[1] Stephen Skinner, M.D. (Etymologicon linguae Anglicanae, Lond.,
1671), gives the derivation: "Frankincense, Thus, q.d. Incensum (i.e.
Thus Libere) seu Liberaliter, ut in sacris officiis par est,
adolendum."
[2] "Sic _olibanum_ dixere pro thure ex Graeco [Greek: o libanos]"
(Salmasius, C. S. _Plinianae exercitationes_, t. ii. p. 926, b. F.,
Traj. ad Rhen., 1689 fol.). So also Fuchs (Op. didact. pars. ii. p.
42, 1604 fol.), "Officinis non sine risu eruditorum, Graeco articulo
adjecto, _Olibanus_ vocatur." The term _olibano_ was used in
ecclesiastical Latin as early as the pontificate of Benedict IX., in
the 11th century. (See Ferd. Ughellus, _Italia sacra_, tom. i. 108,
D., Ven., 1717 fol.)
[3] So designated from its whiteness (J. G. Stuckius, _Sacror. et
sacrific. gent. descrip._, p. 79, Lugd. Bat., 1695, fol.; Kitto,
_Cycl. Bibl. Lit._ ii. p. 806, 1870); cf. _Laben_, the Somali name
for cream (R. F. Burton, _First Footsteps in E. Africa_, p. 178,
1856).
[4] Written _Louan_ by Garcias da Horta (_Aromat. et simpl.
medicament. hist., C. Clusii Atrebatis Exoticorum lib. sept._, p.
157, 1605, fol.), and stated to have been derived by the Arabs from
the Greek name, the term less commonly used by them being _Conder_:
cf. Sanskrit _Kunda_. According to Colebrooke (in _Asiatick Res._ ix.
p. 379, 1807), the Hindu writers on Materia Medica use for the resin
of _Boswellia thurifera_ the designation _Cunduru_.
[5] A term applied also to the resinous exudation of _Pinus
longifolia_ (see Dr E. J. Waring, _Pharmacopoeia of India_, p. 52,
Lond., 1868).
[6] See "Appendix," vol. i. p. 419 of Sir W. C. Harris's _Highland of
Aethiopia_ (2nd ed., Lond., 1844); and _Trans. Bombay Geog. Soc._
xiii. (1857), p. 136.
[7] Cruttenden, _Trans. Bombay Geog. Soc._ vii. (1846), p. 121; S. B.
Miles, J. Geog. Soc. (1872).
[8] Or Dhafar. The incense of "Dofar" is alluded to by Camoens, _Os
Lusiadas_, x. 201.
[9] H. J. Carter, "Comparative Geog. of the South-East Coast of
Arabia," in _J. Bombay Branch of R. Asiatic Soc._ iii. (Jan. 1851),
p. 296; and Mueller, _Geog. Graeci Minores_, i. p. 278 (Paris, 1855).
[10] J. Vaughan, _Pharm. Journ._ xii. (1853) pp. 227-229; and Ward,
_op. cit._ p. 97.
[11] Pereira, _Elem. of Mat. Med._ ii. pt. 2, p. 380 (4th ed., 1847).
[12] "_Boswellia thurifera_," ... says Waring (_Pharm. of India_, p.
52), "has been thought to yield East Indian olibanum, but there is no
reliable evidence of its so doing."
[13] "Libanus igitur est mons redolentie & summe aromaticitatis. nam
ibi herbe odorifere crescunt. ibi etiam arbores thurifere coalescunt
quarum gummi electum olibanum a medicis nuncupatur."--_Perigrinatio_,
p. 53 (1502, fol.).
[14] See, on the chemistry of frankincense, Braconnot, _Ann. de
chimie_, lxviii. (1808) pp. 60-69; Johnston, _Phil. Trans_. (1839),
pp. 301-305; J. Stenhouse, _Ann. der Chem. und Pharm_. xxxv. (1840)
p. 306; and A. Kurbatow, _Zeitsch. fuer Chem_. (1871), p. 201.
[15] "Praecipua autem gratia est mammoso, cum haerente lacryma priore
consecuta alia miscuit se" (_Nat. Hist._ xii. 32). One of the Chinese
names for frankincense, _Ju-hiang_, "milk-perfume," is explained by
the _Pen Ts'au_ (xxxiv. 45), a Chinese work, as being derived from
the nipple-like form of its drops. (See E. Bretschneider, _On the
Knowledge possessed by the Ancient Chinese of the Arabs_, &c., p. 19,
Lond., 1871.)
[16] _The Voyage of Nearchus, loc. cit._
[17] Vaughan (_Pharm. Journ._ xii. 1853) speaks of the Arabian Luban,
commonly called _Morbat_ or _Shaharree Luban_, as realizing higher
prices in the market than any of the qualities exported from Africa.
The incense of "Esher," i.e. Shihr or Shehr, is mentioned by Marco
Polo, as also by Barbosa. (See Yule, _op. cit._ ii. p. 377.) J.
Raymond Wellsted (_Travels to the City of the Caliphs_, p. 173,
Lond., 1840) distinguishes two kinds of frankincense--"_Meaty_,"
selling at $4 per cwt., and an inferior article fetching 20% less.
[18] "Es scheint, dass selber die Araber ihr eignes Raeuchwerk nicht
hoch schaetzen; denn die Vornehmen in Jemen brauchen gemeiniglich
indianisches Raeuchwerk, ja eine grosse Menge Mastix von der Insel
Scio" (_Beschreibung von Arabien_, p. 143, Kopenh., 1772).
[19] "De Arabibus minus mirum, qui nigricantem colorem, quo Thus
Indicum praeditum esse vult Dioscorides [lib. i. c. 70], Indum
plerumque vocent, ut ex Myrobalano nigro quem Indum appellant, patet"
(_op. sup. cit._ p. 157).
FRANKING, a term used for the right of sending letters or postal
packages free (Fr. _franc_) of charge. The privilege was claimed by the
House of Commons in 1660 in "a Bill for erecting and establishing a Post
Office," their demand being that all letters addressed to or sent by
members during the session should be carried free. The clause embodying
this claim was struck out by the Lords, but with the proviso in the Act
as passed for the free carriage of all letters to and from the king and
the great officers of state, and also the single inland letters of the
members of that present parliament during that session only. It seems,
however, that the practice was tolerated until 1764, when by an act
dealing with postage it was legalized, every peer and each member of the
House of Commons being allowed to send free ten letters a day, not
exceeding an ounce in weight, to any part of the United Kingdom, and to
receive fifteen. The act did not restrict the privilege to letters
either actually written by or to the member, and thus the right was very
easily abused, members sending and receiving letters for friends, all
that was necessary being the signature of the peer or M.P. in the corner
of the envelope. Wholesale franking grew usual, and M.P.'s supplied
their friends with envelopes already signed to be used at any time. In
1837 the scandal had become so great that stricter regulations came into
force. The franker had to write the full address, to which he had to add
his name, the post-town and the day of the month; the letter had to be
posted on the day written or the following day at the latest, and in a
post-town not more than 20 m. from the place where the peer or M.P. was
then living. On the 10th of January 1840 parliamentary franking was
abolished on the introduction of the uniform penny rate.
