Thus [diarizes Adams, at the time a young man of but

twenty-four, when the difficulty with which the slips

had been procured by Franklin came to his knowledge] he

took the trouble to hunt over the city (Philadelphia)

and not finding vines there, he sends seventy miles

into the country, and then sends one bundle by water,

and, lest they should miscarry, another by land, to a

gentleman whom he owed nothing, and was but little

acquainted with, purely for the sake of doing good in

the world by propagating the Rhenish vines through

these provinces. And Mr. Quincy has some of them now

growing in his garden. This is an instance, too, of his

amazing capacity for business, his memory and

resolution: amidst so much business as counselor,

postmaster, printer, so many private studies, and so

many public avocations too, to remember such a

transient hint and exert himself so in answer to it, is

surprising.

If Adams had only known Franklin better at the time when these words were

penned, which was long before his analysis of Franklin's motives could be

jaundiced by jealousy or wounded self-love, he might have added that this

incident was also an illustration of that unfailing good-nature which made

the friendship of Franklin an ever-bubbling well-spring of kindly offices.

"Accept my kind offices to thy other children as the only return in my

power for thy continual favors to me," one of the petitions in the "little

prayer," prefixed to Franklin's manual of self-discipline, expressed an

aspiration which, in addition to more impressive forms of fulfilment, was

realized many times over in the innumerable small offerings of good feeling

that he was in the habit of laying from time to time upon the altar of

friendship. In recounting the benefactions, which he bestowed upon his

fellow-creatures by his public spirit and private benevolence, it is hard

to refrain from speculating as to what he might have accomplished, if his

wealth had only, like that of Andrew Carnegie, been commensurate with his

wisdom and philanthropic zeal. Then, in truth, would have been united such

agencies as have not often worked together for the amelioration of human

society. But independent as Franklin was, according to the pecuniary

standards of Colonial America, he was in no position to contribute money

lavishly to any generous object. When he gave it, he had to give it in such

a way as to make it keep itself going until it had gone far by its own mere

cumulative energy. This is very interestingly brought out in a letter from

him, when at Passy, to Benjamin Webb, a distressed correspondent, to whom

he was sending a gift of ten louis d'ors.

I do not pretend [he said] to _give_ such a Sum; I only

_lend_ it to you. When you shall return to your Country

with a good Character, you cannot fail of getting into

some Business, that will in time enable you to pay all

your Debts. In that Case, when you meet with another

honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by

lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the

Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and

shall meet with such another opportunity. I hope it may

thus go thro' many hands, before it meets with a Knave

that will stop its Progress. This is a trick of mine

for doing a deal of good with a little money. I am not

rich enough to afford _much_ in good works, and so am

obliged to be cunning and make the most of a _little_.

It is to be hoped that Webb was but the first link in the golden chain

which this letter sought to fashion.

It is a remarkable fact that Franklin also endeavored to give even

posthumous efficacy to this same idea of economizing pecuniary force. By a

codicil to his will, he created two funds of one thousand pounds each, one

for the benefit of the inhabitants of the town of Boston, and the other for

the benefit of the inhabitants of the town of Philadelphia. The selectmen

and the ministers of the oldest Episcopalian, Congregational and

Presbyterian churches in Boston were to be the trustees for the management

of the Boston fund, and the City Corporation was to manage the Philadelphia

fund. The amounts were to be respectively lent in sums not exceeding sixty

pounds sterling, nor less than fifteen pounds, for any one person, in the

discretion of the respective managers, to such young married artificers,

under the age of twenty-five years, as should have served an apprenticeship

in the respective towns and have faithfully fulfilled the duties stipulated

for in their indentures, upon their producing certificates to their good

moral character from at least two respectable citizens, and bonds executed

by themselves and these citizens, as sureties, for the repayment of the

loans in ten equal annual instalments, with interest at the rate of five

per cent. per annum. If there were more applicants than money, the

proportions, in which the sums would otherwise have been allotted, were to

be ratably diminished in such a way that some assistance would be given to

every applicant. As fast as the sums lent were repaid, they were again to

be lent out to fresh borrowers. If the plan was faithfully carried out for

one hundred years, the fond projector calculated that, at the end of that

time, the Boston, as well as the Philadelphia, fund, would amount to one

hundred and thirty-one thousand pounds, of which he would have the managers

of the Boston fund lay out in their discretion one hundred thousand pounds

in public improvements; the remaining thirty-one thousand pounds to be lent

out as the original one thousand pounds was for another hundred years. At

the end of the second term, Franklin calculated that, mishaps aside, the

sum would be four million and sixty-one thousand pounds sterling, of which

he bequeathed one million sixty-one thousand pounds to the inhabitants of

Boston absolutely, and three million pounds to the Commonwealth of

Massachusetts absolutely; not presuming, he said, to carry his views

further. At the end of the first one hundred years, if the purpose was not

already executed, the City Corporation was to use a part of the fund

accumulated for the benefit of the inhabitants of Philadelphia in piping

the water of Wissahickon Creek into that city, and the testator also

recommended that the Schuylkill should be made completely navigable. In

other respects the conditions of the two gifts were the same. An English

lawyer characterized the famous will by which Peter Thellusson tried to

circumvent the legal rule against perpetuities as "posthumous avarice." If

Franklin, too, kept his hand clenched after he left the world, it was not

in the vainglory of family pride nor from the mere sordid, uncalculating

love of treasured wealth, but only that he might open it as "bounty's

instrument," when overflowingly full, for the purpose of conferring upon

men a far richer largess of beneficence than it had been capable of

conferring in life. Changes in industrial conditions defeated his

intentions with respect to artificers, and the Philadelphia fund proved far

less crescive than the Boston one, but both have proved enough so to

illustrate the procreative quality of money upon which Franklin was so fond

of dilating. The Boston fund, including the sum applied at the end of the

first one hundred years to the use of Franklin Union, amounted on January

1, 1913, to $546,811.39, and the Philadelphia fund, including the amount

applied to the use of Franklin Institute, amounted on January 1, 1913, to

$186,807.06. Poor Richard certainly selected a most effective way this time

for renewing the reminder with which he ended his _Hints for those that

would be Rich_.

"A Penny sav'd is Twopence clear

A Pin a Day is a groat a year."

With the expanding horizon, which came to Franklin in 1757, when he was

drawn off into the world-currents of his time, came also larger

opportunities for promoting the welfare of the race. There was a double

reason why he should not be tardy in availing himself of these

opportunities. He was both by nature and training at once a philosopher and

a philanthropist. "God grant," he fervently exclaimed in a letter to David

Hartley in 1789, "that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough

Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth,

so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say

'This is my country,'" To Joseph Huey he wrote in the letter, from which we

have already freely quoted, that the only thanks he desired for a kindness

which he had shown the former was that he should always be equally ready to

serve any other person who might need his assistance, and so let good

offices go round; "for Mankind," Franklin added, "are all of a Family."

During his third sojourn in England, he entered earnestly into a scheme for

supplying the islands of Acpy-nomawee and Tovy-poennammoo, "called in the

maps New Zealand," which contained no useful quadrupeds but dogs, with

fowls, hogs, goats, cattle, corn, iron and other commodities of civilized

life. The portion of the appeal for pecuniary aid for this purpose, which

was borrowed from his pen, after beginning with the statement that Britain

itself was said to have originally produced nothing but sloes, adapts

itself, as all his writings of this kind usually did, to both the unselfish

and selfish instincts of his readers. It was the obligation, he insisted,

of those, who thought it their duty to ask bread and other blessings daily

from Heaven, to show their gratitude to their great Benefactor by the only

means in their power, and that was by promoting the happiness of his other

children. _Communiter bona profundere_ Deum est. And then trade always

throve better when carried on with a people possessed of the arts and

conveniences of life than with naked savages.

As events moved along apace, and Franklin found himself in a world, once

again ravaged and ensanguined by war, the triple birth of human folly,

greed and atrocity, his heart, irrevocably enlisted as it was in the

American cause, went out into one generous effort after another to

establish at least a few peaceful sanctuaries where the nobler impulses and

aims of human nature might be safe from the destructive rage of its

malignant passions. In 1779, when our Minister to France, he issued

instructions to the captains of all armed ships holding commissions from

Congress not to molest, in any manner, the famous English navigator,

Captain Cook, on his return from the voyage of discovery into unknown seas

upon which he had been dispatched before the Revolutionary War. This act

was handsomely acknowledged by the British Government. One of the gold

medals, struck in honor of Captain Cook, was presented to Franklin by the

hand of Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, and the

British Admiralty Board also sent him a copy of the Captain's book, with

its "elegant collection of plates," and a very polite letter from Lord Howe

stating that the gift was made with the express approval of the King. In

the same year similar instructions were given by Franklin for the

protection of the vessel that was that year to transport the supplies which

were annually conveyed from Europe to the Moravian Mission on the coast of

Labrador. And later the same aegis was likewise extended over the ship which

was expected to bear provisions and clothing from the charitable citizens

of Dublin for the relief of suffering in the West Indies. Of the rule that

"free ships shall make free goods," Franklin said in a letter to J. Torris,

an agent for American cruisers at Dunkirk, "This rule is itself so

reasonable, and of a nature to be so beneficial to mankind, that I cannot

but wish it may become general." Nor did he stop there. In this letter,

such was his confidence that Congress would approve the new rule that he

notified Torris that, until he had received its orders on the subject, he

should condemn no more English goods found by American cruisers in Dutch

vessels, unless contraband of war. How unqualifiedly he was disposed to

recognize the neutrality of all such goods is evidenced by other letters of

his, too, written when he was in France. But to him also belongs the

peculiar glory of insisting that non-combatants should be exempt from the

lamentable penalties of war.

