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[Illustration: Benj. Franklin]
American Statesmen
Standard Library Edition
[Illustration: _Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 1776_]
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
BY
JOHN T. MORSE, JR.
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1899
Copyright, 1898,
BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
_All rights reserved._
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
The editor has often been asked: "Upon what principle have you
constructed this series of lives of American statesmen?" The query has
always been civil in form, while in substance it has often implied that
the "principle," as to which inquiry is made, has been undiscoverable by
the interrogator. Other queries, like pendants, have also come: Why have
you not included A, or B, or C? The inference from these is that the
querist conceives A, or B, or C to be statesmen certainly not less
eminent than E, or F, or G, whose names he sees upon the list. Now there
really has been a principle of selection; but it has not been a
mathematical principle, whereby the several statesmen of the country
have been brought to the measuring-pole, like horses, and those of a
certain height have been accepted, and those not seeming to reach that
height have been rejected. The principle has been to make such a list of
men in public life that the aggregation of all their biographies would
give, in this personal shape, the history and the picture of the growth
and development of the United States from the beginning of that
agitation which led to the Revolution until the completion of that
solidarity which we believe has resulted from the civil war and the
subsequent reconstruction.
In illustration, let me speak of a few volumes. Patrick Henry was hardly
a great statesman; but, apart from the prestige and romance which his
eloquence has thrown about his memory, he furnished the best opportunity
for drawing a picture of the South in the period preceding the
Revolution, and for showing why and how the southern colonies, among
whom Virginia was easily the leader, became sharers in the strife.
Benton might possibly have been included upon his own merits. But if
there were any doubt upon this point, or if including him would seem to
have rendered it proper to include others equally eminent and yet
omitted, the reply is that Benton serves the important purpose of giving
the best available opportunity to sketch the character of the Southwest,
and the political feeling and development in that section of the
country.
In like manner, Cass was hardly a great statesman, although very active
and prominent for a long period. But the Northwest--or what used to be
the Northwest not so very long ago--comes out of the wilderness and into
the domain of civilization in the life of Cass.
John Randolph, erratic and bizarre, was not justly entitled to rank
among great statesmen. But the characteristics of Congress, as a body,
can be brought into better relief in the narrative of his life than in
that of any other person of his day. These characteristics were so
striking, so essential to an understanding of the history of those
times, and so utterly different from the habits and ways of our own era,
that an opportunity to present them must have been forced if Randolph
had not fortunately offered it.
These four volumes are mentioned by way of illustration of the plan of
the series in some of its less obvious purposes. By the light of the
suggestions thus afforded, readers will probably see for themselves the
motives which have led to the presence of other volumes. But one further
statement should be made. It has been the editor's intention to deal
with the advancement of the country. When the people have moved steadily
along any road, the men who have led them on that road have been
selected as subjects. When the people have refused to enter upon a road,
or, having entered, have soon turned back from it, the leaders upon such
inchoate or abandoned excursions have for the most part been rejected.
Those who have been exponents of ideas and principles which have entered
into the progress and have developed in a positive way the history of
the nation have been chosen; those who have unfortunately linked
themselves with rejected ideas and principles have themselves also been
rejected. Calhoun has been made an exception to this rule, for reasons
so obvious that they need not be rehearsed.