In the United States the franking privilege was first granted in January
1776 to the soldiers engaged in the American War of Independence. The
right was gradually extended till it included nearly all officials and
members of the public service. By special acts the privilege was
bestowed on presidents and their widows. By an act of the 3rd of March
1845, franking was limited to the president, vice-president, members and
delegates in Congress and postmasters, other officers being required to
keep quarterly accounts of postage and pay it from their contingent
funds. In 1851 free exchange of newspapers was re-established. By an act
of the 3rd of March 1863 the privilege was granted the president and his
private secretary, the vice-president, chiefs of executive departments,
such heads of bureaus and chief clerks as might be designated by the
postmaster-general for official letters only; senators and
representatives in Congress for all correspondence, senders of petitions
to either branch of the legislature, and to publishers of newspapers for
their exchanges. There was a limit as to weight. Members of Congress
could also frank, in matters concerning the federal department of
agriculture, "seeds, roots and cuttings," the weight to be fixed by the
postmaster-general. This act remained in force till the 31st of January
1873, when franking was abolished. Since 1875, by sundry acts, franking
for official correspondence, government publications, seeds, &c., has
been allowed to congressmen, ex-congressmen (for 9 months after the
close of their term), congressmen-elect and other government officials.
By special acts of 1881, 1886, 1902, 1909, respectively, the franking
privilege was granted to the widows of Presidents Garfield, Grant,
McKinley and Cleveland.
FRANKL, LUDWIG AUGUST (1810-1894), Austrian poet. He took part in the
revolution of 1848, and his poems on liberty had considerable vogue. His
lyrics are among his best work. He was secretary of the Jewish community
in Vienna, and did a lasting service to education by his visit to the
Orient in 1856. He founded the first modern Jewish school (the Von
Laemmel Schule) in Jerusalem. His brilliant volumes _Nach Jerusalem_
describing his eastern tour have been translated into English, as is the
case with many of his poems. His collected poems appeared in three
volumes in 1880. (I. A.)
FRANKLAND, SIR EDWARD (1825-1899), English chemist, was born at
Churchtown, near Lancaster, on the 18th of January 1825. After attending
the grammar school at Lancaster he spent six years as an apprentice to a
druggist in that town. In 1845 he went to London and entered Lyon
Playfair's laboratory, subsequently working under R. W. Bunsen at
Marburg. In 1847 he was appointed science-master at Queenwood school,
Hampshire, where he first met J. Tyndall, and in 1851 first professor of
chemistry at Owens College, Manchester. Returning to London six years
later he became lecturer in chemistry at St Bartholomew's hospital, and
in 1863 professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution. From an early
age he engaged in original research with great success.
Analytical problems, such as the isolation of certain organic radicals,
attracted his attention to begin with, but he soon turned to synthetical
studies, and he was only about twenty-five years of age when an
investigation, doubtless suggested by the work of his master, Bunsen, on
cacodyl, yielded the interesting discovery of the organo-metallic
compounds. The theoretical deductions which he drew from the
consideration of these bodies were even more interesting and important
than the bodies themselves. Perceiving a molecular isonomy between them
and the inorganic compounds of the metals from which they may be formed,
he saw their true molecular type in the oxygen, sulphur or chlorine
compounds of those metals, from which he held them to be derived by the
substitution of an organic group for the oxygen, sulphur, &c. In this
way they enabled him to overthrow the theory of conjugate compounds, and
they further led him in 1852 to publish the conception that the atoms of
each elementary substance have a definite saturation capacity, so that
they can only combine with a certain limited number of the atoms of
other elements. The theory of valency thus founded has dominated the
subsequent development of chemical doctrine, and forms the groundwork
upon which the fabric of modern structural chemistry reposes.
In applied chemistry Frankland's great work was in connexion with
water-supply. Appointed a member of the second royal commission on the
pollution of rivers in 1868, he was provided by the government with a
completely-equipped laboratory, in which, for a period of six years, he
carried on the inquiries necessary for the purposes of that body, and
was thus the means of bringing to light an enormous amount of valuable
information respecting the contamination of rivers by sewage,
trade-refuse, &c., and the purification of water for domestic use. In
1865, when he succeeded A. W. von Hofmann at the School of Mines, he
undertook the duty of making monthly reports to the registrar-general on
the character of the water supplied to London, and these he continued
down to the end of his life. At one time he was an unsparing critic of
its quality, but in later years he became strongly convinced of its
general excellence and wholesomeness. His analyses were both chemical
and bacteriological, and his dissatisfaction with the processes in vogue
for the former at the time of his appointment caused him to spend two
years in devising new and more accurate methods. In 1859 he passed a
night on the very top of Mont Blanc in company with John Tyndall. One of
the purposes of the expedition was to discover whether the rate of
combustion of a candle varies with the density of the atmosphere in
which it is burnt, a question which was answered in the negative. Other
observations made by Frankland at the time formed the starting-point of
a series of experiments which yielded far-reaching results. He noticed
that at the summit the candle gave a very poor light, and was thereby
led to investigate the effect produced on luminous flames by varying the
pressure of the atmosphere in which they are burning. He found that
pressure increases luminosity, so that hydrogen, for example, the flame
of which in normal circumstances gives no light, burns with a luminous
flame under a pressure of ten or twenty atmospheres, and the inference
he drew was that the presence of solid particles is not the only factor
that determines the light-giving power of a flame. Further, he showed
that the spectrum of a dense ignited gas resembles that of an
incandescent liquid or solid, and he traced a gradual change in the
spectrum of an incandescent gas under increasing pressure, the sharp
lines observable when it is extremely attenuated broadening out to
nebulous bands as the pressure rises, till they merge in the continuous
spectrum as the gas approaches a density comparable with that of the
liquid state. An application of these results to solar physics in
conjunction with Sir Norman Lockyer led to the view that at least the
external layers of the sun cannot consist of matter in the liquid or
solid forms, but must be composed of gases or vapours. Frankland and
Lockyer were also the discoverers of helium. In 1868 they noticed in the
solar spectrum a bright yellow line which did not correspond to any
substance then known, and which they therefore attributed to the then
hypothetical element, helium.
Sir Edward Frankland, who was made a K.C.B. in 1897, died on the 9th of
August 1899 while on a holiday at Golaa, Gudbrandsdalen, Norway.
A memorial lecture delivered by Professor H. E. Armstrong before the
London Chemical Society on the 31st of October 1901 contained many
personal details of Frankland's life, together with a full discussion
of his scientific work; and a volume of _Autobiographical Sketches_
was printed for private circulation in 1902. His original papers, down
to 1877, were collected and published in that year as _Experimental
Researches in Pure, Applied and Physical Chemistry_.
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN (1706-1790), American diplomat, statesman and
scientist, was born on the 17th of January 1706 in a house in Milk
Street, opposite the Old South church, Boston, Massachusetts. He was the
tenth son of Josiah Franklin, and the eighth child and youngest son of
ten children borne by Abiah Folger, his father's second wife. The elder
Franklin was born at Ecton in Northamptonshire, England, where the
strongly Protestant Franklin family may be traced back for nearly four
centuries. He had married young and had migrated from Banbury to Boston,
Massachusetts, in 1685. Benjamin could not remember when he did not know
how to read, and when eight years old he was sent to the Boston grammar
school, being destined by his father for the church as a tithe of his
sons. He spent a year there and a year in a school for writing and
arithmetic, and then at the age of ten he was taken from school to
assist his father in the business of a tallow-chandler and soapboiler.