I approve much [he said in a letter in 1780 to Charles

W. F. Dumas] of the Principles of the Confederacy of

the Neutral Powers, and am not only for respecting the

Ships as the House of a Friend, tho' containing the

Goods of an Enemy, but I even wish for the sake of

humanity that the Law of Nations may be further

improv'd, by determining, that, even in time of War,

all those kinds of People, who are employ'd in

procuring subsistence for the Species, or in exchanging

the Necessaries or Conveniences of Life, which are for

the common Benefit of Mankind, such as Husbandmen on

their lands, fishermen in their Barques, and traders in

unarm'd Vessels, shall be permitted to prosecute their

several innocent and useful Employments without

interruption or Molestation, and nothing taken from

them, even when wanted by an Enemy, but on paying a

fair Price for the same.

This principle, as well as a stipulation against privateering, was actually

made a part of the treaty of amity and commerce between Prussia and the

United States, which was signed shortly before Franklin returned to America

from the French Mission, and it was not for the lack of effort on his part

that similar articles were not inserted in all the treaties between the

United States and other European countries that were entered into about the

same time.

For the practice of privateering he cherished a feeling of intense

abhorrence. It behoved merchants, he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan, "to

consider well of the justice of a War, before they voluntarily engage a

Gang of Ruffians to attack their Fellow Merchants of a neighbouring Nation,

to plunder them of their Property, and perhaps ruin them and their

Families, if they yield it; or to wound, maim, or murder them, if they

endeavour to defend it. Yet these Things are done by Christian Merchants,

whether a War be just or unjust; and it can hardly be just on both sides.

They are done by English and American Merchants, who, nevertheless,

complain of private Thefts, and hang by Dozens the Thieves they have taught

by their own Example." Rarely have the injurious results of privateering

been presented with more force than they were by Franklin in his

_Propositions Relative to Privateering_, sent to Richard Oswald--the

industrial loss involved in the withdrawal of so many men from honest

labor, "who, besides, spend what they get in riot, drunkenness, and

debauchery, lose their habits of industry, are rarely fit for any sober

business after a peace, and serve only to increase the number of highwaymen

and housebreakers"; and the pecuniary ruin into which their employers are

drawn by inability, after the enjoyment of rapidly acquired wealth, to

adjust the habits formed by it to normal conditions. "A just punishment,"

Franklin adds, "for their having wantonly and unfeelingly ruined many

honest, innocent traders and their families, whose subsistence was employed

in serving the common interests of mankind." And after all, he further

said, as in the case of other lotteries, while a few of the adventurers

secured prizes, the mass, for reasons that he stated very clearly, were

losers.

We have already seen how strongly his mind leaned in the direction of

arbitration as the proper method for settling international differences.

But a grave error it would be to think of Franklin as merely a wise,

placid, humane Quaker, or as simply a benignant, somewhat visionary Friend

of Man. He knew what the world ought to be, and might be made to be, but he

also knew what the world was, and was likely for some time to be. He

resembled the Quaker in his shrewd capacity to take care of himself, in his

love of thrift and of all that appertains to the rational and useful side

of life, and especially in his broad, unreserved, human sympathies. It was

for this reason that, though not a Quaker himself, he could usually count

with more or less certainty upon the support of Quakers in his public

undertakings and political struggles. But rigid, dogged scruples like those

which made an effort in Franklin's time to coerce a Pennsylvania Quaker

into taking up arms as impotent, as a rule, as blows upon an unresisting

punch-bag were wholly out of keeping with such a character as Franklin's.

For all that was best in the enthusiastic philanthropy of the French, too,

he had no little affinity, but what Lecky has called his "pedestrian

intellect" saved him from inane dreams of patriarchal innocence and

simplicity in a world from which Roland was to hurry himself because it was

too polluted with crime.

It was a good story that Franklin's Quaker friend, James Logan, told of

William Penn. He was coming over to Pennsylvania as the Secretary of Penn,

when their ship was chased by an armed vessel. Their captain made ready for

an engagement, but said to Penn that he did not expect his aid or that of

his Quaker companions, and that they might retire to the cabin, which they

all did except Logan, who remained on deck, and was quartered to a gun. The

supposed enemy proved to be a friend, and, when this fact was announced by

Logan to Penn and the other refugees below, Penn rebuked him for violating

the Quaker principle of non-resistance. Nettled by being reproved before so

many persons, Logan replied, "_I being thy servant, why did thee not order

me to come down? But thee was willing enough that I should stay and help to

fight the ship when thee thought there was danger._" Franklin abhorred the

Medusa locks of war, and loved the fair, smiling face of peace as much as

any Quaker, but, when there was peril to be braved, he could always be

relied upon to incur his share.

Both in point of physique and manliness of spirit he was well fitted for

leadership and conflict. Josiah, the father of Franklin, we are told in the

_Autobiography_, had "an excellent constitution of body, was of middle

stature, but well set, and very strong." The description was true to

Franklin himself. He is supposed to have been about five feet and ten

inches high, was robustly built, and, when a printer at Watts' printing

house in London, could carry up and down stairs in each hand a large form

of types which one of his fellow printers could carry only with both hands.

In his boyhood he was as eager as most healthy-minded boys are to go off to

sea; but his father already had one runagate son, Josiah the younger, at

sea, and had no mind to have another. However, living as he did near the

water, Benjamin was much in and about it, and learnt early to swim well and

to manage boats.

When in a boat or canoe with other boys [he says in the

_Autobiography_], I was commonly allowed to govern,

especially in any case of difficulty; and upon other

occasions I was generally a leader among the boys, and

sometimes led them into scrapes, of which I will

mention one instance, as it shows an early projecting

public spirit, tho' not then justly conducted.

He then tells us how, under his direction, a band of his comrades, late in

the afternoon, when no one was about, "like so many emmets," abstracted all

the stones collected for the foundation of a new building and constructed

with them a wharf on a quagmire for the convenience of the marauders when

fishing. The authors of the mischief were discovered. "Several of us," says

Franklin, "were corrected by our fathers; and, though I pleaded the

usefulness of the work, mine convinced me that nothing was useful which was

not honest."[14]

Another incident in Franklin's youth, indicative of the way in which

leadership was apt to be conceded in moments of perplexity to his

hardihood, is narrated in the journal of his first voyage from England to

America, and arose when he and two companions, after wandering about the

Isle of Wight until dark, were anxiously endeavoring to make their way back

across an intercepting creek to their ship, the _Berkshire_, which was only

awaiting the first favoring breeze to be up and away. On this occasion, he

stripped to his shirt, and waded through the waters of the creek, and at

one time, through mud as well up to his middle, to a boat staked nearly

fifty yards offshore; the wind all the while blowing very cold and very

hard. When he reached the boat, it was only to find after an hour's

exertions that he could not release it from its fastenings, and that there

was nothing for him to do but to return as he came. Then, just as the

unlucky trio were thinking of looking up some haystack in which to spend

the night, one of them remembered that he had a horseshoe in his pocket.

Again the indomitable Franklin waded back to the boat, and this time, by

wrenching out with the shoe the staple by which it was chained to the

stake, secured it, and brought it ashore to his friends. On its way to the

other shore, it grounded in shoal water, and stuck so fast that one of its

oars was broken in an effort to get it off. After striving and struggling

for half an hour and more, the party gave up and sat down with their hands

before them in despair. It looked as if after being exposed all night to

wind and weather, which was bad, they would be exposed the next morning to

the taunts of the owner of the boat and the amusement of the whole town of

Yarmouth; which was worse. However, when their plight seemed utterly

hopeless, a happy thought occurred to them, and Franklin and one of his

companions, having got out into the creek and thus lightened the craft,

contrived to draw it into deeper water.

Still another incident brings into clear relief the resolute will of the

youthful Franklin. It is told in the _Autobiography_. He was in a boat on

the Delaware with his free-thinking and deep-drinking friend, Collins, who

had acquired the habit of "sotting with brandy," and some other young men.

Collins was in the state pictured by one or more of the cant phrases

descriptive of an inebriate condition which were compiled with such

painstaking thoroughness by Franklin in his "Drinker's Dictionary" for the

_Pennsylvania Gazette_. It became Collins' turn to row, but he refused to

do it. "I will be row'd home," said Collins. "We will not row you," said

Franklin. "You must, or stay all night on the water just as you please,"

said Collins. The others said: "Let us row; what signifies it?" But

Franklin's mind was soured by Collins' past misconduct, and he refused to

do so. Thereupon Collins swore that he would make him row or throw him

overboard, and advanced towards him and struck at him. As he did so,

Franklin clapped his hand under Collins' crotch, and, rising, pitched him

headforemost into the river. Knowing that Collins was a good swimmer, he

felt little concern about him; so the boat was rowed a short distance from

Collins, and with a few timely strokes removed slightly out of his reach

whenever he attempted to board it; he being asked each time whether he

would consent to row.

He was ready to die with vexation [says Franklin], and

obstinately would not promise to row. However, seeing

him at last beginning to tire, we lifted him in and

brought him home dripping wet in the evening. We hardly

exchang'd a civil word afterwards, and a West India

captain, who had a commission to procure a tutor for

the sons of a gentleman at Barbadoes, happening to meet

with him, agreed to carry him thither. He left me then,

promising to remit me the first money he should receive

in order to discharge the debt; but I never heard of

him after.

The debt was for money that Franklin had lent to Collins, when in straits

produced by his dissipated habits, out of the vexatious sum collected by

Franklin for Mr. Vernon, which cost him so much self-reproach until

remitted to that gentleman.

The firmness exhibited by Franklin on this occasion he never failed to

exhibit in his later life whenever it was necessary for him to do so. Even

John Adams, in 1778, though he had worked himself up to the point of

charging Franklin with downright indolence and with the "constant policy

never to say 'yes' or 'no' decidedly but when he could not avoid it,"

admitted in the same breath that Franklin had "as determined a soul as any

man." If anyone doubts it, let him read the letters written by Franklin

upon the rare occasions when he felt that, as a matter of justice or sober

self-respect, he could not escape the duty of holding up the mirror of

candid speech to the face of misconduct. On these occasions, his rebuke was

like a bitter draught administered in a measuring glass, not a drop too

much, not a drop too little. Witness his letter of March 12, 1780, to

Captain Peter Landais in reply to the demand of that captain that he should

be again placed in command of the _Alliance_.

