Franklin indicated his antagonism toward governmental restraint of
trade, internal and among nations, in his antipathy toward British
mercantilism, it was not until after he became impregnated with French
doctrine that he began to express very fully his advocacy of free trade.
After Connecticut imposed a 5% duty on goods imported from neighboring
colonies, Franklin wrote to Jared Eliot in 1747 that it was likely that
the duty would devolve on the consumer and be "only another mode of
Taxing" the purchaser. In addition he recognized that smuggling,
virtually a colonial art, would cause the "fair Trader" to "be undersold
and ruined."[i-232] He urged that the import duty might suggest
selfishness, and might also tend to deter Connecticut commerce. Here, it
must be admitted, Franklin did not sanction free trade with a priori
appeals to the "natural order," the key in the arch of physiocracy. He
rather appealed to the instincts and observations of the prudential
tradesman. His _Plan for Regulating Indian Affairs_ (1766), unlike his
1747 letters, _suggested_ (if it did not express concretely) inviolable
laws of commerce in the words: "It seems contrary to the Nature of
Commerce, for Government to interfere in the Prices of Commodities....
It therefore seems to me, that Trade will best find and make its own
Rates; and that Government cannot well interfere, unless it would take
the whole Trade into its own hands ... and manage it by its own Servants
at its own Risque."[i-233] To Dupont de Nemours he admitted that British
mercantilism had not achieved "that wisdom which sees the welfare of the
parts in the prosperity of the whole."[i-234] To Sir Edward Newenham,
representing the County of Dublin, he expressed admiration for Irish
efforts to secure freedom of commerce, "which is the right of all
mankind." "To enjoy all the advantages of the climate, soil, and
situation in which God and nature have placed us, is as clear a right as
that of breathing; and can never be justly taken from men but as a
punishment for some atrocious crime."[i-235] Three years before he met
Quesnay (though after he had read Dupont de Nemours's letters to
Templeman), Franklin sanctioned free trade through appeal to other than
utilitarian prudence: first he admitted that British restraint of
colonial commerce, for example with the West Indies, will tend to
prevent colonists from making remittances for British manufactured
goods, since "The Cat can yield but her skin." Then with a suggestion of
philosophic generalization he hoped that "In time perhaps Mankind may be
wise enough to let Trade take its own Course, find its own Channels, and
regulate its own Proportions, etc."[i-236] Restraint of manufactures
"deprive[s] us of the Advantage God & Nature seem to have intended
us.... So selfish is the human Mind! But 'tis well there is One above
that rules these Matters with a more equal Hand. He that is pleas'd to
feed the Ravens, will undoubtedly take care to prevent a Monopoly of the
Carrion."[i-237] Glorifying the husbandman and suggesting that trade
restrictions disturb a natural order, Franklin wrote to David Hartley in
1783 that Great Britain has tended to impede "the mutual communications
among men of the gifts of God, and rendering miserable multitudes of
merchants and their families, artisans, and cultivators of the earth,
the most peaceable and innocent part of the human species."[i-238]
That Franklin was not without his influence in eighteenth-century
economic thought we may gather from Dugald Stewart's opinion that "the
expressions _laissez-faire_ and, _pas trop gouverner_ are indebted
chiefly for their extensive circulation to the short and luminous
comments of Franklin, which had so extraordinary an influence on public
opinion in the old and new world."[i-239] Mr. Carey maintains that
Franklin, unlike the physiocrats, inveighed against trade regulations
because they led to smuggling rather than because to any important
degree they violated the "natural order." The physiocrats are tenuous,
amorphous, and ambiguous when they seek to define _L'Ordre naturel_. At
times Dupont de Nemours seems to identify it with a primitivistic
past.[i-240] Quesnay, on the other hand, says: "Natural right is
indeterminate in a state of nature. The right only appears when justice
and labour have been established."[i-241] Again, he asserts: "By
entering society and making conventions for their mutual advantage men
increase the scope of natural right without incurring any restriction of
their liberties, for this is just the state of things that enlightened
reason would have chosen."[i-242] Natural order is a "providential
order": "Its laws are irrevocable, pertaining as they do to the essence
of matter and the soul of humanity. They are just the expression of the
will of God."[i-243] According to the physiocrats, the laws of the
natural order are "unique, eternal, invariable, and universal."[i-244]
Now it is true that nowhere did Franklin assert that his advocacy of
laissez faire and agrarianism was neatly dependent on these a priori
bases. Even though this is true, there are references (quoted above)
which seem to suggest that trade restrictions are violations of the very
nature of things. It is not wholly fanciful (bearing in mind Franklin's
adoration of a Deity who is the creator and sustainer of immutable,
universal physical laws which together present the mind with the concept
of a vast, wonderfully harmonized physical machine) to conjecture to
what extent this matchless physical harmony tended to challenge him with
the possibility of discovering a parallel economic machine operating
according to immutable laws capable of proof and human adaptability.