In his thirteenth year he was apprenticed to his half-brother James, who
was establishing himself in the printing business, and who in 1721
started the _New England Courant_, one of the earliest newspapers in
America.
Benjamin's tastes had at first been for the sea rather than the pulpit;
now they inclined rather to intellectual than to other pleasures. At an
early age he had made himself familiar with _The Pilgrim's Progress_,
with Locke, _On the Human Understanding_, and with a volume of _The
Spectator_. Thanks to his father's excellent advice, he gave up writing
doggerel verse (much of which had been printed by his brother and sold
on the streets) and turned to prose composition. His success in
reproducing articles he had read in _The Spectator_ led him to write an
article for his brother's paper, which he slipped under the door of the
printing shop with no name attached, and which was printed and attracted
some attention. After repeated successes of the same sort Benjamin threw
off his disguise and contributed regularly to the _Courant_. When, after
various journalistic indiscretions, James Franklin in 1722 was forbidden
to publish the _Courant_, it appeared with Benjamin's name as that of
the publisher and was received with much favour, chiefly because of the
cleverness of his articles signed "Dr Janus," which, like those
previously signed "Mistress Silence Dogood," gave promise of "Poor
Richard." But Benjamin's management of the paper, and particularly his
free-thinking, displeased the authorities; the relations of the two
brothers gradually grew unfriendly, possibly, as Benjamin thought,
because of his brother's jealousy of his superior ability; and Benjamin
determined to quit his brother's employ and to leave New England. He
made his way first to New York City, and then (October 1723) to
Philadelphia, where he got employment with a printer named Samuel
Keimer.[1]
A rapid composer and a workman full of resource, Franklin was soon
recognized as the master spirit of the shop. Sir William Keith
(1680-1749), governor of the province, urged him to start in business
for himself, and when Franklin had unsuccessfully appealed to his father
for the means to do so, Keith promised to furnish him with what he
needed for the equipment of a new printing office and sent him to
England to buy the materials. Keith had repeatedly promised to send a
letter of credit by the ship on which Franklin sailed, but when the
Channel was reached and the ship's mails were examined no such letter
was found. Franklin reached London in December 1724, and found
employment first at Palmer's, a famous printing house in Bartholomew
Close, and afterwards at Watts's Printing House. At Palmer's he had set
up a second edition of Wollaston's _Religion of Nature Delineated_. To
refute this book and to prove that there could be no such thing as
religion, he wrote and printed a small pamphlet, _A Dissertation on
Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain_, which brought him some
curious acquaintances, and of which he soon became thoroughly ashamed.
After a year and a half in London, Franklin was persuaded by a friend
named Denham, a Quaker merchant, to return with him to America and
engage in mercantile business; he accordingly gave up printing, but a
few days before sailing he received a tempting offer to remain and give
lessons in swimming--his feats as a swimmer having given him
considerable reputation--and he says that he might have consented "had
the overtures been sooner made." He reached Philadelphia in October
1726, but a few months later Denham died, and Franklin was induced by
large wages to return to his old employer Keimer; with Keimer he
quarrelled repeatedly, thinking himself ill used and kept only to train
apprentices until they could in some degree take his place. In 1728
Franklin and Hugh Meredith, a fellow-worker at Keimer's, set up in
business for themselves; the capital being furnished by Meredith's
father. In 1730 the partnership was dissolved, and Franklin, through the
financial assistance of two friends, secured the sole management of the
printing house. In September 1729 he bought at a merely nominal price
_The Pennsylvania Gazette_, a weekly newspaper which Keimer had started
nine months before to defeat a similar project of Franklin's, and which
Franklin conducted until 1765. Franklin's superior management of the
paper, his new type, "some spirited remarks" on the controversy between
the Massachusetts assembly and Governor Burnet, brought his paper into
immediate notice, and his success both as a printer and as a journalist
was assured and complete. In 1731 he established in Philadelphia one of
the earliest circulating libraries in America (often said to have been
the earliest), and in 1732 he published the first of his Almanacks,
under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders. These "Poor Richard's
Almanacks" were issued for the next twenty-five years with remarkable
success, the annual sale averaging 10,000 copies, and far exceeding the
sale of any other publication in the colonies.
Beginning in 1733 Franklin taught himself enough French, Italian,
Spanish and Latin to read these languages with some ease. In 1736 he was
chosen clerk of the General Assembly, and served in this capacity until
1751. In 1737 he had been appointed postmaster at Philadelphia, and
about the same time he organized the first police force and fire company
in the colonies; in 1749, after he had written _Proposals Relating to
the Education of Youth in Pensilvania_, he and twenty-three other
citizens of Philadelphia formed themselves into an association for the
purpose of establishing an academy, which was opened in 1751, was
chartered in 1753, and eventually became the University of Pennsylvania;
in 1727 he organized a debating club, the "Junto," in Philadelphia, and
later he was one of the founders of the American Philosophical Society
(1743; incorporated 1780); he took the lead in the organization of a
militia force, and in the paving of the city streets, improved the
method of street lighting, and assisted in the founding of a city
hospital (1751); in brief, he gave the impulse to nearly every measure
or project for the welfare and prosperity of Philadelphia undertaken in
his day. In 1751 he became a member of the General Assembly of
Pennsylvania, in which he served for thirteen years. In 1753 he and
William Hunter were put in charge of the post service of the colonies,
which he brought in the next ten years to a high state of efficiency and
made a financial success; this position he held until 1774. He visited
nearly every post office in the colonies and increased the mail service
between New York and Philadelphia from once to three times a week in
summer, and from twice a month to once a week in winter. When war with
France appeared imminent in 1754, Franklin was sent to the Albany
Convention, where he submitted his plan for colonial union (see ALBANY,
N.Y.). When the home government sent over General Edward Braddock[2]
with two regiments of British troops, Franklin undertook to secure the
requisite number of horses and waggons for the march against Ft.
Duquesne, and became personally responsible for payment to the
Pennsylvanians who furnished them. Notwithstanding the alarm occasioned
by Braddock's defeat, the old quarrel between the proprietors of
Pennsylvania and the assembly prevented any adequate preparations for
defence; "with incredible meanness" the proprietors had instructed their
governors to approve no act for levying the necessary taxes, unless the
vast estates of the proprietors were by the same act exempted. So great
was the confidence in Franklin in this emergency that early in 1756 the
governor of Pennsylvania placed him in charge of the north-western
frontier of the province, with power to raise troops, issue commissions
and erect blockhouses; and Franklin remained in the wilderness for over
a month, superintending the building of forts and watching the Indians.