A Series of Great Failures presents fine opportunities, which will some
day attract some enterprising editor; but that is not the undertaking
here in hand. If the men who guided and the men who failed to guide the
movement and progress of the country were to stand side by side in this
series its size would be increased by at least one third, but probably
not so its value. Yet the failures have held out some temptations which
it has been difficult to resist. For example, there was Governor
Hutchinson, whose life has since been written by the same gentleman who
in this series has admirably presented his great antagonist, Samuel
Adams. There was much to be said in favor of setting the two portraits,
done by the same hand, side by side. It must be remembered that the
cause for the disaffected colonists is argued by the writers in this
series in the old-fashioned way,--that is to say, upon the fundamental
theory that Great Britain was foully wrong and her cis-Atlantic subjects
nobly right. A life of Hutchinson would have furnished an opportunity
for showing that, as an unmodified proposition, this is very far from
being correct. The time has come when efforts to state the quarrel
fairly for both parties are not altogether refused a hearing in the
United States. Nevertheless the admission of Hutchinson for this purpose
would have entailed too many consequences. The colonists _did_ secede
and _did_ establish independence; their action and their success
constitute the history of the country; and the leaders of their movement
are the persons whose portraits are properly hung in this gallery. The
obstructionists, leaders of the defeated party, who failed to control
our national destiny, must find room elsewhere. In the same way, Stephen
A. Douglas has been left outside the door. Able, distinguished,
influential, it was yet his misfortune to represent ideas and policies
which the people decisively condemned. Sufficient knowledge of these
ideas and policies is obtained from the lives of those who opposed and
triumphed over them. The history of non-success needs not the elaborate
presentation of a biography of the defeated leader in a series of
statesmen. The work of Douglas was discredited; it does not remain as an
active surviving influence, or as an integral part amid our modern
conditions. Andrew Johnson, also, furnished such an admirable
opportunity for the discussion of the subject of reconstruction that
some persons have thought that he should have found a place. But this
was impossible unless he were absolutely necessary for this especial
purpose; and fortunately he was not so, since the work could be done in
the lives of Seward and Stevens and Sumner. Then, if one were willing to
contribute to the immortality of a scoundrel, there was Aaron Burr; but
large as was the part which he played for a while in American politics,
and near as it came to being very much larger, the presence of his name
would have been a degradation of the series. Moreover his career was
strictly selfish and personal; he led no party, represented no idea, and
left no permanent trace. There was also William H. Crawford, who
narrowly missed being President, and who was a greater man than many of
the Presidents; but he _did_ miss, and he died, and there was an end of
him. There was Buchanan also; intellectually he had the making of a
statesman; but his wrong-headed blundering is sufficiently depicted for
the purposes of this series by the lives of those who foiled him.
These names, again, are mentioned only as indications of the scheme, as
explaining some exclusions. There are other exclusions, which have been
made, not because the individuals were not men of note, but because it
seemed that the story of their lives would fill no hiatus among the
volumes of the completed series.
The editor cannot expect every one to agree with him in the selection
which he has made. We all have our favorites in past history as well as
in modern politics, and few lists would precisely duplicate each other.
So the only thing which would seriously afflict the editor with a sense
of having made a bad blunder would be, if some one should detect a
really gaping chasm, a neglect to treat somewhere among the lives some
important item of our national history falling within the period which
the series is designed to cover.
The whole series naturally shapes itself, in a somewhat crude and rough
way to be sure, yet by virtue of substantial lines of division, into a
few sub-series or groups. The first of these belongs to the
Revolutionary period, what may be called the destructive period, since
it witnessed the destruction of the long-established political
conditions. In this group we find the leaders of the disaffection and
revolt: Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and George
Washington. Washington, of course, might properly find a place also in
the second group; but for the purposes of separation he is by preference
placed in the first one, because the Revolution was to so great an
extent his own personal achievement, his transcendent and crowning
glory.
The second group, constituting the constructive period, comprises the
men who were foremost in framing the Constitution, and in organizing and
giving coherence and life to the new government and to the nationality
thereby created. This is introduced by John Adams. He, like Washington,
might properly find a place in both the first and the second groups, but
the distinction of the presidential office brings him with sufficient
propriety into the second. The others in this group are Alexander
Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, John Jay, and John Marshall.
The third group follows the overthrow of Federalism with its theory of a
strongly centralized government. This, of course, begins with Thomas
Jefferson, who led and organized the new party of the democracy. He is
followed by his political disciple, James Madison; by their secretary of
the treasury, Albert Gallatin; and by James Monroe, John Quincy Adams,
and John Randolph. The two last named are hardly to be called
Jeffersonians, but they mark the passage of the nation from the
statesmanship of Jefferson to the widely different democracy of Jackson.
The fourth group witnesses the absorption of the nation in questions of
domestic policy. The crude and rough domination of Andrew Jackson opened
a new order of things. Men's minds were busied with affairs at home, at
first more especially with the tariff, then more and more exclusively
with slavery. This group, besides Jackson, includes Martin Van Buren,
Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Thomas H. Benton, and Lewis
Cass.
