal

indebtedness to them, or to be inclined to show any unusual degree of

consideration to them. This was true of Jay, if for no other reason,

because his intercourse with them was but limited in point of time.

Franklin, on the other hand, was the idol of the French people, and

received from Vergennes as decisive proofs of confidence as one individual

can confer upon another. No one could have been in a better position than

he was to know that the French alliance was hardly more the fruit of

selfish policy upon the part of the French ministry, or of a desire upon

its part to avenge historic injuries, than of the generous sensibility of

the French people to the liberal and democratic impulses, which were

hurrying them on to the fiercest outbreak of uncalculating enthusiasm that

the world has ever seen. He had never entered the cabinet of the French

Minister to sue for pecuniary aid without coming away with a fresh cordial

for the drooping energies of his people. That upright and able minister, he

wrote to Samuel Huntington, on one occasion, had never promised him

anything which he did not punctually perform.[42] No matter how dark were

the thick clouds that enveloped the fate of his country, no matter how

acute was the pecuniary distress of France herself, there was always

another million at the bottom of the stocking of the French tax-payer for

the land of freedom and opportunity. Franklin had even known what it was to

beg for a loan from the French King and to receive it as a gracious gift.

He would have been fashioned of ignoble materials, indeed, if he had been

too quick, in seeking the selfish advantage of his country, to forget the

extraordinary magnanimity of her ally, and to suspect a disposition upon

her part to deprive the United States of the just rewards of the triumph,

which they might never have achieved but for her. And he, at any rate, with

his strong sense of justice, was not likely to commit himself with

unhesitating alacrity to a coldblooded scramble for concessions from

England to America which took no account of the fact that France not only

had the interests of America, but also her own necessities to consult, and

that it was as essential to her interests that America should not make

peace with England before she did, as it was to the interests of America

that France should not make peace with England before America did. In the

Treaty of Alliance, France had assumed no obligation to the United States

except that of continuing to wage war against England until their

independence was acknowledged, and of not concluding any peace with England

that did not include them. She had never bound herself to secure to America

the right of fishery on the Newfoundland Banks, or to oppose every

restriction upon the extension of her western boundaries. In the course of

the war, there was a time when the situation of America was so desperate

that Vergennes was, with perfect fidelity to the American cause, brought to

the conclusion that the Thirteen States might well afford to surrender a

part of their territory to England as the price of independence; and this

was a conclusion to which any honest American mind might have been brought

under the circumstances. And, even after this crisis had passed, and

negotiations for peace were pending between Great Britain and the Allies,

it is not surprising that he should not have foreseen that he would ever

have occasion to say, as he did after England and America came to terms,

that England had bought rather than made a peace, but should have thought

that England might still hold out stubbornly enough to cause even America

to feel that she could be reasonably expected by France to forego more than

one minor expectation to make certain of her independence. There was also

the fact, which could hardly escape the attention of a man so deferential

to the authority of his principals as Franklin always was, that Congress

had positively instructed its Commissioners to make the most candid and

confidential communications upon all subjects to the minister of its

generous ally, the King of France, to undertake nothing in the negotiations

for peace or a truce without the knowledge and concurrence of the Minister

and King, and ultimately to govern themselves by their advice and opinion.

And there was also the fact that Franklin had always had such marked

success in influencing the conclusions of Vergennes, that he might well

have confided in his ability to bring the French minister over to any

reasonable views that he might form about the results that America had the

right to expect from the Peace; particularly as Vergennes had long been

possessed with a haunting fear that America might be detached from her

alliance with France.

In the light of all these circumstances, it is not strange that Franklin

should have been reluctant, in the first instance, to unite with Adams and

Jay in signing the preliminary treaty of peace with England without

previously consulting with Vergennes; for that is the only tangible

foundation for the claim that he was too submissive to the selfish designs

of France; and there is no substantial evidence that any real point was

gained by America by the act, or that it awakened any feeling in Vergennes

profounder than the passing disappointment, born of realized distrust and

affronted pride, which led him to write to M. de la Luzerne, the French

Minister to the United States, immediately after it as follows:

I think it proper that the most influential members of

Congress should be informed of the very irregular

conduct of their Commissioners in regard to us. You may

speak of it not in the tone of complaint. I accuse no

person; I blame no one, not even Dr. Franklin. He has

yielded too easily to the bias of his colleagues, who

do not pretend to recognize the rules of courtesy in

regard to us. All their attentions have been taken up

by the English whom they have met in Paris. If we may

judge of the future from what has passed here under our

eyes, we shall be but poorly paid for all that we have

done for the United States, and for securing to them a

national existence.

When we recollect how faithfully France had rejected every effort upon the

part of England to treat for peace with her separately, and insisted that

the treaty of peace between England and France, on the one hand, and the

treaty of peace between England and the United States, on the other, should

go hand in hand, how entirely Vergennes had refrained from inquiring into

the course of the pending negotiations between England and our

commissioners, which resulted in the signing of the preliminary treaty of

peace between England and the United States; and how singularly limited was

the measure of concession that France asked for herself from England, these

words cannot be read by any true American without a highly painful

impression.

When Franklin appealed, after the peace, to both Adams and Jay to deny the

statement, current in America, that he had not stood up stoutly for

American rights, when the peace was being concluded, Jay complied with

unreserved emphasis, and Adams with a reluctant note which rendered his

testimony but the stronger. The truth is that, if Franklin's conduct during

the peace negotiations was not admirable in every respect, it was only

because he found that he could not decline to unite with his colleagues in

violating the instruction of Congress without breaking with them and

hazarding discord that might be fatal to the interests of his country. He

did not, of course, believe that France, after the enormous sacrifices that

she had made for American independence, was engaged in a treacherous effort

to shackle the growth of the United States. He could not readily have

entertained such a totally ungrounded suspicion as that which led Jay, when

he learnt that De Rayneval was going over to London to have an interview

with Shelburne, to leap to the conclusion that it was for the purpose of

confounding American aspirations, and to inform Shelburne that now was the

time for England to outbid France for the favor of America by executing at

once preliminary articles of peace, conceding to America the points about

which she was most concerned. The overture was a bold one, but if it had

not been accepted in the manner that it was, and had been communicated by

Shelburne to Vergennes, it might have been attended by consequences

inimical to the Alliance which even the personal influence of Franklin

might not have been able to prevent. Franklin was too prudent to risk

rashly the support of an ally, from which the United States still found it

necessary to borrow money, even after their independence was acknowledged,

and too grateful to risk lightly the friendship of an ally which had not

only aided the United States with soldiers, ships and money to secure their

independence, but had repeatedly declined to treat with England except on

the basis of American independence. His inclination naturally and properly

enough was to maintain with Vergennes until the last the frank and intimate

relations that he had always maintained with him; to avoid everything that

might have the least savor of faithlessness or sharp practice in the

opinion of our ally, and to rely upon our growing importance and the

ordinary appeals of argument and persuasion for a peace at once fair and

just to both the United States and France. But never once from the time

that he wrote to Lord Shelburne the brief letter, that initiated the

negotiations for peace between England and the United States, until the day

that he threw himself, after the consummation of peace, into the arms of

the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, saying, "My friend! Could I have hoped at my

age to enjoy such a happiness," was he animated by any purpose except that

of securing for his countrymen the most generous terms that he could. It is

by no means improbable that, if he had been our sole negotiator, he would

not only have obtained for us all that was secured by his

Fellow-Commissioners and himself but Canada besides, and would, moreover,

have saved the United States the reproach that justly attached to them

because of the precipitate signature of the preliminary articles of peace.

As we have already seen, the acquisition of Canada by the United States

was something that he had definitely in mind even before the negotiations

for peace began, and, when they did begin, this was one of the things that

he specified in a memorandum that he gave to Oswald, the British envoy, as

concessions that it was advisable for England to make, and we also know

from the correspondence of Oswald that it was a topic to which his

conversation frequently turned. With such address did he ply Oswald upon

this point that the latter went so far as to say that it might be conceded.

To compass it, he was even willing to agree that the Loyalists should be

compensated by the United States for their losses; which was the point upon

which the English Ministry was most earnestly bent, and the one which

aroused in him feelings of the deepest antagonism. What a trifling

recompense the compensation of the Loyalists would have been for such an

addition to our national domain as Canada we hardly need say; nor need we

dilate upon the far-sighted statesmanship which so surely foresaw what

futurity held in store for a country which, as late as 1760, had been

gravely proposed to be exchanged with France for the Island of Guadeloupe.

It is to be regretted by the United States, if the present happy lot of

Canada is to be the subject of regret at all, that the desire of Franklin

to secure Canada for them was not more urgently seconded by Adams and Jay.

The former was enthusiastically resolved, as was but proper, to secure for

New England the right to fish on the Newfoundland Banks, and the latter was

especially eager, as any statesman with the slightest glow of imagination

might well have been, to remove every obstacle in our pathway westward.

Neither appears to have been zealously alive to the considerations, which

led Franklin to cast a covetous eye upon Canada, and to make it one of the

primary objects of his efforts to promote the interests of America during

the peace negotiations. On the other hand, Franklin was not less impressed

than they were with the importance of our North Eastern Fisheries and our

Western Destiny; and was quite as stiff as they in maintaining our rights

with respect to them. Moreover, when the insistence of the English Ministry

upon compensation for the Loyalists threatened to be the only rock, upon

which the negotiations were likely to split, it was his suggestiveness

which relieved the situation by proposing, as an offset to the losses of

the Loyalists, the payment by England of the pecuniary losses wantonly

inflicted by her upon the inhabitants of such towns as Fairfield and

Norfolk on our Atlantic seaboard. After this timely counter-claim, a

compromise was soon reached, under which it was agreed that the Loyalists

should be referred to the justice of the individual States with a favorable

recommendation from the Commissioners. This was but a diplomatic way of

disposing of the proposition adversely without seeming to do so, for

Shelburne as well as the American Commissioners must have realized that the

recommendation was the only form of indemnity that the Loyalists were

likely to obtain.