In February 1757 the assembly, "finding the proprietary obstinately
persisted in manacling their deputies with instructions inconsistent not
only with the privileges of the people, but with the service of the
crown, resolv'd to petition the king against them," and appointed
Franklin as their agent to present the petition. He arrived in London on
the 27th of July 1757, and shortly afterwards, when, at a conference
with Earl Granville, president of the council, the latter declared that
"the King is the legislator of the colonies," Franklin in reply declared
that the laws of the colonies were to be made by their assemblies, to be
passed upon by the king, and when once approved were no longer subject
to repeal or amendment by the crown. As the assemblies, said he, could
not make permanent laws without the king's consent, "neither could he
make a law for them without theirs." This opposition of views distinctly
raised the issue between the home government and the colonies. As to the
proprietors Franklin succeeded in 1760 in securing an understanding that
the assembly should pass an act exempting from taxation the _unsurveyed_
waste lands of the Penn estate, the surveyed waste lands being assessed
at the usual rate for other property of that description. Thus the
proprietors finally acknowledged the right of the assembly to tax their
estates.
The success of Franklin's first foreign mission was, therefore,
substantial and satisfactory. During this sojourn of five years in
England he had made many valuable friends outside of court and political
circles, among whom Hume, Robertson and Adam Smith were conspicuous. In
1759, for his literary and more particularly his scientific attainments,
he received the freedom of the city of Edinburgh and the degree of
doctor of laws from the university of St Andrews. He had been made a
Master of Arts at Harvard and at Yale in 1753, and at the college of
William and Mary in 1756; and in 1762 he received the degree of D.C.L.
at Oxford. While in England he had made active use of his remarkable
talent for pamphleteering. In the clamour for peace following the death
of George II. (25th of October 1760), he was for a vigorous prosecution
of the war with France; he had written what purported to be a chapter
from an old book written by a Spanish Jesuit, _On the Meanes of
Disposing the Enemie to Peace_, which had a great effect; and in the
spring of 1760 there had been published a more elaborate paper written
by Franklin with the assistance of Richard Jackson, agent of
Massachusetts and Connecticut in London, entitled _The Interest of Great
Britain Considered with Regard to Her Colonies, and the Acquisitions of
Canada and Guadeloupe_ (1760). This pamphlet answered the argument that
it would be unsafe to keep Canada because of the added strength that
would thus be given to any possible movement for independence in the
English colonies, by urging that so long as Canada remained French there
could be no safety for the English colonies in North America, nor any
permanent peace in Europe. Tradition reports that this pamphlet had
considerable weight in determining the ministry to retain Canada.
Franklin sailed again for America in August 1762, hoping to be able to
settle down in quiet and devote the remainder of his life to experiments
in physics. This quiet was interrupted, however, by the "Paxton
Massacre" (Dec. 14, 1763)--the slaughter of a score of Indians
(children, women and old men) at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by some young
rowdies from the town of Paxton, who then marched upon Philadelphia to
kill a few Christian Indians there. Franklin, appealed to by the
governor, raised a troop sufficient to frighten away the "Paxton boys,"
and for the moment there seemed a possibility of an understanding
between Franklin and the proprietors. But the question of taxing the
estates of the proprietors came up in a new form, and a petition from
the assembly was drawn by Franklin, requesting the king "to resume the
government" of Pennsylvania. In the autumn election of 1764 the
influence of the proprietors was exerted against Franklin, and by an
adverse majority of 25 votes in 4000 he failed to be re-elected to the
assembly. The new assembly sent Franklin again to England as its special
agent to take charge of another petition for a change of government,
which, however, came to nothing. Matters of much greater consequence
soon demanded Franklin's attention.
Early in 1764 Lord Grenville had informed the London agents of the
American colonies that he proposed to lay a portion of the burden left
by the war with France upon the shoulders of the colonists by means of a
stamp duty, unless some other tax equally productive and less
inconvenient were proposed. The natural objection of the colonies, as
voiced, for example, by the assembly of Pennsylvania, was that it was a
cruel thing to tax colonies already taxed beyond their strength, and
surrounded by enemies and exposed to constant expenditures for defence,
and that it was an indignity that they should be taxed by a parliament
in which they were not represented; at the same time the Pennsylvania
assembly recognized it as "their duty to grant aid to the crown,
according to their abilities, whenever required of them in the usual
manner." To prevent the introduction of the Stamp Act, which he
characterized as "the mother of mischief," Franklin used every effort,
but the bill was easily passed, and it was thought that the colonists
would soon be reconciled to it. Because he, too, thought so, and because
he recommended John Hughes, a merchant of Philadelphia, for the office
of distributor of stamps, Franklin himself was denounced--he was even
accused of having planned the Stamp Act--and his family in Philadelphia
was in danger of being mobbed. Of Franklin's examination, in February
1766, by the House in Committee of the Whole, as to the effects of the
Stamp Act, Burke said that the scene reminded him of a master examined
by a parcel of schoolboys, and George Whitefield said: "Dr Franklin has
gained immortal honour by his behaviour at the bar of the House. His
answer was always found equal to the questioner. He stood unappalled,
gave pleasure to his friends and did honour to his country."[3] Franklin
compared the position of the colonies to that of Scotland in the days
before the union, and in the same year (1766) audaciously urged a
similar union with the colonies before it was too late. The knowledge of
colonial affairs gained from Franklin's testimony, probably more than
all other causes combined, determined the immediate repeal of the Stamp
Act. For Franklin this was a great triumph, and the news of it filled
the colonists with delight and restored him to their confidence and
affection. Another bill (the Declaratory Act), however, was almost
immediately passed by the king's party, asserting absolute supremacy of
parliament over the colonies, and in the succeeding parliament, by the
Townshend Acts of 1767, duties were imposed on paper, paints and glass
imported by the colonists; a tax was imposed on tea also. The imposition
of these taxes was bitterly resented in the colonies, where it quickly
crystallized public opinion round the principle of "No taxation without
representation." In spite of the opposition in the colonies to the
Declaratory Act, the Townshend Acts and the tea tax, Franklin continued
to assure the British ministry and the British public of the loyalty of
the colonists. He tried to find some middle ground of reconciliation,
and kept up his quiet work of informing England as to the opinions and
conditions of the colonies, and of moderating the attitude of the
colonies toward the home government; so that, as he said, he was accused
in America of being too much an Englishman, and in England of being too
much an American. He was agent now, not only of Pennsylvania, but also
of New Jersey, of Georgia and of Massachusetts. Hillsborough, who became
secretary of state for the colonies in 1768, refused to recognize
Franklin as agent of Massachusetts, because the governor of
Massachusetts had not approved the appointment, which was by resolution
of the assembly. Franklin contended that the governor, as a mere agent
of the king, could have nothing to do with the assembly's appointment of
its agent to the king; that "the King, and not the King, Lords, and
Commons collectively, is their sovereign; and that the King, with
_their_ respective Parliaments, is their only legislator." Franklin's
influence helped to oust Hillsborough, and Dartmouth, whose name
Franklin suggested, was made secretary In 1772 and promptly recognized
Franklin as the agent of Massachusetts.