O. H. Taylor has shown that "The evolution of the idea of 'laws' in
economics has closely paralleled its evolution in the natural
sciences."[i-245] In searching for these economic constants, "the
economic mechanism was regarded as a wise device of the Creator for
causing individuals, while pursuing only their own interests, to promote
the prosperity of society; and for causing the right adjustment to one
another of supplies, demand, prices, and incomes, to take place
automatically, in consequence of the free action of all
individuals."[i-246] After giving due weight to the fact that Franklin
saw in the doctrine of the physiocrats trenchant arguments to buttress
his attacks on British mercantilism, one has cogent evidence for at
least raising the question, To what extent may his apprehension of a
demonstrable physical harmony have suggested to his speculative mind an
economic analogy?[i-247]
VI. FRANKLIN'S POLITICAL THEORIES
Plague of the Pennsylvania proprietaries, propagandist of the American
Revolution, moderator of the Constitutional Convention, Franklin was all
through his life a politician and statesman in an age characterized
above all by political speculations and changes in the destiny of
states. Colonial patriot, "arch rebel of King George III," "idol of the
court of Versailles," Franklin was a cyclopedia of political strategy
and principles. Only through a genetic survey of Franklin the political
theorist can one hope to understand his mind as he changed from
imperialist, to revolutionist, to the patriarch of the Constitutional
Convention who, like a balance wheel, moderated the extreme party
factions.
In the early 1720's, Franklin had breathed a Boston air saturated with
discontent between the royal governor and the governed. By 1730 he was
printer to the Pennsylvania Assembly and in 1736 was appointed clerk to
that body. Yet one learns little of his political biases until 1747,
when he published _Plain Truth_. In 1729 he genially asserted that he
was "no Party-man,"[i-248] and in 1746 temperately stated,
Free from the bitter Rage of Party Zeal,
All those we love who seek the publick Weal.[i-249]
His _Plain Truth_ (November, 1747), directed against the proprietary
governor as well as against the Quaker assembly, showed Franklin a party
man only if one dedicated to "the publick weal" was a party man. With
all respect for the Quaker conscience which checks military activity,
Franklin could not, however, condone its virtually prohibiting others
from defending the province's border. And the proprietaries had shown
an inveterate unwillingness to arm Pennsylvania--a reluctance which did
not, however, prevent them from collecting taxes and quitrents. On other
questions the governor and his chiefs had to contend with the opposition
of the assembly. Without opposition, the proprietary government could
serenely kennel itself in its medieval privilege of remaining dumb to an
urgent need: one remembers that eighteenth-century proprietary colonies
were "essentially feudal principalities, upon the grantees of which were
bestowed all the inferior regalities and subordinate powers of
legislation which formerly belonged to the counts palatine, while
provision was also made for the maintenance of sovereignty in the king
[the king paid little attention to Pennsylvania], and for the
realization of the objects of the grant."[i-250] While the government
remained inert, Pennsylvania would be a pawn in the steeled hands of the
French and their rum-subsidized Indian mercenaries. Appealing to
Scripture and common sense, Franklin pleaded for "Order, Discipline, and
a few Cannon."[i-251] Not untruthfully he warned that "we are like the
separate Filaments of Flax before the Thread is form'd, without
Strength, because without Connection, but UNION would make us strong,
and even formidable."[i-252] Since war existed, there was no need to
consider him a militarist because he challenged, "The Way to secure
Peace is to be prepared for War."[i-253] In the midst of _Plain Truth_
Franklin uttered what only _before_ the time of Locke could be
interpreted in terms of feudal _comitatus_: he entreated his readers to
consider, "if not as Friends, at least as Legislators, that _Protection_
is as truly due from the Government to the People, as _Obedience_ from
the People to the Government."[i-254] Suggestive of the contract theory,
this is revolutionary only in a very elementary way. With the French
writhing under the Treaty of Paris, with appeals to natural rights and
the right of revolution, this once harmless principle took on Gargantuan
significance. But Thomas Penn anticipated wisely enough the ultimate
implication of Franklin's paper; Penn intuitively saw the march of time:
"Mr. Franklin's doctrine that obedience to governors is no more due them
than protection to the people, is not fit to be in the heads of the
unthinking multitude. He is a dangerous man and I should be glad if he
inhabited any other country, as I believe him of a very uneasy spirit.
