This paragraph is fundamental to all of Franklin’s thinking about the relationship between England and America. Equally important was his fondness for Great Britain. “Upon the whole, I have lived so great a part of my life in Britain,” he told Karnes, “and have formed so many friendships in it, that I love it, and sincerely wish it prosperity; and therefore wish to see that union, on which alone I think it can be secured and established.” But overmastering all facts and feelings was his vision of America’s future. “America, an immense territory, favoured by Nature with all advantages of climate, soil, great navigable rivers and lakes, &c, must become a great country, populous and mighty; and will, in a less time than is generally conceived, be able to shake off any shackles that may be imposed on her, and perhaps place them on the imposers.” This was a vision rooted not only in sentiment but in science, in Franklin’s confidence in his mathematical prediction of America’s population growth.
This vision was what made Franklin so sad when he contemplated England’s hostile, aggressive mood toward the colonies. “Every act of oppression will sour their tempers, lessen greatly, if not annihilate the profits of your commerce with them,” he warned Karnes, “and hasten their final revolt; for the seeds of liberty are universally found there, and nothing can eradicate them.”
In spite of the discouraging political atmosphere, Franklin continued to press Lord Shelburne and other ministers to gain their backing for the new western colony. On August 28, 1767, he wrote to William Franklin: “Last week I dined at Lord Shelburne’s, and had a long conversation with him and Mr. Conway [Henry Seymour Conway, the Irish orator who was now a member of the cabinet] . . . on the subject of reducing American expense.” The two ministers talked of turning Indian affairs over to provinces that bordered on the tribal lands. Indian superintendents, such as Sir William Johnson, each thinking he was representing the largesse of George III, had recently executed treaties involving exorbitant sums. Franklin immediately “took the opportunity of urging it as one means of saving expense . . . that a settlement should be made in the Illinois country; expatiated on the various advantages. . .. I mentioned your plan, its being approved by Sir William Johnson, the readiness and ability of the gentlemen concerned to carry the settlement into execution, with very little expense to the Crown, &c. The Secretaries appeared finally to be fully convinced, and there remained no obstacle but the Board of Trade, which was to be brought over privately, before the matter should be referred to them officially.”
In this same letter, Franklin added an interesting paragraph about the French ambassador in London, one Monsieur Durand. “He is extremely curious to inform himself in the affairs of America; pretends to have a great esteem for me, on account of the abilities shown in my examination [before the House of Commons during the Stamp Act crisis]; has desired to have all my political writings, invited me to dine with him, was very inquisitive, treated me with great civility, makes me visits, &c. I fancy that intriguing nation would like very well to meddle on occasion, and blow up the coals between Britain and her colonies; but I hope we shall give them no opportunity.”
Franklin’s reaction to the French ambassador’s overtures was entirely in keeping with his hoping-for-the-best but fearing-the-worst mood at the time. A few days later, he left with his good friend, Sir John Pringle, for a summer vacation in France. Someone who views history as a series of intrigues might try to make something sinister of this. But Franklin showed little sign of being anything except an eager, observant tourist.
From Paris he wrote a lively letter back to Polly Stevenson, telling of his adventures along the way. “At Dover,” he told her, “a number of passengers who had never been before at sea” insisted on eating a hearty breakfast before they sailed. “Doubtless they thought that when they had paid for their breakfast, they had a right to it, and that when they had swallowed it they were sure of it. But they had scarce been out half an hour, before the sea laid claim to it, and they were oblig’d to deliver it up. So it seems there are uncertainties, even beyond those between the cup and the lip.”
In France, Franklin met numerous members of the French Academy of Sciences, for whom he was already a famous name. He was fascinated by a group of French economists, the physiocrats, who argued that the government should have as little as possible to do with business. One of their leaders, Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, eventually moved to America and founded a corporate dynasty. Franklin became even more friendly with a French scholar-scientist, Barbe Dubourg, who spoke excellent English, and expressed a great interest in translating Franklin’s writings into French. But the high point of Franklin’s visit was his presentation to King Louis XV at Versailles. He told Polly Stevenson about it in vivid detail. The King “spoke to both of us [BF and Dr. Pringle] very graciously and chearfully, is a handsome man, has a very lively look, and appears younger than he is.” In the evening the two travelers went to the Grand Convert, at which the royal family dined in public. Franklin and Pringle were brought forward, and stood beside the King and Queen. Knowing Pringle was physician to the English royal family, King Louis asked him a good many questions about his fellow rulers. Franklin added that Louis “did me too the honor of taking some notice of me; that’s saying enough, for I would not have you think me so much pleas’d with this King and Queen, as to have a whit less regard than us’d to have for ours.”
Franklin found Versailles “a prodigious mixture of magnificence and negligence, with every kind of elegancy except that of cleanliness, and what we call tidyness.” He admired the Parisians’ drinking water, which they filtered through sand cisterns, and their clean streets which encouraged people to walk on them, and cut down on the number of coaches and chairs which constantly clogged London’s streets. He noted, with his scientist’s eye, that a Parisian on foot, even when he was carrying an umbrella, did not take up more than three square feet, while a coach took up 240 square feet. He also admired French manners, “It seems to be a point settled here universally, that strangers are to be treated with respect; and one has the same deference shewn one here by being a stranger, as in England by being a lady. . .. Why don’t we practice this urbanity to Frenchmen? Why should they be allowed to outdo us in anything?”