In 1773 there appeared in the _Public Advertiser_ one of Franklin's
cleverest hoaxes, "An Edict of the King of Prussia," proclaiming that
the island of Britain was a colony of Prussia, having been settled by
Angles and Saxons, having been protected by Prussia, having been
defended by Prussia against France in the war just past, and never
having been definitely freed from Prussia's rule; and that, therefore,
Great Britain should now submit to certain taxes laid by Prussia--the
taxes being identical with those laid upon the American colonies by
Great Britain. In the same year occurred the famous episode of the
Hutchinson Letters. These were written by Thomas Hutchinson, Governor of
Massachusetts, Andrew Oliver (1706-1774), his lieutenant-governor, and
others to William Whately, a member of Parliament, and private secretary
to George Grenville, suggesting an increase of the power of the governor
at the expense of the assembly, "an abridgement of what are called
English liberties," and other measures more extreme than those
undertaken by the government. The correspondence was shown to Franklin
by a mysterious "member of parliament" to back up the contention that
the quartering of troops in Boston was suggested, not by the British
ministry, but by Americans and Bostonians. Upon his promise not to
publish the letters Franklin received permission to send them to
Massachusetts, where they were much passed about and were printed, and
they were soon republished in English newspapers. The Massachusetts
assembly on receiving the letters resolved to petition the crown for the
removal of both Hutchinson and Oliver. The petition was refused and was
condemned as scandalous, and Franklin, who took upon himself the
responsibility for the publication of the letters, in the hearing before
the privy council at the Cockpit on the 29th of January 1774 was
insulted and was called a thief by Alexander Wedderburn (the
solicitor-general, who appeared for Hutchinson and Oliver), and was
removed from his position as head of the post office in the American
colonies.
Satisfied that his usefulness in England was at an end, Franklin
entrusted his agencies to the care of Arthur Lee, and on the 21st of
March 1775 again set sail for Philadelphia. During the last years of his
stay in England there had been repeated attempts to win him (probably
with an under-secretaryship) to the British service, and in these same
years he had done a great work for the colonies by gaining friends for
them among the opposition, and by impressing France with his ability and
the excellence of his case. Upon reaching America, he heard of the
fighting at Lexington and Concord, and with the news of an actual
outbreak of hostilities his feeling toward England seems to have changed
completely. He was no longer a peacemaker, but an ardent war-maker. On
the 6th of May, the day after his arrival in Philadelphia, he was
elected by the assembly of Pennsylvania a delegate to the Continental
Congress in Philadelphia. In October he was elected a member of the
Pennsylvania assembly, but, as members of this body were still required
to take an oath of allegiance to the crown, he refused to serve. In the
Congress he served on as many as ten committees, and upon the
organization of a continental postal system, he was made
postmaster-general, a position he held for one year, when (in 1776) he
was succeeded by his son-in-law, Richard Bache, who had been his deputy.
With Benjamin Harrison, John Dickinson, Thomas Johnson and John Jay he
was appointed in November 1775 to a committee to carry on a secret
correspondence with the friends of America "in Great Britain, Ireland
and other parts of the world." He planned an appeal to the king of
France for aid, and wrote the instructions of Silas Deane who was to
convey it. In April 1776 he went to Montreal with Charles Carroll,
Samuel Chase and John Carroll, as a member of the commission which
conferred with General Arnold, and attempted without success to gain the
co-operation of Canada. Immediately after his return from Montreal he
was a member of the committee of five appointed to draw up the
Declaration of Independence, but he took no actual part himself in
drafting that instrument, aside from suggesting the change or insertion
of a few words in Jefferson's draft. From July 16 to September 28 he
acted as president of the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania.
With John Adams and Edward Rutledge he was selected by Congress to
discuss with Admiral Howe (September 1776, at Staten Island) the terms
of peace proposed by Howe, who had arrived in New York harbour in July
1776, and who had been an intimate friend of Franklin; but the
discussion was fruitless, as the American commissioners refused to treat
"_back_ of this step of independency." On the 26th of September in the
same year Franklin was chosen as commissioner to France to join Arthur
Lee, who was in London, and Silas Deane, who had arrived in France in
June 1776. He collected all the money he could command, between L3000
and L4000, lent it to Congress before he set sail, and arrived at Paris
on the 22nd of December. He found quarters at Passy,[4] then a suburb of
Paris, in a house belonging to Le Ray de Chaumont, an active friend of
the American cause, who had influential relations with the court, and
through whom he was enabled to be in the fullest communication with the
French government without compromising it in the eyes of Great Britain.
At the time of Franklin's arrival in Paris he was already one of the
most talked about men in the world. He was a member of every important
learned society in Europe; he was a member, and one of the managers, of
the Royal Society, and was one of eight foreign members of the Royal
Academy of Sciences in Paris. Three editions of his scientific works had
already appeared in Paris, and a new edition had recently appeared in
London. To all these advantages he added a political purpose--the
dismemberment of the British empire--which was entirely congenial to
every citizen of France. "Franklin's reputation," wrote John Adams with
characteristic extravagance, "was more universal than that of Leibnitz
or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire; and his character more esteemed and
beloved than all of them.... If a collection could be made of all the
gazettes of Europe, for the latter half of the 18th century, a greater
number of panegyrical paragraphs upon _le grand Franklin_ would appear,
it is believed, than upon any other man that ever lived." "Franklin's
appearance in the French salons, even before he began to negotiate,"
says Friedrich Christoph Schlosser, "was an event of great importance to
the whole of Europe.... His dress, the simplicity of his external
appearance, the friendly meekness of the old man, and the apparent
humility of the Quaker, procured for Freedom a mass of votaries among
the court circles who used to be alarmed at its coarseness and
unsophisticated truths. Such was the number of portraits,[5] busts and
medallions of him in circulation before he left Paris that he would have
been recognized from them by any adult citizen in any part of the
civilized world."
Franklin's position in France was a difficult one from the start,
because of the delicacy of the task of getting French aid at a time when
France was unready openly to take sides against Great Britain. But on
the 6th of February 1778, after the news of the defeat and surrender of
Burgoyne had reached Europe, a treaty of alliance and a treaty of amity
and commerce between France and the United States were signed at Paris
by Franklin, Deane and Lee. On the 28th of October this commission was
discharged and Franklin was appointed sole plenipotentiary to the French
court. Lee, from the beginning of the mission to Paris, seems to have
been possessed of a mania of jealousy toward Franklin, or of
misunderstanding of his acts, and he tried to undermine his influence
with the Continental Congress. John Adams, when he succeeded Deane
(recalled from Paris through Lee's machinations) joined in the chorus of
fault-finding against Franklin, dilated upon his social habits, his
personal slothfulness and his complete lack of business-like system; but
Adams soon came to see that, although careless of details, Franklin was
doing what no other man could have done, and he ceased his harsher
criticism. Even greater than his diplomatic difficulties were Franklin's
financial straits. Drafts were being drawn on him by all the American
agents in Europe, and by the Continental Congress at home. Acting as
American naval agent for the many successful privateers who harried the
English Channel, and for whom he skilfully got every bit of assistance
possible, open and covert, from the French government, he was
continually called upon for funds in these ventures. Of the vessels to
be sent to Paris with American cargoes which were to be sold for the
liquidation of French loans to the colonies made through Beaumarchais,
few arrived; those that did come did not cover Beaumarchais's advances,
and hardly a vessel came from America without word of fresh drafts on
Franklin. After bold and repeated overtures for an exchange of
prisoners--an important matter, both because the American frigates had
no place in which to stow away their prisoners, and because of the
maltreatment of American captives in such prisons as Dartmoor--exchanges
began at the end of March 1779, although there were annoying delays, and
immediately after November 1781 there was a long break in the agreement;
and the Americans discharged from English prisons were constantly in
need of money. Franklin, besides, was constantly called upon to meet the
indebtedness of Lee and of Ralph Izard (1742-1804), and of John Jay, who
in Madrid was being drawn on by the American Congress. In spite of the
poor condition in Europe of the credit of the struggling colonies, and
of the fact that France was almost bankrupt (and in the later years was
at war), and although Necker strenuously resisted the making of any
loans to the colonies, France, largely because of Franklin's appeals,
expended, by loan or gift to the colonies, or in sustenance of the
French arms in America, a sum estimated at $60,000,000.
