hope it will be lasting, and that mankind will at length, as they call
themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle
their differences without cutting throats: for, in my opinion, _there
never was a good war nor a bad peace_. What vast additions to the
conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the
money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility. What
an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what
rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts,
new roads, and other public works, edifices and improvements, rendering
England a complete paradise, might not have been obtained, by spending
those millions in doing good which in the last war have been spent in
doing mischief; in bringing misery into thousands of families, and
destroying the lives of so many thousands of working people, who might
have performed the useful labour!
"I am pleased with the late astronomical discoveries made by our
society. Furnished as all Europe now is with academies of science, with
nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human
knowledge will be rapid, and discoveries made of which we have at
present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon,
since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known one
hundred years hence.
"I wish continued success to the labours of the Royal Society, and that
you may long adorn their chair; being, with the highest esteem, dear
sir, &c.
"B. FRANKLIN."
"Dr. Blagden will acquaint you with the experiment of a vast globe sent
up into the air, much talked of here, and which, if prosecuted, may
furnish means of new knowledge."
* * * * *
"_Robert Morris, Esq._
(Superintendent of Finances, United States.)
"Passy, Dec. 25, 1783.
"The remissness of our people in paying taxes is highly blameable, the
unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see in some resolutions of
town meetings a remonstrance against giving Congress a power to take, as
they call it, _the people's money_ out of their pockets, though only to
pay the interest and principal of debts duly contracted. They seem to
mistake the point. Money justly due from the people is their creditor's
money, and no longer the money of the people, who, if they withhold it,
should be compelled to pay by some law. All property, indeed, except the
savages' temporary cabin, his bow, his matchuat, and other little
acquisitions absolutely necessary for his subsistence, seems to me to be
the creature of public convention. Hence the public has the right of
regulating descents, and all other conveyances of property, and even of
limiting the quantity and the uses of it. All the property that is
necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual and the
propagation of the species, is his natural right, which none can justly
deprive him of; but all property superfluous to such purposes is the
property of the public, who, by their laws, have created it, and who may
therefore, by other laws, dispose of it whenever the welfare of the
public shall desire such disposition. He that does not like civil
society on these terms, let him retire and live among savages. He can
have no right to the benefits of society who will not pay his club
towards the support of it.
"The Marquis de Lafayette, who loves to be employed in our affairs, and
is often very useful, has lately had several conversations with the
ministers and persons concerned in forming new regulations respecting
the commerce between our two countries, which are not yet concluded. I
thought it therefore, well to communicate to him a copy of your letter
which contains so many sensible and just observations on that subject.
He will make a proper use of them, and perhaps they may have more
weight, as appearing to come from a Frenchman, than they would have if
it were known that they were the observations of an American. I
perfectly agree with all the sentiments you have expressed on this
occasion.
"I am sorry, for the public's sake, that you are about to quit your
office, but on personal considerations I shall congratulate you. For I
cannot conceive of a more happy man than he who, having been long loaded
with public cares, finds himself relieved from them, and enjoying
private repose in the bosom of his friends and family.
"With sincere regard and attachment, I am ever, dear sir, yours, &c.,
B. FRANKLIN."
* * * * *
"_To Dr. Mather, Boston._
"Passy, May 12, 1784.
"REV. SIR,
"I received your kind letter with your excellent advice to the people of
the United States, which I read with great pleasure, and hope it will be
duly regarded. Such writings, though they may be lightly passed over by
many readers, yet if they make a deep impression on one active mind in a
hundred, the effects may be considerable. Permit me to mention one
little instance, which, though it relates to myself, will not be quite
uninteresting to you. When I was a boy I met with a book entitled
_Essays to do Good_, which I think was written by your father. It had
been so little regarded by a former possessor, that several leaves of it
were torn out: but the remainder gave me such a turn of thinking as to
have an influence on my conduct through life; for I have always set a
greater value on the character of a _doer of good_, than on any other
kind of reputation; and if I have been, as you seem to think, a useful
citizen, the public owes the advantage of it to that book. You mention
your being in your 78th year: I am in my 79th; we are grown old
together. It is now more than sixty years since I left Boston, but I
remember well both your father and grandfather, having heard them both
in the pulpit, and seen them in their houses. The last time I saw your
father was in the beginning of 1724, when I visited him after my first
trip to Pennsylvania. He received me in his library, and on my taking
leave showed me a shorter way out of the house through a narrow passage,
which crossed by a beam over head. We were still talking as I withdrew,
he accompanying me behind, and I turning partly towards him, when he
said hastily, _Stoop, stoop!_ I did not understand him till I felt my
head hit against the beam. He was a man that never missed any occasion
of giving instruction, and upon this he said to me, _You are young, and
have the world before you_; STOOP _as you go through it, and you will
miss many hard thumps_. This advice, thus beat into my head, has
frequently been of use to me; and I often think of it when I see pride
mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people by their carrying their
heads too high.