Friendly as Franklin was to the French Court, it was only where some treaty

stipulation was involved, or some definite rule of courtesy was to be

observed, that he recognized the right of France to influence the course of

the negotiations between England and the American Commissioners. He knew as

well as Adams and Jay that French policy, partly because of considerations,

peculiar to France herself, and partly because of obligations, that France

owed to Spain, differed in some very material respects from American

policy. But he entertained the belief, and justly entertained the belief,

that this was no reason why Vergennes should necessarily be moved by the

settled, perfidious purpose of arresting an agreement between England and

America until the negotiations between England and France and Spain had

gone too far for the United States to be any longer in the position to

insist effectively upon their fishery and boundary claims. The disposition

of the French Minister to contemplate contingencies, in which concessions

would have to be made by America, was in Franklin's judgment "due to the

moderation of the minister and to his desire of removing every obstacle to

speedy negotiations for peace"; and there is no real reason to believe that

he was not right. It is quite true that Marbois, when he was the French

Secretary of Legation in the United States, in his famous letter to

Vergennes, which the English were at pains to bring to the notice of John

Jay, suggested to Vergennes that he should let the Americans know that

their pretensions to the Newfoundland fisheries were not well founded, and

that the French King did not mean to support them; but, as Vergennes wrote

to M. de la Luzerne, the successor of Gerard, the opinion of Marbois was

not necessarily that of the King, and, moreover the views of his letter had

not been followed. When Franklin made his suggestion to Oswald in respect

to Canada, he did not bring it to the knowledge of Vergennes. In the very

commencement of the negotiations between England and the United States, he

let it be known to Grenville, the envoy of Charles James Fox, that, when

Great Britain acknowledged the independence of America, the treaty, that

America had made with France for gaining it, ended, and no conventional tie

remained between America and France but that of the treaty of commerce

which England, too, might establish between America and herself, if she

pleased. Indeed, Vergennes himself clearly recognized the right of the

American Commissioners to make the best terms that they could for

themselves in the matter of the fisheries, the western boundaries or any

other object of American policy.

We are [he wrote Luzerne on April 9, 1782], and shall

always be, disposed to consent that the American

plenipotentiaries in Europe should treat according to

their instructions directly and without our

intervention with those of the Court of London, while

we on our side shall treat in the same way, provided

that the two negotiations continue at the same rate,

and that the two treaties shall be signed the same day,

and shall not be good the one without the other.

The hesitation of Franklin about executing the preliminary articles of

peace between England and the United States was not due to any doubt as to

the technical right of the American Commissioners to sign it, aside from

the instruction of Congress that they were not to take any important step

without the advice of the French Ministry. He hesitated to sign it because

he was subject to this instruction, and also because he felt that for the

Commissioners to sign such a treaty, without taking Vergennes into their

confidence, was hardly compatible with the scrupulous deference due to such

a timely, generous and powerful ally as France had proved herself to be and

might be again. His reason for disregarding the instruction of Congress,

and uniting with his colleagues in signing the articles doubtless was that

he deemed it unwise, in any view of the case, not to subordinate his own

judgment, after full discussion, to that of the majority of the Commission

in a case where, if the French Minister were acting in bad faith, it was

but proper that his bad faith should be anticipated, and where, if he were

acting in good faith, his resentment was not likely to be more serious than

that which is usually visited upon a mere breach of diplomatic decorum. The

execution of the articles was expressly made subject to the proviso that

they were to have no force, if England did not reach an understanding with

France also. Without such a proviso, the action of our Commissioners, of

course, would have merited the contempt of the world. With it, Franklin was

left free to say, disingenuously it must be confessed, to Vergennes that,

in signing the articles, the Commissioners had at the most been guilty of

neglecting a point of _bienseance_. No one knew better than he that no such

soothing pretence could be set up by Adams and Jay, and that, even as

respected himself, though the extent of his offence consisted, as Vergennes

truly divined, in yielding to the bias of his colleagues, he had been drawn

into a position in which it was impossible for him to separate himself

wholly from either the motives or the moral responsibilities of his

colleagues. In transmitting with them to Congress a copy of the articles,

he united with them in this statement:

As we had reason to imagine that the Articles

respecting the boundaries, the refugees and fisheries,

did not correspond with the policy of this court, we

did not communicate the preliminaries to the Minister

until after they were signed, and not even then the

separate Article. We hope that these considerations

will excuse our having so far deviated from the spirit

of our instructions. The Count de Vergennes, on

perusing the Articles, appeared surprised, but not

displeased, at their being so favorable to us.

The separate article was one fixing the northern boundary of West Florida,

in case Great Britain, at the conclusion of the war, should recover, or be

put in possession of, that Province. In reply to a letter from Robert R.

Livingston, disapproving the manner, in which the articles had been signed,

Franklin said that they had done what appeared to all of them best at the

time, and, if they had done wrong, the Congress would do right, after

hearing them, to censure them. The nomination by Congress of five persons

to the service, he further said, seemed to mark that they had some

dependence on their joint judgment, since one alone could have made a

treaty by direction of the French Ministry, as well as twenty. But there

can be no doubt that the individual views of Franklin about the aims of the

French Court, in relation to the United States, are to be found not in the

letter of the Commissioners to Congress, but in his own words in this same

reply to Livingston:

I will only add [he said] that, with respect to myself,

neither the Letter from M. de Marbois, handed us thro'

the British Negociators (a suspicious Channel) nor the

Conversations respecting the Fishery, the Boundaries,

the Royalists, &c., recommending Moderation in our

Demands, are of Weight sufficient in my Mind to fix an

Opinion, that this Court wish'd to restrain us in

obtaining any Degree of Advantage we could prevail on

our Enemies to accord; since those Discourses are

fairly resolvable, by supposing a very natural

Apprehension, that we, relying too much on the Ability

of France to continue the War in our favour, and supply

us constantly with Money, might insist on more

Advantages than the English would be willing to grant,

and thereby lose the Opportunity of making Peace, so

necessary to all our friends.

It is impossible, however, to believe that Franklin could have taken such a

step except with grave misgivings as to its effect on the mind of

Vergennes. This is shown by the reserve which he, as well as his

fellow-commissioners, maintained towards Vergennes, while the preliminary

articles were being matured.

According to the injunctions of Congress [Vergennes

wrote to Luzerne], they should have done nothing

without our participation. I have pointed out to you,

Sir, that the King would not have sought to interest

himself in the negotiations, save in so far as his

offices might be necessary to his friends. The American

Commissioners will not say that I have sought to

intervene in their business, still less that I have

wearied them by my curiosity. They have kept themselves

carefully out of my way.

It must have taxed even the nice judgment of Franklin to calculate

precisely the degree of resentment that the act of the Commissioners would

excite. He took the precaution of sending a copy of the articles to

Vergennes the day after they were signed. His receipt of them was followed

by an ominous silence. Some days later, Franklin called upon Vergennes, and

the latter took pains to let him perceive that the signing of the articles

had little in it which could be agreeable to the King, and Franklin

advanced such excuses for his colleagues and himself as the case permitted.

According to Vergennes, the conversation was amicable, but for a time it

did not efface the impression that his mind had received. A week or so

later, when Franklin proposed to send the preliminary articles to America

by a ship, for which an English passport had been provided, and was

soliciting a loan of twenty millions of francs from France, Vergennes gave

him a bad quarter of an hour.

I am at a loss sir [he said] to explain your conduct,

and that of your colleagues on this occasion. You have

concluded your preliminary articles without any

communication between us, although the instructions

from Congress prescribe that nothing shall be done

without the participation of the King. You are about to

hold out a certain hope of peace to America, without

even informing yourself on the state of the negotiation

on our part. You are wise and discreet, sir; you

perfectly understand what is due to propriety; you have

all your life performed your duties. I pray you to

consider how you propose to fulfill those, which are

due to the King! I am not desirous of enlarging these

reflections; I commit them to your own integrity. When

you shall be pleased to relieve my uncertainty, I will

entreat the King to enable me to answer your demands.

The reply of Franklin was almost abject.

Nothing [he said] has been agreed in the preliminaries

contrary to the interests of France; and no peace is to

take place between us and England, till you have

concluded yours. Your observation is, however,

apparently just, that, in not consulting you before

they were signed, we have been guilty of neglecting a

point of _bienseance_. But, as this was not from want

of respect for the King, whom we all love and honour,

we hope it will be excused, and that the great work,

which has hitherto been so happily conducted, is so

nearly brought to perfection, and is so glorious to his

reign, will not be ruined by a single indiscretion of

ours. And certainly the whole edifice sinks to the

ground immediately, if you refuse on that account to

give us any further assistance.

Again, unpromising as the conditions were, there was no resisting the voice

of the seductive mendicant. France did not lend the twenty millions of

francs to the United States because she did not have that much to lend; but

she did lend six. If any loss of dignity or self-respect was suffered on

this occasion it was not by her.

The definitive treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States

was signed at Paris on September 3, 1783, and was ratified a few months

later by both the contracting powers. Several weeks after it was signed,

Franklin again tendered his resignation to Congress, but it was not

accepted until March 7, 1785. Three days later, Jefferson, who had been in

France ever since August, 1784, for the purpose of co-operating with

Franklin and Adams in the negotiation of commercial treaties with England

and other European countries, was appointed the American plenipotentiary at

the Court of Versailles in the place of Franklin.

