The Prodigal William
The end of the Revolution was, for both men and nations, a season or reconciliation. If America could repair its relationship with Britain, there was hope that Franklin could do so with his son. “Dear and honored father,” William wrote from England that summer. “Ever since the termination of the unhappy contest between Great Britain and America, I have been anxious to write to you, and to endeavor to revive that affectionate intercourse and connection which, until the commencement of the late troubles, had been the pride and happiness of my life.”
It was a noble and plaintive gesture from a son who had, through it all, never said anything bad about his estranged father nor stopped loving him. But William was still a Franklin, and he could not bring himself to admit that he had been in the wrong, nor to apologize. “If I have been mistaken, I cannot help it. It is an error of judgment that the maturest reflection I am capable of cannot rectify; and I verily believe were the same circumstances to occur again tomorrow, my conduct would be exactly similar to what it was.” He offered to come to Paris, if his father did not want to come to England, so they could settle their issues with “a personal interview.”
Franklin’s response revealed his pain, but it also offered some hints of hope. He began by saying he was “glad to find that you desire to revive the affectionate intercourse,” and he even brought himself to add, “it will be agreeable to me.” Yet he immediately segued from love to anger.
TO WILLIAM FRANKLIN, AUGUST 16, 1784
Dear Son,
I received your letter of the 22d past, and am glad to find that you desire to revive the affectionate intercourse that formerly existed between us. It will be very agreeable to me. Indeed nothing has ever hurt me so much and affected me with such keen sensations, as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me, in a cause wherein my good fame, fortune and life were all at stake.
You conceived, you say, that your duty to your king and regard for your country required this. I ought not to blame you for differing in sentiment with me in public affairs. We are men, all subject to errors. Our opinions are not in our power; they are formed and governed much by circumstances that are often as inexplicable as they are irresistible. Your situation was such that few would have censured your remaining neuter, though there are natural duties which precede political ones, and cannot be extinguished by them. This is a disagreeable subject. I drop it. And we will endeavor as you propose mutually to forget what has happened relating to it, as well as we can.
I send your son over to pay his duty to you. You will find him much improved. He is greatly esteemed and beloved in this country, and will make his way anywhere. It is my desire that he should study the law, as a necessary part of knowledge for a public man, and profitable if he should have occasion to practice it. I would have you therefore put into his hands those law-books you have viz. Blackstone, Coke, Bacon, Viner, etc. He will inform you, that he received the letter sent him by Mr. Galloway, and the paper it enclosed, safe. On my leaving America I deposited with that friend for you a chest of papers, among which was a manuscript of 9 or 10 volumes relating to manufactures, agriculture, commerce, finance, etc. Which cost me in England about 70 guineas; and eight quire books containing the rough drafts of all my letters while I lived in London. These are missing. I hope you have got them. If not, they are lost. Mr. Vaughan has published in London a volume of what he calls my political works. He proposes a second edition. But as the first was very incomplete, and you had many things that are omitted, for I used to send you sometimes the rough drafts, and sometimes the printed pieces I wrote in London, I have directed him to apply to you for what may be in your power to furnish him with, or to delay his publication till I can be at home again if that may ever happen. I did intend returning this year, but the Congress, instead of giving me leave to do so, have sent me another commission, which will keep me here at least a year longer, and perhaps I may then be too old and feeble to bear the voyage. I am here among a people that love and respect me, a most amiable nation to live with, and perhaps I may conclude to die among them; for my friends in America are dying off one after another, and I have been so long abroad that I should now be almost a stranger in my own country. I shall be glad to see you when convenient, but would not have you come here at present. You may confide to your son the family affairs you wished to confer upon with me, for he is discreet. And I trust that you will prudently avoid introducing him to company that it may be improper for him to be seen with. I shall hear from you by him, and any letters to me afterwards, will come safe, under cover directed to Mr. Ferdinand Grand, Banker at Paris.
Wishing you Health, and more Happiness than it seems you have lately experienced, I remain,
Your affectionate Father,
B. Franklin
On Wishes, Age, and Bifocals
In his spare time, Franklin perfected one of his most famous and useful inventions, bifocal glasses. Writing to a friend in August of 1784, he announced himself “happy in the invention of Double Spectacles, which, serving for distant objects as well as near ones, make my eyes as useful to me as ever they were.” A few months later, in response to a request for more information about “your invention,” Franklin provided details. A portrait by Charles Willson Peale, done in 1785, shows him wearing his new spectacles.
TO GEORGE WHATLEY, MAY 23, 1785
Dear old Friend,
I sent you a few Lines the other Day, with the Medallion, when I should have written more but was prevented by the coming in of a Bavard, who worried me till Evening. I bore with him, and now you are to bear with me: For I shall probably bavarder in answering your Letter.
I am not acquainted with the saying of Alphonsus which you allude to, as a Sanctification of your Rigidity in refusing to allow me the Plea of Old Age as an Excuse for my want of exactitude in correspondence. What was that Saying? You do not it seems, feel any occasion for such an excuse, though you are, as you say, rising 75. But I am rising (perhaps more properly falling) 80, and I leave the excuse with you till you arrive at that Age; perhaps you may then be more sensible of its validity, and see fit to use it for your self.