The fifth and closing group is that of the civil war. This of course
opens with Abraham Lincoln. The others are William H. Seward, as being a
sort of prime minister throughout the period; Salmon P. Chase, in whose
life can properly be discussed the financial policy and the principal
legal matters; Charles Francis Adams, embodying the important topic of
diplomatic relations; Charles Sumner, representing the advanced
abolitionist element; and Thaddeus Stevens, who appears as a tribune,
perhaps we may say the leader, in the popular branch of Congress.
Almost inevitably the series begins with Benjamin Franklin, the first
great American, the first man born on this side of the water who was
"meant for the universe." His mere existence was a sort of omen. It was
absurd to suppose that a people which could produce a man of that scope,
in character and intellect, could long remain in a condition of
political dependence. It would have been preposterous to have had
Franklin die a colonist, and go down to posterity, not as an American,
but as a colonial Englishman. He was a microcosm of the coming nation of
the United States; all the better moral and intellectual qualities of
our people existed in him, save only the dreamy philosophy of the famous
New England school of thinkers. It is very interesting to see how slowly
and reluctantly, yet how surely and decisively, he came to the point of
resistance and independence. He was not like so many, who were unstable
and shifting. There was no backward step, though there were many painful
and unwilling forward ones in his progress. One feels almost as if an
apology were needed for writing another life of a man so be-written. Yet
there is some reason for doing so; the chapter concerning his services
in France during the Revolution presents the true facts and the
magnitude of his usefulness more carefully than, so far as I am aware,
it has previously been done.
As a promoter of the Revolution, Samuel Adams has easily the most
conspicuous place. He was an agitator to the very centre of his marrow.
He was the incarnation of New England; to know thoroughly his career is
to know the Massachusetts of that day as an anatomist knows the human
frame. The man of the town meeting did more to kindle the Revolution
than any other one person. Many stood with him, but his life tells the
story and presents the picture. The like service is done for Virginia by
Patrick Henry; and the contrast between the two men is most striking
and picturesque, yet not more so than the difference between the two
sections of the country to which they respectively belonged.
If John Adams had died before he was made President, he also would have
been one of this group. But the lustre of his official position prevents
our placing him in the earlier constellation. Yet, though not more
prominent than many others, in fact hardly to be called prominent at all
in the events which led up to the Revolution, he became a leader in the
first Congress, and it is probable that no one contributed more than he
did--possibly no one contributed so much--towards forcing the adoption
of the Declaration of Independence.
Washington, though a member of Congress, was by no means conspicuous in
the agitation which preceded the actual outbreak of hostilities. His
entry in his uniform among his civilian comrades was indeed dramatic;
but his important public career really began with his acceptance of the
position of commander in chief. In this capacity he achieved the
overthrow of the British supremacy, and brought to a successful close
the period of destruction.
This first group is a small one, for the first Congress brought no new
men to the front. Indeed, that body lost its own prestige very soon
after independence was declared; thereafter it was no stage on which
new men could win distinction, or men already famous could add to their
store; indeed, members were lucky if they escaped without diminution of
their reputations, by very reason of being parts of so nerveless and
useless a body. The fact is, that the civilians, after they had set the
ball going, did little more. They contributed almost nothing to the
Revolution in any practical way during its actual progress. Perhaps they
could not; but certainly they did not. Washington and his officers and
soldiers deserve all the credit for making independence a reality
instead of an assertion. They were not very strenuously or generously
backed by the mass of the people after the first fervor was over. The
truth is that that grand event was the work of a small body of heroes,
who presented freedom and nationality to the people of the thirteen
colonies. John Adams and Congress said that the colonists were free, and
there left the matter, _functi officio_. Washington and the troops took
up the business, and actually made colonists into freemen. Those upon
whom this dignity and advantage were conferred were, for the most part,
content somewhat supinely to allow the new condition to be established
for them.
JOHN T. MORSE, JR.
September, 1898.