He freely admitted that he was enjoying France immensely. “Traveling is one way of lengthening life, at least in appearance. It is but about a fortnight since we left London, but the variety of scenes we have gone through makes it seem equal to six months living in one place. Perhaps I have suffered a greater change, too, in my own person, than I could have done in six years at home. I had not been here six days, before my taylor and perruquier [wig maker] had transform’d me into a Frenchman. Only think what a figure I make in a little bag-wig and naked ears. They told me I was become 20 years younger and look’d very gallant.
“So being in Paris where the mode is to be sacredly follow’d I was once very near making love to my friend’s wife.
“This letter shall cost you a shilling, and you may consider it cheap, when you reflect, that it has cost me at least 50 guineas to get into the situation, that enables me to write it. Besides, I might, if I had staied at home, have won perhaps two shillings of you at cribbidge.”
This charming letter also makes it clear how deeply and intricately Franklin continued to interweave his personal life, his role of husband and father and friend, through the broader web of world affairs and Parliamentary politics in which he was involved. He took as intense an interest in the life and loves of Polly Stevenson, as if he were her own father. In mid-1767, he wrote to Deborah, “Our Polly’s match is quite broke off. The difference was about money matters. I am not displeased at it, as I did not much like the man, thinking him a mean-spirited mercenary fellow and not worthy so valuable a girl as she is in every respect: person, fortune, temper, and excellent understanding.”
His fondness for Polly Stevenson even inspired Franklin to one of his rare flights of poetry as a birthday present for her. He made fun of his poem in a wry lett
er that probably had the young lady laughing too hard to read the rather serious sentiments.
Dear Polly,
A muse, you must know, visited me this morning! I see you are surpriz’d, as I was. I never saw one before. And shall never see another. So I took the opportunity of her help to put the answer into verse, because I was some verse in your debt ever since you sent me the last pair of garters.
This muse appear’d to be no housewife. I suppose few of them are. She was drest (if the expression is allowable) in an undress, a kind of slatternly negligee, neither neat nor clean, nor well made; and she has given the same sort of dress to my piece. On reviewing it, I would have reform’d the lines, and made them all of a length, as I an told lines ought to be; but I find I can’t lengthen the short ones without stretching them on the rack, and I think it would be equally cruel to cut off any part of the long ones. Besides the superfluity of these makes up for the deficiency of those; and so, from a principle of justice, I leave them at full length, that I may give you at least in one sense of the word, good measure. Adieu, my dear good girl, and believe me ever your affectionate, faithful friend,
You’d have the custom broke, you say, That marks with festive mirth your natal day, “Because, as one grows old,
One cannot so be told
How many of one’s years have pass’d away.” That reason came not from your heart.
‘Tis given in earnest but by those,
The empty belles and emptier beaux
Who justly may suppose
The outward frame to be their better part,
And therefore grieve that time subjects it to decay.
There are two more stanzas, which are atrociously bad poetry and justified everything Franklin said about his slatternly muse.
Franklin followed with equally close attention the fortunes of his real family in Philadelphia. He advised Deborah minutely on decorating their new house. When Deborah complained that “the Blue Room” was too dark, he told her, “I would have you finish it as soon as you can, thus: paint the wainscot a dead white; paper the walls blue, and tack the gilt border around just above the surbase and under the cornish.” Additional instructions included “papier mache musical figures” tacked to the middle of the ceiling. “When this is done,” he assured Deborah, “I think it will look very well.”
He was not so sure about his daughter Sally’s choice of a husband. Deborah let him know in rather strong terms that she approved of young Richard Bache, a Yorkshireman who had emigrated to Philadelphia after Franklin had left on his second mission to Europe. William Franklin clearly disapproved of the young man, who had a somewhat less than successful record in business, and at the age of thirty not much visible means of support. William told his father that most of Franklin’s friends were equally dubious about Bache. Franklin feared that the young man was a fortune hunter. But he had enough confidence in Deborah’s common sense to let her judgment prevail.
Franklin only pointed out that his partnership with David Hall, under which he had received about 700 pounds a year, had expired in 1766, and Hall had become full owner of The Pennsylvania Gazette. There was also the possibility, on the shifting sands of English politics, that he might lose his post office job. This meant they would be reduced to living on a rather narrow scale. He warned Deborah not to “make an expensive feasting wedding” but to conduct everything “with frugality and economy.” He hoped that Mr. Bache did not have expectations “of any fortune to be had with our daughter before our death.” The most he could see his way clear to do was to fit Sally out “handsomely” in clothes and furniture, to the tune of about 500 pounds. “For the rest, they must depend, as you and I did, on their own industry and care.”
