Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

  Franklin’s two sardonic essays signed Homespun were among at least thirteen attacks on the Stamp Act that he published in a three-month period. In one hoax, signed “A Traveler,” he claimed that America had no need of British wool because “the very tails of the American sheep are so laden with wool that each has a car or wagon on four little wheels to support and keep it from trailing on the ground.” Writing as “Pacificus Secundus,” he resorted to his old tactic of scathing satire by pretending to support the idea that military rule be imposed in the colonies. It would take only fifty thousand British soldiers at a cost of merely £12 million a year. “It may be objected that by ruining our colonies, killing one half the people, and driving the rest over the mountains, we may deprive ourselves of their custom for our manufacturers; but a moment’s consideration will satisfy us that since we have lost so much of our European trade, it can be only the demand in America that keeps up and has of late so greatly enhanced the price of those manufacturers, and therefore a stop put to that demand will be an advantage to all of us, as we may thereafter buy our own goods cheaper.” The only downside for England, he noted, was that “multitudes of our poor may starve for want of employment.”14

  (As has been frequently noted, Franklin often wrote anonymously or using a pseudonym, beginning as a young teen when he wrote as Silence Dogood and then as the Busy-Body, Alice Addertongue, Poor Richard, Homespun, and others. Sometimes, he was trying to be truly anonymous; at other times, he was wearing only a thin mask. This practice was not unusual, indeed it was quite common, among writers of the eighteenth century, including such Franklin heroes as Addison, Steele, and Defoe. “Scarce one part in ten of the valuable books which are published are with the author’s name,” Addison once declared, with a bit of exaggeration. At the time, writing anonymously was considered cleverer, less vulgar, and less likely to lead to libel or sedition charges. Gentlemen sometimes thought it was beneath their stature to have their names on pamphlets and press pieces. The practice also assured that dissenting political and religious writings were rebutted on their merits rather than by personal attacks.)15

  Franklin also produced a political cartoon, a counterpart to his “Join, or Die,” that showed a bloodied and dismembered British Empire, its limbs labeled with the names of colonies. The motto underneath, “Give a Penny to Belisarius,” referred to the Roman general who oppressed his provinces and died in poverty. He had the cartoon printed on note cards, hired a man to hand them out in front of Parliament, and sent one to his sister Jane Mecom. “The moral,” he told her, “is that the colonies may be ruined, but that Britain would thereby be maimed.” Enforcing the Stamp Act, he warned one British minister, would end up “creating a deep-rooted aversion between the two countries and laying the foundation of a future total separation.”16

  Still a loyal Briton, Franklin was eager to prevent such a split. His preferred solution was colonial representation in Parliament. In a set of notes he prepared for his meetings with ministers, Franklin jotted down the argument: “Representation useful two ways. It brings information and knowledge to the great council. It conveys back to the remote parts of the empire the reasons of public conduct…It will forever preserve the union which otherwise may be various ways broken.”

  But he also warned that the time to seize that opportunity was passing. “The time has been when the colonies would have esteemed it a great advantage as well as honor to them to be permitted to send members to Parliament,” he wrote a friend in January 1766. “The time is now come when they are indifferent about it, and will probably not ask it, though they might accept it if offered them; and the time will come when they will certainly refuse it.”

  Short of representation in Parliament, Franklin wrote, “the next best thing” would be the traditional method of requesting funds to be appropriated by each of the colonial legislatures. In the notes he wrote for his conversation with ministers, he suggested a third alternative that would be a step toward independence for the colonies: “empowering them to send delegates from each Assembly to a common council.” In other words, the American colonies would form their own federal legislature rather than be subject to the laws of Parliament. The only thing that would then unite the two parts of the British Empire would be loyalty to the king. It derived from the plan he had proposed more than a decade earlier; next to this idea in his notes he wrote the phrase “Albany Plan.”17

  On February 13, 1766, Franklin got the chance to present his case directly to Parliament. His dramatic appearance was a masterpiece of both lobbying and theater, helpfully choreographed by his supporters in that body. In one afternoon of highly charged testimony, he would turn himself into the foremost spokesman for the American cause and brilliantly restore his reputation back home.