I must agree with you that the Gout is bad, and that the Stone is worse. I am happy in not having them both together: and I join in your Prayer that you may live till you die without either. But I doubt the Author of the Epitaph you send me was a little mistaken, when he speaking of the world, he says that
He never cared a pin, What they said or may say
of the Mortal within,
It is so natural to wish to be well spoken of, whether alive or dead, that I imagine he could not be quite exempt from that desire, and that at least he wished to be thought a wit, or he would not have given himself the trouble of writing so good an epitaph to leave behind him. Was it not as worthy of his care that the world should say he was an honest and a good man? I like better the concluding sentiment in the old song called the Old Man’s Wish, wherein after wishing for a warm house in a country town, an easy horse, some good old authors, ingenious and cheerful companions, a pudding on Sundays with stout ale and a bottle of burgundy, &c. &c. in separate stanzas, each ending with this burden
May I govern my Passions with an absolute sway
Grow wise and better as my Strength wears away
Without Gout, or Stone, by a gentle Decay,
he adds,
With a Courage undaunted may I face my last day;
And when I am gone, may the better Sort say,
In the Morning when sober, in the Evening when mellow,
He’s gone, and has not left behind him his Fellow;
For he governed his Passions, &c
But what signifies our wishing? Things happen after all as they will happen. I have sung that Wishing Song a thousand times when I was young, and now find at Fourscore that the three Contraries have befallen me; being subject to the Gout, and the Stone, and not being yet Master of all my Passions. Like t
he proud girl in my country, who wished and resolved not to marry a Parson, nor a Presbyterian, nor an Irishman, and at length found herself married to an Irish Presbyterian Parson. You see I have some reason to wish that in a future State I may not only be as well as I was, but a little better. And I hope it: For I too, with your Poet, trust in God. And when I observe that there is great frugality as well as wisdom in his works, since he has been evidently sparing both of labor and materials; for by the various wonderful inventions of propagation he has provided for the continual peopling his world with plants and animals without being at the trouble of repeated new creations; and by the natural reduction of compound substances to their original elements, capable of being employed in new compositions, he has presented the necessity of creating new matter; for that the earth, water, air and perhaps fire which, being compounded, from wood, do when the wood is dissolved return and again become air, earth, fire and water: I say that when I see nothing annihilated, and not even a drop of water wasted, I cannot suspect the annihilation of souls, or believe that he will suffer the daily waste of millions of minds ready made that now exist, and put himself to the continual trouble of making new ones, thus finding myself in the world, I believe I shall in some shape or other always exist: and with all the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine; hoping however that the Errata of the last may be corrected…
What you call the Cincinnati Institution is no Institution of our Government, but a private Convention among the Officers of our late Army, and so universally disliked by the people that it is supposed it will be dropt. It was considered as an attempt to establish something like an hereditary Rank or Nobility. I hold with you that it was wrong; may I add that all descending honors are wrong and absurd; that the honor of virtuous actions appertains only to him that performs them, and is in its nature incommunicable. If it were communicable by descent, it must also be divisible among the descendants, and the more ancient the family, the less would be found existing in any one branch of it; to say nothing of the greater chance of unlucky interruptions.
Our Constitution seems not to be well understood with you. If the Congress were a permanent body, there would be more reason in being jealous of giving it powers. But its members are chosen annually, cannot be chosen more than three years successively, nor more than three years in seven, and any of them may be recalled at any time, whence their constituents shall be dissatisfied with their conduct. They are of the people and return again to mix with the people, having no more durable pre-eminence than the different grains of sand in an hourglass. Such an assembly cannot easily become dangerous to liberty. They are the servants of the people, sent together to do the people’s business and promote the public welfare; their powers must be sufficient, or their duties cannot be performed. They have no profitable appointments, but a mere payment of daily wages, such as are scarcely equivalent to their expenses, so that having no chance for great places and enormous salaries or pensions as in some countries, there is no bruiging or bribing for elections. I wish old England were as happy in its government, but I do not see it. Your people however think their constitution the best in the world, and affect to despise ours. It is comfortable to have a good opinion of one’s self and of every thing that belongs to us, to think one’s own religion, king and wife the best of all possible wives, kings and religions. I remember three Greenlanders, who had traveled two years in Europe, under the care of some Moravian missionaries, and had visited Germany, Denmark, Holland and England, when I asked them at Philadelphia, (where they were in their way home) whether now they had seen how much more commodiously the white people lived by the help of the arts, they would not choose to remain among us, their answer was that they were pleased with having had an opportunity of seeing so many fine things, but they chose to live in their own country, which country by the way consisted of rock only; for the Moravians were obliged to carry earth in their ship from New York for the purpose of making there a cabbage garden.