Franklin also wrote William, urging him to let Deborah and Sally have their way. The last thing he wanted was a family quarrel when he was too far away to mediate it, and he gathered from Deborah’s letters that William was throwing his weight around. William peremptorily denied the implied accusation in his father’s advice. In a clear reference to his earlier withdrawal from Deborah’s stormy jurisdiction, he wrote: “On the contrary, I can safely say it has been the constant endeavor of my life to avoid all such quarrels, and I have not only pass’d over quietly what I have been told by others, but things of the most provoking nature which I have seen and heard in person.” These words implied rather strongly that if anyone was acting up, it was Deborah with her fishwife’s tongue. “A regard to your peace & happiness has prevented your being acquainted with these matters,” he told Franklin. “Be assur’d you are greatly mistaken in thinking that my mother was ‘not angry with our friends for not approving the match, etc.’ “William closed the discussion with a sentence which underscored his devotion to his father. “I sincerely wish that you may on your return find that everything has been conducted to your satisfaction, for as to what other people may think it is a matter of no consequence.”
Most of the time William and his father discussed politics. In the fall of 1767, William was writing earnestly to his father that the Townshend Acts were arousing widespread opposition throughout America. Boston had led the way with riots and fiery denunciations in the newspapers, while Franklin’s old foe, John Dickinson, had produced a pamphlet, Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer, which revised the old colonial distinction between internal and external taxes, and made a further distinction, between taxes to regulate commerce and taxes for revenue. The latter, Dickinson insisted, Parliament had no right to impose. William was grateful that New York, the province with the greatest influence on New Jersey, had accepted the new duties with little or no protest. Proudly, William added that he heard many people in New Jersey and New York praising Benjamin Franklin’s efforts on behalf of all of the colonies in this protracted struggle with Parliament.
Franklin replied in a similar spirit, saying he too was delighted with New York’s discretion. “I wish the Boston people had been as quiet,” he added. Then came a comment that was to take on greater significance in the light of future events. “Governor Bernard [of Boston] has sent over all their violent papers to the Ministry, and wrote them word that he daily expected a rebellion. . .. A certain noble lord expressed himself to me with some disgust and contempt of Bernard on this occasion, saying he ought to have known his people better, than to impute to the whole country sentiments, that perhaps are only scribbled by some madman in a garret; that he appeared to be too fond of contention, and mistook the matter greatly, in supposing such letters as he wrote were acceptable to the ministry.”
This “certain noble lord,” was probably Lord Shelburne, who was pro-American and disliked seeing a royal governor blacken the character of a whole people. Franklin was dedicated to urging more people on both sides of the quarrel to think the same way. He pointed out to William that if “we Americans wish not to be judged of in the gross, by particular papers written by anonymous scribblers and published in the colonies, it would be well, if we could avoid falling into the same mistake in America, in judging of ministers here by the libels printed against them.” He enclosed with his letter “a very abusive” attack on the current Ministry.
But overriding even politics in the letters between father and son was the dream of the western colony. In late 1767 Franklin reported to William with obvious pride and delight that Lord Shelburne had drawn up a paper recommending western settlement and laid it before the King and Privy Council. He had informed this summit of imperial power that the paper represented not only his own sentiments, but the thinking of General Jeffrey Amherst, Dr. Franklin, and Mr. Jackson, “three gentlemen that were allowed to be the best authorities for anything that related to America.” The Privy Council’s attitude toward the paper was encouraging, and it had been referred to the Board of Trade. Since Franklin had long been in the process of bringing these gentlemen over “privately,” as he had told William he would in an earlier letter, there was little opposition left to worry about there.
But all this delicate lobbying would come to na
ught if a new western boundary could not be rearranged. Sir William Johnson, operating simultaneously as Indian agent and silent partner in the new colony (a deal which the British commander-in-chief in America, General Thomas Gage, had turned down as improper), had already persuaded the Indians to agree to a restructured boundary and had, in fact, reported the new arrangement to the Board of Trade. He was only awaiting approval from London to confirm the treaty. By way of creating additional pressure, William Franklin and Samuel Wharton stimulated a letter writing campaign from Croghan and other Indian experts, assuring the London bureaucrats that if the treaty was not approved, an Indian war that would make Pontiac’s rebellion look like a petty flare-up was certain. Meanwhile, Franklin urged Shelburne to confirm Johnson’s treaty, on its merits. The Colonial Secretary reacted with considerable astonishment. He declared that he had never even heard of such a treaty. Shelburne sent Franklin to Lord Clare, latest head of the Board of Trade, where Johnson’s letters routinely went. There, Franklin ran into a wall of blue-blooded incompetence. Lord Clare vowed that he had never received any letters from Sir William Johnson concerning the boundary. He would have his secretary search for them. Although Clare was lukewarm to the idea of a western colony, as Shelburne had been at first, Franklin obviously had confidence in his ability to galvanize him. He wrote hopefully to William, “The present ministry seem now likely to continue through this session of Parliament; and perhaps if the new Parliament should not differ greatly in complexion from this, they may be fixed for a number of years, which I earnestly wish, as we have no chance for a better.”
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