  Many of the 174 questions directed at him were scripted in advance by leaders of the new Whig ministry of Lord Rockingham, which was sympathetic to the colonies and was looking for a way out of the Stamp Act debacle. Others were more hostile. Through it all, Franklin was cogent and calm. The questioning was begun by a member whose manufacturing business had been hurt by the breakdown in trade, who asked Franklin whether the Americans already paid taxes voluntarily to Britain. “Certainly many, and very heavy taxes,” he replied, and he went on to recount their history in detail (though leaving out some of the disputes over taxing of Proprietary lands).

  An adversary broke in. “Are not the colonies,” he asked, “very able to pay the Stamp duty?” Replied Franklin: “There is not gold and silver enough in the colonies to pay the stamp duty for one year.”

  Grenville, who had proposed the act, defended it by asking whether Franklin didn’t agree that the colonies should pay for the defense provided them by royal forces. The Americans, Franklin countered, had defended themselves, and by doing so had defended British interests as well. “The colonies raised, clothed and paid, during the last war, near 25,000 men and spent many millions,” he explained, adding that only a small portion had been reimbursed.

  The larger issue, Franklin stressed, was how to promote harmony within the British Empire. Before the Stamp Act was imposed, asked a supporter named Grey Cooper, “What was the temper of America towards Great Britain?”

  Franklin: The best in the world. They submitted willingly to the government of the Crown, and paid, in all their courts, obedience to the acts of Parliament…They cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons or armies to keep them in subjection. They were governed by this country at the expense of only a little pen, ink and paper. They were led by a thread. They had not only a respect but an affection for Great Britain; for its laws, its customs and manners, and even a fondness for its fashions, which greatly increased the commerce.

  Cooper: And what is their temper now?

  Franklin: Oh, very much altered.

  Cooper: In what light did the people of America used to consider the Parliament?

  Franklin: They considered the Parliament as the great bulwark and security of their liberties.

  Cooper: And have they not still the same respect?

  Franklin: No, it is greatly lessened.

  Once again, Franklin emphasized a distinction between external and internal taxes. “I have never heard any objection to the right of laying duties to regulate commerce. But a right to lay internal taxes was never supposed to be in Parliament, as we are not represented there.”

  Would America submit to a compromise? No, said Franklin, it was a matter of principle. So only military force could compel them to pay the Stamp Tax?

  “I do not see how a military force could be applied to that purpose,” Franklin answered.

  Question: Why may it not?

  Franklin: Suppose a military force is sent into America. They will find nobody in arms. What are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one.

  The finale came when supporters of the Stamp Act tried to dismiss the distinction between extern
al and internal taxes. If the colonies successfully opposed an internal tax, might they later start opposing tariffs and other external taxes?

  “They never have hitherto,” replied Franklin. “Many arguments have lately been used here to show them that there is no difference…At present they do not reason so. But in time they may possibly be convinced by these arguments.”

  It was a dramatic ending, and a foreboding one. In making a distinction between internal taxes and external tariffs, Franklin was again taking a stance more moderate and pragmatic than some emerging American leaders, including most members of the Massachusetts Assembly, who rankled at the prospect of heavy import duties levied by London. But the Boston Tea Party was still almost eight years in the future. On both sides of the Atlantic, there was great rejoicing when Parliament promptly repealed the Stamp Act, even though it laid the ground for future conflict by adding a Declaratory Act stating that Parliament had the right “in all cases whatsoever” to enact laws for the colonies.18

  Franklin had displayed, with steely words cloaked in velvet, both reason and resolve. For a generally reluctant public speaker, it was the longest sustained oratorical performance of his life. He made his case less through eloquence than through a persuasive persistence in focusing the debate on the realities that existed in America. Even one of his diehard opponents told him afterward, Franklin recorded, “that he liked me from that day for the spirit I showed in defense of my country.” Famed in Britain as a writer and scientist, he was now widely recognized as America’s most effective spokesman. He also became, in effect, the ambassador for America in general; besides representing Pennsylvania, he was soon named the agent for Georgia, and then New Jersey and Massachusetts.