Shortly after the return of Franklin to Philadelphia, he was elected

President of the Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,

and, in 1787, he was elected a member of the convention which adopted the

Federal Constitution. There was only one man in the United States whose

claims to the Presidency of the Convention could possibly be deemed

paramount to his; and that was Washington. The nomination of Washington to

the position was to have been made by him, but the weather on the day,

fixed for it, was too bad to permit him at his advanced age, and in his

infirm condition, to venture abroad. The honor of making the nomination,

therefore, fell to Robert Morris, another member of the Pennsylvania

delegation. It was thought becoming and graceful in Pennsylvania, Madison

tells us, to pass by her own distinguished citizen as President, and to

take the lead in giving that pre-eminence to the late Commander-in-Chief of

the American Army, which the country felt to be his due.[43] At the next

session of the Convention, Franklin was present, and thereafter he attended

its sessions regularly for five hours each day for more than four months.

His stone made it impossible for him to stand long upon his feet, and, when

he participated on any important occasion in the discussions of the body,

it was his habit to reduce his thoughts to writing, and to have them read

to the body by one of his colleagues, usually James Wilson. Copies of these

speeches were made by Madison from the original manuscripts for his reports

of the debates of the Convention, and, unlike the speeches of the other

leading members of the Assembly, the speeches of Franklin have consequently

come down to us in their entirety. Of his general course in the Convention,

it is enough to say that it was strongly marked by liberalism, faith in the

popular intelligence and virtue, and the aversion to arbitrary power which

was always such a prominent feature of his conduct in every relation. He

had a quick eye to the abuses of authority, and it is probable that, if he

had been a younger man, when the Convention met, and had lived until the

clash between the Federalists and the Republicans arose, he would have been

a Republican. Inane idealism, lack of energy and resolution did not belong

to his character, but, to say nothing more, what he had seen of the

workings of monarchical and aristocratic institutions, during the long

dispute between England and her colonies, was not calculated to prejudice

him in their favor.[44]

The compensation that should be paid to the Chief Magistrate of the Union

was the first topic to which he formally addressed himself as a member of

the Convention. In his opinion, no pecuniary compensation should be paid to

him. The argument that he pursued in support of his proposition was one

that he had often made with respect to the Government of Great Britain.

Sir [he said] there are two Passions which have a

powerful Influence in the Affairs of Men. These are

_Ambition and Avarice_; the Love of Power and the Love

of Money. Separately, each of these has great Force in

prompting Men to Action; but when united in View of the

same Object, they have in many Minds the most violent

Effects. Place before the Eyes of such Men a Post of

_Honour_, that shall at the same time be a Place of

_Profit_, and they will move Heaven and Earth to obtain

it. The vast Number of such Places it is that renders

the British Government so tempestuous. The Struggles

for them are the true source of all those Factions

which are perpetually dividing the Nation, distracting

its Councils, hurrying it sometimes into fruitless and

mischievous Wars, and often compelling a Submission to

dishonorable Terms of Peace.

The argument, of course, fell upon deaf ears. It really presupposes a

numerous class, at once sufficiently free from pecuniary anxieties to give

its exclusive attention to public duties, and sufficiently qualified to

discharge them with the requisite degree of success. Such a class was not

to be found in America, at any rate, and, even if it was, it would have

been invidious in the eyes of a democratic community to limit the enjoyment

of public office to it. The subsequent history of the Republic showed that,

in the beginning of our national existence, even moderate salaries did not

suffice to keep some of the ablest men in the United States from declining

or resigning federal office. The long journeys and the bad roads and

taverns of that day were probably responsible for this state of things. In

the first thirty years after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, no

less than one hundred and ten seats in the United States Senate were

resigned, and Washington experienced great difficulty in inducing lawyers

to accept positions even on the Supreme Bench of the United States. It is a

remarkable fact that, during the first thirty years after the adoption of

the Federal Constitution, ten persons either declined to serve as associate

justices of the Supreme Court, or resigned the office. It is a still more

remarkable fact that both Jay and Ellsworth resigned as Chief Justice after

brief terms of office. There was, however, undoubtedly an element of

expediency in the views of Franklin, for it is no uncommon thing in the

United States to see the supervisory functions of certain offices,

connected with the educational or eleemosynary systems of the country, more

efficiently and faithfully exercised, when exercised without pay by men, in

whom public spirit or philanthropic zeal is highly developed, than they

would be, if exercised by the very different kind of men who would be

attracted to them, if salaried.

In connection with another question, the extent to which the superior

wealth and population of the larger states were to be represented in

Congress, it was the fortune of Franklin to exert a powerful and decisive

influence. The debate over this question was so protracted and heated, the

smaller States demanding equal representation with the larger in both

Houses of Congress, and the larger repelling the claim as utterly

unreasonable and unjust, that it looked, at one time, as if the Convention

would break up like a ship lodged on a fatal rock. Then it was that

Franklin found out to his surprise that his colleagues did not set the same

value as himself upon the harmonizing influence of prayer. Not only was his

suggestion that the proceedings of the Convention be opened each day with

it rejected, but the controversy became more acrimonious than ever; John

Dickinson, one of the members from Delaware, who always had a way of

chafing in harness, even declaring that rather than be deprived of an

equality of representation in the Legislature he would prefer to be a

foreign subject. At this point, Franklin came forward with a proposition of

compromise, accompanied by one of his happy illustrations.

The diversity of opinion [he said] turns on two points.

If a proportional representation take place, the small

States contend that their liberties will be in danger.

If an equality of votes is to be put into its place,

the larger States say their money will be in danger.

When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of the

planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both,

and makes a good joint.

He then proposed that all the States should have an equal number of

delegates in Congress, and that on all questions affecting the authority or

sovereignty of a State, or, when appointments and confirmations were under

consideration, every State should have an equal vote, but that on bills to

raise or expend money every State should have a vote proportioned to its

population. This compromise did not meet with the favor of the smaller

States. Under the lead of Dickinson, they still contended for unvarying

equality between them and the larger States. At length, a committee was

appointed to consider the matter, and to report a compromise, and Franklin

was one of its members. It came back with a plan, proposed by his

constructive intellect, namely, that, in the Senate, every State should

have equal representation, but that, in the other House, every State should

have a representation proportioned to its population; and that bills to

raise or expend money should originate in the other House. The report of

the committee was adopted, and no device of the Constitution has, in

practice, more strikingly vindicated the wisdom of the brain by which it

was conceived than that hit upon by Franklin for disarming the jealousy and

fears of the smaller States represented in the Convention.

He approved the proposed article making the presidential term of office

seven years, and declaring its incumbent ineligible for a second term. The

sagacity of this conclusion has been confirmed by experience. There was

nothing degrading, Franklin thought, in the idea of the magistrate

returning to the mass of the people; for in free governments rulers are the

servants, and the people are their superiors and sovereigns. The same

popular bias manifested itself when the proposition was made to limit the

suffrage to freeholders. "It is of great consequence," he said, "that we

should not depress the virtue and public spirit of our common people, of

which they displayed a great deal during the war, and which contributed

principally to the favorable issue of it." The British statute, setting

forth the danger of tumultuous meetings, and, under that pretext, narrowing

the right of suffrage to persons having freeholds of a certain value, was

soon followed, he added, by another, subjecting the people, who had no

votes, to peculiar labors and hardships. Some days later, Madison informs

us, he expressed his dislike to everything that tended to debase the spirit

of the common people. If honesty was often the companion of wealth, and, if

poverty was exposed to peculiar temptations, it was not less true, he

declared, that the possession of property increased the desire for more

property. Some of the greatest rogues he was ever acquainted with were the

richest rogues. They should remember the character which the Scriptures

require in rulers, that they should be men hating covetousness. The

Constitution would be much read and attended in Europe, and, if it should

betray a great partiality to the rich, would not only cost them the esteem

of the most liberal and enlightened men there, but discourage the common

people from removing to America.

He strongly favored the clause giving Congress the power to impeach the

President. When the head of the government cannot be lawfully called to

account, the people have no recourse, he said, against oppression but

revolution and assassination. These, it should be recollected, were the

utterances of a man who was from age too near the end of political ambition

to be possibly influenced by demagogic designs of any sort. Franklin also

opposed the idea of conferring an absolute veto upon the President, and the

requirement of fourteen years' residence as a condition of citizenship.

Four years he believed to be enough. He approved the article making an

overt act essential to the crime of treason, and exacting the evidence of

two witnesses to establish the overt act.

He also forcibly expressed his views with regard to the respective powers

with which the two Houses of Congress should be invested. When the

Convention was drawing to a close, he urged its members in a tactful and

persuasive speech to lay aside their individual disappointments, and to

give their work to the world with the stamp of unanimity. As is well known,

when the last members were signing, he looked towards the President's

chair, at the back of which there was a representation of a rising sun,

and, after observing to some of his associates near him that painters had

found it difficult in their art to distinguish a rising from a setting sun,

he concluded with this exultant peroration: "I have often and often, in the

course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its

issue, looked at that behind the President, without being able to tell

whether it was rising or setting: but now, at length, I have the happiness

to know, that it is a rising and not a setting sun." And a rising sun,

indeed, it was, starting out upon its splendid circuit like the sun in the

lines of Charles Lamb, "with all his fires and travelling glories round

him."

