When Polly Stevenson heard about some of the things this strange divine was saying about the man she worshipped, she wrote a letter to Franklin. Franklin’s response skewered Smith for all time. “I made that man my enemy by doing him too much kindness.’ Tis the honestest way of acquiring an enemy. And since ‘tis convenient to have at least one enemy, who by his readiness to revile one on all occasions may make one careful of one’s conduct, I shall keep him an enemy for that purpose.” He noted that Polly’s mother had once admired “the benevolent spirit” of Dr. Smith’s sermons. The best answer to that puzzle, Franklin said, and the best summation of Dr. Smith was written by the poet William Whitehead.
“Full many a peevish, envious, slanderous elf is, in his works, benevolence itself.
“For all mankind—unknown—his bosom heaves; he only injures those with whom he lives.”
In the war with the Penns, everything seemed to be moving steadily in Franklin’s favor. So confident of victory was he that he and William planned an extensive tour of Ireland in the spring and summer of 1759. Then dismaying news came, teaching Franklin what influence could accomplish in English politics. In April 1759, Governor William Denny had approved a money bill passed by the Pennsylvania Assembly, which taxed the Proprietary estates. When the bill arrived in Great Britain, the Penns opened a predictable attack on it, insisting that it exposed their estates to unfair and inequitable treatment. The two Franklins were on the point of departing for Ireland when they heard that the Committee for Plantation Affairs of the King’s Privy Council had issued a report most favorable to the Proprietors. Hearings were scheduled, but these were almost foreordained to endorse the committee report unless Benjamin Franklin did something quickly.
Cancelling his travel plans and hastily unpacking his bags, Franklin sent his lawyer scurrying to protest the committee report and rushed a letter to no less than the King’s First Minister, William Pitt. For months, Franklin had tried to see Pitt, but the great man was too involved in running the war to worry about this minor dispute in Pennsylvania. Franklin had finally given up, and contented himself with working through his secretaries. But now, in this crisis, he approached Pitt directly, begging him to protect the province from the rapacity of the Penns. Then, he added a postscript that was a prime example of Franklin guile.
“Between you and I, it is said, that we may look upon them all to be a pack of d-d R-ls; and that unless we bribe them all higher than our adversaries can do, & condescend to do every piece of dirty work they require, we shall never be able to attain common justice at their hands.” This was libel, among other things, but Franklin solved that problem by drawing a line through the words. William Franklin, writing to his friend Joseph Galloway, thought this was one of his father’s shrewdest maneuvers. He called it “a new species of rhetoric which (as there is no hanging a man for his thoughts) would be of considerable service to those who write and publish libels, if they could get them printed in that manner.”
Simultaneously, Franklin recruited prominent merchants who did business with Pennsylvania to petition the Board of Trade to modify the Privy Council decision. They pointed out that 100,000 pounds had already been issued in paper money based on the money bill, and this amount was in general circulation. If the currency was declared worthless, the financial stability of the province would be in question.
Franklin’s counteroffensive quickly overwhelmed the Penns. After numerous conferences and hearings, it became clear to the Privy Council that some kind of compromise had to be worked out. One day, Lord Mansfield, who was Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, asked Franklin to step into a nearby office while the lawyers were arguing.
“Are you really of the opinion that no injury will be done to the Penns’ estate in the execution of the act?” Mansfield asked.
“Certainly I am,” Franklin said.
“Then,” said Lord Mansfield, “you can have little objection to enter into an engagement to insure that point.”
“None at all,” Franklin replied.
The lawyers were then summoned to a conference, and Franklin and his attorney entered into an agreement, specifying certain safeguards to be amended to the disputed taxation bill and all subsequent bills, which assured the Penns that their estates would not be taxed at a higher rate than other lands of the same kind. The Committee for Plantation Affairs approved the compromise, and the Privy Council as a whole and the King gave their approval a few days later. Franklin had rescued Pennsylvania from potential disaster and achieved the primary purpose of his trip to London.
There was now no real reason for Franklin to stay in London except one, his son William. In the autumn of 1760, in one of those major spins of fortune’s wheel, George II toppled over in his closet, a victim of apoplexy. George III ascended the throne and with him a new group of men entered the inner circle of imperial power. The new King was only twenty-two and was almost pathologically devoted to the man who had been his tutor and second father, Lord Bute, a Scottish peer with pretensions to intellectual achievement and a significant interest in science. Bute’s personal physician, and soon the King’s personal physician as well, was John Pringle, an equally close friend of both Franklins. In the summer of 1761, the three men took a leisurely tour of Holland and Belgium together. When they returned, the relationship was even more solidified, and so was the Franklin family ambition. Pringle was a Scotsman, and he drew into the web of influence many of Franklin’s intellectual Scots friends. Soon it was only a matter of what Crown position would be suitable for William’s talents and reputation. These were significantly enhanced, early in 1762, when he accompanied his father to Oxford, where Benjamin collected his second Doctor of Laws degree and William, in tribute to the part he had played in his father’s electrical experiments, was made a Master of Arts.