The demand, however [Franklin wrote], may perhaps be

made chiefly for the sake of obtaining a Refusal, of

which you seem the more earnestly desirous as the

having it to produce may be of service to you in

America. I will not therefore deny it to you, and it

shall be as positive and clear as you require it. No

one has ever learnt from me the Opinion I formed of you

from the Enquiry made into your conduct. I kept it

entirely to myself. I have not even hinted it in my

Letters to America, because I would not hazard giving

to any one a Bias to your Prejudice. By communicating a

Part of that Opinion privately to you it can do you no

harm for you may burn it. I should not give you the

pain of reading it if your Demand did not make it

necessary. I think you, then, so imprudent, so

litigious and quarrelsome a man, even with your best

friends, that Peace and good order and, consequently,

the quiet and regular Subordination so necessary to

Success, are, where you preside, impossible. These are

matters within my observation and comprehension, your

military Operations I leave to more capable Judges. If

therefore I had 20 Ships of War in my Disposition, I

should not give one of them to Captain Landais.

All the higher forms of intellectual or moral power suggest the idea of

reserve force, and of nothing is this truer than the self-controlled

indignation of a really strong man like Franklin or Washington.

What Franklin did for Philadelphia, when peace prevailed, we have already

seen; what he did for it, when threatened by war, remains to be told. In

1747, England was involved in a struggle with France and Spain, and the

city lay at the mercy of French and Spanish privateers, all the efforts of

Governor Thomas to induce the Quaker majority in the Assembly to pass a

militia law and to make other provision for the security of the Province

having proved wholly futile. Under these circumstances, Franklin wrote and

published a pamphlet, entitled _Plain Truth_, for the purpose of arousing

the people of the Province to a true sense of their perilous predicament.

The pamphlet [Franklin tells us in the

_Autobiography_], had a sudden and surprising effect,

and we can readily believe it, for rarely has an alarum

been more artfully sounded. In its pages is to be found

every artifice of persuasion that could be skillfully

used by an adroit pamphleteer for the purpose of

playing upon the fears of his readers and inciting them

to determined measures of self-defense. It began by

pointing out the causes which had brought about an

entire change in the former happy situation of the

Province, namely its increased wealth, its defenseless

condition, the familiarity acquired by its enemies with

its Bay and River through prisoners, bearers of flags

of truce, spies, and, perhaps, traitors, the ease with

which pilots could be employed by these enemies and the

known absence of ships of war, during the greatest part

of the year, ever since the war began, from both

Virginia and New York. That the enemies of the Province

might even then have some of their spies in the

Province could not be seriously doubted, it declared,

for to maintain such spies had been the practice of all

nations in all ages, as for example the five men sent

by the Children of Dan to spy out the land of the

Zidonians, and search it. (Book of Judges, Chap. XVIII,

V. 2). These men, while engaged in their enterprise,

met with a certain idolatrous priest of their own

persuasion (would to God no such priests were to be

found among the Pennsylvanians!) And, when they

questioned him as to whether their way would be

prosperous, he among other things said unto them, _Go

in Peace; before the Lord is your Way wherein you go_.

(It was well known that there were many priests in the

Province of the same religion as those who, of late,

encouraged the French to invade the mother country).

_And they came_, (Verse 7) _to Laish, and saw the

People that were therein, how they dwelt CARELESS,

after the Manner of the Zidonians_, QUIET AND SECURE.

They _thought_ themselves secure no doubt; and, as they

_never had been_ disturbed, vainly imagined they _never

should_. It was not unlikely that some saw the danger

they were exposed to by living in that careless manner;

but it was not unlikely, too, that if these publicly

expressed their apprehensions, the rest reproached them

as timorous persons, wanting courage or confidence in

their Gods, who (they perhaps said) had hitherto

protected them. But the spies (Verse 8) returned, and

among other things said to their countrymen (Verse 9),

_Arise that we may go up against them; for we have seen

the Land and behold it is very good! When ye go, ye

shall come unto a People SECURE_ (that is a people that

apprehend no danger, and therefore have made no

provision against it; great encouragement this), _and

to a large Land, and a Place where there is no Want of

any Thing_. What could they desire more? Accordingly we

find, continued _Plain Truth_, in the succeeding verses

that _six hundred Men_ only, _appointed with Weapons of

War_, undertook the conquest of this _large Land_;

knowing that 600 men, armed and disciplined, would be

an overmatch, perhaps, for 60,000 unarmed,

undisciplined, and off their guard. And when they went

against it, the idolatrous priest (Verse 17) _with his

graven Image, and his Ephod, and his Teraphim, and his

molten Image_ (plenty of superstitious trinkets) joined

with them, and, no doubt, gave them all the

intelligence and assistance in his power; his heart, as

the text assures us, _being glad_, perhaps, for reasons

more than one. And now what was the fate of poor Laish?

The 600 men, being arrived, found, as the spies had

reported, a people QUIET and SECURE. (Verses 20, 21).

_And they smote them with the Edge of the Sword, and

burnt the City with_ FIRE; _and there was no_

DELIVERER,_ because it was far from Zidon_--not so far

from _Zidon_, however, as _Pennsylvania_ was from

_Britain_; and yet we are, said _Plain Truth_, more

careless than the people of _Laish_!

Having awakened in this clever fashion the slumbering strings of sectarian

hatred and religious association, the author of _Plain Truth_ brings the

same sure and compelling touch to the other points of his theme: the danger

that the Iroquois might, from considerations set forth in the pamphlet with

telling force, be wholly gained over by the French; which meant deserted

plantations, ruin, bloodshed and confusion; the folly and selfishness of

the view that Rural Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia did not owe

each other mutual obligations of assistance; the ruin in which commerce,

trade and industry were certain to be involved by the occlusion of the

Delaware; the probability that the enemy, finding that he could come higher

and higher up the river, seize vessels, land and plunder plantations and

villages, and return with his booty unmolested, might finally be led to

believe that all Pennsylvanians were Quakers, against all defence, from a

principle of conscience, and thus be induced to strike one bold stroke for

the city and for the whole plunder of the river.

Then, after dispatching with a few practical observations the fallacy that

the expense of a vessel to guard the trade of the Province would be greater

than any loss that the enemy could inflict upon the Province at sea, and

that it would be cheaper for the Government to open an insurance office and

to pay every such loss, the pamphlet presents a harrowing description of

the fate that would befall Philadelphia if it passed into the hands of the

enemy. It is all limned with the minuteness of a Dutch painting; the

confusion and disorder; the outcries and lamentations; the stream of

outgoing fugitives (including citizens reputed to be rich and fearful of

the torture), hurrying away with their effects; the wives and children

hanging upon the necks of their husbands and fathers and imploring them to

be gone; the helplessness of the few that would remain; the sack; the

conflagration. But what, asked _Plain Truth_, would the condition of the

Philadelphians be, if suddenly surprised without previous alarm, perhaps in

the night? Confined to their houses, they would have nothing to trust to

but the enemy's mercy. Their best fortune would be to fall under the power

of commanders of King's ships, able to control the mariners; and not into

the hands of licentious privateers. Who could without the utmost horror

conceive the miseries of the latter, when their persons, fortunes, wives

and daughters would be subject to the wanton and unbridled rage, rapine and

lust of negroes, mulattoes and others, the vilest and most abandoned of

mankind? And then in a timely marginal note _Plain Truth_ tells how poor

Captain Brown, for bravely defending himself and his vessel longer than the

ragged crew of a Spanish privateer expected, was barbarously stabbed and

murdered, though on his knees begging quarter!

It would not be so bad for the rich, said _Plain Truth_. The means of

speedy flight were ready to their hands, and they could lay by money and

effects in distant and safe places against the evil day. It was by the

middling people, the tradesmen, shopkeepers and farmers of the Province and

city that the brunt would have to be borne. They could not all fly with

their families, and, if they could, how would they subsist? Upon them too

the weight of the contributions exacted by the enemy (as was true of

ordinary taxes) would rest. Though numerous, this class was quite

defenceless as it had neither forts, arms, union nor discipline, and yet on

whom could it fix its eyes with the least expectation that they would do

anything for its security? Not on that wealthy and powerful body of people,

the Quakers, who had ever since the war controlled the elections of the

Province and filled almost every seat in the Assembly. Should the Quakers

be conjured by all the ties of neighborhood, friendship, justice and

humanity to consider the obligations that they owed to a very great part of

the people who could have no confidence that God would protect those that

neglected the use of rational means for protecting themselves, and the

distraction, misery and confusion, desolation and distress which might

possibly be the effect of their unreasonable predominancy and perseverance,

yet all would be in vain; for the Quakers had already been by great numbers

of the people petitioned in vain. The late Governor of the Province did for

years solicit, request and even threaten them in vain. The council had

twice remonstrated with them in vain. Their religious prepossessions were

unchangeable, their obstinacy invincible.

The manner in which Franklin makes his strictures on the Quakers in this

pamphlet keen enough to shame them into letting the other elements of the

population of the Province have the use of enough of the public money to

enable them to protect both themselves and the Quakers and yet not keen

enough to make the Quakers thoroughly incensed as well as obstinate is one

of the notable features of _Plain Truth_.

The prospect of the middling people of the Province, the pamphlet

continues, was no better, if they turned their eyes to those great and rich

men, merchants and others, who were ever railing at the Quakers, but took

no one step themselves for the public safety. With their wealth and

influence, they might easily promote military ardor and discipline in the

Province and effect everything under God for its protection. But envy

seemed to have taken possession of their hearts, and to have eaten out and

destroyed every generous, noble, public-spirited sentiment, and rage at the

disappointment of their little schemes for power gnawed their souls, and

filled them with such cordial hatred to their opponents that any proposal,

by the execution of which the latter might receive benefit as well as

themselves, was rejected with indignation.