The opinions of Franklin with regard to general political topics are always

acute and interesting, and, unlike the opinions of most great men, even the

greatest, are rarely, if ever, flecked by the errors of his time. In some

quarters, there has been a disposition to reproach him with being an

advocate of what since his day has come to be known in the United States as

rag or fiat money. The reproach loses sight of the fact that the currency

problems, with which he had to deal, did not turn upon the true respective

functions of paper and real money, under conditions that permit their

application to their several natural and proper uses. No such conditions

existed in America during the colonial period or the Revolutionary War.

There was no California, Alaska, Nevada, or Colorado then. "Gold and

Silver," Franklin said in 1767, in his _Remarks and Facts Concerning

American Paper Money_, "are not the Produce of _North-America_, which has

no Mines."

Every civilized community, unless it is to be remanded to mere barter, must

have some kind of convenient medium for the exchange of commodities and

the payment of debts, even though it be no better than wampum or tobacco.

Paper money, whether it bore interest or not, and whether it was a legal

tender or not, was, unsupported by any real provision for its redemption, a

dangerous currency for America, in her early history, as it is for any

country, whatever its state of maturity; but she had no choice. It was

either that or something not even as good on the whole for monetary

purposes. Not only were there no gold or silver mines in North America, but

the balance of trade between the Colonies and Great Britain was so greatly

in favor of the latter country that even such gold and silver coin, as

found its way to them, was at once drawn off to her.

However fit [bitterly declared Franklin in the

pamphlet, to which we have just referred], a particular

Thing may be for a particular Purpose, wherever that

Thing is not to be had, or not to be had in sufficient

Plenty, it becomes necessary to use something else, the

fittest that can be got, in lieu of it.

In America, this undoubtedly was a paper currency, even though issued as

real, and not representative, money. At times, in the history of the

Colonies, it worked much pecuniary loss and debasement of morals, but,

makeshift as it was, it was the best makeshift that the situation of the

Colonies allowed; and, when New England petitioned for the Act of

Parliament, depriving it of the legal-tender quality within her limits, it

was only, Franklin contended, because the close intercourse between the

four provinces, of which she was constituted, and the large supply of hard

money, derived by her from her whale and cod fisheries, took the sting out

of the act. But, when the act was afterwards extended to the other

colonies, it became a real grievance, and, as such, was stated by Franklin,

in his examination before the House of Commons, to be one of the causes,

which had lessened the respect of the Colonies for Parliament. "It seems

hard therefore," he said in the paper just mentioned, "to draw all their

real Money from them, and then refuse them the poor Privilege of using

Paper instead of it." In the same essay, the circumstances, in which the

need for a paper currency in the Colonies originated, are stated in his

perspicuous manner: "The Truth is, that the Balance of their Trade with

Britain being generally against them, the Gold and Silver is drawn out to

pay that Balance; and then the Necessity of some Medium of Trade has

induced the making of Paper Money, which could not be carried away."

In his capacity as colonial agent, Franklin earnestly strove to secure the

repeal of the British legislation, forbidding the use of paper money in the

Colonies as a legal tender, and he even enlisted for this purpose the aid

of a large body of London merchants, engaged in the American trade, but his

efforts met with slight success. Some of the members of the Board of Trade,

who had united in recommending the restraint upon colonial paper money,

were, it was said, at the time in the state of mind of Soame Jenyns, who

had laughingly declared, when he was asked as a member of the Board to

concur in some measure, "I have no kind of objection to it, provided we

have heretofore signed nothing to the contrary."[45] Worse still, Grenville

threw out the chilling suggestion in the House of Commons that Great

Britain should make the paper money for the Colonies, issue it upon loan

there, take the interest and apply it as Parliament might think

proper.[46] This suggestion, and the interest excited by it led to a letter

from Franklin to Galloway in which he said that he was not for applying

again very soon for a repeal of the restraining act. "I am afraid," he

remarked, "an ill use will be made of it. The plan of our adversaries is to

render Assemblies in America useless; and to have a revenue independent of

their grants, for all the purposes of their defence, and supporting

governments among them."

These comments were followed by the suggestion that the Pennsylvania

Assembly might be petitioned by the more prominent citizens of Pennsylvania

to authorize a moderate emission of paper money, though without the

legal-tender feature; the petition to be accompanied by a mutual engagement

upon the part of the petitioners to take the money in all business

transactions at rates fixed by law. Or, perhaps, Franklin said, a bank

might be established that would meet the currency needs of the community.

In any event, should the scarcity of money continue, they would rely more

upon their own industrial resources, to the detriment of the British

merchant, and by keeping in Pennsylvania the real cash, that came into it,

would, in time, have a quantity sufficient for all their occasions. The

same thought, tinged with a trace of resentment, emerges in one of his

letters to Lord Kames:

As I think a scarcity of money will work with our other

present motives for lessening our fond extravagance in

the use of the superfluous manufactures of this

country, which unkindly grudges us the enjoyment of

common rights, and will tend to lead us naturally into

industry and frugality, I am grown more indifferent

about the repeal of the act, and, if my countrymen will

be advised by me, we shall never ask it again.[47]

The relations sustained by Franklin to the Continental paper currency we

have already seen. There was an apparent element of inconsistency in his

suggestion that it should bear interest; for interest-bearing bills, he had

contended in his _Remarks and Facts Concerning American Paper Money_, were

objectionable as currency, because it was tedious to calculate interest on

one of them, as often as it changed hands, and also because a distinct

advantage was to be gained by hoarding them.

The Continental bills depreciated so rapidly that in 1777 the price of a

bushel of salt at Baltimore was nine pounds. Three years later, the price

of a yard of cassimere in America was $300, and of a yard of jean and habit

cloth $60. Inflated as the bills were, Franklin with his cheerful habit of

mind was not at a loss to say a good word for them. There was some

advantage to the general public, at any rate, he wrote to Stephen Sayre, in

the facility with which taxes could be paid off with the depreciated

paper. Congress, he wrote to Dr. Cooper, had blundered in not earlier

adopting his suggestion that the interest on the bills should be paid in

real money.

The _only Remedy_ now [he said] seems to be a

Diminution of the Quantity by a vigourous Taxation, of

great nominal Sums, which the People are more able to

pay, in proportion to the Quantity and diminished

Value; and the _only Consolation_ under the Evil is,

that the Publick Debt is proportionably diminish'd with

the Depreciation; and this by a kind of imperceptible

Tax, everyone having paid a Part of it in the Fall of

Value that took place between his receiving and Paying

such Sums as pass'd thro' his hands.

In this same letter, Franklin declared that it was a mystery to foreign

politicians how America had been able to continue a war for four years

without money, and how it could pay with paper that had no previously fixed

fund appropriated specifically to redeem it. "This Currency, as we manage

it," he said, "is a wonderful Machine. It performs its Office when we issue

it; it pays and clothes Troops, and provides Victuals and Ammunition; and

when we are obliged to issue a Quantity excessive, it pays itself off by

Depreciation." The paper he subsequently wrote to Thomas Ruston had really

operated as a tax, and was perhaps the most equal of all taxes, since it

depreciated in the hands of holders of money, and thereby taxed them in

proportion to the sums they held and the time they held them, which

generally was in proportion to men's wealth.

All this, of course, was but making the best of a _pis-aller_. Franklin in

a sense held a brief for paper money all his life, because, during almost

his whole life, his country had to put up with paper money, whether she

wanted to do so or not. When the Revolutionary War was over, he could be

less of an advocate, and more of a judge with respect to such money; and

the change is neatly illustrated in the words that he wrote from

Philadelphia to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld in 1787. "Paper money in

moderate quantities has been found beneficial; when more than the occasions

of commerce require, it depreciated and was mischievous; and the populace

are apt to demand more than is necessary."

To see at once how quickly Franklin could evade the danger, lurking in the

proposition, urged by John Adams upon Vergennes, that the subjects of King

Louis were as fairly amenable to the will of Congress, in reducing the

value of paper money in their hands to one part in forty, as the Americans

themselves, and yet how perfectly Franklin understood the workings of a

depreciated paper currency, we need but turn to a letter from him to M. Le

Veillard dated Feb. 17, 1788.

Where there is a free government [he said in this

letter] and the people make their own laws by their

representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging

one another to take their own paper money. It is no

more so than compelling a man by law to take his own

note. But it is unjust to pay strangers with such money

against their will. The making of paper money with such

a sanction is however a folly, since, although you may

by law oblige a citizen to take it for his goods, you

cannot fix his prices; and his liberty of rating them

as he pleases, which is the same thing as setting what

value he pleases on your money, defeats your sanction.

Franklin was a free-trader, but his opinions with regard to import duties

are sometimes streaked with Protectionist reasoning. All the natural

leanings of such a broad-minded man were, it almost goes without saying, in

favor of unrestricted commerce. His general attitude towards commercial

restrictions was emphatically expressed in one of his letters to Peter

Collinson from which we have already quoted.

In time perhaps [he said] Mankind may be wise enough to

let Trade take its own Course, find its own Channels,

and regulate its own Proportions, etc. At present, most

of the Edicts of Princes, Placaerts, Laws & Ordinances

of Kingdoms & States for that purpose, prove political

Blunders. The Advantages they produce not being

_general_ for the Commonwealth; but _particular_, to

private Persons or Bodies in the State who procur'd

them, and _at the Expence of the rest of the People_.

Many years later, he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan, "The making England

entirely a free port would have been the wisest step ever taken for its

advantage." In recent years, his _Wail of a Protected Manufacturer_ has

been reprinted and widely circulated in England by the opponents of the

Fair Trade movement:

Suppose a country, X, which has three

industries--cloth, silk, iron--and supplies three other

countries--A, B, and C--therewith, wishes to increase

the sale and raise the price of cloth in favour of its

cloth-makers.

