Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

  His visit to Cambridge made such an impression that he was invited back later that summer to view the university’s commencement. “My vanity was not a little gratified by the particular regard shown me,” he admitted to Deborah. But that regard was not awaiting him when he returned to London in the fall.26

  The Penns Respond

  In November 1758, more than a year after Franklin had submitted his “Heads of Complaint,” the Penns finally responded. Snubbing Franklin, they had their lawyer, Ferdinand Paris, write directly to the Pennsylvania Assembly, with a copy to Franklin, and then followed with a letter of their own to the Assembly.

  On the issue of the Assembly’s power, the Proprietors held firm: their instructions to their governors were inviolable, and the charter “gives the power to make laws to the Proprietary.” The Assembly could provide only “advice and consent.” On the issue of taxation, however, the Penns held open the possibility of some compromise. “They are very ready to have the annual income of their estate inquired into,” Paris wrote, and consider some contributions based on what “is in its nature taxable.”

  The murky response, which offered no concrete assurances of any real money, prompted Franklin to write seeking clarification. But a key aspect of the Proprietors’ position was that they would not deal with him anymore. Paris pointedly told the Assembly that they had not chosen a “person of candor” to be their agent. And the Penns, in their own letter, said that further negotiations would require “a very different representation.” To emphasize the point, Paris visited Franklin personally to deliver the Penns’ message that “we do not think it necessary to keep up a correspondence with a gentleman who acknowledges he is not empowered to conclude proper measures.” Franklin “answered not a word,” Paris reported, and “looked as if much disappointed.”

  “Thus a final end is put to all further negotiation between them and me,” Franklin wrote Assembly Speaker Norris. His mission stymied, he could have returned home and let others work out the details of a compromise on taxation. So he made a halfhearted offer to resign. “The House will see,” he wrote Norris, “that if they propose to continue treating with the Proprietors, it will be necessary to recall me and appoint another person or persons for that service who are likely to be more acceptable or more pliant than I am, or, as the Proprietors express it, persons of candor.”

  But Franklin did not recommend this approach. His usual pragmatic instincts fell prey to sentiments he had once tried to train himself to avoid, such as bitterness, wounded pride, emotionalism, and political fervor. He proposed, instead, a radically different alternative: attempting to take Pennsylvania away from the Penns and turning it into a Crown colony under the king and his ministers. “If the House, grown at length sensible of the dangers to the liberties of the people necessarily arising from such growing power and property in one family with such principles, shall think it expedient to have the government and property in different hands, and for that purpose shall desire that the Crown would take the province into its immediate care, I believe that point might without much difficulty be carried.” With some eagerness he concluded, “In that I think I could still do service.”27

  There was no reason to believe that England’s ministers would meddle with the Proprietary charter or strike a blow for democracy in the colonies. So why did Franklin fixate on an ill-considered, and ill-fated, crusade to turn Pennsylvania into a royal colony? Part of the problem was that his animosity toward the Penns had blurred his peripheral vision. To the Yale historian Edmund Morgan, this “prolonged fit of political blindness” seems surprising, even puzzling. “Franklin’s preoccupation, not to say obsession, with the Proprietary prerogatives not only wasted his immense talents but obscured his vision and his perceptions of what was politically feasible,” he writes.

  Yet Franklin’s actions can be explained, at least partly, by his enthusiasm for the glory of the king’s growing empire. “Once we fully accept the fact that Franklin between 1760 and 1764 was an enthusiastic and unabashed royalist who did not and could not foresee the breakup of the Empire, then much of the surprise, confusion and mystery of his behavior in these years falls away,” argues Brown University professor Gordon Wood.28

  Others in America were quicker than Franklin to realize that it was the prevailing attitude among most British leaders, and not merely the Proprietors, that the colonies ought to be subservient both politically and economically. Franklin’s allies in the Pennsylvania Assembly, however, shared his belief that the struggle was with the Proprietors, and they agreed he should stay to fight them. So, with no personal desire to leave England, he launched assaults against the Penns on three fronts.