However, if the city and Province were brought to destruction, it would not

be for want of numerous inhabitants able to bear arms in their defence. It

was computed that the Province had at least (exclusive of the Quakers)

60,000 fighting men, acquainted with firearms, many of them hunters and

marksmen, hardy and bold. All they lacked was order, discipline and a few

cannon. At present they were like the separate filaments of flax before the

thread is formed, without strength because without connection; but union

would make them strong and even formidable. Many of the inhabitants of the

Province were of the British race, and, though the fierce fighting animals

of those happy islands were said to abate their natural fire and

intrepidity, when removed to a foreign clime, yet, with their people this

was not so. Among the inhabitants of the Province likewise were those brave

men whose fathers in the last age made so glorious a stand for

Protestantism and English liberty, when invaded by a powerful French Army,

joined by Irish Catholics, under a bigoted Popish King; and also thousands

of that warlike nation whose sons had ever since the time of Caesar

maintained the character he gave their fathers of uniting the most

obstinate courage to all the other military virtues--the brave and steady

Germans.

Poor Richard, of course, had to have his proverb in war as well as peace.

Were the union formed, and the fighting men of the Province once united,

thoroughly armed and disciplined, the very fame of strength and readiness,

_Plain Truth_ thought, would be a means of discouraging the enemy, "for,"

said Franklin, "'tis a wise and true Saying, that _One Sword often keeps

another in the Scabbard_. The Way to secure Peace is to be prepared for

War."

After these weighty maxims, this remarkable pamphlet ends with the

statement that, if its hints were so happy as to meet with a suitable

disposition of mind from the countrymen and fellow citizens of the writer,

he would, in a few days, lay before them a form of association for the

purposes mentioned in the pamphlet, together with a practical scheme for

raising the money necessary for the crisis without laying a burthen on any

man.

Like

"The drum,

That makes the warrior's stomach come,"

was _Plain Truth_ with its sudden and surprising effect. Agreeably with the

popular response to it, Franklin drafted articles of association, after

consulting with others, and issued a call for a citizen's rally in the

Whitefield meeting-house. When the citizens assembled, printed copies of

the articles had already been struck off, and pens and ink had been

distributed throughout the hall. Franklin then harangued the gathering a

little, read and explained the articles, and handed around the printed

copies. They were so eagerly signed that, when the meeting broke up, there

were more than twelve hundred signatures, and this number, when the country

people were subsequently given an opportunity to sign, swelled to more than

ten thousand. All the signers furnished themselves as soon as they could

with arms, organized into companies and regiments, chose their own

officers, and met every week for military training. The contagion spread

even to the women, and, with money raised by their own subscriptions, they

procured silk colors for the companies, set off with devices and mottoes

furnished by Franklin himself, who had a peculiar turn for designing things

of that sort. The next step was for the officers of the companies,

constituting the Philadelphia regiment, to meet and choose a colonel. They

did so, and selected the only man, or almost the only man, so far as we

know, who has ever, in the history of the American Militia, conceived

himself to be unfit for the office of colonel, and that is Benjamin

Franklin. "Conceiving myself unfit," says Franklin in the _Autobiography_,

"I declin'd that station, and recommended Mr. Lawrence, a fine person, and

man of influence, who was accordingly appointed." But between building and

equipping a battery on the river below Philadelphia, and manipulating

Quaker scruples, Franklin had his hands quite as full as were those of

Colonel Lawrence. At that time, whether the souls of men were to be saved

by the erection of a church or their bodies to be destroyed by the erection

of a battery, resort was had to a lottery. Franklin himself, for instance,

was twice appointed by the vestry of Christ Church the manager of a lottery

for the purpose of building a steeple and buying a chime of bells for that

church. A lottery, therefore, was proposed by him to defray the expense of

building and equipping the battery. The suggestion was eagerly acted upon,

and, with the current of popular enthusiasm running so swiftly, the lottery

soon filled, and a battery with merlons framed of logs and packed with

earth was rapidly erected. The problem was how to get the necessary

ordnance. Some old cannon were bought in Boston, a not over-sanguine

request for some was made of the stingy Proprietaries, Richard and Thomas

Penn, an order was given to other persons in England to purchase in case

the request was not honored, and Colonel Lawrence, William Allen, Abram

Taylor and Franklin were dispatched to New York by the association to

borrow what cannon they could from Governor George Clinton. Fortunately for

Pennsylvania, the cockles of that Governor's heart were of the kind that

glow and expand with generous benevolence when warmed by the bottle. At

first, he refused peremptorily to let the embassy have any cannon, but,

later on when he sat at meat, or rather drink, with the members of his

council, there was, we are told by Franklin in the _Autobiography_, great

drinking of Madeira wine, as the custom of New York then was. With the

progress of the dinner, he softened by degrees, and said that he would lend

six. After a few more bumpers, he advanced to ten, and, at length, he very

good-naturedly conceded eighteen. They were fine cannon, eighteen-pounders,

with their carriages, and were soon transported and mounted on the battery

in Pennsylvania, where the associators kept a nightly guard while the war

lasted; and where, among the rest, Franklin regularly took his turn of duty

as a common soldier.

The activity of Franklin at this conjuncture not only won him a high degree

of popularity with his fellow-citizens but also the good will of the

Governor of Pennsylvania and his Council, who took him into their

confidence, and consulted with him whenever it was felt that their

concurrence was needed by the association. When they approved his

suggestion that a fast should be proclaimed for the purpose of invoking the

blessing of Heaven upon the association, and it was found that no such

thing had ever been thought of in Pennsylvania before, he even fell back

upon his New England training, and drew up a proclamation for the purpose

in the usual form which was translated into German, printed in both English

and German, and circulated throughout the Province. The fast day fixed by

the paper gave the clergy of the different sects in Pennsylvania a

favorable opportunity for urging the members of their flocks to enroll

themselves as members of the association, and it was the belief of Franklin

that, if peace had not soon been declared, all the religious congregations

in the Province except those of the Quakers would have been enlisted in the

movement for the defence of the Province.

The most interesting thing, however, connected with this whole episode was

the conduct of the Quakers. James Logan, true to his former principles,

wrote a cogent address to his Fellow-Friends justifying defensive war, and

placed sixty pounds in Franklin's hands with instructions to him to apply

all the lottery prizes that they might win to the cost of the battery.

Other Friends also, perhaps most of the younger ones, were in favor of

defence, but many Friends preferred to keep up silently the semblance of

conformity with their dogma about war, though ready enough to have it

refined away by Franklin's astuteness, which had a gift for working around

obstacles when it could not climb over or break through them. That the

Quakers, as a body, even if they did not relish his new-born intimacy with

the executive councillors, with whom they had had a feud of long standing,

were not losing much of their placidity over the proposition to protect

their throats and chattels against their will, an ambitious young

gentleman, who wished to displace Franklin, as the Clerk of the Quaker

Assembly, soon learnt. Like the generous Maori of New Zealand, who

refrained from descending upon their English invaders until they had duly

communicated to them the hour of their proposed onset, he advised Franklin

(from good will he said) to resign as more consistent with his honor than

being turned out. He little realized apparently that he was attempting to

intimidate one of the grimmest antagonists that ever entertained the

robuster American ideas about public office, the manner in which it is to

be sought, and the prehensile tenacity, with which it is to be clung to,

when secured. But for the fact that Franklin was always a highly faithful

and efficient officeholder, and the further fact that he gave his entire

salary, as President of Pennsylvania, to public objects, he would not fall

far short of being a typical American officeholder of the better class, as

that class was before the era of civil-service reform. On a later occasion,

when his resignation as Deputy Postmaster-General for America was desired,

he humorously observed in a letter to his sister, Jane, that he was

deficient in the Christian virtue of resignation. "If they would have my

Office," he said, "they must take it." And, on another later occasion, he

strongly advised his son not to resign his office, as Governor of New

Jersey, because, while much might be made of a removal, nothing could be

made of a resignation. As long as there was a son, or a grandson of his

own, with no fear of the inclination of political competitors to pry into

skeleton closets, or a relative of any sort to enjoy the sweets of public

office, Franklin appears to have acted consistently upon the principle that

the persons whose qualifications we know best, through the accident of

family intimacy, are the persons that are likely to confer the highest

degree of credit upon us when we appoint them to public positions.

With this general outlook upon the part of Franklin in regard to public

office, the young man, who wished to be his successor, as clerk, soon found

that there was nothing left for him to do except to go off sorrowfully like

the young man in the Scriptures.

My answer to him [says Franklin in the _Autobiography_]

was, that I had read or heard of some public man who

made it a rule never to ask for an office, and never to

refuse one when offer'd to him. "I approve," says I,

"of his rule, and will practice it with a small

addition; I shall never _ask_, never _refuse_, nor ever

_resign_ an office." If they will have my office of

clerk to dispose of to another, they shall take it from

me. I will not, by giving it up, lose my right of some

time or other making reprisals on my adversaries.

Franklin never actually refused an office except when its duties could be

discharged only from what was virtually his death-bed, and he never

resigned an office, though he was removed from one under circumstances

which furnished a fine illustration, indeed, of how much can be made of a

removal. On the other hand, he did not keep his vow of never asking for an

office; for melancholy to relate, like a raven eying a sick horse, we find

him fore-handed enough, when it was manifest that Mr. Elliot Benger, the

Deputy Postmaster-General of America, was about to pay his last debt to

nature, to apply for the reversion of his office before the debt was

actually paid, and to offer, through Chief Justice Allen of Pennsylvania,

the sum of three hundred pounds in perquisites and contingent fees and

charges for it. Indeed, Benger, though "tho't to be near his end" by

Franklin, when the latter first set to work to succeed him, did not die

until more than two years afterwards.[15] As we shall see hereafter, to

Franklin, as an officeholder, was honorably allotted even the state of

supreme beatitude under the spoils system of politics which consists in

holding more than one public office at one time.

