“I see by the minutes,” speaking of Congress, “that they have allowed
Mr. Lee handsomely for his services in England before his appointment to
France, in which services I and Mr. Bollan co-operated with him, and
have had no such allowance, and since his return he has been very
properly rewarded with a good place, as well as my friend Mr.
Jay,—though these are trifling compensations in comparison with what was
granted by the king to Mr. Gerard on his return to America. But how
different is what happened to me! On my return from England, in 1775,
the Congress bestowed on me the office of postmaster-general, for which
I was very thankful. It was, indeed, an office I had some kind of right
to, as having previously greatly enlarged the revenue of the post by the
regulations I had contrived and established while I possessed it under
the crown. When I was sent to France, I left it in the hands of my
son-in-law, who was to act as my deputy. But soon after my departure it
was taken from him and given to Mr. Hazzard. When the English ministry
thought fit to deprive me of the office (that of postmaster), they left
me, however, the privilege of receiving and sending my letters free of
postage, which is the usage when a postmaster is not displaced for
misconduct in the office; but in America I have ever since had the
postage demanded of me, which since my return from France has amounted
to about fifty pounds, much of it occasioned by my having acted as
minister there.”
There are so many incidents connected with Benjamin Franklin—incidents
associated alike with our country’s history, its literature, art, and
science—that we are not at all surprised at the many editions and
variety of style of works written expressly to connect his name with
them. We annex a pleasing little sketch of some of the early scenes of
his life, from notes furnished by Thomas J. Wharton, Esq., to the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, in 1830:—
“The year 1719 deserves particular remembrance in the annals of
Pennsylvania, as that in which the first newspaper was printed in the
State. These potent engines exercise so vast an influence for good or
evil over men’s minds and actions in the present age, that a particular
history of their rise and progress would be no idle or unprofitable
task, though out of place here. The first number of the ‘American Weekly
Mercury,’ as it was called, appeared on the 22d of December, 1719, on a
half-sheet of the quarto size, and purported to be printed ‘by Andrew
Bradford at _the_ Second Street,’ and to be sold by him and by John
Copson in Market Street. The price was ten shillings per annum; and this
was quite as much as it deserved. Extracts from foreign journals
generally about six months old, and two or three badly-printed
advertisements, formed the substance of the journal. The office of the
editor was a sinecure,—at least his _pen_ seems to have been seldom
employed, and little information can be derived from the journal
concerning the existing condition of Philadelphia. Occasionally a bill
of mortality tells us that one adult and one child died during a certain
week, and even that is beyond the usual number; for some weeks appear to
have passed without a single death. From the following advertisement,
which appears in No. 17, something of the customs and state of things at
the period may be gathered:—‘These are to give notice that Matthew
Cowley, a skinner by trade, is removed from Chestnut Street to dwell in
Walnut Street, _near the Bridge_, where all persons may have their buck
and doeskins dressed, &c.’ ‘He also can furnish _you_ with bindings,
&c.’ What new ideas of Walnut Street does not this hint about a _bridge_
give us! and how plenty must deer have been in those times, when _all
persons_ are invited to have their skins dressed by Matthew Cowley! And
then what a familiar and village-sort of acquaintance with everybody
does not the transition at the end, from the third to the second person
plural, imply! ‘He also can furnish you with bindings, &c.’
“Nine years after the appearance of the American Mercury, the
Philadelphia press was delivered of a second newspaper, to which the
modest title was given of ‘The Universal Instructor of all Arts and
Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette.’ In his inimitable autobiography
Franklin has immortalized Keimer, the eccentric publisher of this
journal, whose vanity and selfishness, whose wild notions upon religion
and morals, and whose turn for poetry and gluttony are so happily and
graphically delineated. Franklin, from whom Keimer had stolen the idea
of a second newspaper, attacked it in a series of papers published in
Bradford’s journal and called The Busy-Body.[34] The ‘Universal
Instructor’ soon fell into decay, and then into Franklin’s hands, by
whom it was very skilfully managed, both for his own profit and for the
interest and edification of the public. An editorial notice in one of
Franklin’s papers proves, in rather a ludicrous way, how badly
Philadelphia was supplied at the time (1736) with printing-presses. What
was called the _outer form_ was printed reversely or upside down to the
inner form, and the following apology is offered:—‘The printer hopes the
irregular publication of this paper will be excused a few times by his
town readers, in consideration of his being at Burlington with the
press, laboring for the public good to make money more plentiful.’
“It is not generally known that this venerable journal survived till
within a year or two of the present time, under the name of ‘The
Pennsylvania Gazette.’ The third newspaper published in Pennsylvania
was ‘The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser,’ the first number
of which appeared on the 2d of December, 1742; and several other
journals shortly afterwards arose, with various success. In 1760 five
newspapers were published in the State, all weekly,—three of them
printed in the city, one in Germantown, and one in Lancaster. In 1810
the number had increased to sixty-six, of which thirteen were published
in Philadelphia; and in 1824 an official return to the
postmaster-general stated the number at one hundred and ten, of which
eighteen were published in Philadelphia, eleven of them daily: a
prodigious increase, which argues that the appetite for this food has
increased in full proportion with the population. It is perhaps worth
adding that the first _daily_ newspaper that appeared on the continent
of America was published in Philadelphia.