In 1781 Franklin, with John Adams, John Jay, Jefferson, who remained in
America, and Henry Laurens, then a prisoner in England, was appointed on
a commission to make peace with Great Britain. In the spring of 1782
Franklin had been informally negotiating with Shelburne, secretary of
state for the home department, through the medium of Richard Oswald, a
Scotch merchant, and had suggested that England should cede Canada to
the United States in return for the recognition of loyalist claims by
the states. When the formal negotiations began Franklin held closely to
the instructions of Congress to its commissioners, that they should
maintain confidential relations with the French ministers and that they
were "to undertake nothing in the negotiations for peace or truce
without their knowledge and concurrence," and were ultimately to be
governed by "their advice and opinion." Jay and Adams disagreed with him
on this point, believing that France intended to curtail the territorial
aspirations of the Americans for her own benefit and for that of her
ally, Spain. At last, after the British government had authorized its
agents to treat with the commissioners as representatives of an
independent power, thus recognizing American independence before the
treaty was made, Franklin acquiesced in the policy of Jay. The
preliminary treaty was signed by the commissioners on the 30th of
November 1782, the final treaty on the 3rd of September 1783. Franklin
had repeatedly petitioned Congress for his recall, but his letters were
unanswered or his appeals refused until the 7th of March 1785, when
Congress resolved that he be allowed to return to America; on the 10th
of March Thomas Jefferson, who had joined him in August of the year
before, was appointed to his place. Jefferson, when asked if he replaced
Franklin, replied, "No one can replace him, sir; I am only his
successor." Before Franklin left Paris on the 12th of July 1785 he had
made commercial treaties with Sweden (1783) and Prussia (1785; signed
after Franklin's departure by Jefferson and John Adams). Franklin
arrived in Philadelphia on the 13th of September, disembarking at the
same wharf as when he had first entered the city. He was immediately
elected a member of the municipal council of Philadelphia, becoming its
chairman; and was chosen president of the Supreme Executive Council (the
chief executive officer) of Pennsylvania, and was re-elected in 1786 and
1787, serving from October 1785 to October 1788. In May 1787 he was
elected a delegate to the Convention which drew up the Federal
Constitution, this body thus having a member upon whom all could agree
as chairman, should Washington be absent. He opposed over-centralization
of government and favoured the Connecticut Compromise, and after the
work of the Convention was done used his influence to secure the
adoption of the Constitution.[6] As president of the Pennsylvania
Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Franklin signed a
petition to Congress (12th February 1790) for immediate abolition of
slavery, and six weeks later in his most brilliant manner parodied the
attack on the petition made by James Jackson (1757-1806) of Georgia,
taking off Jackson's quotations of Scripture with pretended texts from
the Koran cited by a member of the Divan of Algiers in opposition to a
petition asking for the prohibition of holding Christians in slavery.
These were his last public acts. His last days were marked by a fine
serenity and calm; he died in his own house in Philadelphia on the 17th
of April 1790, the immediate cause being an abscess in the lungs. He was
buried with his wife in the graveyard (Fifth and Arch Streets) of Christ
Church, Philadelphia.
Physically Franklin was large, about 5 ft. 10 in. tall, with a
well-rounded, powerful figure; he inherited an excellent constitution
from his parents--"I never knew," says he, "either my father or mother
to have any sickness but that of which they dy'd, he at 89, and she at
85 years of age"--but injured it somewhat by excesses; in early life he
had severe attacks of pleurisy, from one of which, in 1727, it was not
expected that he would recover, and in his later years he was the victim
of stone and gout. When he was sixteen he became a vegetarian for a
time, rather to save money for books than for any other reason, and he
always preached moderation in eating, though he was less consistent in
his practice in this particular than as regards moderate drinking. He
was always enthusiastically fond of swimming, and was a great believer
in fresh air, taking a cold air bath regularly in the morning, when he
sat naked in his bedroom beguiling himself with a book or with writing
for a half-hour or more. He insisted that fresh, cold air was not the
cause of colds, and preached zealously the "gospel of ventilation." He
was a charming talker, with a gay humour and a quiet sarcasm and a
telling use of anecdote for argument. Henri Martin, the French
historian, speaks of him as "of a mind altogether French in its grace
and elasticity." In 1730 he married Deborah Read, in whose father's
house he had lived when he had first come to Philadelphia, to whom he
had been engaged before his first departure from Philadelphia for
London, and who in his absence had married a ne'er-do-well, one Rogers,
who had deserted her. The marriage to Franklin is presumed to have been
a common law marriage, for there was no proof that Miss Read's former
husband was dead, nor that, as was suspected, a former wife, alive when
Rogers married Miss Read, was still alive, and that therefore his
marriage to Deborah was void. His "Debby," or his "dear child," as
Franklin usually addressed her in his letters, received into the family,
soon after her marriage, Franklin's illegitimate son, William Franklin
(1729-1813),[7] with whom she afterwards quarrelled, and whose mother,
tradition says, was Barbara, a servant in the Franklin household.
Another illegitimate child became the wife of John Foxcroft of
Philadelphia. Deborah, who was "as much dispos'd to industry and
frugality as" her husband, was illiterate and shared none of her
husband's tastes for literature and science; her dread of an ocean
voyage kept her in Philadelphia during Franklin's missions to England,
and she died in 1774, while Franklin was in London. She bore him two
children, one a son, Francis Folger, "whom I have seldom since seen
equal'd in everything, and whom to this day [thirty-six years after the
child's death] I cannot think of without a sigh," who died (1736) when
four years old of small-pox, not having been inoculated; the other was
Sarah (1744-1808), who married Richard Bache (1737-1811), Franklin's
successor in 1776-1782 as postmaster-general. Franklin's gallant
relations with women after his wife's death were probably innocent
enough. Best known of his French _amies_ were Mme Helvetius, widow of
the philosopher, and the young Mme Brillon, who corrected her "Papa's"
French and tried to bring him safely into the Roman Catholic Church.
With him in France were his grandsons, William Temple Franklin, William
Franklin's natural son, who acted as private secretary to his
grandfather, and Benjamin Franklin Bache (1769-1798), Sarah's son, whom
he sent to Geneva to be educated, for whom he later asked public office
of Washington, and who became editor of the _Aurora_, one of the leading
journals in the Republican attacks on Washington.
