Franklin

by Thomas Fleming

  Although he was making progress, Franklin became more and more disgusted with the Penns as human beings. It is an intriguing insight into Franklin’s mind. As expansive as his political theories were, he was intensely human in his personal relationships. Once a man lost his respect, he rarely regained it, and he was most likely to be treated with remarkable ruthlessness. He did not even deign to apologize when he learned that Thomas Penn had gotten his hands on a letter Franklin had written to Isaac Norris in Pennsylvania, describing the scene in which Penn gave up his father’s honor in the argument over the charter. Penn was particularly incensed that Franklin said his manner resembled a “low jockey.”

  Franklin scolded Norris for being so careless with his letters, but he coolly rejected a reproof from Dr. John Fothergill, although he admitted that it had given Penn an excuse to break off negotiations with him. To Norris and other friends, Franklin made it clear that he believed negotiating with the Penns was a waste of time. Better to sidestep them by petitioning the King to convert Pennsylvania into a royal province under the government of the Crown. “The government and property of a province should not be in the same family,” he told one of his correspondents. “‘Tis too much weight in one scale.”

  To his chief political aide Joseph Galloway, Franklin wrote: “I still see nothing in the letter but what was proper for me to write, as you ought to be acquainted with everything that is important to your affairs and it is of no small importance to know what sort of a man we have to deal with, and how base his principles. I might indeed have spar’d the comparison of Thomas to a low jockey, who triumph’d with insolence when a purchaser complain’d of being cheated in a horse . . . but indignation extorted it from me, and I cannot yet say that I much repent of it. It sticks in his liver, I find . . . Let him bear what he so well deserves.”

  Showing a flash of Poor Richard, Franklin added that by filching private messages, Penn had confirmed the adage “Listeners seldom hear any good of themselves.”

  This attitude of course sent the Penns into a frenzy of resentment. From their point of view, it was nothing less than a revolution. But that was Franklin’s way. Once he felt that the moral value of a relationship was undermined, he was ruthlessly ready to dispense with it.

  Simultaneously, the two Franklins became involved in another more subtle controversy, emanating from the undercurrent of alienation and misunderstanding that appeared from time to time in the relationships between the colonies and the mother country.

  The war in America had drawn the attention of the average Englishman to the colonies for the first time in decades, and it also had brought together in often uncomfortable partnership American and British troops in forays against the French. Like General Braddock, more than a few British officers found the undisciplined Americans irritating, and echoes of their dissatisfaction drifted back to London. William Strahan’s paper The London Chronicle printed several letters purportedly by a British officer who had served in New York and Pennsylvania. The writer assailed the Americans mercilessly, reserving some particularly vicious barbs for New Englanders. He accused them of hating the Church of England as their Puritan ancestors did. He claimed that they were rude and infected with “a leveling spirit” that threatened those who became too wealthy. As for their soldiering, the Brit said he would trade 6000 American militiamen for 2000 regulars any time. “Three hundred Indians with their yell throw 3000 of them into a panic so total they shoot each other instead of the enemy,” he claimed. “For this reason regulars feared to venture into the woods with them on the most trifling expedition.”

  Boston-born Benjamin Franklin could not allow these insults go unanswered. In a long, deliciously acid letter, he demolished these carping critics. It was strange, he said, that they found Americans boorish in dress since they wore nothing but clothes that were made in Britain. As for language, every new book and pamphlet worth reading appeared in America within a few months of its publication in England. As for their fighting abilities, Franklin ticked off one success after another on the American continent, where the vast majority of the troops were Americans. “One ranging captain of a few provincials, Rogers [Robert Rogers], has harassed the enemy more on the frontiers of Canada and destroyed more of their men than the whole army of regulars,” Franklin noted. As for Americans growing panicky at the Indian yell, Franklin certainly pointed to Braddock’s failure where regulars were thrown into a panic by the “yells of 3 or 400 Indians and in their confusion shot one another. With five times the force of the enemy, they fled before them destroying all their own stores, ammunition, and provisions.” The reason regulars hated to go into the woods, Franklin wryly suggested, was more likely “a concern for their scalps” than the possibility that they might be shot by blundering Americans.

  Franklin next proceeded to scold the habit of the author to blame all the British disasters on provincials. He recited a roll call of British defeats in the West Indies and on the continent, in this and earlier wars, and sardonically lamented that it was a shame no provincials were involved in them. “Our commanders would have been saved the labor of writing long apologies for their conduct. It might have been sufficient to say, Provincials were with us!” Then, in a soothing last paragraph, Franklin called for an end to this kind of bickering.