“There are few persons on record to whose individual genius and
exertions a community has owed so much as to Dr. Franklin. If William
Penn was the political founder of the province, Franklin may perhaps be
denominated the architect of its literature, the gifted author of many
of its best institutions, and the father of some of the finest features
of our character. It is seldom, however, that Providence has vouchsafed
such a length of years to such an intellect, and still more seldom that
such events occur as those which developed the powers and capacities of
Franklin’s mind. The name of this illustrious man is closely connected
with the literary history of Pennsylvania; but his life and actions are
too well known to require that any elaborate notice of them should be
given here. Referring, therefore, to his own invaluable memoirs for the
events of his personal and political history, I shall content myself
with a short sketch of the principal features of his literary career.
The year 1723 was that in which Franklin first set his foot in
Philadelphia. As he landed on Market Street wharf, and walked up that
street, an obscure and almost penniless boy, devouring a roll of bread,
and ignorant where he could find a lodging for the night, little could
he or any one who then saw him anticipate that later advent, when, sixty
years afterwards, he landed upon the same wharf, amid the acclamations
of thousands of spectators, on his return from an embassy in which he
had dictated to his former king the terms of peace for the confederated
republics, of one of which he was placed at the head, and not merely
distinguished as a politician, but covered with literary honors and
distinctions from every country in Christendom by which genius and
public virtue were held in estimation. And yet the change was scarcely
greater for Franklin than for Philadelphia. The petty provincial
village, with its scattered houses dotted over the bank of the Delaware,
had become a magnificent metropolis, distinguished for the wisdom and
liberality of its institutions, and as the seat of a general and
republican government, which at the former period could scarcely have
entered into his dreams.
“At the time of Franklin’s arrival in Philadelphia there were two
printing-offices in operation. Keimer, the proprietor of one of them,
had but one press and a few worn-out types, with which, when Franklin
visited him, he was composing an elegy, literally of his own
_composition_, for it had never gone through the usual process in this
manufacture, of pen and ink, but flowed at once from his brain to the
press. The subject of these typographical stanzas was _Aquila Rose_, an
apprentice in the office, whose surname naturally suggested to the mind
of Keimer some touching figures. If we may judge from some specimens of
his poetry which Thomas has preserved in his History of Printing, the
province lost little by Keimer’s emigration to Bermuda, which took place
shortly afterwards.”
Perhaps, if we except his scientific and political labors,—labors which
won him a name while living and honored when dead,—there was no other
department wherein business and tact were so united to effect a great
national reform as in that of the post-office.
And yet historians pass over that portion of his life with a mere dash
of the pen, and seem to consider it a dry episode in his otherwise
eventful career. Had they gone into the history of this connection, the
business of the postal department would have loomed up before them a
splendid subject to descant upon. It would have shown them how out of
chaos came forth, under Franklin’s control, a form perfect in shape and
gigantic in its proportions. It would tower a giant above the many
lesser subjects he wrote pages upon, and give to the world a leaf in our
book on political economy which is now—at least as far as this
department is concerned—a blank page.
Benjamin Franklin, at the head of the postal department under the
colonial government, was the great pioneer in the cause of _letters_: he
mapped the length and breadth of their extent; brought distant places
together by the speed of horses, as he did in after-years by electric
power the lightning from the surcharged clouds to our very feet.
And when at the head of the department, under the _States united_
forming a Union that has made us a nation among nations, to be honored,
respected, and _feared_, he carried out his plans, based upon a
principle that has governed the operations of the postal department to
this day.
Franklin died April 17, 1790. In his will, dated July 17, 1788, he
simply expressed his wish to have his body buried with as little expense
or ceremony as might be. But in the codicil, dated June 23, 1789, but a
few months before his death, we find this clause:—
“I wish to be buried by the side of my wife, if it may be, and that a
marble stone, to be made by Chambers, six feet long, four feet wide,
plain, with only a small moulding round the upper ledge, and this
inscription:—
+----------------------------------------+
│ BENJAMIN } │
│ AND } FRANKLIN. │
│ DEBORAH } │
│ 178-. │
+----------------------------------------+
to be placed over us both.”
In the graveyard belonging to Christ Church in this city, situated at
the southeast corner of Arch and Fifth Streets, this plain slab, with
the above inscription, is still to be seen.
The man to whose memory it is dedicated, in immediate expectation of
death (as is shown by the fact that the codicil was made in June, 1789,
and the figures 178- are so arranged by him that unless he died in that
very year they would be useless), had calmly and deliberately selected
the spot where he wished his corpse to repose. There rest the remains of
one whose name, though simply recorded on a piece of marble, lives in
memory while reason holds its throne in the immortal mind.
There is in the simple gray stone which now covers the breasts of
“Benjamin Franklin and Deborah his wife” more attraction and genuine
respectability than could be found in the loftiest pillar ever reared to
gratify mere ambition.
“Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can honor’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?”
Richard Bache had acted as postmaster up to 1776, when he was succeeded
by Ebenezer Hazard. Hazard’s name is better known as an editor than as
a postmaster, as he subsequently compiled the valuable historical
collections bearing his name. He held the office of postmaster until the
inauguration of President Washington’s administration. The succession of
postmaster-generals since the adoption of the Federal Constitution will
be given in its proper place.