"I long much to see again my native place, and to lay my bones there. I
left it in 1723; I visited it in 1733, 1743, 1753, and 1763. In 1773 I
was in England; in 1775 I had a sight of it, but could not enter, it
being in possession of the enemy. I did hope to have been there in 1783,
but could not obtain my dismission from this employment here; and now I
fear I shall never have that happiness. My best wishes, however, attend
my dear country. _Esto perpetua_. It is now blessed with an excellent
constitution; may it last for ever! * * *
"With great and sincere esteem, I have the honour to be, &c.,
B. FRANKLIN."
* * * * *
"_To William Strahan, M. P._
"Passy, August 19, 1784.
"DEAR FRIEND,
"I received your kind letter of April 17. You will have the goodness to
place my delay in answering to the account of indisposition and
business, and excuse it. I have now that letter before me; and my
grandson, whom you may formerly remember a little scholar at Mr.
Elphinston's, purposing to set out in a day or two on a visit to his
father in London, I sit down to scribble a little to you, first
recommending him as a worthy young man to your civilities and counsels.
"You press me much to come to England. I am not without strong
inducements to do so; the fund of knowledge you promise to communicate
to me is, in addition to them, no small one. At present it is
impracticable. But when my grandson returns, come with him. We will talk
the matter over, and perhaps you may take me back with you. I have a bed
at your service, and will try to make your residence, while you can stay
with us, as agreeable to you, if possible, as I am sure it will be to
me.
"You do not 'approve the annihilation of profitable places; for you do
not see why a statesman who does his business well should not be paid
for his labour as well as any other workman.' Agreed. But why more than
any other workman? The less the salary the greater the honour. In so
great a nation there are many rich enough to afford giving their time to
the public; and there are, I make no doubt, many wise and able men who
would take as much pleasure in governing for nothing, as they do in
playing of chess for nothing. It would be one of the noblest amusements.
That this opinion is not chimerical, the country I now live in affords a
proof; its whole civil and criminal law administration being done for
nothing, or, in some sense, for less than nothing, since the members of
its judiciary parliaments buy their places, and do not make more than
three per cent. for their money by their fees and emoluments, while the
legal interest is five; so that, in fact, they give two per cent. to be
allowed to govern, and all their time and trouble into the bargain. Thus
_profit_, one motive for desiring place, being abolished, there remains
only _ambition_; and that being in some degree balanced by _loss_, you
may easily conceive that there will not be very violent factions and
contentions for such places; nor much of the mischief to the country
that attends your factions, which have often occasioned wars, and
overloaded you with debts impayable.
"I allow you all the force of your joke upon the vagrancy of our
Congress. They have a right to sit _where_ they please, of which,
perhaps, they have made too much use by shifting too often. But they
have two other rights; those of sitting _when_ they please and as _long_
as they please, in which, methinks, they have the advantage of your
Parliament; for they cannot be dissolved by the breath of a minister, or
sent packing, as you were the other day, when it was your earnest desire
to have remained longer together.
"You 'fairly acknowledge that the late war terminated quite contrary to
your expectation.' Your expectation was ill-founded; for you would not
believe your old friend, who told you repeatedly, that by those measures
England would lose her colonies, as Epictetus warned in vain his master
that he would break his leg. You believed rather the tales you heard of
our poltroonery and impotence of body and mind. Do you not remember the
story you told me of the Scotch sergeant who met with a party of forty
American soldiers, and, though alone, disarmed them all and brought them
in prisoners? a story almost as improbable as that of an Irishman, who
pretended to have alone taken and brought in five of the enemy by
_surrounding_ them. And yet, my friend, sensible and judicious as you
are, but partaking of the general infatuation, you seemed to believe it.