To that end X prohibits the importation of cloth from

A.

In retaliation A prohibits silks coming from X.

The workers in silk complain of the decline in their

trade.

To satisfy them X excludes silk from B.

B, to retaliate, shuts out iron and hardware against X.

Then the makers of iron and hardware cry out that their

trades are being ruined.

So X closes its doors against iron and hardware from C.

In return C refuses to take cloth from X.

Who is the gainer by all these prohibitions?

Answer

All the four countries have diminished their common

fund of the enjoyments and conveniences of life.

The open ports of the United States, after the conclusion of the American

Revolution, were a source of keen gratification to Franklin. They had

brought in, he thought, a vast plenty of foreign goods, and occasioned a

demand for domestic produce; so that America enjoyed the double advantage

of buying what they consumed cheap, and of selling what they could spare

dear.

The following views in a letter from him to Jared Eliot, as far back as the

year 1747, sound like a recent tariff reform speech in Congress:

First, I imagine that the Five Per Cent Duty on Goods

imported from your Neighbouring Governments, tho' paid

at first Hand by the Importer, will not upon the whole

come out of his Pocket, but be paid in Fact by the

Consumer; for the Importer will be sure to sell his

Goods as much dearer as to reimburse himself; so that

it is only another Mode of Taxing your own People tho'

perhaps meant to raise Money on your Neighbours.

But then follows what a free trader, using Franklin's own coarse phrase,

might call "spitting in the soup." "Yet, if you can make some of the Goods,

heretofore imported, among yourselves, the advanc'd price of five per cent

may encourage your own Manufacture, and in time make the Importation of

such Articles unnecessary, which will be an Advantage."

In another place, he employed language in harmony with the importance that

the Protectionist assigns to his favorite system as a means of building up

local markets for the produce of the farmer.[48] It may be truly said,

however, as has already been hinted, that Franklin was never more friendly

to the principle of international free trade than in the latter years of

his life. In his letter to Le Veillard of Feb. 17, 1788, he used language

which demonstrates that he was still convinced that import duties are paid

by the consumer, and in an earlier letter to Robert R. Livingston in 1783

he said that he felt inclined to believe that a State, which left all her

ports open to all the world, upon equal terms, would, by that means, have

foreign commodities cheaper, sell its own productions dearer and be on the

whole the most prosperous.

For export duties, he had a fierce contempt. "To lay duties on a commodity

exported, which our neighbours want," he wrote to James Lovell in 1778, "is

a knavish attempt to get something for nothing. The statesman who first

invented it had the genius of a pickpocket, and would have been a

pickpocket if fortune had suitably placed him."

How thoroughly Franklin understood the principles, which regulate the ebb

and flow of population, we have had occasion to note.

With equal intelligence, he laid bare the pauperizing effect of aid

injudiciously extended to the poor in too generous a measure. Commenting in

his essay on the Laboring Poor on the liberal provision, made for indigence

in England, he said:

I fear the giving mankind a dependance on anything for

support, in age or sickness, besides industry and

frugality during youth and health, tends to flatter our

natural indolence, to encourage idleness and

prodigality, and thereby to promote and increase

poverty, the very evil it was intended to cure; thus

multiplying beggars instead of diminishing them.

In his essay, Franklin makes the interesting statement that the condition

of the poor in England was by far the best in Europe; "for that," he adds,

"except in England and her American colonies, there is not in any country

of the known world, not even in Scotland or Ireland, a provision by law to

enforce a support of the poor. Everywhere else necessity reduces to

beggary." The whole essay is a highly ingenious argument to the effect that

it is a misconception to think of a rich man as the sole possessor of his

wealth, and that in one way or another the laboring poor have the usufruct

of the entire clear income of all the property owners in the community.

Nobody knew better than Poor Richard that no help is worth speaking of save

that which promotes self-help.

The support of the poor [he wrote to Richard Jackson]

should not be by maintaining them in idleness, but by

employing them in some kind of labour suited to their

abilities of body, as I am informed begins to be of

late the practice in many parts of England, where

workhouses are erected for that purpose. If these were

general, I should think the poor would be more careful,

and work voluntarily to lay up something for themselves

against a rainy day, rather than run the risk of being

obliged to work at the pleasure of others for a bare

subsistence, and that too under confinement.

For Agriculture, Franklin always had an appreciative word. "Agriculture,"

he observed in a letter to Cadwallader Evans, "is truly _productive of new

wealth_; manufacturers only change forms, and, whatever value they give to

the materials they work upon, they in the meantime consume an equal value

in provisions, &c."

His other observations on Agriculture are worthy of being read for the

light that they cast on his own character, if for no other reason. It is,

he declared, in a letter to Jonathan Shipley, "the most useful, the most

independent, and therefore the noblest of Employments." Another remark of

his in his _Positions to be Examined, Concerning National Wealth_ is that

there seemed to him but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth:

The first is by _war_, as the Romans did, in plundering

their conquered neighbors. This is _robbery_. The

second by _commerce_, which is _generally_ cheating.

The third by _agriculture_, the only _honest way_,

wherein man receives a real increase of the seed

thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle,

wrought by the hand of God in his favour, as a reward

for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.

The same spirit gives life to the following observations too in his essay

on "The Internal State of America": "The Agriculture and Fisheries of the

United States are the great Sources of our Encreasing Wealth. He that puts

a Seed into the Earth is recompens'd, perhaps, by receiving twenty out of

it; and he who draws a Fish out of our Waters, draws up a Piece of Silver."

In Franklin's time as now there was a feeling that the farmer did not

receive his full share of the blessings of organized society. In his _Price

of Corn, and Management of the Poor_, he makes a farmer say, "I am one of

that class of people, that feeds you all, and at present is abused by you

all. In short I am a _farmer_."

Franklin's views about punishment were also conspicuously worthy of his

kind heart and sound sense. His letter to Benjamin Vaughan on the Criminal

Laws is one of his best essays, and merited the honor conferred on it by

Samuel Romilly, when he added it in the form of an appendix to his own

observations on _Dr. Madan's Thoughts on Executive Justice_. In the course

of his feeling exposures of existing fallacies with respect to the

philosophy of punishment, Franklin, who did not scruple to say that there

would be less crime, if there were no criminal laws, asked these searching

questions:

I see, in the last Newspaper from London, that a Woman

is capitally convicted at the Old Bailey, for privately

stealing out of a Shop some Gauze, value 14 Shillings

and three pence; is there any Proportion between the

Injury done by a Theft, value 14/3, and the Punishment

of a human Creature, by Death, on a Gibbet? Might not

that Woman, by her Labour, have made the Reparation

ordain'd by God, in paying fourfold? Is not all

Punishment inflicted beyond the Merit of the Offence,

so much Punishment of Innocence? In this light, how

vast is the annual Quantity of not only _injured_, but

_suffering_ Innocence, in almost all the civilized

States of Europe!

That Franklin was opposed to imprisonment for debt it is hardly necessary

to say. His sense of humor, if nothing else, was sufficient to point out to

him the absurdity of depriving a debtor of all means of earning money until

he earned enough to satisfy his creditors. John Baynes, in his Journal,

informs us that, in a conversation with him, Franklin expressed his

disapprobation of "this usage" in very strong terms. He said he could not

compare any sum of money with imprisonment--they were not commensurable

quantities.

Both slavery and the slave trade were held by Franklin in just reprobation,

but his views on these subjects, it must be confessed, would be weightier,

if he had not trafficked at one time in slaves himself. As it is, he

occupies somewhat the same equivocal position as that which inspired Thomas

Moore to pen the blackguard lines in which he pictured the American

slaveholding patriot as dreaming of Freedom in his bondmaid's arms.[49] The

economic truth, however, of what he had to say about Slave Labor in his

essay on "The Increase of Mankind" is undeniable.

Tis an ill-grounded Opinion [he declared] that by the

Labour of slaves, _America_ may possibly vie in

Cheapness of Manufactures with _Britain_. The Labour of

Slaves here can never be so cheap here as the Labour of

working Men is in _Britain_. Anyone may compute it.

Interest of Money is in the Colonies from 6 to 10 per

Cent. Slaves one with another cost 30L Sterling per

Head. Reckon then the Interest of the first Purchase of

a Slave, the Insurance or Risque on his Life, his

Cloathing and Diet, Expences in his Sickness and Loss

of Time, Loss by his Neglect of Business (Neglect is

natural to the Man who is not to be benefited by his

own Care or Diligence), Expence of a Driver to keep him

at Work, and his Pilfering from Time to Time, almost

every Slave being _by Nature_ a Thief, and compare the

whole Amount with the Wages of a Manufacturer of Iron

or Wool in _England_, you will see that Labour is much

cheaper there than it ever can be by Negroes here.

In this essay, the introduction of slaves is enumerated as one of the

causes that diminish the growth of white population.

The Negroes brought into the _English_ Sugar _Islands_

[he says] have greatly diminish'd the Whites there; the

Poor are by this Means deprived of Employment, while a

few Families acquire vast Estates; which they spend on

Foreign Luxuries, and educating their Children in the

Habit of those Luxuries; the same Income is needed for

the Support of one that might have maintain'd 100. The

Whites who have Slaves, not labouring, are enfeebled,

and therefore not so generally prolific; the Slaves

being work'd too hard, and ill fed, their Constitutions

are broken, and the Deaths among them are more than the

Births; so that a continual Supply is needed from

_Africa_. The Northern Colonies, having few Slaves,

increase in Whites. Slaves also pejorate the Families

that use them; the white Children become proud,

disgusted with Labour, and being educated in Idleness,

are rendered unfit to get a Living by Industry.[50]

FOOTNOTES:

[10] There is no evidence that, while he was a member of the Pennsylvania

Assembly, Franklin ever had occasion, as every member of an American State

legislature is likely to have, to deal with a bill for the extermination of

hawks and owls; but a skeleton sketch by his hand of his services as an

assemblyman shows that he shared the fate of the ordinary member of an

American State legislature in having a bill relating to dogs referred to a

Committee of which he was a member.

