American Aurora
Page 62
So let’s resume …
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1785
The Pennsylvania Gazette
PHILADELPHIA, On Wednesday last arrived, in the ship London Packet, Captain Truxtun, His Excellency Doctor FRANKLIN, late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the Court of France, after an absence of near nine years.
The important scenes in which this man has been a principal agent … furnish a striking example … how greatly a single individual may dignify a nation. The exalted names of WASHINGTON and FRANKLIN will be the boast of Americans in centuries to come.
The Doctor was received at the wharf by a number of citizens who attended him to his house with acclamations of joy. A discharge of cannon announced his arrival, and the bells rang a joyful peel to his welcome.
With the Doctor came his [grandson] … Master Benjamin Bache …
On Thursday, the Hon. the General Assembly [of Pennsylvania] … presented the following address, which was read by the Speaker …
We are confident, Sir … that your services in the public councils and negociations … will be recorded in history to your immortal honor …
On Friday … the Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania presented the following Address …
Among the many benevolent projections which have held so ample a foundation for the esteem and gratitude of your native country, permit this seminary to reckon her first establishment upon the solid principles of Equal Liberty … restored thro’ the influence of our happy [state] Constitution …
Saturday last the following ADDRESS was presented by a Committee of fifteen members of the Constitutional Society …
In the course of a long and bloody war, we have been deeply indebted to your wisdom and vigilance for the frequent support we have received … from our great and good allies … You must not think yourself flattered when we add that your personal character as a philosopher and a citizen has given weight to your negociation …
It would be endless to enumerate the great variety of instances in which you have benefited the state of Pennsylvania … We cannot, however, omit to express the high veneration with which we view you as the father of our free and excellent constitution. In this great work, we persuade ourselves that you, in conjunction with the other patriots of the convention over which you presided, have erected a strong hold to the sacred cause of liberty which will long continue … to resist the assaults of all its enemies …
WILLIAM ADCOOK, Chairman …
To which the DOCTOR was pleased to present the following
ANSWER …
Gentlemen … I think myself happy in returning to live under the free constitution of this commonwealth and hope with you that we and our posterity may long enjoy it.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
A Committee from a respectable Meeting of Citizens at Byrn’s Tavern having waited on Doctor FRANKLIN to propose to him a Seat in the [state] Executive Council at the ensuing Election; it is with the greatest satisfaction, the Committee announce to the Public his accession to the Proposal, to which they do not apprehend there will be a dissenting voice in the city.
Another eyewitness reports:
Mr. Franklin arrived … in better health than when he left Paris. He has been received like a titulary god—it was a general holiday. The vessels in port were all in flags, even the British. [The French Sculptor] monsieur Houdon was with him.
Monsieur Franklin has returned his grandson, already full grown, to the lad’s mother. This child was only a boy when he was taken to Paris in 1776.1467
Friday, September 23, 1785. Today, Tom Paine writes from New York:
To Honorable Benjamin Franklin, Esq …
It gives me exceeding great pleasure to have the opportunity of congratulating you on your return home …1468
He also sends congratulations to Benny Bache:
Master Bache was too young when he went away to remember me; but do me the service to make him a sharer of my congratulations.1469
Sunday, September 25, 1785. Today, Ben Franklin writes Tom Paine:
Your kind Congratulations on my safe Return give me a great deal of Pleasure; for I have always valued your friendship …
Be assured, my dear Friend, that instead of Repenting that I was your Introducer into America, I value myself on the Share I had in procuring for it the Acquisition of so useful and valuable a Citizen.
I shall be very glad to see you …1470
Between now and the time Tom Paine leaves for France, he will be a frequent visitor at the Franklin home.1471
Sunday, October 30, 1785. Today, eighty-year-old Benjamin Franklin writes his dear friend Mrs. Mary Hewson in London:
I am plung’d again into public Business, as deep as ever … Ben is at College to compleat his Studies …1472
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1785
The Pennsylvania Gazette
PHILADELPHIA, November 2. Saturday last, the Council and General Assembly of this state met in the Assembly room, for the purpose of choosing a President … for the ensuing year; when His Excellency BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Esq; was chosen President … of this commonwealth. After which, proclamation of the election was made at the Court-House, amidst a great concourse of people who expressed their satisfaction by repeated shouts …
Saturday, May 6, 1786. Today, in a letter to his friend Mary Hewson, in London, Ben Franklin continues his long-standing pleasantry that Benny Bache will someday marry Mary’s daughter, Elizabeth:
Ben is finishing his studies at college and continues to behave as well as when you knew him, so I think he will make you a good son.1473
Saturday, August 12, 1786. Today, Benny Bache turns seventeen years old. He studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Tuesday, August 22, 1786. Today, delegates from fifty towns in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, meet in Hatfield, Massachusetts, to discuss the plight of farmers whose inability to pay debts and taxes subjects them to imprisonment and their farms to foreclosure. From minutes of the meeting:
The convention … were of opinion that many grievances and unnecessary burdens now lying upon the people are the sources of … discontent … throughout this Commonwealth. Among which the following articles were voted as such, viz.