CONTENTS
I. EARLY YEARS 1
II. A CITIZEN OF PHILADELPHIA: CONCERNMENT IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS 17
III. REPRESENTATIVE OF PENNSYLVANIA IN ENGLAND: RETURN HOME 59
IV. LIFE IN PHILADELPHIA 86
V. SECOND MISSION TO ENGLAND: I. 100
VI. SECOND MISSION TO ENGLAND: II. 142
VII. SECOND MISSION TO ENGLAND: III.
THE HUTCHINSON LETTERS: THE PRIVY COUNCIL SCENE: RETURN HOME 177
VIII. SERVICES IN THE STATES 204
IX. MINISTER TO FRANCE: I.
DEANE AND BEAUMARCHAIS: FOREIGN OFFICERS 220
X. MINISTER TO FRANCE: II.
PRISONERS: TROUBLE WITH LEE AND OTHERS 248
XI. MINISTER TO FRANCE: III.
TREATY WITH FRANCE: MORE QUARRELS 267
XII. FINANCIERING 304
XIII. HABITS OF LIFE AND OF BUSINESS: AN ADAMS INCIDENT 337
XIV. PEACE NEGOTIATIONS: LAST YEARS IN FRANCE 357
XV. AT HOME: PRESIDENT OF PENNSYLVANIA:
THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION: DEATH 403
INDEX 429
ILLUSTRATIONS
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
From the original by Jean Baptiste Greuze, in the
Boston Public Library. It was painted for Benjamin
Franklin as a gift to Richard Oswald, the English
commissioner associated with him in the peace negotiations
of 1782. Gardner Brewer of Boston bought the painting
in 1872 and presented it to the Library.
Autograph from the Declaration of Independence.
The vignette of Independence Hall is after a drawing
in the possession of the American Bank Note Co., Philadelphia.
COUNT VERGENNES
From the frontispiece to Doniol, "Histoire de la Participation de la
France à l'Establissement des Etats-Unis d'Amérique," Paris, 1886, 5
vols., 4to. vol. i.; an engraving by Vangelisti, from the original
painting by Antoine Francois Callet.
Autograph from same book.
LORD HILLSBOROUGH (Born Wills Hill; afterwards Marquis of Downshire)
From a painting by J. Rising, owned by Lord Salisbury.
Autograph from MS. collection in the New York Public Library, Lenox Building.
PAUL JONES
From the original portrait by C. W. Peale in Independence
Hall.
Autograph from MS. collection in Library of Boston Athenæum.
SEA-FIGHT BETWEEN THE SERAPIS AND BON HOMME RICHARD
Off Flamborough Head, September 3, 1779. Paul
Jones's ship, in compliment to the author of "Poor Richard's
Maxims," was named "Bon Homme Richard." Captain Pearson, who
commanded the Serapis, was knighted for his heroic resistance. Paul
Jones, tradition says, on hearing of the honor conferred on
Pearson, good-naturedly observed, "If I ever meet him again, I'll
make a lord of him."
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS
It is a lamentable matter for any writer to find himself compelled to
sketch, however briefly, the early years of Benjamin Franklin. That
autobiography, in which the story of those years is so inimitably told,
by its vividness, its simplicity, even by its straightforward vanity,
and by the quaint charm of its old-fashioned but well-nigh faultless
style, stands among the few masterpieces of English prose. It ought to
have served for the perpetual protection of its subject as a copyright
more sacred than any which rests upon mere statutory law. Such, however,
has not been the case, and the narrative has been rehearsed over and
over again till the American who is not familiar with it is indeed a
curiosity. Yet no one of the subsequent narrators has justified his
undertaking. Therefore because the tale has been told so often, and once
has been told so well, and also in order that the stone which it is my
lot to cast upon a cairn made up of so many failures may at least be
only a small pebble, I shall get forward as speedily as possible to that
point in Franklin's career where his important public services begin, at
the same time commending every reader to turn again for further
refreshment of his knowledge to those pages which might well have
aroused the envy of Fielding and Defoe.
Franklin came from typical English stock. For three hundred years,
perhaps for many centuries more, his ancestors lived on a small freehold
at Ecton in Northamptonshire, and so far back as record or tradition ran
the eldest son in each generation had been bred a blacksmith. But after
the strange British fashion there was intertwined with this singular
fixedness of ideas a stubborn independence in thinking, courageously
exercised in times of peril. The Franklins were among the early
Protestants, and held their faith unshaken by the terrors of the reign
of Bloody Mary. By the end of Charles the Second's time they were
non-conformists and attendants on conventicles; and about 1682 Josiah
Franklin, seeking the peaceful exercise of his creed, migrated to
Boston, Massachusetts. His first wife bore him seven children, and died.