In the spring of 1762, one of their influential friends, perhaps Dr. Pringle sent the Franklins the exciting news that the governorship of New Jersey was available. Until this point, William’s best hope had been an appointment to the government organization that controlled colonial trade - perhaps a judge of the admiralty court or a Customs officer such as his friend John Temple had become. The governorship of New Jersey was almost too perfect to be believed. It meant William would remain close to home, to his father and friends in Philadelphia. At the same time, it was even more prestigious than anything he had dared to hope for. It meant an opportunity to vault into the upper echelon of Crown officials. As governor he would deal directly with the lords who sat on the boards of trade, who held the cabinet secretary ships and places on the Privy Council. Nor was this the only reason for rejoicing. Benjamin Franklin was already convinced that the Penns had to be run out of Pennsylvania and replaced by a royal governor. What better argument for royal government than to be able to point to the honest, stable, peaceful regime of that staunch son of Philadelphia, William Franklin, governor of New Jersey? Then, there was that other, by no means forgotten dream - of founding a colony in the Ohio Valley. This was English territory now. What better way to school his son in the uses of power than to inherit the immense patrimony that this experiment would leave him?
But that was five, maybe ten years away. The question now was how to capture the current prize. Absolute secrecy was necessary because if Thomas and Richard Penn found out about it, they would turn England inside out and spend half their wealth to block the appointment. The whole negotiation was conducted with the utmost delicacy, perhaps the best possible evidence that the Franklins had access to the safest, surest, and most inside path to the peak of royal power. Ordinarily appointments were solicited by a kind of group pressure that naturally made it the talk of the city. Franklin was admirably prepared to exert such pressure on William’s behalf. But this was no longer necessary, thanks to Pringle’s familiarity with Lord Bute. Before the summer of 1762 was over, the good news arrived from St. James Palace. William Franklin was the next royal governor of New Jersey.
Father, son, John Pringle, and William Straha
n certainly made a significant inroad into London’s supply of Madeira that night. Strahan was as thrilled as William’s father.
The achievement obviously inspired William to think that he had come into his manhood, and achieved independence at last. For several years he had pursued what one of his friends called “his West Indian charmer.” Her name was Elizabeth Downes. She was from Barbados, and may well have been the reason why William declined to fulfill his father’s hopes for him and Mary Stevenson. The difference between the two women tells us something about William Franklin. Mary Stevenson was an extremely intelligent, rather independent girl, with whom Benjamin Franklin exchanged long letters about science and literature, addressing her as an intellectual equal. Elizabeth Downes, on the other hand, was a lovely but dependent woman, who had led an extremely sheltered life and needed the reassurance of a title and a steady income before she could say yes to William’s long courtship. Although analyzing someone at a distance of more than 200 years is always dangerous, there would seem to be evidence that William Franklin preferred a dependent woman to an independent one, a sign that he had still not fully resolved the emotional insecurity that was an almost inevitable consequence of his birth.
Franklin was disappointed by the match, although he was too smart to assume that he had either the right or the power to choose a wife for his son. He said nothing to William, of course, but he did reveal his feelings to Polly Stevenson. He had “once flattered himself,” he wrote, that she might “become his own in the tender relation of a child; but can now entertain such pleasing hopes no more.”
Franklin did not stay in England for William’s wedding. The date was set for September, less than a week after the King had approved the final draft of William’s commission as governor. Franklin saw no reason to sit around waiting for the consummation of these formalities. He had told William Strahan in July that he felt “here like a thing out of its place, and useless because it is out of its place. How then can I any longer be happy in England? You have great power of persuasion, and might easily prevail on me to do anything; but not any longer to do nothing. I must go home.” There was also the importance for someone his age of sailing before the winter storms made an Atlantic crossing a harrowing and exhausting ordeal.
So within a month Franklin was aboard ship at Portsmouth writing sad farewell letters to his English and Scottish friends. His parting with Mary Stevenson was particularly sad. The young fatherless girl had come to worship Benjamin Franklin, and she wept so violently her mother reproved her for making him miserable. She wrote him a letter of apology, assuring him that her suffering would cease the moment she heard he was safely arrived in Philadelphia. Then it would be enough for her to know she had “so valuable a friend in the world.”
Even more touching was a letter Franklin carried with him to his Gazette partner, David Hall, from William Strahan. The friendship between the two men had deepened steadily during Franklin’s five years in England, until for Strahan it had become the most significant relationship of his life outside his family. The letter is a remarkable tribute to Franklin’s unique personal powers, as well as a revealing glimpse of how he exercised them. Strahan began by telling “Dear Davie” (Hall had worked as an apprentice for him before joining Franklin in Philadelphia) that Hall would never have seen Franklin’s face on his side of the water “had my power been in any measure equal to my inclination.” It was surprising, Strahan went on, the way Franklin with all his remarkable talents and abilities that had won the admiration and affection of “the greatest geniuses of this country” was equally beloved by ordinary businessmen such as himself. Franklin knew how “to level himself for the time to the understandings of his company, and to enter without affectation into their amusements and chitchat.” This was how he made people from all walks and levels of life “his affectionate friends.” As for himself, Strahan said, “I never found a person in my whole life more thoroughly to my mind. It would much exceed the bounds of a letter to tell you in how many views and on how many accounts, I esteem and love him. . . . Suffice it to say that I part with him with infinite regret and sorrow. I know not where to find his equal, nor can the chasm his departure leaves in my social enjoyments and happiness ever be filled up. There is something in his leaving us even more cruel than a separation by death; it is like an untimely death, where we part with a friend to meet no more, with a whole heart, as we say in Scotland.” Strahan went on for pages, lamenting “a separation so much the more bitter and agonizing as it is likely to be endless.”