The young aspirant for Franklin's place had nothing but his generous

motives to soothe his disappointment, for at the next election Franklin was

unanimously elected clerk as usual. Indeed, Franklin had reason to believe

that the measures taken for the protection of Pennsylvania were not

disagreeable to any of the Quakers, provided that they were not required to

participate actively in them. The proportion of Quakers sincerely opposed

to resistance, he estimated, after having had a chance to look the field

over, was as one to twenty-one only.

His long contact with the Assembly, as its clerk, had afforded him

excellent opportunities for observing how embarrassed its Quaker majority,

which loved political power quite as much as it detested war and

Presbyterians, was, whenever applications were made to the Assembly for

military grants by order of the Crown, and to what subtle shifts this

majority was compelled to resort on such occasions to save its face; ending

finally in its voting money simply for the "King's use," and never

inquiring how it was spent. Sometimes the demand was not directly from the

Crown, and then the conflict, that is being perpetually renewed between

eccentric human opinions and the inexorable order of the universe, became

acute, indeed, as, for instance, when this majority was urged by Governor

Thomas to appropriate a sum of money with which to buy powder for the

military needs of New England. Money to buy powder nakedly the Quakers were

not willing to vote, but they appropriated three thousand pounds to be put

into the hands of the Governor for the purchase of bread, flour, wheat or

other _grain_. Some members of the Governor's Council, desirous of still

further embarrassing the Assembly, advised him not to accept provisions

instead of powder, but he replied: "I shall take the money, for I

understand very well their meaning; other grain is gunpowder." Gunpowder he

accordingly bought, and the Quakers maintained a silence as profound as

that which lulled Franklin to sleep in their great meeting-house when he

first arrived in Philadelphia. The esoteric meaning of this kind of

language was, of course, not likely to be lost upon a man so prompt as

Franklin to take a wink for a nod. With his practical turn of mind, he was

the last person in the world to boggle over delphic words when they were

clear enough for him to see that they gave him all that he wanted. So,

when it was doubtful whether the Quakers in the Union Fire Company would

vote a fund of sixty pounds for the purchase of tickets in the lottery,

remembering the incident, which has just been related, he said to his

friend, Syng, one of its members, "If we fail, let us move the purchase of

a fire-engine with the money; the Quakers can have no objection to that;

and then, if you nominate me and I you as a committee for that purpose, we

will buy a great gun, which is certainly a _fire engine_." But there was no

real danger of the fund not being voted. The company consisted of thirty

members, of whom twenty-two were Quakers. The remaining eight punctually

attended the meeting, at which the vote was to be taken. Only one Quaker,

Mr. James Morris, appeared to oppose the grant. The proposition, he said,

with the confidence that usually marks statements in a democratic community

about the preponderance of popular opinion, ought never to have been made,

as Friends were all against it, and it would create such discord as might

break up the company. At any rate, he thought that, though the hour for

business had arrived, a little time should be allowed for the appearance of

other members of the company, who, he knew, intended to come for the

purpose of voting against the proposition. While this suggestion was being

combated, who should appear but a waiter to tell Franklin that two

gentlemen below desired to speak with him. These proved to be two of the

Quaker members of the company. Eight of them, they said, were assembled at

a tavern just by, who were ready to come and vote for the proposition, if

they should be needed, but did not desire to be sent for, if their

assistance could be dispensed with. Franklin then went back to Mr. Morris,

and after a little seeming hesitation--for at times he had a way of piecing

out the skin of the lion with the tail of the fox--agreed to a delay of

another hour. This Mr. Morris admitted was extremely fair. Nobody else

came, and, upon the expiration of the hour, the proposition was carried by

a vote of eight to one. Franklin was a thoroughly normal man himself, but

his wit, patience and rare capacity for self-transformation usually enabled

him to deal successfully with any degree of abnormality in others, however

pronounced. "Sensible people," he once said to his sister Jane, "will give

a bucket or two of water to a dry pump, that they may afterwards get from

it all they have occasion for."

The next time that Franklin crosses the stage of war is when General

Braddock and his men, in the buskins of high tragedy, are moving to their

doom. It had been reported to the General that, not only had the

Pennsylvania Assembly refused to vote money for the King's service, but

that the Pennsylvanians themselves had sold provisions to the French,

declined to aid in the construction of a road to the West, and withheld

wagons and horses sorely needed by the expedition; and the General had just

been compelled to settle down for a time in the temper of a chafed bull at

Frederick, Maryland, for the want of wagons and horses to transport his

army to Fort Duquesne, which he afterwards told Franklin could hardly

detain him above three or four days on his triumphant progress to Niagara

and Frontenac. Forts, he seemed to think, to recall Franklin's simile,

could be taken as easily as snuff. Under these circumstances, the

Pennsylvania Assembly decided to ask Franklin to visit Braddock's camp,

ostensibly as Deputy Postmaster-General, for the purpose of arranging a

plan, by which the General could effectively keep in postal touch with the

Colonial Governors, but really for the purpose of removing the prejudices

which the General had formed against Pennsylvania. And a pleasant April

journey that must have been for the mounted Franklin through Pennsylvania

and Delaware, and over "the green-walled hills of Maryland," with his son,

and the Governors of New York and Massachusetts, also mounted, as his

companions. That such a brave company, as it passed through the mild vernal

air of that delightful season from stage to stage of its itinerary,

experienced no dearth of hospitable offices, we may rest assured. One

Maryland gentleman, the "amiable and worthy" Colonel Benjamin Tasker, who

entertained Franklin and William Franklin on this journey with great

hospitality and kindness at his country place, even pleasantly claimed that

a whirlwind, which Franklin made the subject of a most graphic description

in a letter to Peter Collinson, had been got up by him on purpose to treat

Mr. Franklin.

It was probably the energy and resource of Franklin that were really

responsible for Braddock's defeat, paradoxical as this may sound. When that

brave but rash and infatuated general and his officers found that only

twenty-five wagons could be obtained in Virginia and Maryland for the

expedition, they declared that it was at an end; not less than one hundred

and fifty wagons being necessary for the purpose. Their hopes, however,

were revived when Franklin remarked that it was a pity that the army had

not landed in Pennsylvania, as almost every farmer in that Colony had his

wagon. This observation was eagerly pounced upon by Braddock, and Franklin

was duly commissioned to procure the needed wagons. With such consummate

art did he, in an address published by him at Lancaster, partly by

persuasion, and partly by threats, work upon the feelings of the prosperous

farmers of York, Lancaster and Cumberland Counties that in two weeks the

one hundred and fifty wagons, with two hundred and fifty-nine pack-horses,

were on their way to Braddock's camp. Nay more; with the aid of William

Franklin, who knew something of camp life and its wants, he drew up a list

of provisions for Braddock's subaltern officers, whose means were too

limited to enable them to victual themselves comfortably for the march,

and induced the Pennsylvania Assembly to make a present of them to these

officers. The twenty parcels, in which the provisions were packed, were

each placed upon a horse and presented to a subaltern together with the

horse itself. The twenty horses and their packs arrived in camp as soon as

the wagons, and were very thankfully received. The kindness of Franklin in

procuring them was acknowledged in letters to him from the colonels of the

two regiments composing Braddock's army in the most grateful terms, and

Braddock was so delighted with his services in furnishing the wagons and

pack-horses that he not only thanked him repeatedly, craved his further

assistance, and repaid him one thousand pounds of a sum amounting to some

thirteen hundred pounds which he had advanced, but wrote home a letter in

which, after inveighing against the "false dealings of all in this

country," with whom he had been concerned, he commended Franklin's

promptitude and fidelity, and declared that his conduct was almost the only

instance of address and fidelity which he had seen in America. The balance

of the amount that Franklin advanced he was never able to collect.

It is foreign to the plan of this book to describe the horrors of the

sylvan inferno in which the huddled soldiers of Braddock stood about as

much chance of successfully retaliating upon their flitting assailants as

if the latter had been invisible spirits. It is enough for our purpose to

say that, as soon as the wagoners, whom Franklin had gathered together, saw

how things were going, they each took a horse from his wagon, and scampered

away as fast as his steed could carry him, leaving too many wagons,

provisions, pieces of artillery, stores and scalps behind them to make it

worth the while of the victors to pursue them. Franklin states in the

_Autobiography_ that, when Braddock, with whom he dined daily at Frederick,

spoke of passing from Fort Duquesne to Niagara, and from Niagara to

Frontenac, as lightly as a traveller might speak of the successive inns at

which he was to bait on a peaceful journey, he conceived some doubts and

fears as to the event of the campaign. He might well have done so, for he

knew, if Braddock did not, what a nimble, painted and befeathered Indian in

the crepuscular shades of the primeval American forest was. We also learn

from the _Autobiography_ that when the Doctors Bond came to Franklin to ask

him to subscribe to fireworks, to be set off upon the fall of Fort

Duquesne, he looked grave, and said that it would be time enough to prepare

for the rejoicing when they knew that they had occasion to rejoice. All

this was natural enough in a man whose temper was cautious, and who had

dined daily for some time with Braddock. "The General presum'd too much,

and was too secure. This the Event proves, but it was my Opinion from the

time I saw him and convers'd with him." These were the words of Franklin in

a letter to Peter Collinson shortly after the catastrophe. But, when we

remember his written assurance in his Lancaster address to the Pennsylvania

farmers that the service, to which their wagons and horses would be put,

would be light and easy, and above all the individual promises of

indemnity, tantamount to the pledge of his entire fortune, which he gave to

these farmers, we cannot help feeling that Franklin's doubts and fears were

not quite so strong as he afterwards honestly believed them to be, and that

his second sight in this instance was, perhaps, somewhat like that of the

clairvoyant, mentioned in the letter, contributed by his friend, Joseph

Breintnal to one of his Busy-Body essays, who was "only able to discern

Transactions about the Time, and for the most Part after their happening."