Not satisfied, he took in second nuptials Abiah Folger, "daughter of
Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of whom
honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather," and justly, since in those
dark days he was an active philanthropist towards the Indians, and an
opponent of religious persecution.[1] This lady outdid her predecessor,
contributing no less than ten children to expand the family circle. The
eighth of this second brood was named Benjamin, in memory of his
father's favorite brother. He was born in a house on Milk Street,
opposite the Old South Church, January 6, old style, 17, new style,
1706. Mr. Parton says that probably Benjamin "derived from his mother
the fashion of his body and the cast of his countenance. There are
lineal descendants of Peter Folger who strikingly resemble Franklin in
these particulars; one of whom, a banker of New Orleans, looks like a
portrait of Dr. Franklin stepped out of its frame."[2] A more important
inheritance was that of the humane and liberal traits of his mother's
father.
[Note 1: Parton's _Life of Franklin_, i. 27.]
[Note 2: _Ibid._ i. 31.]
In that young, scrambling village in the new country, where all
material, human or otherwise, was roughly and promptly utilized, the
unproductive period of boyhood was cut very short. Franklin's father
speedily resolved to devote him, "as the tithe of his sons, to the
service of the church," and so sent him to the grammar school. A droller
misfit than Franklin in an orthodox New England pulpit of that era can
hardly be imagined; but since he was only seven years old when his
father endeavored to arrange his life's career, a misappreciation of his
fitnesses was not surprising. The boy himself had the natural hankering
of children bred in a seaboard town for the life of a sailor. It is
amusing to fancy the discussions between this babe of seven years and
his father, concerning his occupation in life. Certainly the babe had
not altogether the worst of it, for when he was eight years old his
father definitively gave up the notion of making him a preacher of the
Gospel. At the ripe age of ten he was taken from school, and set to
assist his father in the trade of tallow-chandler and soap-boiler. But
dipping wicks and pouring grease pleased him hardly better than
reconciling infant damnation and a red-hot hell with the loveliness of
Christianity. The lad remained discontented. His chief taste seemed to
be for reading, and great were the ingenuity and the self-sacrifice
whereby he secured books and leisure to read them. The resultant of
these several forces was at last a suggestion from his father that he
should take up, as a sort of quasi-literary occupation, the trade of a
printer. James Franklin, an older brother of Benjamin, was already of
that calling. Benjamin stood out for some time, but at last reluctantly
yielded, and in the maturity of his thirteenth year this child set his
hand to an indenture of apprenticeship which formally bound him to his
brother for the next nine years of his life.
Handling the types aroused a boyish ambition to see himself in print. He
scribbled some ballads, one about a shipwreck, another about the capture
of a pirate; but he "escaped being a poet," as fortunately as he had
escaped being a clergyman. James Franklin seems to have trained his
junior with such fraternal cuffs and abuse as the elder brothers of
English biography and literature appear usually to have bestowed on the
younger. But this younger one got his revenges. James published the "New
England Courant," and, inserting in it some objectionable matter, was
forbidden to continue it. Thereupon he canceled the indenture of
apprenticeship, and the newspaper was thereafter published by Benjamin
Franklin. A secret renewal of the indenture was executed simultaneously.
This "flimsy scheme" gave the boy his chance. Secure that the document
would never be produced, he resolved to leave the printing-house. But
the influence of James prevented his getting employment elsewhere in the
town. Besides this, other matters also harassed him. It gives an idea of
the scale of things in the little settlement, and of the serious way in
which life was taken even at its outset, to hear that this 'prentice lad
of seventeen years had already made himself "a little obnoxious to the
governing party," so as to fear that he might soon "bring himself into
scrapes." For the inherited habit of freedom in religious speculation
had taken a new form in Franklin, who was already a free-thinker, and by
his "indiscreet disputations about religion" had come to be "pointed at
with horror by good people as an infidel and atheist"--compromising,
even perilous, names to bear in that Puritan village. Various motives
thus combined to induce migration. He stole away on board a sloop bound
for New York, and after three days arrived there, in October, 1723. He
had but a trifling sum of money, and he knew no one in the strange city.