However, as he is a sort of tribune of the people, he must be treated
with regard."[i-255] It is difficult to see how Franklin's passion for
order and provincial union,[i-256] obviously necessary, could have been
considered so illiberally subversive of the government. By 1747 Franklin
had read in _Telemachus_ that kings exist for the people, not the people
for the kings; he must have read Locke's justification of the "Glorious
Revolution" and have become aware of the impetus it gave to the British
authority of consent in its subsequent constitutional history.
After his first political pamphlet, he widened his horizon from
provincial to colonial affairs. Two years before the London Board of
Trade demanded that colonial governors hold a conference with the
Iroquois, Franklin seems to have devised plans for uniting the several
colonies. He was aware of the narrow particularism shown by the
provinces; he knew also that since "Governors are often on ill Terms
with their Assemblies," no concerted military efforts could be achieved
without a military federation.[i-257] One remembers that as soon as he
could think politically he was an imperialist, a lesser William Pitt,
and in his _Increase of Mankind_ (1751) could gloat over an envisioned
thickly populated America--"What an Accession of Power to the _British_
Empire by Sea as well as Land!"[i-258] When the Board of Trade, after
British efforts to bring the colonies together had failed, demanded that
something be done, Franklin was appointed one of the commissioners to
meet at Albany in 1754. Like Franklin, Governor Glen had admitted that
the colonies were "a Rope of Sand ... loose and inconnected."[i-259]
Franklin's plan, adopted by the commissioners, called for a
Governor-General "appointed by the king" and a Grand Council made up of
members chosen by the Assembly of each of the colonies, the Governor "to
have a negation on all acts of the Grand Council, and carry into
execution whatever is agreed on by him and that Council."[i-260] Surely
not a very auspicious beginning for one who later was to favor the
legislative over the executive functions of state. The plan included the
powers of making Indian treaties of peace and war, of regulating Indian
trade and Indian purchases, of stimulating the settling of new lands, of
making laws to govern new areas, of raising soldiers, of laying general
duties, et cetera.[i-261] But Franklin did not minimize the lack of
cohesion of the colonies. We recollect that "in 1755, at a time when
their very existence was threatened by the French, Massachusetts and New
York engaged in a bitter boundary controversy leading to riot and
bloodshed."[i-262] The colonies refused to ratify the plan--"their weak
Noddles are perfectly distracted,"[i-263] wrote Franklin. He was
probably right when he observed in 1789 that had the plan been adopted
"the subsequent Separation of the Colonies from the Mother Country might
not so soon have happened."[i-264] The sending of British regulars to
America and the resulting efforts at taxation were not least among the
sparks which set off the Revolution.
Franklin's _Three Letters to Governor Shirley_ (1754), while expressing
no credulous views of the wisdom of the people, maintained in one breath
that the colonists were loyal to the Constitution and Crown as ever
colonists were and in another that "it is supposed an undoubted right of
Englishmen, not to be taxed but by their own consent given through their
representatives."[i-265] (Shirley had apparently written that the
Council in the Albany Plan should be appointed by England, and not by
the colonial assemblies.) Franklin held for the colonists' right to
English civil liberty and the right to enjoy the Constitution. Here
again we find a factor later magnified into one of the major causes of
the Revolution.
In addition to being lethargic in the defense of the Pennsylvania
borders, the proprietor refused "to be taxed except for a trifling Part
of his Estate, the Quitrents, located unimprov'd Lands, Money at
Interest, etc., etc., being exempted by Instructions to the
Governor."[i-266] Thereupon Franklin turned from colonial affairs
(which had indeed proved obstinate) to pressing local matters, when in
1757 he was appointed agent to go to London to demand that the
proprietor submit his estates to be taxed. In the _Report of the
Committee of Aggrievances of the Assembly of Pennsylvania_[i-267] (Feb.