  The first involved the Penns’ handling of Indian affairs. Franklin had long been sympathetic to the rights of the Indians, especially the Delawares, who felt that the Penns had cheated them of land. In the fall of 1758, he submitted a brief on the Delawares’ behalf to the Privy Council. In it, he echoed his use of the phrase “low jockey” that he knew had already enraged the Penns. The Penns, he wrote, had extended their holdings “by such arts of jockeyship [that] gave the Indians the worst of opinions of the English.” Little came of Franklin’s advocacy, but he helped publicize the case to score propaganda points against the way the Penns managed their colony.29

  Franklin’s second line of attack involved a libel case the Pennsylvania Assembly had won against William Smith, the provost of the Academy who had become Franklin’s political adversary. When Smith appealed to the Privy Council in London for a reversal, Franklin turned the case into a larger struggle on behalf of the Assembly’s rights. Ferdinand Paris represented Smith, arguing that “the Assembly of Pennsylvania was not a Parliament nor had anything near so much power as the House of Commons had.” In June 1759, the Privy Council ruled against Franklin. On a narrow point, it noted that the Assembly in question had adjourned and a new one been voted in, so the current Assembly had no case. More ominously, it noted that “inferior assemblies” like those in the colonies “must not be compared in power or privileges to the House of Commons.”30

  On the third issue Franklin was somewhat more successful. It involved the case of Gov. William Denny, who had violated his instruction in a number of cases by approving bills that taxed the Proprietors’ estates. The Penns, alleging with some evidence that Denny had been bribed, not only recalled him but also appealed to the Privy Council to have the bills nullified.

  An initial advisory opinion by the Board of Trade went against Franklin and the Assembly. But something surprising happened when the Privy Council heard the appeal. Lord Mansfield, a member of the Council, beckoned Franklin to join him in the clerk’s office while the lawyers were arguing. Was he really of the opinion that the taxes could be levied in such a way that did not injure the Penn estates?

  “Certainly,” Franklin replied.

  “Then,” said Lord Mansfield, “you can have little objection to enter into an engagement to assure that point.”

  “None at all,” said Franklin.

  Thus a compromise was reached. Franklin agreed that the Assembly’s tax bill would exclude the “unsurveyed wastelands” belonging to the Proprietors and would tax unsettled land at a rate “no higher than similar land owned by others.” By reverting to his old pragmatism, Franklin had won a partial victory. But the compromise did not settle permanently the issue of the Assembly’s power, nor did it restore harmony between it and the Proprietors.31

  The compromise also did nothing to further Franklin’s crusade to strip the Penns of their proprietorship of Pennsylvania. Quite the contrary. In all of its rulings, the Privy Council showed no inclination to alter the charter of the Proprietors, nor had Franklin succeeded in whipping up any public support for such a course. Once again, he faced a situation in which there was little more he could achieve in England and no real reason he could not return home. Yet once again, Franklin felt no inclination to leave.

  “Densest Happiness”

  Among Franklin’s
greatest joys were his summer travels. In 1759, he and William went to Scotland, their path paved with introductions to the intellectual elite from William Strahan and John Pringle, both Edinburgh natives. He stayed at the manor of Sir Alexander Dick, a renowned physician and scientist, and there met the greats of the Scottish Enlightenment: the economist Adam Smith, the philosopher David Hume, and the jurist and historian Lord Kames.

  One night at dinner, Franklin regaled the guests with one of his best literary hoaxes, a biblical chapter he fabricated called the Parable against Persecution. It told of Abraham giving food and shelter to a 198-year-old man, then throwing him out when he said he did not believe in Abraham’s God. The parable concluded:

  And at midnight God called upon Abraham, saying, Abraham where is the stranger?