1st. The existence of the Senate.
2d. The present mode of representation.
3d. The officers of the government not being annually dependent on the representatives of the people, in General Court [legislature] assembled for their salaries …
4th. All the civil officers of government not being annually elected by the representatives of the people in General Court [legislature] assembled …
19th. Voted, That whereas several of the above articles of grievances arise from defects in the constitution [of Massachusetts]; therefore a revision of the same ought to take place …1474
These Massachusetts citizens want to discard John Adams’ Massachusetts constitution, to eliminate the Massachusetts senate (leaving a single-chamber legislature), to have that single-chamber legislature choose government officers annually, and to discard wealth qualifications for office-holders, etc. In short, they propose to replace John Adams’ aristocratic government with Ben Franklin’s democratic Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776!
Having served their country and been paid in worthless currency, having incurred debts to recultivate their farms, and now (in the face of a recession) lacking the cash to pay back those debts or even to pay their Massachusetts taxes, these debtor farmers can’t obtain debt relief from the Massachusetts legislature (“The House of Representatives is intended as the Representative of the Persons, and the Senate of the property of the Commonwealth … ”) because the Massachusetts senate, representing (and composed of) their wealthy creditors, won’t agree.
Other Massachusetts counties will meet. Farmers must get debt relief (and constitutional change), or, once again, they’ll take up arms!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1786
The Pennsylvania Gazette
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BOSTON, September 6. It is somewhat extraordinary, says a correspondent, that the existence of the [Massachusetts] senate should be complained of by the several county conventions as a grievance; … and can attribute it to no other cause than that body’s keeping their doors always shut, and thereby debarring their constituents from a knowledge of their debates and proceedings.
A sensible writer in the Hampshire Herald, of last Tuesday, says, “County conventions have proved the occasion, and some of the members have been the fomenters of riots and tumultuous raising of the people …”
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1786
The Pennsylvania Gazette
BOSTON, September 14. Monday last about 1000 men, with arms of various sorts assembled at Concord … On Tuesday, they took possession of the grounds opposite the Court-house, and kept a number of guards marching backward and forward, from the line they formed in the Court-house, to prevent any persons, other than their own friends and comrades approaching it … About two o’clock in the afternoon, a man acting as a Sergeant, with two drums and fifes, went some distance and in about half an hour returned at the head of about 90 armed men from the countries of Hampshire and Worcester … A convention from about 26 towns, in consequence of a circular letter from Concord, were sitting in the meeting-house …
Those debtor farmers will no longer allow merchant creditors, fancy lawyers, or even the courts of Massachusetts to jail them or foreclose their farms!
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1786
The Pennsylvania Gazette
BOSTON … October 7. The General Court [the Massachusetts legislature] is now deeply engaged in devising measures for restoring peace to the deluded inhabitants of the several refractory counties, and for giving efficacy, permanency, and dignity to the laws and constitution of the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts].
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1786
The Pennsylvania Gazette
BOSTON … Extract of a letter from a Gentleman in Worcester, dated Tuesday evening, December 5, 9 o’clock.
We have been in an alarm for twelve days past. Last week the insurgents in this county and the county of Berkshire, were collected to join those from Middlesex and Bristol, to stop the Courts of Common Pleas and Sessions at Cambridge … They were headed by [Daniel Shays], who, it is said, had about 100 from Hampshire …
On Monday the militia in the town of Worcester was paraded, and 170 men appeared in support of government … I have just heard that the militia from Brookfield are on the march in support of government …
Wednesday morning, 11 o’clock. Insurgents still in town. The post-rider, who brought the above letter, informs, That he was yesterday morning at Patch’s Tavern in Worcester; That … the number of insurgents amounted to 1800 or 2000 men.
Monday, January 1, 1787. New Year’s Day. Today, in London, John Adams completes Volume One of his three-volume response to Frenchmen, like Turgot, and Americans, like Tom Paine and Massachusetts rebel Daniel Shays, who prefer Ben Franklin’s Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 with its simple one-chamber legislative government over Adams’ Massachusetts constitution with a wealthy chief executive and propertied state senate to veto the democratic house of representatives. John Adams:
The intention [of Turgot’s letter] was to celebrate Franklin’s Constitution and condemn mine. I understood it, and undertook to defend my constitution, and it cost me three volumes.1475
In John Adams’ Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Against the Attack of M. Turgot, in His Letter to Dr. Price, Dated the Twenty-second Day of March, 1778, John Adams reviews ancient and modern governments to conclude that the English constitution, with its two-chamber legislature (including the House of Lords!) and strong executive (the king!), is, at least in theory, the best of all possible forms. John Adams:
M. Turgot had seen only the constitutions of New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland, and the first constitution of Pennsylvania. His principal intention was to censure the three former. From these three, the [federal] constitution of the United States was afterwards almost entirely drawn.