By Mr. Dolland’s saying that my double spectacles can only serve particular eyes, I doubt he has not been rightly informed of their construction. I imagine it will be found pretty generally true, that the same convexity of glass through which a man sees clearest and best at the distance proper for reading, is not the best for greater distances. I therefore had formerly two pair of spectacles, which I shifted occasionally, as in traveling I sometimes read and often wanted to regard the prospects. Finding this change troublesome and not always sufficiently ready, I had the glasses cut, and half of each kind associated in the same circle, thus by this means, as I wear my spectacles constantly, I have only to move my eyes up or down as I want to see distinctly far or near, the proper glasses being always ready. This I find more particularly convenient since my being in France, the glasses that serve me best at table to see what I eat, not being the best to see the faces of those on the other side of the table who speak to me; and when one’s ears are not well accustomed to the sounds of a language, a sight of the movements in the features of him that speaks helps to explain, so that I understand French better by the help of my spectacles…
We shall always be ready to take your children if you send them to us. I only wonder that since London draws to itself and consumes such numbers of your country-people, your country should not to supply their places, want and willingly receive the children you have to dispose of. That circumstance, together with the multitude who voluntarily part with their freedom as men, to serve for a time as lackeys, or for life as soldiers in consideration of small wages, seems to me a proof that your island is over-peopled. And yet it is afraid of emigrations!
Adieu, my dear Friend, and believe me ever,
Yours very affectionately,
B. Franklin
Part 8
Constitutional Sage
The Constitutional Convention
Franklin arrived back in Philadelphia in 1785, and two years later he was elected to the convention meeting there to write a new Constitution to replace the weak Articles of Confederation. At 81, Franklin was the oldest member by 15 years and was exactly twice the average age of the rest of the members. His benign countenance and venerable grace as he took his seat every morning, and his preference for wry storytelling over argumentative oratory, added a calming presence.
The greatest issue facing the convention was whether America would remain 13 separate states, or become one nation, or some magical combination of both, as Franklin had first suggested in his Albany Plan of Union back in 1754. This issue was manifest in various specific ways: Would Congress be directly elected by the people or chosen by the state legislatures? Would representation be based on population or be equal for each state? Would the national government or the state governments be sovereign?
America was deeply split on this set of issues. Some people, Franklin initially among them, were in favor of creating a supreme national government and reducing the states to a subordinate role. On the other side were those fervently opposed to any surrender of state sovereignty, which had been enshrined in the Articles of Confederation.
The debate grew heated, threatening to break up the convention, and on June 11 Franklin decided it was time to try to restore a spirit of compromise. He had written his speech in advance, and because of his health he asked another delegate to read it aloud. Some of the suggestions that Franklin proposed seemed sensible, others rather odd. With his love of detail, he provided a lengthy set of calculations showing how smaller states could garner enough votes to match the power of larger ones. There were other remedies to be considered. Perhaps the larger states could give up some of their land to the smaller ones. If that was not feasible, he suggested an even more complex option: There could be equal tax contributions requisitioned from each state, and equal votes in Congress from each state on how to spend this money, then a supplemental requisition from larger states, with proportional votes in Congress on how to spend that fund.
Franklin’s speech was long, co
mplex and at times baffling. Were these all serious suggestions or were some of them merely theoretical discourses? Members seemed not to know. He made no motion to vote on his suggestion for adjusting borders or creating separate treasury funds. More important than his specific ideas was his tone of moderation and conciliation. His speech, with its openness to new ideas and absence of one-sided advocacy, provided time for tempers to cool, and his call for creative compromises had an effect.
IN THE CONVENTION, JUNE 11, 1787
Mr. Chairman,
It has given me great pleasure to observe that till this point, the proportion of representation, came before us, our debates were carried on with great coolness and temper. If any thing of a contrary kind has on this occasion appeared, I hope it will not be repeated; for we are sent hither to consult, not to contend, with each other; and declaration of a fixed opinion and of determined resolutions never to change it; neither enlighten nor convince us. Positiveness and warmth on one side naturally beget their like on the other; and tend to create and augment discord, and division, in a great concern, wherein harmony and union are extremely necessary, to give weight to our counsels, and render them effectual in promoting and securing the common good.
I must own that I was originally of opinion it would be better if every member of Congress, or our national council, were to consider himself rather as a representative of the whole, than as an agent for the interests of a particular state, in which case the proportion of members for each state would be of less consequence, and it would not be very material whether they voted by states or individually. But I find as this is not to be expected, I now think the number of representatives should bear some proportion to the number of the represented, and that the decisions should be by the majority of members, not by the majority of states. This is objected to, from an apprehension that the greater states would then swallow up the smaller. I do not at present clearly see what advantage the greater states could propose to themselves by swallowing the smaller and therefore do not apprehend they would attempt it. I recollect that in the beginning of this century, when the union was proposed of the two kingdoms, England and Scotland, the Scotch patriots were full of fears, that unless they had an equal number of representatives in Parliament they should be ruined by the superiority of the English. They finally agreed however that the different proportions of importance in the union, of the two nations should be attended to, whereby they were to have only forty members in the house of commons, and only sixteen of their peers were to sit in the house of lords, a very great inferiority of numbers! And yet to this day I do not recollect that any thing has been done in the Parliament of great Britain to the prejudice of Scotland; and whoever looks over the lists of public officers civil and military of that nation will find, I believe, that the north Britons enjoy at least their full proportion of emolument.
A Benjamin Franklin Reader Page 38