He sought occupation in his trade, but got nothing better than advice to
move on to Philadelphia; and thither he went. The story of this
journeying is delightfully told in the autobiography, with the famous
little scene wherein he figures with a loaf under each arm and munching
a third while he walks "up Market Street, as far as Fourth Street,
passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father; when she,
standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a
most awkward, ridiculous appearance."
In Philadelphia Franklin soon found opportunity to earn a living at his
trade. There were then only two printers in that town, ignorant men
both, with scant capacity in the technique of their calling. His greater
acquirements and ability, and superior knowledge of the craft, soon
attracted attention. One day Sir William Keith, governor of the
province, appeared at the printing-office, inquired for Franklin, and
carried him off "to taste some excellent Madeira" with himself and
Colonel French, while employer Keimer, bewildered at the compliment to
his journeyman, "star'd like a pig poison'd." Over the genial glasses
the governor proposed that Franklin should set up for himself, and
promised his own influence to secure for him the public printing. Later
he wrote a letter, intended to induce Franklin's father to advance the
necessary funds. Equipped with this document, Franklin set out, in
April, 1724, to seek his father's coöperation, and surprised his family
by appearing unannounced among them, not at all in the classic garb of
the prodigal son, but "having a genteel new suit from head to foot, a
watch, and my pockets lin'd with near five pounds sterling in silver."
But neither his prosperous appearance nor the flattering epistle of the
great man could induce his hard-headed parent to favor a scheme "of
setting a boy up in business, who wanted yet three years of being at
man's estate." The independent old tallow-chandler only concluded that
the distinguished baronet "must be of small discretion." So Franklin
returned with "some small gifts as tokens" of parental love, much good
advice as to "steady industry and prudent parsimony," but no cash in
hand. The gallant governor, however, said: "Since he will not set you
up, I will do it myself," and a plan was soon concocted whereby Franklin
was to go to England and purchase a press and types with funds to be
advanced by Sir William. Everything was arranged, only from day to day
there was delay in the actual delivery to Franklin of the letters of
introduction and credit. The governor was a very busy man. The day of
sailing came, but the documents had not come, only a message from the
governor that Franklin might feel easy at embarking, for that the papers
should be sent on board at Newcastle, down the stream. Accordingly, at
the last moment, a messenger came hurriedly on board and put the packet
into the captain's hands. Afterward, when during the leisure hours of
the voyage the letters were sorted, none was found for Franklin. His
patron had simply broken an inconvenient promise. It was indeed a
"pitiful trick" to "impose so grossly on a poor innocent boy." Yet
Franklin, in his broad tolerance of all that is bad as well as good in
human nature, spoke with good-tempered indifference, and with more of
charity than of justice, concerning the deceiver. "It was a habit he had
acquired. He wish'd to please everybody; and, having little to give, he
gave expectations. He was otherwise an ingenious, sensible man, a pretty
good writer, and a good governor for the people.... Several of our best
laws were of his planning, and passed during his administration."
None the less it turned out that this contemptible governor did Franklin
a good turn in sending him to London, though the benefit came in a
fashion not anticipated by either. For Franklin, not yet much wiser than
the generality of mankind, had to go through his period of youthful
folly, and it was good fortune for him that the worst portion of this
period fell within the eighteen months which he passed in England. Had
this part of his career been run in Philadelphia its unsavory aroma
might have kept him long in ill odor among his fellow townsmen, then
little tolerant of profligacy. But the "errata" of a journeyman printer
in London were quite beyond the ken of provincial gossips. He easily
gained employment in his trade, at wages which left him a little surplus
beyond his maintenance. This surplus, during most of the time, he and
his comrades squandered in the pleasures of the town. Yet in one matter
his good sense showed itself, for he kept clear of drink; indeed, his
real nature asserted itself even at this time, to such a degree that we
find him waging a temperance crusade in his printing-house, and actually
weaning some of his fellow compositors from their dearly loved "beer."
One of these, David Hall, afterward became his able partner in the
printing business in Philadelphia. Amid much bad companionship he fell
in with some clever men. His friend James Ralph, though a despicable,
bad fellow, had brains and some education. At this time, too, Franklin
was in the proselyting stage of infidelity. He published "A Dissertation
on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain," and the pamphlet got him
some little notoriety among the free-thinkers of London, and an
introduction to some of them, but chiefly of the class who love to sit
in taverns and blow clouds of words. Their society did him no good, and
such effervescence was better blown off in London than in Philadelphia.