[11] Franklin, though in no sense a time server, rarely got out of touch

with the majority simply because he always saw things as the best

collective intelligence of the community is likely to see them--only a

little sooner and more clearly. "Friend Joseph," one Quaker is said to have

asked of an acquaintance, "didst thee ever know Dr. Franklin to be in a

minority?"

[12] "I believe it will in time be clearly seen by all thinking People that

the Government and Property of a Province should not be in the same family.

Tis too much weight in one scale." Letter from Franklin to Israel

Pemberton, Mar. 19, 1759.

[13] In 1768, the revenues of the Proprietaries from their Pennsylvania

estates were estimated by Joseph Galloway to be not much short of one

hundred thousand pounds.

[14] "The shocking news of the strange, unprecedented and ignominious

defeat of General Braddock," William Franklin said, "had no more effect

upon Governor Morris than the miracles of Moses had on the heart of

Pharaoh."

[15] Franklin's first impressions of Lord Loudon were very different from

his later ones. In a letter to Strahan from New York, dated July 27, 1756,

he said: "I have had the honour of several conferences with him on our

American affairs, and am extremely pleased with him. I think there can not

be a fitter person for the service he is engaged in."

[16] In connection with this feature of the proposed Plan of Union,

Franklin gives us some interesting facts in regard to the distances that

could be made in a day's journey in America in 1754. Philadelphia, he said,

was named as the place for the first meeting of the Grand Council because

it was central, and accessible by high roads, which were for the most part

so good that forty or fifty miles a day might very well be, and frequently

were, travelled over them. It could also be reached under very favorable

conditions by water. In summer the passage from Charleston to Philadelphia

often did not consume more than a week. Two or three days were required for

the passage from Rhode Island to New York, through the Sound, and the

distance between New York and Philadelphia could be covered in two days by

stage-boats and wheel-carriages that set out every other day. The transit

from Charleston to Philadelphia could be facilitated by the use of the

Chesapeake Bay. But, if all the members of the Grand Council were to set

out for Philadelphia on horseback, the most distant ones, those from New

Hampshire and South Carolina, could probably arrive at their destination in

fifteen or twenty days.

[17] Another good Indian story is told by Franklin in his _Remarks

Concerning the Savages of North America_: "A Swedish Minister, having

assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanah Indians, made a Sermon to them,

acquainting them with the principal historical Facts on which our Religion

is founded; such as the Fall of our First Parents by eating an Apple, the

coming of Christ to repair the Mischief, his Miracles and Suffering, &c.

When he had finished, an Indian Orator stood up to thank him. 'What you

have told us,' says he, 'is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat Apples.

It is better to make them all into Cyder. We are much oblig'd by your

kindness in coming so far, to tell us these Things which you have heard

from your Mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard

from ours. In the Beginning, our Fathers had only the Flesh of Animals, to

subsist on; and if their Hunting was unsuccessful, they were starving. Two

of our young Hunters, having kill'd a Deer, made a Fire in the Woods to

broil some Part of it. When they were about to satisfy their Hunger, they

beheld a beautiful young Woman descend from the Clouds, and seat herself on

that Hill, which you see yonder among the blue Mountains. They said to each

other, it is a Spirit that has smelt our broiling Venison, and wishes to

eat of it; let us offer some to her. They presented her with the Tongue;

she was pleas'd with the Taste of it, and said, "Your kindness shall be

rewarded; come to this Place after thirteen Moons, and you shall find

something that will be of great Benefit in nourishing you and your children

to the latest Generations." They did so, and, to their surprise, found

Plants they had never seen before; but which, from that ancient time, have

been constantly cultivated among us, to our great Advantage. Where her

right Hand had touched the Ground, they found Maize; where her left hand

had touch'd it, they found Kidney-Beans, and where her Back side had sat on

it they found Tobacco.' The good Missionary, disgusted with this idle Tale,

said: 'What I delivered to you were sacred Truths; but what you tell me is

mere Fable, Fiction, and Falsehood.' The Indian, offended, reply'd, 'My

brother, it seems your Friends have not done you Justice in your Education;

they have not well instructed you in the Rules of common Civility. You saw

that we, who understand and practise those Rules, believ'd all your

stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?'"

[18] When asked in the course of his examination before the House of

Commons what the temper of America towards Great Britain was before the

year 1763, Franklin made this reply: "The best in the world. They submitted

willingly to the government of the Crown, and paid, in all their courts,

obedience to acts of parliament. Numerous as the people are in the several

provinces, they cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons, or armies,

to keep them in subjection. They were governed by this country at the

expence only of a little pen, ink and paper. They were led by a thread.

They had not only a respect, but an affection for Great-Britain; for its

laws, its customs and manners, and even a fondness for its fashions, that

greatly increased the commerce. Natives of Britain were always treated with

particular regard; to be an Old England man was, of itself, a character of

some respect, and gave a kind of rank among us."

How little colored by the exigencies of the moment these words were is made

apparent in a letter from Franklin to Francis Maseres after the

independence of the Colonies had been acknowledged by England. "The true

_loyalists_ were the people of America, against whom they (the Tories)

acted. No people were ever known more truly loyal, and universally so, to

their sovereigns. The Protestant succession in the House of Hanover was

their idol. Not a Jacobite was to be found from one end of the Colonies to

the other. They were affectionate to the people of England, zealous and

forward to assist in her wars, by voluntary contributions of men and money,

even beyond their proportion. The King and Parliament had frequently

acknowledged this by public messages, resolutions, and reimbursements. But

they were equally fond of what they esteemed their rights; and, if they

resisted when those were attacked, it was a resistance in favour of a

British constitution, which every Englishman might share in enjoying, who

should come to live among them; it was resisting arbitrary impositions,

that were contrary to common right and to their fundamental constitutions,

and to constant ancient usage. It was indeed a resistance in favour of the

liberties of England, which might have been endangered by success in the

attempt against ours; and therefore a great man in your Parliament did not

scruple to declare, he _rejoiced that America had resisted_. I, for the

same reason, may add this very resistance to the other instances of their

loyalty."

[19] The view that Franklin took of the constitutional tie between Great

Britain and America was expressed in many different forms. One of the

concisest is to be found in a letter to his grandnephew Jonathan Williams,

dated Feb. 12, 1786, and, therefore, written after the tie, whatever its

exact nature was, had become a subject for the historian rather than the

politician. Speaking of a controversy in which Williams had been involved,

he says: "It seems to me that instead of discussing _When_ we ceas'd to be

British Subjects you should have deny'd our _ever having been such_. We

were Subjects to the King of G. Britain, as were also the Irish, the Jersey

and Guernsey People and the Hanoverians, but we were American Subjects as

they were Irish, Jersey and Hanoverian Subjects. None are British Subjects

but those under the Parliament of Britain."

[20] "Your medallion is in good company; it is placed with those of Lord

Chatham, Lord Camden, Marquis of Rockingham, Sir George Saville, and some

others, who honoured me with a show of friendly regard, when in England."

(Letter from Franklin to Geo. Whatley, May 18, 1787.)

[21] This idea is advanced also in _The Mother Country_, _A Song_, which

Jared Sparks thought was probably written by Franklin about the time of the

Stamp Act or a little later:

"We have an old mother that peevish is grown;

She snubs us like children that scarce walk alone;

She forgets we're grown up and have sense of our own;

Which nobody can deny, deny,

Which nobody can deny.

If we don't obey orders, whatever the case,

She frowns, and she chides and she loses all pati-

Ence, and sometimes she hits us a slap in the face,

Which nobody can deny, etc.

Her orders so odd are, we often suspect

That age has impaired her sound intellect.

But still an old mother should have due respect,

Which nobody can deny, etc.

Let's bear with her humors as well as we can;

But why should we bear the abuse of her man?

When servants make mischief, they earn the rattan,

Which nobody should deny, etc.

Know too, ye bad neighbours, who aim to divide

The sons from the mother, that still she's our pride;

And if ye attack her we're all of her side,

Which nobody can deny, etc.

We'll join in her lawsuits, to baffle all those,

Who, to get what she has, will be often her foes;

For we know it must all be our own, when she goes,

Which nobody can deny, deny,

Which nobody can deny."

[22] "But there can hardly be a doubt, as between the America and the

England of the future, that the daughter, at some no very distant time,

will, whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than the

mother.

"'O matre forti filia fortior.'"

_Kin Beyond Sea_, by William E. Gladstone.

[23] Jared Sparks hardly overstates the case when he asserts that the

policy and acts of Lord Hillsborough contributed more, perhaps, than those

of any other man towards increasing the discontents which led to the

separation of the Colonies from Great Britain.

[24] On Jan. 28, 1820, John Adams stated in a letter to Dr. Hosack, of New

York, that Temple had told him in Holland that he had communicated the

Hutchinson letters to Dr. Franklin, though "I swear to you," he said to

Adams, "that I did not procure them in the manner represented."