  And Abraham answered and said, Lord, he would not worship thee; neither would he call upon thy name. Therefore have I driven him out before my face into the wilderness.

  And God said, Have I borne with him these hundred ninety and eight years, and nourished him, and clothed him, notwithstanding his rebellion against me, and couldst thou not, that art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night?32

  The guests, charmed by Franklin and his philosophy of tolerance, asked him to send them copies, which he did. It was also at this time that Franklin wrote Hume about the tale of the dispute over a Maypole, which involved a Lord Mareschal who had been asked to opine on whether all forms of damnation were for eternity. Franklin compared it to the plight of a mayor in a Puritan Massachusetts village who was called on to resolve a dispute between those who wanted to erect a Maypole and others who considered it blasphemous:

  He heard their altercation with great patience, and then gravely determined thus: You that are for having no Maypole shall have no Maypole; and you that are for having a Maypole shall have a Maypole. Get about your business and let me hear no more of this quarrel. So methinks Lord Mareschal might say: You that are for no more damnation than is proportioned to your offenses, have my consent that it may be so; and you that are for being damned eternally, G——d eternally d——n you all, and let me hear no more of your disputes.33

  David Hume was the greatest British philosopher of his era and one of the most important logical and analytic thinkers of all time. He had already written the two seminal tracts, A Treatise of Human Nature and Essays Concerning Human Understanding, that are now considered among the most important works in the development of empirical thought, placing him in the pantheon with Locke and Berkeley. When Franklin met him, he was completing the six-volume History of England that would make him rich and famous.

  Franklin assiduously courted him and helped convert him to the colonial cause. “I am not a little pleased to hear of your change of sentiments in some particulars relating to America,” Franklin subsequently wrote him, adding as flattery, “I know no one that has it more in his power to rectify” the British misunderstandings. Of one of Hume’s essays favoring free trade with the colonies, Franklin enthused that it would have “a good effect in promoting a certain interest too little thought of by selfish man…I mean the interest of humanity, or common good of mankind.”

  Franklin and Hume also shared an interest in language. When Hume berated him for coining new words, Franklin agreed to quit using the terms “colonize” and “unshakeable.” But he lamented that “I cannot but wish the usage of our tongue permitted making new words when we want them.” For example, Franklin argued, the word “inaccessible” was not nearly as good as coining a new word such as “uncomeatable.” Hume’s response to this suggestion is unknown, but it did nothing to diminish his ardent admiration for his new friend. “America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo,” he wrote back. “But you are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man of letters, for whom we are beholden to her.”34

  During his visit to Scotland, Franklin also became friends with Henry Home, Lord Kames, whose interests ranged from farming and science to literary criticism and history. Among the things they discussed on their horseback rides through the countryside was the need for Britain to keep control of Canada, which had been wrested from the French earlier that year when an Anglo-American force captured Quebec in one of the decisive battles of the French and Indian War. Franklin pushed the case “not merely as I am a colonist, but as I am a Briton.” As he wrote Kames soon after his departure, “The future grandeur and stability of the British Empire lie in America.” For all his problems with the Penns, he had not yet turned into a rebel.

  The visit to Scotland was capped by Franklin’s acceptance of an honorary doctorate from the University of St. Andrews. As the crimson silk and white satin robe was draped over his shoulder, Franklin was read a citation praising “the rectitude of his morals and sweetness of his life and conversation.” It added, “By his ingenious inventions and successful experiments, with which he has enriched the science of natural philosophy and more especially of electricity which heretofore was little known, [he has] acquired so much praise throughout the world as to deserve the greatest honors in the Republic of Letters.” Thereafter, he was often referred to, even by himself, as Dr. Franklin.