Franklin early rebelled against New England Puritanism and spent his
Sundays in reading and in study instead of attending church. His
free-thinking ran its extreme course at the time of his publication in
London of _A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain_
(1725), which he recognized as one of the great _errata_ of his life. He
later called himself a deist, or theist, not discriminating between the
terms. To his favourite sister he wrote: "There are some things in your
New England doctrine and worship which I do not agree with; but I do not
therefore condemn them, or desire to shake your belief or practice of
them." Such was his general attitude. He did not believe in the divinity
of Christ, but thought "his system of morals and his religion, as he
left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is like to see." His
intense practical-mindedness drew him away from religion, but drove him
to a morality of his own (the "art of virtue," he called it), based on
thirteen virtues each accompanied by a short precept; the virtues were
Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity,
Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity and Humility,
the precept accompanying the last-named virtue being "Imitate Jesus and
Socrates." He made a business-like little notebook, ruled off spaces for
the thirteen virtues and the seven days of the week, "determined to give
a week's strict attention to each of the virtues successively ...
[going] thro' a course compleate in thirteen weeks and four courses in a
year," marking for each day a record of his adherence to each of the
precepts. "And conceiving God to be the fountain of wisdom," he "thought
it right and necessary to solicit His assistance for obtaining it," and
drew up the following prayer for daily use: "O powerful Goodness!
bountiful Father! merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which
discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my resolution to perform what
that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to Thy other children, as
the only return in my power for Thy continual favours to me." He was by
no means prone to overmuch introspection, his great interest in the
conduct of others being shown in the wise maxims of Poor Richard, which
were possibly too utilitarian but were wonderfully successful in
instructing American morals. His _Art of Virtue_ on which he worked for
years was never completed or published in any form.
"Benjamin Franklin, Printer," was Franklin's own favourite description
of himself. He was an excellent compositor and pressman; his
workmanship, clear impressions, black ink and comparative freedom from
errata did much to get him the public printing in Pennsylvania and New
Jersey, and the printing of the paper money[8] and other public matters
in Delaware. The first book with his imprint is _The Psalms of David
Imitated in the Language of the New Testament and apply'd to the
Christian State and Worship. By I. Watts ..., Philadelphia: Printed by
B. F. and H. M. for Thomas Godfrey, and Sold at his Shop, 1729._ The
first novel printed in America was Franklin's reprint in 1744 of
_Pamela_; and the first American translation from the classics which was
printed in America was a version by James Logan (1674-1751) of Cato's
_Moral Distichs_ (1735). In 1744 he published another translation of
Logan's, Cicero _On Old Age_, which Franklin thought typographically the
finest book he had ever printed. In 1733 he had established a press in
Charleston, South Carolina, and soon after did the same in Lancaster,
Pa., in New Haven, Conn., in New York, in Antigua, in Kingston, Jamaica,
and in other places. Personally he had little connexion with the
Philadelphia printing office after 1748, when David Hall became his
partner and took charge of it. But in 1753 he was eagerly engaged in
having several of his improvements incorporated in a new press, and more
than twenty years after was actively interested in John Walter's scheme
of "logography." In France he had a private press in his house in Passy,
on which he printed "bagatelles." Franklin's work as a publisher is for
the most part closely connected with his work in issuing the _Gazette_
and _Poor Richard's Almanack_ (a summary of the proverbs from which
appeared in the number for 1758, and has often been reprinted--under
such titles as _Father Abraham's Speech_, and _The Way to Wealth_).[9]
Of much of Franklin's work as an author something has already been said.
Judged as literature, the first place belongs to his _Autobiography_,
which unquestionably ranks among the few great autobiographies ever
written. His style in its simplicity, facility and clearness owed
something to De Foe, something to Cotton Mather, something to Plutarch,
more to Bunyan and to his early attempts to reproduce the manner of the
third volume of the _Spectator_; and not the least to his own careful
study of word usage. From Xenophon's _Memorabilia_ he learned when a boy
the Socratic method of argument. Swift he resembled in the occasional
broadness of his humour, in his brilliantly successful use of sarcasm
and irony,[10] and in his mastery of the hoax. Balzac said of him that
he "invented the lightning-rod, the hoax ('le canard') and the
republic." Among his more famous hoaxes were the "Edict of the King of
Prussia" (1773), already described; the fictitious supplement to the
Boston _Chronicle_, printed on his private press at Passy in 1782, and
containing a letter with an invoice of eight packs of 954 cured, dried,
hooped and painted scalps of rebels, men, women and children, taken by
Indians in the British employ; and another fictitious _Letter from the
Count de Schaumberg to the Baron Hohendorf commanding the Hessian Troops
in America_ (1777)--the count's only anxiety is that not enough men will
be killed to bring him in moneys he needs, and he urges his officer in
command in America "to prolong the war ... for I have made arrangements
for a grand Italian opera, and I do not wish to be obliged to give it
up."[11]
Closely related to Franklin's political pamphlets are his writings on
economics, which, though undertaken with a political or practical
purpose and not in a purely scientific spirit, rank him as the first
American economist. He wrote in 1729 _A Modest Enquiry into the Nature
and Necessity of a Paper Currency_, which argued that a plentiful
currency will make rates of interest low and will promote immigration
and home manufactures, and which did much to secure the further issue of
paper money in Pennsylvania. After the British Act of 1750 forbidding
the erection or the operating of iron or steel mills in the colonies,
Franklin wrote _Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind and the
Peopling of Countries_ (1751); its thesis was that manufactures come to
be common only with a high degree of social development and with great
density of population, and that Great Britain need not, therefore, fear
the industrial competition of the colonies, but it is better known for
the estimate (adopted by Adam Smith) that the population of the colonies
would double every quarter-century; and for the likeness to
Malthus's[12] "preventive check" of its statement: "The greater the
common fashionable expense of any rank of people the more cautious they
are of marriage." His _Positions to be examined concerning National
Wealth_ (1769) shows that he was greatly influenced by the French
physiocrats after his visit to France in 1767. His _Wail of a Protected
Manufacturer_ voices a protest against protection as raising the cost of
living; and he held that free trade was based on a natural right. He
knew Kames, Hume and Adam Smith, and corresponded with Mirabeau, "the
friend of Man." Some of the more important of his economic theses, as
summarized by W. A. Wetzel, are: that money as coin may have more than
its bullion value; that natural interest is determined by the rent of
land valued at the sum of money loaned--an anticipation of Turgot; that
high wages are not inconsistent with a large foreign trade; that the
value of an article is determined by the amount of labour necessary to
produce the food consumed in making the article; that manufactures are
advantageous but agriculture only is truly productive; and that when
practicable (as he did not think it practicable at the end of the War of
Independence) state revenue should be raised by direct tax.