Apart from the evidence afforded by the expedition that, if Braddock had

been as able a general as Franklin was a commissary, its result would have

been different, its chief interest to the biographer of Franklin consists

in the light that it sheds upon the self-satisfied ignorance of American

conditions and the complete want of sympathy with the Americans themselves

which subsequently aided in rendering the efforts of Franklin to secure a

fair hearing in London for his countrymen so difficult. When Franklin

ventured to express apprehension that the slender line of Braddock's army,

nearly four miles long, might be ambushed by the Indians, while winding its

way through the woods, and be cut like a thread into several pieces,

Braddock smiled at his simplicity and replied, "These savages may, indeed,

be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the King's

regular and disciplin'd troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any

impression." He saw enough before he was fatally wounded to realize that

the very discipline of his British soldiers was their undoing, when

contending with such a mobile and wily foe as the Indian in the forest, and

that a few hundred provincials, skulking behind trees, and giving their

French and Indian antagonists a taste of their own tactics, were worth many

thousands of such regulars even as his brave veterans. That he came to some

conclusion of this kind before the close of his life we may infer from what

Captain Orme told Franklin and what Franklin tells us in the

_Autobiography_.

Captain Orme [says Franklin], who was one of the

general's aids-de-camp, and, being grievously wounded,

was brought off with him, and continu'd with him to his

death, which happen'd in a few days, told me that he

was totally silent all the first day, and at night only

said "_Who would have thought it?_" That he was silent

again the following day, saying only at last, "_We

shall better know how to deal with them another time_";

and dy'd in a few minutes after.

There was not to be another time for this intrepid but reckless soldier,

who, true to the broad, red banner of England, died like a bulldog with

his iron jaws set to the last, but the first time might have sufficed for

his task if he had only taken Franklin's hint, or freely consulted the

advice of George Washington and the other provincial officers who

accompanied him, or had not reduced his army merely to the condition of

legs without eyes by treating the hundred Indians, invaluable as guides and

scouts, whom George Croghan had brought to his aid, with such neglect and

slights that they all, by successive defections, gradually dropped away

from him.

In the _Autobiography_ Franklin contrasts the conduct of the British on

their way from the sea to the unbroken wilderness with the conduct of the

French allies when making their way from Rhode Island to Yorktown. The

former, he says, from their landing till they got beyond the settlements,

plundered and stripped the inhabitants, totally ruining some poor families,

besides insulting, abusing and confining such persons as remonstrated. This

was enough, he adds, to put the Americans out of conceit of such defenders,

if they had really wanted any. The French, on the other hand, though

traversing the most inhabited part of America for a distance of nearly

seven hundred miles, occasioned not the smallest complaint for the loss of

a pig, a chicken, or even an apple. Perhaps this was partly because the

people gratefully gave them everything that they wanted before there was

any occasion to take it. But it was the pusillanimous misbehavior of

Colonel Dunbar, left by Braddock in the rear of his army to bring along the

heavier part of his stores, provisions and baggage which converted disaster

into disgrace. As soon as the fugitives from the battle reached his camp,

the panic that they brought with them was instantly imparted to him and his

entire force. Though he had at his command more than a thousand men, he

thought of nothing better to do than to turn his draft horses to the

purposes of flight, and to give all his stores and ammunition to the

flames. When he reached the settlements, he was met with requests from the

Governors of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania that he would station his

troops on the frontier of those states so as to protect them from the fury

of the savages, but, so far from stopping to protect anybody else, not one

jot of speed did he abate until, to use Franklin's words, "he arriv'd at

Philadelphia, where the inhabitants could protect him." "This whole

transaction," declares the _Autobiography_, "gave us Americans the first

suspicion that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regulars had not

been well founded."

When Dunbar did abandon the shelter which he had found at Philadelphia, it

was only to give the people of Pennsylvania a parting whiff of his quality.

He promised Franklin that, if three poor farmers of Lancaster County would

meet him at Trenton, where he expected to be in a few days on his march to

New York, he would surrender to them certain indentured servants of theirs

whom he had enlisted. Although they took him at his word, and met him at

Trenton, at considerable sacrifice of time and money, he refused to perform

his promise.

The defeat of Braddock and its consequences left the province fully exposed

to Indian incursions, and again its ablest and most public-spirited man was

compelled to take the lead in providing for its defense. His first act was

to draft and push through the Assembly a bill for organizing and

disciplining a militia. Each company was to elect a captain, a lieutenant

and an ensign, subject to the confirmation of the Governor, and the

officers, so elected, of the companies forming each regiment, were to elect

a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel and a major for the regiment, subject to

the same confirmation. But nothing about the bill is so interesting as the

further evidence that it affords of Franklin's finesse in the management of

Quakers. The Articles of Association, provided for in the Act, were to be

purely voluntary, and nothing in the Act was to be taken as authorizing the

Governor or the military officers mentioned in it to prescribe any

regulations that would in the least affect such of the inhabitants of the

Province as were scrupulous about bearing arms, either in their liberties,

persons or estates. There is almost a gleam of the true Franklin humor in

the recital in the Act, which, though other parts of the Act safeguarded

the Quaker crotchet as to fighting, made the Quaker majority in the

Assembly admit that there were some persons in the Province who had been

disciplined in the art of war, and even--strange as that might

be--conscientiously thought it their duty to fight in defense of their

country, their wives, their families and estates. The Militia Act was

followed by Franklin's _Dialogue between X Y and Z_ explaining and

defending it. This paper is garnished with apt references to the Bible,

and, as a whole, is written with much vivacity and force. Its object was to

convince the English, Scotch-Irish and German Pennsylvanians that they

should fight to keep their own scalps on their heads even though they could

not do this without accomplishing as much for the Quakers. "For my part,"

says Z, "I am no coward, but hang me if I'll fight to save the _Quakers_."

"That is to say," says X, "you won't pump ship because 'twill save the

rats, as well as yourself." And to Z's suggestion that, if the Act was

carried into execution, and proved a good one, they might have nothing to

say against the Quakers at the next election, X, no unknown quantity, but

Franklin himself, replies with this burst of eloquent exhortation which

makes us half doubt Franklin when he says that he was not an orator:

O my friends, let us on this occasion cast from us all

these little party views, and consider ourselves as

_Englishmen_ and _Pennsylvanians_. Let us think only of

the service of our king, the honour and safety of our

country, and vengeance on its murdering enemies. If

good be done, what imports it by whom 'tis done? The

glory of serving and saving others is superior to the

advantage of being served or secured. Let us resolutely

and generously unite in our country's cause, (in which

to die is the sweetest of all deaths) and may the God

of Armies bless our honest endeavours.

When the defeat of Braddock first became known to Governor Morris, he

hastened to consult with Franklin about the proper measures for preventing

the desertion of the back counties of Pennsylvania, and he even went so far

as to offer to make him a general, if he would undertake to conduct a force

of provincials against Fort Duquesne. Franklin had, or with his wise

modesty affected to have, a suspicion that the offer was inspired not so

much by the Governor's confidence in his military abilities as by the

Governor's desire to utilize his great personal influence for the purpose

of enlisting soldiers and securing money to pay them with; and that,

perhaps, without the taxation of the Proprietary estates. The suspicion we

should say was groundless. In the land of the blind the one-eyed mole is

king, and the probability is that the Governor was actuated by nothing more

than the belief that in a province, where there were no seasoned generals,

a man with Franklin's talents, energy and resource would be likely to prove

the best impromptu commander that he could find. If so, his calculations

came to nothing, for Franklin, who always saw things as they were, could

discern no reason why he should be unfit to be a colonel and yet fit to be

a general. When, however, the Militia Act had been passed, and Z had been

silenced by X, and military companies were springing up as rapidly as

mushrooms in a Pennsylvania meadow, he did permit himself to be prevailed

upon by the Governor to take charge of the northwestern frontier of the

Province, and to bend his energies to the task of enlisting soldiers and

erecting forts for its protection. He did not think himself qualified for

even this quasi-military post, but posterity has taken the liberty of

differing from him in this regard. Having speedily rallied five hundred and

sixty men to his standard, and called his son, who had had some military

training, to his side, as his aide-de-camp, he assembled his little army at

Bethlehem, the chief seat of the Moravians, and divided it into three

detachments. One he sent off towards the Minisink to build a fort in the

upper part of the exposed territory, another he sent off to build a fort in

the lower part of the same territory, and the third he conducted himself to

Gnadenhutten, a Moravian village, recently reduced to blood and ashes by

the Indians, for the purpose of erecting a third fort there.

When he reached Bethlehem, he found that not only had the Moravian

brethren, who, he had had reason to believe, were conscientiously averse to

war, erected a stockade around the principal buildings of the town, and

purchased a supply of arms and ammunition for themselves in New York, but

that they had even placed a quantity of stones between the windows of their

high houses, to be thrown down by their women upon the heads of any Indians

by whom these buildings might be invested. "Common sense, aided by present

danger, will sometimes be too strong for whimsical opinions," dryly

comments Franklin in the _Autobiography_.

How death kept his court in that tortured land may be inferred from an

incident recorded by Franklin in the _Autobiography_. Just before he left

Bethlehem for Gnadenhutten, eleven farmers who had been driven from their

plantations by the Indians obtained from him each a gun with a suitable

supply of ammunition, and returned to their homes to fetch away their

cattle. Ten of the eleven were killed by the Indians. The one who escaped

reported that they could not discharge their guns because the priming had

become wet with rain--a mishap which the Indians were too dexterous to

allow to befall their pieces. The same rain descended upon Franklin and his

men on their march from Bethlehem to Gnadenhutten, and disabled their guns

too, but fortunately, though at one point they had to pass through a gap in

the mountains which their foes might well have turned to deadly account,

they were not attacked on the march. Once arrived at Gnadenhutten, as soon

as the detachment had sheltered itself under rude huts, and interred with

more decent completeness the massacred victims, who had been only half

buried by their demoralized neighbors, it proceeded to fell trees and to

erect a fort, or rather stockade, with a circumference of four hundred and

fifty-five feet. "How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke," was not

more aptly written of the peasants whom Gray's _Elegy_ has immortalized,

than it might have been of the seventy brawny axemen in Franklin's camp,

two of whom could by Franklin's watch in six minutes cut down a pine

fourteen inches in diameter. In a week, in spite of drenching rains, a

stockade had been constructed of sufficient strength, flimsy as it was, to

fend off cannonless Indians. It consisted of palisades eighteen feet long,

planted in a trench three feet deep, loopholes, and a gallery, at an

elevation of six feet around its interior, for its defenders to stand on

and take aim through the loopholes. When it had been finished, a swivel gun

was mounted at one of its angles and discharged to let the Indians know

that the garrison was supplied with such pieces. They were not far off; for

when Franklin began, after he had furnished himself with a place of refuge,

in case of retreat, to throw out scouting parties over the adjacent

country, he found that they had been watching his movements from the hills

with their feet dangling in holes, in which, for warmth, fires, made of

charcoal, had been kindled. With their fires going in this way, there was

neither light, flame, sparks, nor even smoke, to betray their presence;

but it would seem that they were too few in numbers to feel that they could

hazard an attack upon the stockade-builders.