  The time he spent in Scotland, he wrote Lord Kames on his way home, “was six weeks of the densest happiness I have met with in any part of my life.” This was, perhaps, a small exaggeration. But it helped explain why he was not hurrying back to Philadelphia.35

  Indeed, by early 1760, Franklin was beginning to harbor some hope that Deborah and Sally would join him in England. His dream, now that he realized William was unlikely to marry Polly Stevenson, was another middle-class union: to have Sally marry William Strahan’s son Billy. It was a match he had fantasized about when Sally was a mere toddler and Strahan was someone he knew only through his letters. Although arranged marriages were no longer prevalent, they were not uncommon, and Strahan proposed in writing a plan to unite their children. Franklin passed it along to Deborah tentatively, assuming that it was unlikely to entice her over:

  I received the enclosed some time since from Mr. Strahan. I afterwards spent an evening in conversation with him on the subject. He was very urgent with me to stay in England and prevail with you to move hither with Sally. He proposed several advantageous schemes to me which appeared reasonably founded. His family is a very agreeable one; Mrs. Strahan a sensible and good woman, the children of amiable characters and particularly the young man, who is sober, ingenious and industrious, and a desirable person.

  In point of circumstances there can be no objection, Mr. Strahan being in so thriving a way as to lay up a thousand pounds every year from the profits of his business, after maintaining his family and paying all charges…I gave him, however, two reasons why I could not think of removing hither. One my affection to Pennsylvania, and long established friendships and other connections there. The other your invincible aversion to crossing the seas.

  Sally was almost 17, and the union held out the promise of a comfortable life in a smart and fun circle. But Franklin left the decision up to his wife. “I thanked him for the regard shown us in the proposal, but gave him no expectation that I should forward the letters,” he wrote. “So you are at liberty to answer or not as you think proper.” There is no indication that Deborah was tempted in the least.36

  As for William, Franklin was not only a bad matchmaker, he was an even worse role model. Around this time, probably in February 1760, William followed in his father’s steps by siring an illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, known as Temple. His mother was apparently a woman of the streets who (like William’s own mother) seems never to have been heard from again. William accepted paternity, but instead of promptly finding a wife and taking him home (as his own father had done), he sent the child to be raised secretly by a foster family.37

  Temple would eventually become a treasured grandchild to Benjamin Franklin, who oversaw his education and then brought him under his wing as a personal secretary. Later, when his grandfather and father were on
opposite sides during the Revolutionary War, Temple would become a pawn in a heart-wrenching struggle for his loyalty and devotion, one that Benjamin Franklin would win at great personal cost. But for the time being, he was kept out of sight while William enjoyed the social whirl of London and more excursions with his celebrated father.

  The most memorable was a trip to the continent in the summer of1761. Because Britain was still at war with France, they traveled instead to Holland and Flanders. Franklin noted with pleasure that the observance of religion there was not as strict as in America, especially when it came to observing Sundays as the Sabbath. “In the afternoon, both high and low went to the play or the opera, where there was plenty of singing, fiddling and dancing,” he reported to a Connecticut friend. “I looked around for God’s judgments but saw no signs of them.” He concluded, with a touch of amusement, that this provided evidence that the Lord did not care so much about preventing pleasure on the Sabbath as the strict Puritans would have people believe. The happiness and prosperity in Flanders, he wrote, “would almost make one suspect that the Deity is not so angry at that offense as a New England justice.”

  Franklin’s fame as a scientist meant that he was celebrated wherever he went. In Brussels, Prince Charles of Lorrains showed them the equipment he had bought to replicate Franklin’s electricity experiments. And in Leyden, a meeting of the world’s two great electricians occurred: Franklin spent time with Pieter van Musschenbroek, inventor of the Leyden jar. The professor said he was about to publish a book that would make use of a letter Franklin had sent him about electricity, but alas, he died just two weeks after the Franklins left.38

  Canada and Empire

  Franklin cut short his trip to the continent to come back to London to attend the coronation of King George III in September 1761. Still very much a proud British royalist, he harbored high hopes for the new king and fancied that he might protect the colonies from the tyranny of the Proprietors.