Franklin’s affection for Strahan was almost as strong. He told him in his farewell note that he felt so depressed on leaving England he had to admit that Strahan’s “persuasions and arguments” had had their effect. “The attraction of reason is at present for the other side of the water, but that of inclination will be for this side. You know which usually prevails. I shall probably make but this one vibration and settle here forever. Nothing will prevent it if I can, as I hope I can, prevail with Mrs. F. to accompany me.”
To Polly Stevenson, he wrote with even more emotion. “Adieu, my dearest child: I will call you so; why should I not call you so, since I love you with all the tenderness, all the fondness of a father? Adieu.”
With this tender sigh, Franklin turned his back on England and sailed home in a convoy by the slow southern route, stopping at the island of Madeira, and studying the Gulf Stream as they poked along. As he neared Philadelphia, one serious concern began to nag at him. What if even part of the terrible things William Smith had been saying about him in London were true? Five years was a long time, and perhaps his friends had, finally, forgotten Franklin. He had scarcely set his foot on shore before he found how totally fabricated Smith’s stories were. The first friends who greeted him proudly informed him that he had been unanimously elected assemblyman once more while at sea. Moreover, the Philadelphia Franklinophiles had plans to meet him with 500 horsemen and escort him into town like a returning hero. Franklin issued a firm no to this idea and slipped quietly home before they could muster this military production. A few weeks later, he proudly reported to Strahan, “My house has been full of a succession of [friends] from morning to night, ever since my arrival, congratulating me on my return with the utmost cordiality and affection. . . Excuse my vanity in writing this to you, who know what has provoked me to it.”
Strahan must have noted glumly that there was not a word in Franklin’s letter about returning to England. Nothing is more intoxicating to a man than the combination of political power and admiring affection. This was something England could not give Benjamin Franklin, and for the moment at least, his happy memories of London days faded by comparison. He settled down in his familiar house and looked forward to the arrival of his son, the governor.
The two burly men, made even bulkier by their thick fur coats, strode purposefully into the clawing February wind whistling down Philadelphia’s Strawberry Alley. Beneath the sign, The Death of the Fox, the New York stagecoach was waiting for them. In a few minutes, the horses were picking their way cautiously down Philadelphia’s snow-banked streets, and the two travelers looked casually out at the city both of them called home. Their memories were different although they were father and son. Gaps are unavoidable between every generation.
Benjamin Franklin saw a city that had been good to him from the time the filthy, hungry, sixteen-year-old runaway boy had landed at the Market Street dock in 1723. In the next three decades, this city on the Delaware had grown from a muddy colonial port to a sophisticated metropolis, the second or third largest city in the British Empire. Benjamin Franklin had grown with it from triumph to triumph. Now he was riding out of his winter-shrouded, red-brick city to yet another triumph, the inauguration of his son as royal governor of New Jersey.
Beside him, thirty-two-year-old William Franklin saw a city that conformed more closely to the winter reality before his eyes. No sunny contentment bathed Market Street in an unreal glow. The Philadelphia he remembered, after nearly
six years in England, was a place that had never fully accepted him. The snubs he had met from the aristocratic Graeme’s and their friends - especially the backhand sneers and snickers about his illegitimate birth - were not memories easily forgotten or forgiven.
As a sensitive, intelligent man with an intense interest in his family, Benjamin Franklin knew and understood what William felt about these social rebuffs. He hoped that now he had made ample amends to his son for the pain he had caused him in earlier years. But this was hardly the primary motive in Franklin’s mind. There is no evidence that Benjamin ever felt much guilt about the facts of William’s birth. The eighteenth century was far more understanding about sexual indiscretion than the nineteenth. The main concern was accepting full responsibility for the results, and this Benjamin had wholeheartedly done. Now, his dominant emotion was the pleasure of having scored triumphantly on the Penns and their Proprietary allies in Philadelphia.
At the same time, there is ample evidence that William did not see himself as a mere shadow of his legendary father. Although he was well aware that his father’s fame and influence had done much to win him the governorship, he also knew that he could not have won it without some substantial accomplishments of his own. His quick wit and charming manners had earned him the friendship of many of his father’s acquaintances, such as William Strahan. The Scottish publisher said William had “a solidity of judgment not very often to be met with in one of his years.” He had won his law degree and proven himself a dignified but tough opponent in the propaganda war with the Penns. Thanks to his five years as clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly, he knew far more than any other American his age about the intricacies of colonial politics, an absolute essential for a successful governor. His expert knowledge of military affairs was also a plus since he might be called upon raise troops. If William Franklin ever doubted that he was fit for the job - and there is no evidence that he ever did - these facts were more than enough to reassure him.
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