  He pointed out that the province of Massachusetts had voted money to erect a monument to George Lord Howe, killed in the attack on Ticonderoga. Americans admired “the worth and bravery of the British troops.” Moreover, he knew that most regular officers were more than willing to allow the provincials their “share of merit.” In fact, they were delighted to discover that “the children of Britain retain their native intrepidity to the third and fourth generation in the regions of America; together with that ardent love of liberty and zeal in its defense, which in every age has distinguish’d their progenitors among the rest of mankind.” Brave men, fools, wise men, and cowards are intermixed in every nation and in every army and, it was silly and unfair to make “national reflections.” Panegyrics, on the other hand, were far more acceptable, and Franklin “boldly” announced that he was ready to say that “the English are brave and wise; the Scotch are brave and wise; and the people of the British colonies, proceeding from both nations, I would say the same of them.”

  The British victory at Minden was topped a few months later by the triumph of Quebec. Franklin and his son heard the good news when they were in Edinburgh and rode back to a London groggy from another round of celebrations. The war effort - unified and vivified by the driving energies of William Pitt - was producing remarkable victories around the world. The son of an earlier Prime Minister, Horace Walpole, living in splendor at his retreat, Strawberry Hill, wrote in his diary, “Victories come tumbling so over one another from distant parts of the globe that it looks just like the handiwork of a lady romance writer.” In India and in the West Indies, France was also humbled by British fleets and armies.

  While the man in the street rejoiced over these triumphs, many powerful nobles, and even King George II himself, regarded them with barely disguised disdain. They hated Pitt far more intensely than they loved their country. The Great Commoner’s arrogance and total disregard of factions and his brutal honesty broke all the rules of establishment politics as they were then played. This malaise among the powerful quickly created an unusual reaction to Britain’s victories. Horace Walpole, ever sensitive to political shifts, caught it in his usual incisive if uninspired way when he told his diary, “It will soon be as shameful to beat a Frenchman as to beat a woman.”

  Franklin was dismayed by this change in the British mood. He was particularly disturbed to find that many Englishmen were in favor of returning Canada to the French, and keeping the sugar island of Guadeloupe in the West Indies as part of the terms of an eventual peace. The idea struck Franklin as so preposterous that his first reaction was burlesque. He wrote a letter to the London Chronicle ridiculing the reasons which he had “with great industry” procured from the pundits wh
o were in favor of giving up this vast territory. Franklin followed this up a few months later with a penetrating pamphlet, “The Interest of Great Britain Considered, With Regard to Her Colonies and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadeloupe.”

  By now the controversy over Canada had become a full-scale pamphlet and newspaper war, and in this carefully researched, superbly argued document, Franklin was intensely serious. He considered the arguments of the anti-Canada writers, one by one, and did his utmost to refute them with logic and facts. Those who claimed that the retention of Canada would be a source of a future war with France were wrong. On the contrary, the present war had started with disputes over land in America, and if the French remained in Canada, the chances of another war were significantly greater. “The people that inhabit the frontiers,” Franklin said, in an interesting observation from a man who had recently spent some time in the western woods, “are generally the refuse of both nations, often with the worst morals and the least discretion, remote from the eye, the prudence, and the restraint of government. Injuries are therefore frequently, in some part or other of so long a frontier, committed on both sides.”

  Other writers argued that America could compete with Britain in shipping and manufacturing strength if colonies and Canada became one. Franklin disagreed. Most Americans were farmers, and if they got more land, they would remain farmers for generations to come. Confine them to their thirteen existing colonies, however, and they would begin manufacturing in order to provide the landless poor a chance to make a living. Drawing facts from his essay on population, he pointed out that exports to the province of Pennsylvania had increased seventeen times in the last twenty-eight years while the population had increased only four times.

  Finally, there were writers who argued that the America eventually would form an alliance with Canada and defy the mother country. In the first place, said Franklin, speaking from bitter experience, it was almost impossible to unite the colonies because of their “different forms of government, different laws, different interests, and some of them different religious persuasions and different manners.” They could not agree to unite to defend themselves against the French and Indians who were burning their towns and murdering their people. What possibly could cause them to unite against “their own nation,” which “they all love much more than they love one another?” There was only one thing that could unite the colonies,” the most grievous tyranny and oppression.” As long as the British government was “mild and just” and critical civil and religious rights were secure, Americans would remain “dutiful and obedient.” If the British government ever introduced the kind of vicious religious and political repression that Spain attempted in the Netherlands, anything could happen, of course. “But this I think I have a right to deem impossible,” Franklin said. Summing it up, he reverted to an aphorism worthy of Poor Richard. “The waves do not rise but when the winds blow.”

  It is, of course, difficult to determine the impact of Franklin’s pamphlet, but it was one of the most thorough arguments on the pro-Canada side and the British government did, finally, decide to keep the Canadian wilderness and give Guadeloupe and its sugary wealth to France.

  Franklin and his friend Strahan grew equally concerned about the way Pitt’s enemies and others who were simply prone to panicky emotionalism were trying to rush England into a premature, disadvantageous peace. To strike a blow against this faction, Franklin resorted to one of his favorite tricks, a literary document supposedly culled from a special source and written in a style that supported the hoax. Thus, The London Chronicle soberly printed a letter from someone who signed himself “a Briton,” introducing an excerpt “from the famous Jesuit Campanella’s discourses addressed to the King of Spain.” The writer apologized for the antiquated language. He was using a translation of a 1629 edition, but he thought the material was so apropos to England’s current situation “only changing Spain for France” that it was still worth the attention of the public. The Jesuit (who was actually a Dominican and actually had written such a book in the seventeenth century) proceeded to advise the King on “the Means of disposing the Enemie to Peace.”