The drift of my whole work was to vindicate these three constitutions …1476
In May, a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia will decide a new federal Constitution for the United States of America. John Adams’ Defence will be widely circulated and extremely influential at that convention.1477 From Volume One of Adams’ Defence:
M. Turgot, in his letter to Dr. Price, confesses, “that he is not satisfied with the constitutions which have hitherto been formed for the different states of America.” He observes, “that, by most of them, the customs of England are imitated without any particular motive. Instead of collecting all authority into one centre, that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a body of representatives, a council, and a governor, because there is in England a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. They endeavor to balance these different powers, as if this equilibrium, which in England may be a necessary check to the enormous influence of royalty, could be of any use in republics founded upon the equality of all the citizens, and as if establishing different orders of men was not a source of divisions and disputes.”
There has been, from the beginning of the revolution in America, a party in every state who have entertained sentiments similar to those of M. Turgot. Two or three of them have established governments upon his principle … [I]t becomes necessary to examine it …1478
I … contend that the English constitution is, in theory, … the most stupendous fabric of human invention; and that the Americans ought to be applauded instead of censured, for imitating it as far as they have done … The Americans have not indeed [adequately] imitated it in [failing to give] a negative [an absolute veto] upon their legislature to the executive power; in this respect their balances are incomplete, very much I confess to my mortification …1479
M. Turgot intended to recommend to the Americans … a single assembly of representatives of the people, without a governor and without a senate …
Shortly before the date of M. Turgot’s letter, Dr. Franklin had arrived in Paris with the American [state] constitutions, and, among the rest, that of Pennsylvania, in which there was but one assembly. It was reported, too, that the Doctor had presided in the convention when it was made, and there approved it …
M. Turgot … tells us our republics are “founded on the equality …” But, what are we to understand here by equality? … Was there, or will there ever be, a nation whose individuals were all equal, in natural and acquired qualities, in virtues, talents, and riches? The answer of all mankind must be in the negative. It must then be acknowledged that in every state, [as] in the Massachusetts, for example, there are inequalities which God and nature have planted there …
In this society of Massachusettensians then, there is, it is true, a moral and political equality … [T]here are, nevertheless, inequalities of great moment … 1. There is an inequality of wealth … 2. Birth … In the Massachusetts, then, there are persons descended from some of their ancient governors, counsellors, judges …1480
[T]his natural aristocracy … is a fact essential to be considered in the institution of a government …1481
The great question therefore is, What combination … ? The controversy between M. Turgot and me is whether a single assembly of representatives be this form? He maintains the affirmative. I am for the negative …1482
If there is, then, in society such a natural aristocracy … how shall the legislator avail himself of their influence for the equal benefit of the public? and how, on the other hand, shall he prevent them from disturbing the public happiness? I answer, by arranging them all, or at least the most conspicuous of them, together in one assembly, by the name of a senate; by separating them from all pretensions to the executive power, and by controlling their ambition and avarice by an assembly of representatives on one side and by the executive authority on the other.1483
In M. Turgot’s singl
e assembly, those who should think themselves most distinguished by blood and education, as well as fortune, would be most ambitious … It is from the natural aristocracy in a single assembly that the first danger is to be apprehended in the present state of manners in America; and with a balance of landed property in the hands of the people, so decided in their favor, the progress to degeneracy … would … grow faster or slower every year …
The only remedy is to throw the rich and the proud into one group, in a separate assembly, and there tie their hands; if you give them scope with the people at large or their representatives, they will destroy all equality and liberty with the consent and acclamations of the people themselves … But placing them alone by themselves, the society avails itself of all their abilities and virtues; they become a solid check to the representatives themselves, as well as to the executive power …1484
In [the constitution of Lacedæmonia], there were three orders, and a balance, not indeed equal to that of England, for want of a negative [veto] in each branch; but the nearest resembling it of any we have yet seen. The king, the nobles, the senate, and the people, in two assemblies, are surely more orders than a governor, senate, and house … The Lacedaemonian republic … had the three essential parts of the best possible government; it was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.1485
Thomas Jefferson:
Can any one read Mr. Adams’ defence of the American constitutions without seeing he was a monarchist?1486