[25] Worldly success has rarely been less effective in gilding an unworthy

character than it was in the case of Wedderburn. American indignation over

his tirade against Franklin, indecent as it was under the circumstances,

would seem to be somewhat overdone, when we remember the professional

license allowed from time immemorial to the pleas of lawyers. It is enough

to say that we can safely leave his English contemporaries to take care of

his forbidding reputation. The searing irons of two of the most ferocious

satirists of literary history have left ineffaceable scars upon his

forehead. In the _Rosciad_ Churchill lifted the veil from the future in

these terms:

"To mischief train'd, e'en from his mother's womb,

Grown old in fraud, tho. yet in manhood's bloom,

Adopting arts, by which gay villains rise,

And reach the heights, which honest men despise."

"In vain," Junius wrote to the Duke of Grafton, some ten years later,

"would our gracious sovereign have looked round him for another character

as consummate as yours. Lord Mansfield shrinks from his principles; Charles

Fox is yet in blossom; and as for Mr. Wedderburn, there is something about

him which even treachery can not trust." But the "gracious sovereign," to

whom Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Rosslyn, sold his Whig principles, when

they had reached just the right stage of merchantable maturity, was equally

hard upon him. "When he died," Lord Brougham tells us, "after a few hours'

illness, the intelligence was brought to the King, who, with a

circumspection abundantly characteristic, asked the bearer of it if he was

quite _sure_ of the fact, as Lord Rosslyn had not been ailing before; and,

upon being assured that a sudden attack of gout in the stomach had really

ended the days of his late servant and once assiduous courtier, his majesty

was graciously pleased to exclaim: 'Then he has not left a worse man behind

him.'"

[26] It is hard to think of a man, whose life was so essentially urban as

that of Franklin, becoming a backwoodsman, but such he was ready to become,

if necessary. In his _Hints for a Reply to the Protests of Certain Members

of the House of Lords against the Repeal of the Stamp Act_, he uses this

resolute language: "I can only Judge of others by myself. I have some

little property in America. I will freely spend nineteen shillings in the

pound to defend my right of giving or refusing the other shilling, and,

after all, if I can not defend that right, I can retire cheerfully with my

little family into the boundless woods of America, which are sure to afford

freedom and subsistence to any man who can bait a hook or pull a trigger."

[27] In 1780, Franklin wrote from Passy to Georgiana Shipley: "I am

unhappily an Enemy, yet I think there has been enough of Blood spilt, and I

wish what is left in the Veins of that once lov'd People, may be spared by

a Peace solid and everlasting."

[28] Franklin's three political hobbies were gratuitous public service, a

plural executive and a single legislature. Through his influence, the

second and third of these two ideas were engrafted upon the Revolutionary

Constitution of the State of Pennsylvania, and were later ably defended by

him, when assailed. The manner in which he illustrated his opposition to a

bi-cameral legislature is well-known. "Has not," he said, "the famous

political Fable of the Snake, with two Heads and one Body, some useful

Instruction contained in it? She was going to a Brook to drink, and in her

Way was to pass thro' a Hedge, a Twig of which opposed her direct course;

one Head chose to go on the right side of the Twig, the other on the left;

so that time was spent in the Contest, and, before the Decision was

completed, the poor Snake died with thirst." As far as carrying the idea of

gratuitous public service into execution was concerned, Franklin, of

course, might as well have attempted to grow pineapples in the squares of

Philadelphia.

[29] In his Diary John Adams states shortly after his arrival in France

that it was said among other things that Arthur Lee had given offence by an

unhappy disposition, and by indiscreet speeches before servants and others

concerning the French nation and government--despising and cursing them.

[30] Deprived of its epigrammatic form, this estimate does not differ so

very greatly from that of Jefferson a few years later: "He is vain,

irritable and a bad calculator of the force and probable effects of the

motives which govern men. This is all the ill which can possibly be said of

him. He is as disinterested as the being who made him; he is profound in

his views and accurate in his judgment, except when a knowledge of the

world is necessary to form a judgment. He is so amiable, that I pronounce

you will love him if ever you become acquainted with him. He would be, as

he was, a great man in Congress."

[31] On Oct. 29, 1778, Vergennes finally wrote to Gerard, the French

Minister at Philadelphia, that his fear of Lee and of _ses entours_ made

the communication of state secrets to him impossible, and he instructed

Gerard to inform Congress that Lee's conduct had "created the highest

disgust" in the courts of France and Spain. It is doubtful whether any man

of the same degree of parts, courage and patriotic constancy as Arthur Lee

was ever more irredeemably condemned by the general verdict of his

contemporaries or posterity. It would be a profitless task to bring

together the most notable of these judgments. Jefferson summed up most of

them in a few words: "Dr. Lee," he said, "was his (Franklin's) principal

calumniator, a man of much malignity, who, besides enlisting his whole

family in the same hostility, was enabled, as the agent of Massachusetts

with the British Government, to infuse it into that State with considerable

effect. Mr. Izard, the Doctor's enemy also, but from a pecuniary

transaction, never countenanced these charges against him. Mr. Jay, Silas

Deane, Mr. Laurens, his colleagues also, ever maintained towards him

unlimited confidence and respect." Silas Deane, the most efficient envoy

except Franklin sent abroad by Congress during the Revolution, derived a

degree of unaffected pleasure from the respect felt for Franklin in France

that contrasts most favorably with the base jealousy of Arthur Lee and the

ignoble jealousy of John Adams. After telling how the French populace on a

certain occasion showed Franklin a measure of deference seldom paid to

their first princes of the blood, he says: "When he attended the operas and

plays, similar honors were paid him, and I confess I felt a joy and pride

which was pure and honest, though not disinterested, for I considered it an

honor to be known to be an American and his acquaintance."

[32] John Adams admits in his Diary that Deane was "active, diligent,

subtle and successful, having accomplished the great purpose of his mission

to advantage." After the recall of Deane from France, Franklin wrote of him

to Henry Laurens: "Having lived intimately with him now fifteen months, the

greatest part of the time in the same House, and been a constant witness of

his public Conduct, I can not omit giving this Testimony, tho. unasked, in

his Behalf, that I esteem him a faithful, active, and able Minister, who,

to my Knowledge, has done in various ways great and important Service to

his Country, whose Interests I wish may always, by every one in her employ,

be as much and as effectually promoted." On other occasions, Franklin spoke

in equally laudatory terms of the abilities and services of Deane. But when

Deane, soured by the persistent malevolence of Arthur Lee and the injustice

of Congress, was weak enough to fall away from "the glorious cause,"

Franklin gave him up. "I see no place for him but England," he wrote to

Robert Morris. "He continues, however, to sit croaking at Ghent chagrined,

discontented, and dispirited." Franklin, however, was too nice a judge of

conduct, and of the balanced considerations, which have to be taken into

account in passing upon it, not to refer later to Deane as "poor, unhappy

Deane,"--language such as he would have been the last man in the world to

use with regard to a perfidious scoundrel like Benedict Arnold.

[33] The Diary of John Adams shows that shortly after he arrived in France

Franklin took pains to lay before him the lamentable situation created by

the impracticable tempers of the Lees and Izard. It would have been well

for the reputation of Adams if this conversation had resulted in a thorough

understanding between Franklin and himself, but the bias that he brought to

France as a member of the Adams-Lee faction in Congress and the inability

of his egotistical, jealous, suspicious and bustling, though honorable and

fearless, nature, to reconcile itself to the overshadowing fame and

influence of Franklin at the French Court drew him into working relations

with Lee and Izard, which abundantly verified all that Franklin had said to

him about them. "There are two men in the world," he declares in his Diary,

"who are men of honor and integrity, I believe, but whose prejudices and

violent tempers would raise quarrels in the Elysian fields, if not in

Heaven." At times the vanity of Adams--easily mortified, easily elated as

all vanity is--was humbled by some fresh proof of the dwarfing prominence

of Franklin. "Neither Lee nor myself is looked upon of much consequence,"

he observes in his Diary. On another occasion, when Arthur Lee suggested

that the papers of the mission should be kept in a room in his own house,

Adams objected for the reason, among others, that nine tenths of the public

letters would ever be carried where Dr. Franklin was. These were but

temporary reactions. When down, the vanity of Adams was soon on its legs

again. The reminder given by Vergennes to the officious, tactless

reasonings and strictures, to which he was subjected by Adams, that

Franklin was the sole American plenipotentiary in France, and the steps

that the latter was compelled to take, both by the request of Vergennes and

his own sense of the peril, that such injudicious conduct on the part of

Adams signified to the American cause, to smooth over the rupture, sent

Adams off to Holland in a resentful but subdued state of mind. But his

success in negotiating a loan in Holland and the prospect of engaging in a

matter of such supreme importance as the final negotiations for peace

lifted him up to giddy heights of intoxicated self-importance again.

Referring to the loan in his Diary, he says: "The compliment of _Monsieur_,

_Vous etes le Washington de la negociation_ (Sir, you are the Washington of

the negotiation) was repeated to me by more than one person.... A few of

these compliments would kill Franklin if they should come to his ears." His

observations in his Diary on Jay and Franklin, when he came over to France

to participate with them in the final negotiations for peace, are equally

characteristic. "Between two as subtle spirits as any in this world, the

one malicious, the other, I think honest, I shall have a delicate, a nice,

a critical part to act. Franklin's cunning will be to divide us; to this

end he will provoke, he will insinuate, he will intrigue, he will

manoeuvre. My curiosity will at least be employed in observing his

invention and his artifice."

[34] "I think," said Franklin in a letter to Charles W. F. Dumas, in 1778,

"that a young State like a young Virgin, should modestly stay at home, &

wait the Application of Suitors for an Alliance with her; and not run about

offering her Amity to all the World; and hazarding their Refusal." "Our

Virgin," he added a line or so later, "is a jolly one; and tho. at present

not very rich, Will in time be a great Fortune."