The impression left upon the mind by this expedition is that it was managed

by Franklin with no little good sense and efficiency, though it does seem

to us that a man who never lacked the capacity to invent any mechanical

device called for by his immediate needs ought to have been too provident

to find himself in a narrow defile with guns as impotent as those of the

ten poor farmers who had perished that very day. It was inexcusable in Poor

Richard at any rate to forget his own saying, "For want of a Nail the Shoe

was lost; for want of a Shoe the Horse was lost; and for want of a Horse

the Rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the Enemy; all for want of

care about a Horse-shoe Nail." In his instructions, before he left

Bethlehem, to Captain Vanetta, in relation to certain operations, which the

latter was to undertake with a separate force against the Indians,

Franklin, though he said nothing about trusting in God, took care to warn

the captain to keep his powder dry. The expedition was cut short by a

letter from the Governor and letters from Franklin's friends in the

Assembly urging him to attend the sessions about to be held by that body.

There was no reason why he should not do so; for the three forts were

completed, and the country people, relying upon the protection afforded by

them, were content to remain on their farms; and especially too as Colonel

Clapham, a New England officer, conversant with Indian warfare, had

accepted the command in the place of Franklin, and had been introduced by

the latter to his men as a soldier much better fitted to lead them than

himself. But Franklin, though he had never been engaged in battle, found on

his return to Philadelphia that he had won a military prestige upon which

he could not easily turn his back. He was elected colonel of the

Philadelphia regiment under such circumstances that he was unable to again

decline the honor of a colonelcy on the score of unfitness. His regiment

consisted of about twelve hundred presentable men, with an artillery

company, furnished with six brass field-pieces, which the company had

become expert enough to fire off twelve times in a minute.

The first time [says Franklin in the _Autobiography] I

reviewed my regiment they accompanied me to my house,

and_ would salute me with some rounds fired before my

door, which shook down and broke several glasses of my

electrical apparatus. And my new honour proved not much

less brittle; for all our commissions were soon after

broken by a repeal of the law in England.

If, however, his colonelcy had not been marked by any considerable effusion

of blood, he had acquired fame enough to arouse the intense jealousy of

Thomas Penn, the Proprietary. When Franklin was on the point of setting out

on a journey to Virginia, the officers of his regiment took it into their

heads to escort him out of town as far as the Lower Ferry. This ceremonious

proceeding was unexpectedly sprung upon him; otherwise, he says, he would

have prevented it, being naturally averse to all flourishes of that sort.

As it was, just as he was getting on horseback, the officers, thirty or

forty in number, came to his door, all mounted, and in their uniforms, and,

as soon as the cavalcade commenced to move, made things worse by drawing

their swords and riding with them naked the entire distance to the Lower

Ferry. The Proprietary, when he heard of the incident, was deeply

affronted. No such honor, forsooth, he declared, had ever been paid to him,

when in the Province, nor to any of his Governors, and was only proper when

due homage was being paid to princes of the blood royal; all of which

Franklin innocently tells us might be so for aught such a novice in

matters of this kind as he knew. So aroused indeed was the Proprietary by

the affair, coming as it did on the heels of the grudge that he already

owed Franklin for his part in insisting that the Proprietary estates should

sustain their just share of the common burden of taxation, that he even

denounced Franklin to the British ministry as the arch obstructionist of

measures for the King's service, citing the pomp of this occasion as

evidence of the fact that Franklin harbored the intention of taking the

government of the Province out of his hands by force. His malice, in fact,

did not stop short even of an effort to deprive Franklin of his office as

Deputy Postmaster-General for the Colonies; with no effect, however, except

that of eliciting a gentle admonition to Franklin from Sir Everard

Fawkener, the British Postmaster-General.

Thus ended for a time the military career of Franklin amid the crash of his

electrical apparatus and the gleam of unfleshed swords. Susceptible of

subdivision as his life is, it would hardly justify a separate chapter on

Franklin the Soldier; but, all the same, by the splendidly efficient

service rendered by him to Braddock, by his pamphlet, _Plain Truth_, by his

Articles of Association and his battery, by his X Y Z dialogue and Militia

Act, by his tact in conciliating and circumventing the awkward Quaker

conviction that "peace unweaponed conquers every wrong," and by the energy

and sound judgment brought by him to the expedition to Gnadenhutten he had

established his right to be considered in war as well as in peace the man

whose existence could be less easily spared than that of any other

Pennsylvanian. There is a pleasure in speculating on the turn that his

future might have taken if the terms in which Braddock recommended him to

the favor of the Crown had been followed by the fall of Fort Duquesne

instead of the battle of the Monongahela. While in his relations to

Braddock's expedition he was influenced, as he always was in every such

case, mainly by generous public spirit, yet it is manifest, too, that he

was fully alive to the significance that his first helpful contact with

such a British commander as Braddock might have for his own

self-advancement.

The sterner stuff in the character of Franklin, however, was to be still

further tried. During the year succeeding his second return from England in

1762, the minds of the people in the western counties of Pennsylvania, and

especially of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, whose passions were easily

deflected into channels of religious fanaticism, were inflamed almost to

madness by Indian atrocities, and this mental condition resulted in an act

of abominable butchery, such as has rarely blackened even the history of

the American Indian himself. Living not far from the town of Lancaster, on

the Manor of Conestoga, was the remnant of what had once been a

considerable tribe of the Six Nations. The members of this tribe sent

messengers to welcome the first English settlers of Pennsylvania with

presents of venison, corn and furs, and entered into a treaty of friendship

with William Penn which, in the figurative language of the savage, was to

last "as long as the Sun should shine, or the Waters run in the Rivers,"

and which in point of fact was faithfully observed by both parties. In the

course of time, as the whites purchased land from them, and hemmed them in

more and more closely, they settled down upon a part of the Manor assigned

to them by William Penn which they were not allowed by the Provincial

Government to alienate, and here they lived on terms of unbroken amity with

their white neighbors. In the further course of time, the tribe dwindled to

such an extent that there were only twenty survivors, seven men, five

women, and eight children of both sexes, whose means of subsistence were

supplied to some extent by mendicancy and the chase, but mainly by the sale

to the whites of the brooms, baskets and wooden ladles made by the women.

The oldest of the band, a man named Shehaes, was old enough to have been

present when the original chain of friendship between the tribe and William

Penn was brightened by a second treaty between the same contracting

parties. The youngest were infants. There is good reason to believe that at

least one or two of the band had been in secret commerce with the hostile

Indians whose shocking barbarities had filled the souls of such of the

Pennsylvania borderers as had not been tomahawked, carried off into

captivity or driven from their homes with sensations little short of

frenzied desperation. On Wednesday, the 14th of December, 1763, fifty men

from the territory about Paxton, a small town in Pennsylvania, on the

Susquehanna above Conestoga, all mounted, and armed with firelocks, hangers

and hatchets, descended upon the squalid huts of this band, about dawn, and

slaughtered in cold blood three men, two women and a young boy--the only

members of the vagabond band whom they found at home. The firelocks,

hangers and hatchets were all used in perpetrating the bloody work, and the

miserable victims were scalped and horribly mangled besides. Shehaes

himself was cut to pieces in his bed. Then, after seizing upon such booty

as was to be found, and applying the torch to most of the huts, the

murderers rode away through the snow-drifts to their homes. A shudder of

horror passed through the whites in the vicinity, and a cry of bitter

lamentation went up from the younger survivors of the band when they

returned to the sickening spot, where the charred bodies of their parents

and other relations, looking as one observer said like half burnt logs,

told the hideous story.

We had known the greater part of them from children

[said Susannah Wright, a humane white woman, who

resided near the spot], had been always intimate with

them. Three or four of the women were sensible and

civilized, and the Indians' children used to play with

ours, and oblige them all they could. We had many

endearing recollections of them, and the manner of

effecting the brutal enormity so affected us, that we

had to beg visitors to forbear to speak of it.

The public officials of the Province appear to have faithfully performed

their duty immediately after the tragedy. The survivors were gathered

together by the sheriff of Lancaster, and placed in the workhouse for

safety. A hundred and forty other friendly Indians, who had been converted

by the Moravians, fearing that they might be visited with just such

violence, had found, before the descent upon Conestoga, shelter near

Philadelphia, at the public expense, under the guidance of a good Moravian

minister. The Governor, John Penn, issued a proclamation calling upon all

the civil and military officers of the Colony and all His Majesty's other

liege subjects to do their duty. But the Governor soon found that he was

reckoning with that Scotch-Irish temper, which, at its highest point of

rigidity, is like concrete reinforced with iron rods, and which in this

instance was more or less countenanced by the sympathy of the entire

Province. Despite the proclamation of the Governor under the great seal of

the Colony, the incensed frontiersmen, now fired by the fresh taste of

blood as well as by the original conviction of the settlements from which

they came that an angry God had turned his face from the inhabitants of

Pennsylvania, because they had not smitten, hip and thigh, and utterly

destroyed the red-skinned Amorites and Canaanites, again assembled, and

riding into Lancaster, armed as on the previous occasion, broke in the door

of its workhouse and dispatched every solitary one of the poor wretches who

had escaped their pitiless hands. Thereupon, they mounted their horses,

huzzaed in triumph, and rode off unmolested. The whole thing was like the

flight of the pigeon-hawk, so swift and deadly was it; for, within ten or

twelve minutes after the alarm was given, the borderers were again in their

saddles. By a large part of the population of the Province the deed was

applauded as the infliction of just vengeance upon a race which had many

unspeakable enormities to answer for in its relations to the whites; by the

people of the Province generally, except the Quakers, it was but languidly

condemned, and the proclamations of the Governor proved to be mere paper

trumpets, for all the efforts of the Government to bring the criminals to

justice were wholly unsuccessful.