  The vital thing, he told his sovereign, was to change the minds of the Enemy. How? By spending a few doubloons among “men of learning, ingenious speakers and writers, who are nevertheless in lowe estate and pinched by fortune. These fifth columnists must be instructed in their sermons, discourses, writings, poems and songs to inculcate the following points. Let them magnify the blessings of peace and enlarge mightily thereon, which is not unbecoming grave Divines and other Christian men; let them expatiate on the miseries of wane, the waste of Christian bloode, the growing scarcitie of labourers and workmen, the dearness of all foreign wares and merchandises, the interruption of commerce by the captures and delay of ships, the increase and great burthen of taxes, and the impossibilities of supplying much longer the expense of the contest.” They were also to depict the war as being fought for the advantage of a small clique, to downgrade the victories and conquests as “trivial and of little import.” Above all let them “magnifie the great power of Your Majestic and the strength of your Kingdome.”

  The author of the letter professed to know nothing about the success of “this Jesuit” in his day. But he was sure that “the present age being more enlightened . . . such arts can now hardly prove so generally successful.”

  In the midst of this lively politicking came two nasty shocks. The first was personal. Franklin learned that his son William had followed both the best and the worst of his father’s example, siring an illegitimate son whom he named William Temple Franklin. As he had done after his own misstep, Franklin insisted that William assume full responsibility for the boy. Unfortunately, William had no income except the modest sum he received as comptroller of the post office in Philadelphia, and this meant that Franklin had to provide most of the cash. But he did so with no evidence of complaint. He arranged - perhaps at the advice of his landlady Mrs. Stevenson - for the child to live with an English family. Simultaneously he made it clear that he was ready to cover all the bills for the boy’s expenses and education for as long as he lived.

  Franklin had promoted a relationship between William and Polly Stevenson. But William was getting too old to follow his father’s advice especially about his personal life. This stand can also be interpreted as a groping for a way to emerge from his father’s formidable shadow. Fathers and sons have been in conflict since civilization began, but it was hard, if not impossible, to maintain this natural warfare with a father who was as generous and good-humored as Benjamin Franklin. His account books, which he kept faithfully during his stay in London, are one long series of loans and gifts of money to William. At one point - perhaps a little appalled by adding up how much he had spent recently - William told his father, “I am extremely obliged to you for your care in supplying me with money and shall ever have a grateful sense of that with the other numberless indulgencies I have received from your paternal affection.” William declared he was ready to return to America or “to go to any other part of the world” with his father whenever Benjamin thought it necessary.” But this gratitude and spirit of obedience did not extend to marrying the girl of his father’s choice.

  The only other person with whom both father and son shared the secret of William Temple Franklin’s birth was their mutual friend William Strahan. He arranged a few years later for the young man to attend a school in Kensington that was run by his brother-in-law.

  The other jarring intrusion on Franklin’s London life was the appearance of William Smith. After failing to recruit some more promising candidates, Franklin hired the clergyman to lead the Philadelphia Academy. A small, intense, egotistic man, Smith had thrown himself enthusiastically into the politics of the province, and as an Anglican clergyman, he found it easy to dislike the Quakers and eventually Franklin. He discarded Franklin’s original plan for a more modern education and inflicted the standard burden of Latin and Greek on the Academy students,
to Franklin’s intense displeasure. The Proprietary Establishment backed him wholeheartedly, and Smith, in turn, lent them the support of his facile pen in their propaganda wars with the Assembly. After a recent heated exchange, the Assembly had arrested him for libel. He had come to England ostensibly to reverse the Assembly’s ruling. The Penns embraced him as a valuable ally and not only backed his lawsuit but encouraged him to repeat slanders all around London about Franklin.

  Smith repeatedly declared that Franklin had lost his popularity at home, thanks to tales other Americans brought back of his luxurious life in London. Even more brutal was Smith’s assertion that Franklin’s formidable reputation in electricity was a fake. Old Ben had stolen everything he knew from a fellow electrical experimenter, Ebenezer Kinnersley, Smith averred. The climax to this smear campaign came when Smith learned that Oxford University was going to give Franklin a honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Smith wrote a letter to the rector of one of the colleges, repeating his assertions about Franklin’s thefts from Kinnersley. This was too much, and Franklin, who usually dealt with the slings and arrows of political warfare with a cairn amounting almost to indifference, exploded and insisted on meeting Smith face to face. The encounter took place at William Strahan’s house. Franklin produced a copy of Smith’s letter to the Oxford rector and proceeded to refute it point by point. Smith collapsed, promised to write a letter of recantation, and escaped into the night. He never wrote the letter, and went back to slandering Franklin assiduously at every opportunity.