22, 1757) it was charged that the proprietor had violated the royal
charter and the colonists' civil rights as Englishmen, and had abrogated
their natural rights, rights "inherent in every man, antecedent to all
laws."[i-268] Later it was but a short step from provincial matters to
colonial rights of revolution. In this _Report_ we see Franklin
associated for the first time expressly with the
throne-and-altar-defying concept of natural rights.
Although we have yet to review the evidence which shows that Franklin at
one stage in his political career was an arch-imperialist, we need to
digress to observe an intellectual factor which, if only fragmentarily
expressed in his political thought during his activities in behalf of
Pennsylvania liberties, was to become a momentous sanction when during
the war he became a diplomat of revolution. From the Stoics, from
Cicero, Grotius, Puffendorf, Burlamaqui, and as Rev. Jonathan
Mayhew[i-269] observes, from Plato and Demosthenes, from Sidney, Milton,
Hoadley, and Locke; in addition, from Gordon and Trenchard (see _Cato's
Letters_ and _The Independent Whig_), Blackstone, Coke--from these and
many others, the colonists derived a pattern of thought known as natural
rights, dependent on natural law.[i-270] There is no better summary of
natural rights than the Declaration of Independence; and of it John
Adams remarked: "There is not an idea in it but what has been hackneyed
in Congress for two years before."[i-271] Carl Becker pointedly
observes: "Where Jefferson got his ideas is hardly so much a question as
where he could have got away from them."[i-272] A characteristic summary
of natural law may be found in Blackstone's _Commentaries_:[i-273]
This law of nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by
God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any
other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and
at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary
to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force
and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this
original.[i-274]
Discoverable only by reason, natural laws are immutable and universal,
apprehensible by all men. As Hamilton wrote,
The origin of all civil government, justly established, must
be a voluntary compact between the rulers and the ruled, and
must be liable to such limitations as are necessary for the
security of the _absolute rights_ of the latter; for what
original title can any man, or set of men, have to govern
others, except their own consent? To usurp dominion over a
people in their own despite, or to grasp at a more extensive
power than they are willing to intrust, is to violate that
law of nature which gives every man a right to his personal
liberty, and can therefore confer no obligation to
obedience.[i-275]
In a pre-social state, real or hypothetical, men possess certain
natural rights, the crown of them, according to Locke,[i-276] being "the
mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call
by the general name, property." In entering the social state men through
free consent are willing to sacrifice fragments of their natural rights
in order to gain civil rights. This process would seem tyrannical were
one to forget that the surrender is sanctioned by the principle of
consent. Men in sacrificing their rights expect from society (i.e., the
governors) civil rights and, in addition, protection of their
unsurrendered natural rights. A voluntary compact is achieved between
the governor and the governed. If laws are fabricated which contravene
these, the governed have retained for themselves the right of forcible
resistance. A natural inference from these premises is that sovereignty
rests with the people. In the colonies this secular social compact was
buttressed by the principle of covenants and natural rights within the
churches. Sermons became "textbooks of politics."[i-277] Miss Baldwin
has ably illustrated how before 1763 the clergy in Franklin's native New
England had popularized the "doctrines of natural right, the social
contract, and the right of resistance" as well as "the fundamental
principle of American constitutional law, that government, like its
citizens, is bounded by law and when it transcends its authority it acts
illegally."[i-278]
In an oration commemorating the Boston massacre Dr. Benjamin Church
stated the principle of the compact: "A sense of their wants and
weakness in a state of nature, doubtless inclined them to such
reciprocal aids and support, as eventually established society."[i-279]
Defining liberty as "the happiness of living under laws of our own
making by our personal consent or that of our representatives,"[i-280]
he warned that any breach of trust in the governor "effectually absolves
subjects from every bond of covenant and peace."[i-281]
Then, too, Newtonian science buttressed the principle of natural rights.
Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated mathematically that the universe was
governed by a fagot of immutable, universal, and harmonious physical
laws. These were capable of being apprehended through reason. Now even
as reason discovered the matchless physical harmony, so could reason,
men argued, ferret out unvarying, universal principles of
social-political rights. These principles constituted natural rights,
natural to the extent that all men had the power, if not the capacity,
to discover and learn them through use of their native reason. Newton
demonstrated the validity of physical law: Locke sanctioned the
supremacy of reason. Since Franklin was himself motivated by Newtonian
rationalism and was a student of Locke, there is reason to believe that
he was vibrantly aware of the extent to which the
scientific-rationalistic ideology lent sanction to man's timeless quest
for the certitude of "natural rights," antecedent to all laws.
Franklin's mission to London in 1757 as Pennsylvania agent may be
understood through an examination of _An Historical Review of the
Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania_ (London, 1759).[i-282] If
not written by him, at least "the ideas are his." Convinced that the
proprietors "seem to have no regard to the Publick Welfare, so the
private Point may be gained--'Tis like Firing a House to have
Opportunity of stealing a Trencher,"[i-283] Franklin knew that a
brilliant attack had to be made were he to intimidate the proprietary
government into assuming its charter responsibilities and granting the
colonists what they considered to be inviolable rights. By 1758 his
"Patience with the Proprietors is almost tho' not quite spent."[i-284] A
few months later, impatient with unresponsive officials, he wrote to
Joseph Galloway: "God knows when we shall see it finish'd, and our
Constitution settled firmly on the Foundation of Equity and English
Liberty: But I am not discouraged; and only wish my Constituents may
have the Patience that I have, and that I find will be absolutely
necessary."[i-285] In 1759 Franklin still found the proprietors
"obscure, uncertain and evasive," and was acutely virulent in despising
Rev. William Smith, who was in London attacking him and the Quaker
Assembly's demands.[i-286] In the same letter to Galloway he uttered a
thought which he sought to develop during his second trip to London as
Assembly agent in 1764: "For my part, I must own, I am tired of
Proprietary Government, and heartily wish for that of the Crown."
Turning to _An Historical Review_ to learn the political principles
sanctioning the Assembly's grievances against its feudal lords, one
finds that the colonists conceived it "our duty to defend the rights and
privileges we enjoy under the royal charter."[i-287] Secondly, they
reminded the lords that the laws agreed upon in England (prior to the
settling of Pennsylvania) were "of the nature of an original compact
between the proprietary and the freemen, and as such were reciprocally
received and executed."[i-288] Thirdly, they demanded the right to
exercise the "birthright of every British subject," "to have a property
of [their] own, in [their] estate, person, and reputation; subject only
to laws enacted by [their] own concurrence, either in person or by
[their] representatives."[i-289] Fourthly, they resisted the proprietors
on basis of their possession of natural rights, "antecedent to all
laws."[i-290] The editor of the protest charged that "It is the cause of
every man who deserves to be free, everywhere."[i-291] It is ironic that
this grievance should have enjoyed the sanction of one who, like Lord
Chatham, was an empire builder, one who proudly wrote, "I am a Briton,"
and even during the time he sought to retrieve the Pennsylvania
colonists' lost natural rights, entertained the ideas of a British
imperialist. Franklin little saw that the internal Pennsylvania struggle
was to be contagious, that the provincial revolt was motivated partially
at least by political theories which were to be given expression _par
excellence_ when a discontented minority created the Declaration of
Independence. In 1760 Franklin had the satisfaction of witnessing the
victory of the Assembly over the Proprietors, although he was not
unaware that the right to tax feudal lands was less than that right he
had already envisioned--the right to become a royal colony.[i-292]
But Franklin's pleas for charter, constitutional, and natural rights may
be misleading if one considers his position as suggestive of doctrinaire
republicanism, of Paine's "Government is the badge of our lost
innocence," or of Shelley's
Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower.
His political activities assert the rights of the governed against the
governor; his writings often indirectly suggest the intemperance of the
governed, and the need for something more lasting than mere outer
freedom. Like Coleridge, who wrote:
[Man] may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within,
white-locked Father Abraham harangued:
The Taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the
Government were the only Ones we had to pay, we might more
easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more
grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our
_Idleness_, three times as much by our _Pride_, and four
times as much by our _Folly_; and from these Taxes the
Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an
Abatement.[i-293]
With solid good sense Franklin acknowledged that "happiness in this
life rather depends on internals than externals."[i-294]