But after the novelty of London life had worn off, it ceased to be to
Franklin's taste. He began to reform somewhat, to retrench and lay by a
little money; and after eighteen months he eagerly seized an
opportunity which offered for returning home. This was opened to him by
a Mr. Denham, a good man and prosperous merchant, then engaged in
England in purchasing stock for his store in Philadelphia. Franklin was
to be his managing and confidential clerk, with the prospect of rapid
advancement. At the same time Sir William Wyndham, ex-chancellor of the
exchequer, endeavored to persuade Franklin to open a swimming school in
London. He promised very aristocratic patronage; and as an opening for
money-getting this plan was perhaps the better. Franklin almost closed
with the proposition. He seems, however, to have had a little touch of
homesickness, a preference, if not quite a yearning, for the colonies,
which sufficed to turn the scale. Such was his third escape; he might
have passed his days in instructing the scions of British nobility in
the art of swimming! He arrived at home, after a tedious voyage, October
11, 1726. But almost immediately fortune seemed to cross him, for Mr.
Denham and he were both taken suddenly ill. Denham died; Franklin
narrowly evaded death, and fancied himself somewhat disappointed at his
recovery, "regretting in some degree that [he] must now sometime or
other have all that disagreeable work to go over again." He seems to
have become sufficiently interested in what was likely to follow his
decease, in this world at least, to compose an epitaph which has become
world-renowned, and has been often imitated:--
THE BODY
OF
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
(LIKE THE COVER OF AN OLD BOOK,
ITS CONTENTS TORN OUT,
AND STRIPT OF ITS LETTERING AND GILDING,)
LIES HERE, FOOD FOR WORMS,
YET THE WORK ITSELF SHALL NOT BE LOST,
FOR IT WILL, AS HE BELIEVED, APPEAR ONCE MORE,
IN A NEW
AND MORE BEAUTIFUL EDITION,
CORRECTED AND AMENDED
BY
THE AUTHOR.
But there was no use for this graveyard literature; Franklin got well,
and recurred again to his proper trade. Being expert with the
composing-stick, he was readily engaged at good wages by his old
employer, Keimer. Franklin, however, soon suspected that this man's
purpose was only to use him temporarily for instructing some green
hands, and for organizing the printing-office. Naturally a quarrel soon
occurred. But Franklin had proved his capacity, and forthwith the father
of one Meredith, a fellow journeyman under Keimer, advanced sufficient
money to set up the two as partners in the printing business. Franklin
managed the office, showing admirable enterprise, skill, and industry.
Meredith drank. This allotment of functions soon produced its natural
result. Two friends of Franklin lent him what capital he needed; he
bought out Meredith and had the whole business for himself. His zeal
increased; he won good friends, gave general satisfaction, and absorbed
all the best business in the province.
At the time of the formation of the partnership the only newspaper of
Pennsylvania was published by Bradford, a rival of Keimer in the
printing business. It was "a paltry thing, wretchedly managed, no way
entertaining, and yet was profitable to him." Franklin and Meredith
resolved to start a competing sheet; but Keimer got wind of their plan,
and at once "published proposals for printing one himself." He had got
ahead of them, and they had to desist. But he was ignorant, shiftless,
and incompetent, and after carrying on his enterprise for "three
quarters of a year, with at most only ninety subscribers," he sold out
his failure to Franklin and Meredith "for a trifle." To them, or rather
to Franklin, "it prov'd in a few years extremely profitable." Its
original name, "The Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences, and
Pennsylvania Gazette," was reduced by the amputation of the first
clause, and, relieved from the burden of its trailing title, it
circulated actively throughout the province, and further. Number 40,
Franklin's first number, appeared October 2, 1729. Bradford, who was
postmaster, refused to allow his post-riders to carry any save his own
newspaper. But Franklin, whose morality was nothing if not practical,
fought the devil with fire, and bribed the riders so judiciously that
his newspaper penetrated whithersoever they went. He says of it: "Our
first papers made a quite different appearance from any before in the
Province; a better type, and better printed; but some spirited remarks
of my writing, on the dispute then going on between Governor Burnet and
the Massachusetts Assembly, struck the principal people, occasioned the
paper and the manager of it to be much talked of, and in a few weeks
brought them all to be our subscribers." Later his articles in favor of
the issue of a sum of paper currency were so largely instrumental in
carrying that measure that the profitable job of printing the money
became his reward. Thus advancing in prestige and prosperity, he was
able to discharge by installments his indebtedness. "In order to
secure," he says, "my credit and character as a tradesman, I took care
to be not only in reality industrious and frugal, but to avoid all
appearances to the contrary." A characteristic remark. With Franklin
every virtue had its market value, and to neglect to get that value out
of it was the part of folly.