[35] Franklin was entirely cognizant of the motive by which Lee was

influenced. Referring in a letter to Thomas Cushing, dated July 7, 1773, to

censure with which he had been visited for supposed neglect in not sending

earlier intelligence to Massachusetts of certain English measures affecting

her welfare, he said, "This Censure, tho. grievous, does not so much

surprize me, as I apprehended from the Beginning, that between the Friends

of an old Agent, my Predecessor, who thought himself hardly us'd in his

Dismission, and those of a young one impatient for the Succession, my

situation was not likely to be a very comfortable one, as my Faults could

scarce pass unobserved."

[36] On one occasion this expression gave rise to an incident that is worth

recalling. We tell it as it is told by Parton. A large cake was sent to the

apartment in which the envoys were assembled, bearing this inscription: _Le

digne Franklin_--the worthy Franklin. Upon reading the inscription, Mr.

Deane said: "As usual, Doctor, we have to thank you for our accommodation,

and to appropriate your present to our joint use." "Not at all," said

Franklin, "this must be intended for all the Commissioners; only these

French people can not write English. They mean no doubt, Lee, Deane,

Franklin." "That might answer," remarked the magnanimous Lee, "but we know

that whenever they remember us at all they always put you first."

[37] "It must," Adams says in his letter to the Boston _Patriot_ of Aug.

21, 1811, with the whiff of bombast that is wafted to us from so many of

his vigorous and vivid utterances, "suffice to say that Mr. Izard, with a

fund of honor, integrity, candor and benevolence in his character, which

must render him eternally estimable in the sight of all moral and social

beings, was, nevertheless, the most passionate, and in his passions the

most violent and unbridled in his expressions, of any man I ever knew."

[38] In the latter part of his life, it must have severely taxed the memory

of Franklin to recollect all the honors paid to him by educational

institutions and learned societies of one kind or another. The honorary

degree of Master of Arts was conferred on him in July, 1753, by Harvard

College, and in September of the same year by Yale College. In April, 1756,

the degree of Master of Arts was bestowed on him by William and Mary

College. In 1759, he received the degree of Doctor in Laws from the

University of St. Andrews, and in 1762, he was made a Doctor of Civil Laws

by the University of Oxford. At various times in his life, he was elected

an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an Honorary Fellow of

the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, a member of the Royal Society of

London, one of the eight foreign associates of the Royal Academy of

Sciences at Paris, an honorary member of the Medical Society of London, the

first foreign associate of the Royal Society of Medicine at Paris, and a

member of other learned societies or academies at Padua, Turin, Orleans,

Madrid, Rotterdam, Goettingen and elsewhere.

[39] "It would be difficult," says Count Segur, "to describe the eagerness

and delight with which the American envoys, the agents of a people in a

state of insurrection against their monarch, were received in France, in

the bosom of an ancient monarchy. Nothing could be more striking than the

contrast between the luxury of our capital, the elegance of our fashions,

the magnificence of Versailles, the still brilliant remains of the

monarchical pride of Louis XIV., and the polished and superb dignity of our

nobility on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the almost rustic

apparel, the plain but firm demeanor, the free and direct language of the

envoys, whose antique simplicity of dress and appearance seemed to have

introduced within our walls, in the midst of the effeminate and servile

refinement of the eighteenth century, some sages contemporary with Plato,

or republicans of the age of Cato and of Fabius. This unexpected apparition

produced upon us a greater effect in consequence of its novelty, and of its

occurring precisely at the period when literature and philosophy had

circulated amongst us an unusual desire for reforms, a disposition to

encourage innovations, and the seeds of an ardent attachment to liberty."

[40] Compassion, it must be confessed, was not the only motive that made

Franklin so eager to secure the freedom of his imprisoned countrymen. "If

we once had our Prisoners from England," he wrote to M. de Sartine on Feb.

13, 1780, "several other privateers would immediately be manned with them."

[41] A Commissioner, Thomas Barclay, was appointed by Congress to audit the

accounts of all the servants of the United States who had been entrusted

with the expenditure of money in Europe during the Revolutionary War. "I

rendered to him," said Franklin in a letter to Cyrus Griffin, the President

of Congress, dated Nov. 29, 1788, "all my accounts, which he examined, and

stated methodically. By this statement he found a balance due me on the 4th

of May, 1785, of 7,533 livres, 19 sols, 3 den., which I accordingly

received of the Congress banker; the difference between my statement and

his being only seven sols, which by mistake I had overcharged;--about three

pence half penny sterling."

[42] The dogged steadfastness with which Vergennes pursued his task of

humbling the pride and power of England through her rebellious colonies was

in keeping with the main point of what Choiseul had said about him as the

French Ambassador at Constantinople: "The Count de Vergennes has something

to say against whatever is proposed to him, but he never finds any

difficulty in carrying out his instructions. Were we to order him to send

us the Vizier's head, he would write that it was dangerous, but the head

would come." The levity of Maurepas, as President of the Council of State,

and the grave diligence of Vergennes, as Minister for Foreign Affairs, led

D'Aranda to say of them, "I chat with M. de Maurepas, I negotiate with M.

de Vergennes."

[43] In a letter to William Carmichael in 1788, after saying that he

presumed that there would not be a vote against the election of Washington

to the Presidency, Jefferson added: "It is more doubtful who will be

Vice-President. The age of Dr. Franklin, and the doubt whether he would

accept it, are the only circumstances that admit a question, but that he

would be the man." Some twenty-two years afterwards, he wrote to Col.

William Duane that he believed that a greater or better character than

Franklin had rarely existed.

[44] Optimist and thorough-going democrat as Franklin was, Shays' Rebellion

and the heated conflict of opposing principles, concomitant with the

adoption of the Federal Constitution, set up a slight current of reaction

in his sanguine nature. On May 25, 1789, he wrote to Charles Carroll of

Carrollton: "We have been guarding against an evil that old States are most

liable to, _excess of power_, in the rulers; but our present danger seems

to be _defect of obedience_ in the subjects." Some six months later, in his

_Queries and Remarks respecting Alterations in the Constitution of

Pennsylvania_, he quoted the advice of the prophet, "Stand in the old ways,

view the ancient Paths, consider them well, and be not among those that are

given to Change." But in this instance Franklin was really invoking the

spirit of conservatism in aid of liberalism; for the occasion for the

Biblical reference was the suggestion that the Pennsylvania Assembly should

no longer consist of a single chamber but of an Upper House based on

property and a Lower House based on population.

[45] This remark brings up in a timely way another member of the Board of

Trade, Lord Clare, whose habits were such as to aid us in understanding why

the Board did not always retain a clear recollection of its past

transactions. Speaking of an interview with him, Franklin wrote to his son:

"He gave me a great deal of flummery; saying, that though at my Examination

(before the House of Commons) I answered some of his questions a little

pertly, yet he liked me, from that day, for the spirit I showed in defence

of my country; and at parting, after we had drank a bottle and a half of

claret each, he hugged and kissed me, protesting he never in his life met

with a man he was so much in love with."

[46] The story told by Franklin of a running colloquy between George

Grenville, who had on one occasion, as usual, been denouncing the Americans

as rebels and Colonel Onslow, a warm friend of America, is good enough to

be related. After recalling the Roman practice of sending a commission to a

disaffected province for the purpose of investigating the causes of its

discontent, Onslow declared his willingness, if the House of Commons should

think fit to appoint them, to go over to America _with that honorable

gentleman_. "Upon this there was a great laugh, which continued some time,

and was rather increased by Mr. Grenville's asking, 'Will the gentleman

engage, that I shall be safe there? Can I be assured that I shall be

allowed to come back again to make the report?' As soon as the laugh was so

far subsided, as that Mr. Onslow could be heard again, he added: 'I can not

absolutely engage for the honorable gentleman's safe return, but if he goes

thither upon this service, I am strongly of opinion the _event_ will

contribute greatly to the future quiet of both countries.' On which the

laugh was renewed and redoubled."

[47] The principal features of a plan for the issuance of a stable colonial

currency proposed by Franklin and Governor Pownall to the British Ministry,

in 1764, 1765 and 1766 were these: bills of credit to a certain amount were

to be printed in England for the use of the Colonies; and a loan office was

to be established in each colony, empowered to issue the bills, take

security for their payment and receive payment of them. They were to be

paid in full in ten years, and were to bear interest at the rate of five

per centum per annum; and one tenth of the principal was to be paid each

year with the proper proportion of interest. They were to be a legal

tender.

[48] "Here in England," Franklin wrote to Humphrey Marshall on Apr. 22,

1771, "it is well known and understood, that whenever a Manufacture is

established which employs a Number of Hands, it raises the Value of Lands

in the neighbouring Country all around it; partly by the greater Demand

near at hand for the produce of the Land; and partly from the Plenty of

Money drawn by the Manufacturers to that part of the Country. It seems

therefore the Interest of all our Farmers and Owners of Lands, to encourage

our Young Manufactures in preference to foreign ones imported among us from

distant Countries."

[49]

The patriot, fresh from Freedom's Councils come,

Now pleas'd retires to lash his slaves at home;

Or woo, perhaps, some black Aspasia's charms,

And dream of freedom in his bondsmaid's arms.

To Thomas Hume, Esq., M.D.

From the City of Washington.

[50] By his will Franklin released his son-in-law from the payment of a

bond for L2172, 5s, with the request that he would immediately after the

death of the testator set free "his negro man Bob."