But there was one man in the Province, and he not a Quaker either, to whom

justice, mercy and law had not lost their meaning. In his _Narrative of the

Late Massacres in Lancaster County_, Franklin, in words as burning as any

ever inspired by righteous wrath, denounced with blistering force the

assassins and their crimes. Anger, Lord Bacon tells us, makes even dull men

witty. Just indignation in this case lifted one of the soberest and most

self-contained of men to the level of impassioned feeling and of almost

lyrical speech. With a firm yet rapid hand, Franklin sketched the history

of the tribe, its peaceful intercourse with the whites, its decline until

it numbered only the twenty creatures whom he brings vividly before us with

a few familiar strokes of individual description, the infamous

circumstances that attended the destruction of defenseless weakness in hut

and workhouse. Then, along with illustrations of clemency and magnanimity

derived from many different historical and national sources, and even from

the annals of semi-civilized and barbarous communities, and graphically

contrasted with the conduct of the ruthless men who had wreaked their will

upon the Conestoga villagers, male and female, and their children, he

poured out a tide of scathing execration upon the heads of the malefactors

which showed as nothing else in all his life ever showed how deep were the

fountains that fed the calm flow of his ordinary benevolence.

O, ye unhappy Perpetrators of this horrid Wickedness!

[he exclaimed, rising with a natural crescendo of

exalted feeling even into the sublimated province of

the apostrophe] reflect a Moment on the Mischief ye

have done, the Disgrace ye have brought on your

Country, on your Religion, and your Bible, on your

Families and Children! Think on the Destruction of your

captivated Country-folks (now among the wild _Indians_)

which probably may follow, in Resentment of your

Barbarity! Think on the Wrath of the United _Five

Nations_, hitherto our Friends, but now provoked by

your murdering one of their Tribes, in Danger of

becoming our bitter Enemies. Think of the mild and good

Government you have so audaciously insulted; the Laws

of your King, your Country, and your God, that you have

broken; the infamous Death that hangs over your Heads;

for Justice, though slow, will come at last. All good

People everywhere detest your Actions. You have imbrued

your Hands in innocent Blood; how will you make them

clean? The dying Shrieks and Groans of the Murdered,

will often sound in your Ears. Their Spectres will

sometimes attend you, and affright even your innocent

Children! Fly where you will, your Consciences will go

with you. Talking in your Sleep shall betray you, in

the Delirium of a Fever you yourselves shall make your

own Wickedness known.

These were honest, fearless words, but, so far as we know, the Erynnes did

not plant any stings of conscience in the breasts of the men from Paxton

District whom Franklin elsewhere in this Narrative described as the

Christian white savages of Paxton and Donegal. On the contrary, several

hundred men from the same region, armed with rifles and hatchets, and clad

in hunting shirts, marched towards Philadelphia with the avowed purpose of

killing the Moravian Indians who had found refuge in its vicinity. The city

was reduced to a state of terror, and Governor Penn, like his predecessors,

could think of nothing more expedient to do than to invoke the advice and

assistance of Franklin. He accordingly made Franklin's house his

headquarters, and freely consulted with him touching every defensive

measure required by the crisis. Again Franklin formed an association for

the protection of Philadelphia; and, under his auspices, the citizens of

Philadelphia were enrolled into nine companies, six of infantry, two of

horse, and one of artillery. "Governor Penn," he afterwards declared in a

letter to Lord Kames, "made my house for some time his headquarters, and

did everything by my advice; so that, for about forty-eight hours, I was a

very great man; as I had been once some years before, in a time of public

danger." On came the insurgents until they reached Germantown, seven miles

from the city. Here they were met by four citizens, of whom Franklin was

one, who had been requested by the Governor and his Council to confer with

them. While the conference was pending, Franklin's regiment, supported by a

detachment of King's troops, remained in the city under arms, and even

young Quakers labored incessantly to complete the intrenchments around the

barracks, in which the menaced Indians with their Moravian shepherd had

been placed. Indeed, now that the waves of the Presbyterian invasion were

lapping his own doorsill, the Quaker of every age in Philadelphia appears

to have entirely lost sight of the duty of non-resistance. The conference

satisfied the insurgents that graver work was ahead of them than that of

slaying and scalping old men, women and children, and they retraced their

steps. "The fighting face we put on," said Franklin, in his letter to Lord

Kames, "and the reasonings we used with the insurgents,... having turned

them back and restored quiet to the city, I became a less man than ever;

for I had, by these transactions, made myself many enemies among the

populace." He had, indeed, but not one whose enmity was not more honorable

to him than the friendship of even all his host of friends.

Nor did the eagerness of Franklin to bring the Paxton assassins to justice

cease with the conference at Germantown. Though pamphlets were sold in the

streets of Philadelphia lauding their acts, and inveighing against all who

had assisted in protecting the Moravian Indians, though the Governor

himself was weak or wicked enough to curry political favor with the party

which approved the recent outrages, Franklin still inflexibly maintained

that the law should be vindicated by the condign punishment of the Paxton

ringleaders. In another place we shall see what his resolute stand cost him

politically.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] In his Plan for Settling Two Western Colonies in North America,

Franklin says ruefully that, if the English did not flow westwardly into

the great country back of the Appalachian Mountains on both sides of the

Ohio, and between that river and the Lakes, which would undoubtedly

(perhaps in less than another century) become a populous and powerful

dominion, and a great accession of power either to England or France, the

French, with the aid of the Indians, would, by cutting off new means of

subsistence, discourage marriages among the English, and keep them from

increasing; thus (if the expression might be allowed) killing thousands of

their children before they were born.

[10] The existence of so much evil and misery in the world was a

stumbling-block to Franklin as it has been to so many other human beings.

In a letter to Jane Mecom, dated Dec. 30, 1770, he told her that he had

known in London some forty-five years before a printer's widow, named

Ilive, who had required her son by her will to deliver publicly in Salter's

Hall a solemn discourse in support of the proposition that this world is

the true Hell, or place of punishment for the spirits who have transgressed

in a better place and are sent here to suffer for their sins as animals of

all sorts. "In fact," Franklin continued, "we see here, that every lower

animal has its enemy, with proper inclinations, faculties, and weapons, to

terrify, wound, and destroy it; and that men, who are uppermost, are devils

to one another; so that, on the established doctrine of the goodness and

justice of the great Creator, this apparent state of general and

systematical mischief seemed to demand some such supposition as Mrs.

Ilive's, to account for it consistently with the honour of the Deity."

[11] The American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting

Useful Knowledge was formed in 1769 by the union of the Philosophical

Society founded by Franklin, which, after languishing for many years, was

revived in 1767, and The American Society Held at Philadelphia for the

Promotion of Useful Knowledge; and Franklin, though absent in England, was

elected its first President.

[12] As a token of his sense of obligation to the instruction derived by

him in his boyhood from a free Boston grammar school, Franklin bequeathed

the sum of one hundred pounds sterling to the free schools of that city,

subject to the condition that it was to be invested, and that the interest

produced by it was to be annually laid out in silver medals, to be awarded

as prizes.

[13] In an earlier letter to James Parker, Franklin commented on the

"Dutch" immigration into Pennsylvania very much as a Californian was

afterwards in the habit of doing on the Chinese immigration to our Pacific

coast. The "Dutch" under-lived, and were thereby enabled, he said, "to

under-work and under-sell the English." In his essay on _The Increase of

Mankind_, he asked: "Why should the _Palatine Boors_ be suffered to swarm

into our Settlements, and, by herding together, establish their Language

and Manners, to the Exclusion of ours?" Expressions in his letter to

Jackson, which we do not mention in our text, make it manifest enough that

he gravely doubted whether the German population of Pennsylvania could be

relied upon to assist actively in the defence of the Province in the event

of its being invaded by the French. However, after suggesting some means of

improving the situation, he is compelled to conclude with these words: "I

say, I am not against the Admission of Germans in general, for they have

their Virtues. Their Industry and Frugality are exemplary. They are

excellent Husbandmen; and contribute greatly to the Improvement of a

Country."

[14] Another sidelight upon the character of Franklin in his boyhood is

found in connection with the caution in regard to England that he gave to

Robert Morris in 1782, when the Revolutionary War was coming to an end.

"That nation," he said, "is changeable. And though somewhat humbled at

present, a little success may make them as insolent as ever. I remember

that, when I was a boxing boy, it was allowed, even after an adversary said

he had enough, to give him a rising blow. Let ours be a douser."

[15] Franklin certainly set an example on this occasion of the vigilant

regard to the future which he afterwards enjoined in such a picturesque way

upon Temple, when he was counselling the latter not to let the season of

youth slip by him unimproved by diligence in his studies. "The Ancients,"

he said, "painted _Opportunity_ as an old Man with Wings to his Feet &

Shoulders, a great Lock of Hair on the forepart of his Head, but bald

behind; whence comes our old saying, _Take Time by the Forelock_; as much

as to say, when it is past, there is no means of pulling it back again; as

there is no Lock behind to take hold of for that purpose." The advice of

similar tenor in a somewhat later letter from Franklin to Temple has a

touch of poetry about it. "If this Season is neglected," he said, "it will

be like cutting off the Spring from the Year." So quick was the sympathy of

Franklin always with youthful feelings and interests that he never grew too

old for the application to him of Emerson's highly imaginative lines,

"The old wine darkling in the cask,

Feels the bloom on the living vine."