Franklin as a scientist[13] and as an inventor has been decried by
experts as an amateur and a dabbler; but it should be remembered that it
was always his hope to retire from public life and devote himself to
science. In the American Philosophical Society (founded 1743) scientific
subjects were much discussed. Franklin wrote a paper on the causes of
earthquakes for his _Gazette_ of the 15th of December 1737; and he
eagerly collected material to uphold his theory that waterspouts and
whirlwinds resulted from the same causes. In 1743, from the circumstance
that an eclipse not visible in Philadelphia because of a storm had been
observed in Boston, where the storm although north-easterly did not
occur until an hour after the eclipse, he surmised that storms move
_against_ the wind along the Atlantic coast. In the year before (1742)
he had planned the "Pennsylvania fire-place," better known as the
"Franklin stove," which saved fuel, heated all the room, and had the
same principle as the hot-air furnace; the stove was never patented by
Franklin, but was described in his pamphlet dated 1744. He was much
engaged at the same time in remedying smoking chimneys, and as late as
1785 wrote to Jan Ingenhousz, physician to the emperor of Austria, on
chimneys and draughts; smoking street lamps he remedied by a simple
contrivance. The study of electricity he took up in 1746 when he first
saw a Leyden jar, in the manipulation of which he became expert and
which he improved by the use of granulated lead in the place of water
for the interior armatures; he recognized that condensation is due to
the dielectric and not to the metal coatings. A note in his diary, dated
the 7th of November 1749, shows that he had then conjectured that
thunder and lightning were electrical manifestations; in the same year
he planned the lightning-rod (long known as "Franklin's rod"), which he
described and recommended to the public in 1753, when the Copley medal
of the Royal Society was awarded him for his discoveries. The famous
experiment with the kite, proving lightning an electrical phenomenon,
was performed by Franklin in June 1752. He overthrew entirely the
"friction" theory of electricity and conceived the idea of plus and
minus charges (1753); he thought the sea the source of electricity. On
light Franklin wrote to David Rittenhouse in June 1784; the sum of his
own conjectures was that the corpuscular theory of Newton was wrong, and
that light was due to the vibration of an elastic aether. He studied
with some care the temperature of the Gulf Stream. In navigation he
suggested many new contrivances, such as water-tight compartments,
floating anchors to lay a ship to in a storm, and dishes that would not
upset during a gale; and beginning in 1757 made repeated experiments
with oil on stormy waters. As a mathematician he devised various
elaborate magic squares and novel magic circles, of which he speaks
apologetically, because they are of no practical use. Always much
interested in agriculture, he made an especial effort (like Robert R.
Livingston) to promote the use of plaster of Paris as a fertiliser. He
took a prominent part in aeronautic experiments during his stay in
France. He made an excellent clock, which because of a slight
improvement introduced by James Ferguson in 1757 was long known as
Ferguson's clock. In medicine Franklin was considered important enough
to be elected to the Royal Medical Society of Paris in 1777, and an
honorary member of the Medical Society of London in 1787. In 1784 he was
on the committee which investigated Mesmer, and the report is a document
of lasting scientific value. Franklin's advocacy of vegetarianism, of
sparing and simple diet, and of temperance in the use of liquors, and of
proper ventilation has already been referred to. His most direct
contribution to medicine was the invention for his own use of bifocal
eyeglasses.
A summary of so versatile a genius is impossible. His services to
America in England and France rank him as one of the heroes of the
American War of Independence and as the greatest of American diplomats.
Almost the only American scientist of his day, he displayed remarkably
deep as well as remarkably varied abilities in science and deserved the
honours enthusiastically given him by the _savants_ of Europe.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Franklin's works were not collected in his own
lifetime, and he made no effort to publish his writings. _Experiments
and Observations on Electricity_ (London, 1769) was translated into
French by Barbeu Dubourg (Paris, 1773); Vaughan attempted a more
complete edition, _Political, Miscellaneous and Philosophical Pieces_
(London, 1779); an edition in three volumes appeared after Franklin's
death (London, 1806); what seemed the authentic _Works_, as it was
under the care of Temple Franklin, was published at London (6 vols.,
1817-1819; 3 vols., 1818) and with some additional matter at
Philadelphia (6 vols., 1818). Sparks's edition (10 vols., Boston,
1836-1842; revised, Philadelphia, 1858) also contained fresh matter;
and there are further additions in the edition of John Bigelow
(Philadelphia, 1887-1888; 5th ed., 1905) and in that by Albert Henry
Smyth (10 vols., New York, 1905-1907). There are important
Frankliniana, about 13,000 papers, in the possession of the American
Philosophical Society, to which they were conveyed by the son of
Temple Franklin's executor, George Fox. Other papers which had been
left to Fox lay for years in barrels in a stable garret; they were
finally cleared out, their owner, Mary Fox, intending to send them to
a paper mill. One barrel went to the mill. The others, it was found,
contained papers belonging to Franklin, and this important collection
was bought and presented to the university of Pennsylvania. The
valuable Frankliniana collected by Henry Stevens were purchased by
Congress in 1885. These MS. collections were first carefully gone over
for the edition of the _Works_ by A. H. Smyth. Franklin's
_Autobiography_ was begun in 1771 as a private chronicle for his son,
Governor William Franklin; the papers, bringing the story of his
father's life down to 1730, were lost by the governor during the War
of Independence, and in 1783 came into the possession of Abel James,
who restored them to Franklin and urged him to complete the sketch. He
wrote a little in 1784, more in 1788, when he furnished a copy to his
friend le Veillard, and a little more in 1790. The original manuscript
was long in the possession of Temple Franklin, who spent years
rearranging the matter in it and making over into politer English his
grandfather's plain-spokenness. So long was the publication delayed
that it was generally believed that Temple Franklin had sold all the
papers to the British government; a French version, _Memoires de la
vie privee_ (Paris, 1791), was retranslated into English twice in 1793
(London), and from one of these versions (by Robinson) still another
French version was made (Paris, 1798). Temple Franklin, deciding to
print, got from le Veillard the copy sent to him in 1788 (sending in
return the original with autograph alterations and the final
addition), and from the copy published (London, 1817) an edition
supposed to be authentic and complete. The complete autograph of the
biography, acquired by John Bigelow in 1867 from its French owners,
upon collation with Temple Franklin's edition showed that the latter
contained 1200 emasculations and that it omitted entirely what had
been written in 1790. Bigelow published the complete _Autobiography_
with additions from Franklin's correspondence and other writings in
1868; a second edition (3 vols., Philadelphia, 1888) was published
under the title, _The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Written by Himself_.
In addition to the _Autobiography_ see James Parton, _Life and Times
of Benjamin Franklin_ (2 vols., New York, 1864); John T. Morse, Jr.,
_Benjamin Franklin_ (Boston, 1889, in the American Statesmen series);
J. B. McMaster, _Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters_ (Boston, 1887,
in American Men of Letters series); Paul L. Ford, _The Many-Sided
Franklin_ (New York, 1899) and _Franklin Bibliography_ (Brooklyn,
1889); E. E. Hale and E. E. Hale, Jr., _Franklin in France_ (2 vols.,
Boston, 1888); J. H. A. Doniol, _Histoire de la participation de la
France a l'etablissement des Etats-Unis d'Amerique_ (Paris, 6 vols.,
1886-1900); S. G. Fisher, _The True Benjamin Franklin_ (Philadelphia,
1899); E. Robins, _Benjamin Franklin_ (New York, 1898, in the American
Men of Energy series); W. A. Wetzel, "Benjamin Franklin as an
Economist," No. 9, in series 13 of _Johns Hopkins Studies in
Historical and Political Science_; and the prefaces and biographical
matter in A. H. Smyth's edition of the _Works_ (New York, 10 vols.,
1905-1907). (R. We.)