The word _general_ puts me in mind of a general, your General Clarke,
who had the folly to say in my hearing, at Sir John Pringle's, that with
a thousand British grenadiers he would undertake to go from one end of
America to the other, and geld all the males, partly by force and partly
by a little coaxing. It is plain he took us for a species of animals
very little superior to brutes. The Parliament, too, believed the
stories of another foolish general, I forget his name, that the Yankees
never _felt bold_. Yankee was understood to be a sort of Yahoo, and the
Parliament did not think the petitions of such creatures were fit to be
received and read in so wise an assembly. What was the consequence of
this monstrous pride and insolence? You first sent small armies to
subdue us, believing them more than sufficient, but soon found
yourselves obliged to send greater; these, whenever they ventured to
penetrate our country beyond the protection of their ships, were ether
repulsed and obliged to scamper out, or were surrounded, beaten, and
taken prisoners. An American planter, who had never seen Europe, was
chosen by us to command our troops, and continued during the whole war.
This man sent home to you, one after another, five of your best generals
baffled, their heads bare of laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of
their employers. Your contempt of our understandings, in comparison with
your own, appeared to be much better founded than that of our courage,
if we may judge by this circumstance, that in whatever court of Europe a
Yankee negotiator appeared, the wise British minister was routed, put in
a passion, picked a quarrel with your friends, and was sent home with a
flea in his ear. But, after all, my dear friend, do not imagine that I
am vain enough to ascribe our success to any superiority in any of those
points. I am too well acquainted with all the springs and levers of our
machine not to see that our human means were unequal to our undertaking,
and that, if it had not been for the justice of our cause, and the
consequent interposition of Providence, in which we had faith, we must
have been ruined. If I had ever before been an Atheist, I should now
have been convinced of the being and government of a Deity! It is he
that abases the proud and favours the humble. May we never forget his
goodness to us, and may our future conduct manifest our gratitude!
"But let us leave these serious reflections and converse with our usual
pleasantry. I remember your observing once to me, as we sat together in
the House of Commons, that no two journeymen printers within your
knowledge had met with such success in the world as ourselves. You were
then at the head of your profession, and soon afterward became member of
Parliament. I was an agent for a few provinces, and now act for them
all. But we have risen by different modes. I, as a republican printer,
always liked a form well _planed down_; being averse to those
_overbearing_ letters that hold their heads so _high_ as to hinder their
neighbours from appearing. You, as a monarchist, chose to work upon
_crown_ paper, and found it profitable; while I worked upon _pro patria_
(often, indeed, called _foolscap_) with no less advantage. Both our
_heaps hold out_ very well, and we seem likely to make a pretty good
_day's work_ of it. With regard to public affairs (to continue in the
same style), it seems to me that your _compositors_ in your _chapel_ do
not _cast off their copy well_, nor perfectly understand _imposing_:
their _forms_, too, are continually pestered by the _outs_ and _doubles_
that are not easy to be _corrected_. And I think they were wrong in
laying aside some _faces_, and particularly certain _headpieces_, that
would have been both useful and ornamental. But, courage! The business
may still flourish with good management, and the master become as rich
as any of the company. * *
"I am ever, my dear friend, yours most affectionately,
B. FRANKLIN."
* * * * *
"_George Wheatley._
"Passy, May 23, 1785.
"DEAR OLD FRIEND,
"I sent you a few lines the other day with the medallion, when I should
have written more, but was prevented by the coming in of a _bavard_, who
worried me till evening. I bore with him, and now you are to bear with
me: for I shall probably _bavarder_ in answering your letter.
"I am not acquainted with the saying of Alphonsus, which you allude to
as a sanctification of your rigidity in refusing to allow me the plea of
old age as an excuse for my want of exactness in correspondence. What
was that saying? You do not, it seems, feel any occasion for such an
excuse, though you are, as you say, rising 75. But I am rising (perhaps
more properly falling) 80, and I leave the excuse with you till you
arrive at that age; perhaps you may then be more sensible of its
validity, and see fit to use it for yourself.
"I must agree with you that the gout is bad, and that the stone is
worse. I am happy in not having them both together, and I join in your
prayer that you may live till you die without either. But I doubt the
author of the epitaph you send me was a little mistaken, when he,
speaking of the world, says that
"'He ne'er cared a pin
What they said or may say of the mortal within.'
"It is so natural to wish to be well spoken of, whether alive or dead,
that I imagine he could not be quite exempt from that desire; and that
at least he wished to be thought a wit, or he would not have given
himself the trouble of writing so good an epitaph to leave behind him.
Was it not as worthy of his care that the world should say he was an
honest and a good man? I like better the concluding sentiment in the old
song, called the _Old Man's Wish_, wherein, after wishing for a warm
house in a country town, an easy horse, some good authors, ingenious and
cheerful companions, a pudding on Sundays, with stout ale and a bottle
of Burgundy, &c., &c., in separate stanzas, each ending with this
burden,
"'May I govern my passons with absolute sway,
Grow wiser and better as my strength wears away,
Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay.'