About this time the wife of a glazier, who occupied part of Franklin's
house, began match-making in behalf of a "very deserving" girl; and
Franklin, nothing loath, responded with "serious courtship." He
intimated his willingness to accept the maiden's hand, provided that its
fellow hand held a dowry, and he named an hundred pounds sterling as his
lowest figure. The parents, on the other part, said that they had not
so much ready money. Franklin civilly suggested that they could get it
by mortgaging their house; they firmly declined. The negotiation
thereupon was abandoned. "This affair," Franklin continues, "having
turned my thoughts to marriage, I look'd round me and made overtures of
acquaintance in other places; but soon found that, the business of a
printer being generally thought a poor one, I was not to expect money
with a wife, unless with such a one as I should not otherwise think
agreeable." Finding such difficulties in the way of a financial
alliance, Franklin appears to have bethought him of affection as a
substitute for dollars; so he blew into the ashes of an old flame, and
aroused some heat. Before going to England he had engaged himself to
Miss Deborah Read; but in London he had pretty well forgotten her, and
had written to her only a single letter. Many years afterward, writing
to Catharine Ray in 1755, he said: "The cords of love and friendship ...
in times past have drawn me ... back from England to Philadelphia." If
the remark referred to an affection for Miss Read, it was probably no
more trustworthy than are most such allegations made when lapsing years
have given a fictitious coloring to a remote past. If indeed Franklin's
profligacy and his readiness to marry any girl financially eligible were
symptoms attendant upon his being in love, it somewhat taxes the
imagination to fancy how he would have conducted himself had he not been
the victim of romantic passion. Miss Read, meanwhile, apparently about
as much in love as her lover, had wedded another man, "one Rogers, a
potter," a good workman but worthless fellow, who soon took flight from
his bride and his creditors. Her position had since become somewhat
questionable; for there was a story that her husband had an earlier wife
living, in which case of course her marriage with him was null. There
was also a story that he was dead. But there was little evidence of the
truth of either tale. Franklin, therefore, hardly knew what he was
wedding, a maid, a widow, or another man's wife. Moreover the runaway
husband "had left many debts, which his successor might be call'd upon
to pay." Few men, even if warmly enamored, would have entered into the
matrimonial contract under circumstances so discouraging; and there are
no indications save the marriage itself that Franklin was deeply in
love. Yet on September 1, 1730, the pair were wedded. Mrs. Franklin
survived for forty years thereafter, and neither seems ever to have
regretted the step. "None of the inconveniences happened that we had
apprehended," wrote Franklin; "she proved a good and faithful helpmate;
assisted me much by attending the shop; we throve together, and have
ever mutually endeavored to make each other happy." A sensible,
comfortable, satisfactory union it was, showing how much better is sense
than sensibility as an ingredient in matrimony. Mrs. Franklin was a
handsome woman, of comely figure, yet nevertheless an industrious and
frugal one; later on in life Franklin boasted that he had "been clothed
from head to foot in linen of [his] wife's manufacture." An early
contribution of his own to the domestic _ménage_ was his illegitimate
son, William, born soon after his wedding, of a mother of whom no record
or tradition remains. It was an unconventional wedding gift to bring
home to a bride; but Mrs. Franklin, with a breadth and liberality of
mind akin to her husband's, readily took the babe not only to her home
but really to her heart, and reared him as if he had been her own
offspring. Mr. Parton thinks that Franklin gave this excellent wife no
further cause for suspicion or jealousy.