He adds,
"'With a courage undaunted may I face my last day,
And when I am gone may the better sort say,
In the morning when sober, in the evening when mellow.
He's gone, and has not left behind him his fellow.
For he governed his passions,' &c.
"But what signifies our wishing? Things happen, after all, as they will
happen. I have sung that _wishing song_ a thousand times when I was
young, and now find at fourscore that the three contraries have
befallen me, being subject to the gout and the stone, and not being yet
master of all my passions. Like the proud girl in my country, who wished
and resolved not to marry a parson, nor a Presbyterian, nor an Irishman,
and at last found herself married to an Irish Presbyterian parson. You
see I have some reason to wish that, in a future state, I may not only
be _as well as I was_, but a little better. And I hope it: for I too,
with your poet, _trust in God_. And when I observe that there is great
frugality as well as wisdom in his works, since he has been evidently
sparing both of labour and materials; for, by the various wonderful
inventions of propagation, he has provided for the continual peopling
his world with plants and animals, without being at the trouble of
repeated new creations; and by the natural reduction of compound
substances to their original elements, capable of being employed in new
compositions, he has prevented the necessity of creating new matter; for
that the earth, water, air, and perhaps fire, which, being compounded
from wood, do, when the wood is dissolved, return, and again become air,
earth, fire, and water: I say, that when I see nothing annihilated, and
not even a drop of water wasted, I cannot suspect the annihilation of
souls, or believe that he will suffer the daily waste of millions of
minds ready made that now exist, and put himself to the continual
trouble of making new ones. Thus, finding myself to exist in the world,
I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist: and with all
the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new
edition of mine; hoping, however, that the errata of the last may be
corrected. * * *
"B. FRANKLIN."
* * * * *
"_David Hartley._
"Passy, July 5, 1785.
"I cannot quit the coasts of Europe without taking leave of my ever dear
friend Mr. Hartley. We were long fellow-labourers in the best of all
works, the work of peace. I leave you still in the field, but, having
finished my day's task, I am going home _to go to bed_. Wish me a good
night's rest, as I do you a pleasant evening. Adieu! and believe me ever
yours most affectionately,
"B. FRANKLIN,
"In his 80th year"
* * * * *
"_To the Bishop of St. Asaph._
"Philadelphia, Feb. 24, 1786.
"DEAR FRIEND,
"I received lately your kind letter of November 27. My reception here
was, as you have heard, very honourable indeed; but I was betrayed by
it, and by some remains of ambition, from which I had imagined myself
free, to accept of the chair of government for the State of
Pennsylvania, when the proper thing for me was repose and a private
life. I hope, however, to be able to bear the fatigue for one year, and
then retire.
"I have much regretted our having so little opportunity for conversation
when we last met.[31] You could have given me informations and counsels
that I wanted, but we were scarce a minute together without being broken
in upon. I am to thank you, however, for the pleasure I had, after our
parting, in reading the new book[32] you gave me, which I think
generally well written and likely to do good: though the reading time of
most people is of late so taken up with newspapers and little
periodical pamphlets, that few nowadays venture to attempt reading a
quarto volume. I have admired to see that in the last century a folio,
_Burton on Melancholy_, went through six editions in about forty years.
We have, I believe, more readers now, but not of such large books.
[31] At Southampton, previous to Dr. Franklin's embarking for the
United States.
[32] Paley's Moral Philosophy.
"You seem desirous of knowing what progress we make here in improving
our governments. We are, I think, in the right road of improvement, for
we are making experiments. I do not oppose all that seem wrong, for the
multitude are more effectually set right by experience, than kept from
going wrong by reasoning with them. And I think we are daily more and
more enlightened; so that I have no doubt of our obtaining, in a few
years, as much public felicity as good government is capable of
affording. * * * *
"As to my domestic circumstances, of which you kindly desire to hear
something, they are at present as happy as I could wish them. I am
surrounded by my offspring, a dutiful and affectionate daughter in my
house, with six grandchildren, the eldest of which you have seen, who is
now at college in the next street, finishing the learned part of his
education; the others promising both for parts and good dispositions.
What their conduct may be when they grow up and enter the important
scenes of life, I shall not live to _see_, and I cannot _foresee_. I
therefore enjoy among them the present hour, and leave the future to
Providence.