  In Philadelphia, his reputation was fully restored. His friend William Strahan helped assure that by sending a transcript of the testimony back to David Hall for publication there. “To this examination,” Strahan wrote, “more than to anything else, you are indebted to the speedy and total repeal of this odious law.” Salutes were fired from a barge christened The Franklin, and at the taverns there were free drinks and presents to all those who arrived with news of the triumph from England. “Your enemies at last began to be ashamed of their base insinuations and to acknowledge that the colonies are under obligation to you,” Charles Thomson wrote.19

  Sally and Richard Bache

  The battle served to remind Franklin about the virtues of the wife he had left back home, or at least to feel guiltier about his neglect of her. Deborah’s frugality and self-reliance were symbols of America’s ability to sacrifice rather than submit to an unfair tax. Now that it was repealed, Franklin rewarded her with a shipment of gifts: fourteen yards of Pompadour satin (he noted that it “cost eleven shillings a yard”), two dozen gloves, a silk negligee and petticoat for Sally, a Turkish rug, cheeses, a corkscrew, and some tablecloths and curtains, which he politely informed her had been selected by Mrs. Stevenson. In the letter accompanying the gifts, he wrote:

  My Dear Child,

  As the Stamp Act is at length repealed, I am willing you should have a new gown, which you may suppose I did not send sooner as I knew you would not like to be finer than your neighbors, unless in a gown of your own spinning. Had the trade between the two countries totally ceased, it was a comfort to me to recollect that I had once been clothed from head to foot in woolen and linen of my wife’s manufacture, that I was never prouder of any dress in my life, and that she and her daughter might do it again if necessary.

  Perhaps, he jovially noted, some of the cheese would be left for him to enjoy by the time he got home. But even though he had turned 60 during the repeal battle and his work in England seemed done, Franklin was not ready to return. Instead, he made plans to spend the summer of 1766 visiting Germany with his friend the physician Sir John Pringle.20

  Deborah’s letters to her husband, awkward though they were, convey both her strength and her loneliness: “I partake of none of the diversions. I stay at home and flatter myself that the next packet will bring me a letter from you.” She coped with his absence and the political tensions by cleaning the house, she said, and she tried hard (perhaps on his instructions) not to bother him with her worries about political matters. “I have wrote several letters to you one almost every day but then I could not forbear saying something to you about public affairs then I would destroy it and then begin again and burn it again and so on.” Describing their newly completed house, she reported that she had not yet hung his pictures because she feared driving nails into the wall without his approval. “There is great odds between a man’s being at home and abroad as everybody is afraid that they shall do wrong so every thing is left undone.”

  His letters, in return, were generally businesslike, focusing mainly on the details of the house. “I could have wished to have been present at the finishing of the kitchen,” he wrote. “I think you will scarce know how to work it, the several contrivances to carry off steam and smell and smoke not being fully explained to you.” He issued detailed instructions for how to paint each room and occasionally made tantalizing references to his eventual homecoming: “If that iron [furnace] is not set, let it alone till my return, when I shall bring a more convenient copper one.”21

  At the end of 1766, his printing partnership with David Hall expired after eighteen years. The end came with a bit of acrimony. Hall had become less ardent about using the pages of the Pennsylvania Gazette to attack the Proprietors, and two of Franklin’s friends helped fund a new printer and paper to take up the cause. Hall considered this a breach of the spirit of their partnership agreement, even though it had expired. “Though you are not absolutely prohibited from being any farther concerned in the printing business in this place, yet so much is plainly implied,” he wrote plaintively.

  Franklin replied from London that the new rival print shop had been “set on foot without my knowledge or participation, and the first notice I had of it was by reading the advertisement in your paper.” He professed his deep affection for Hall and said he had no disagreements with his politics or editorial policies, even if some of his political allies felt otherwise. “I never thought you of any party, and as you never blamed me for the side I took in public affairs, so I never censured you for not taking the same, believing as I do that every man has and ought to enjoy a perfect liberty of judging for himself in such matters.”

  Still, he felt compelled to add that their original agreement did not in fact prevent him from competing now that it had expired: “I could not possibly foresee 18 years beforehand that I should at the end of that term be so rich as to live without business.” Then he added a veiled threat, wrapped in a promise, by saying that he had been offered a chance to become a partner in the rival business but would refrain from doing so as long as Hall provided some more of what Franklin thought he was owed. “I hope I shall have no occasion to do it,” he said of the possibility that he would join with Hall’s rival. “I know there must be a very great sum due to me from our customers, and I hope much more of it will be recovered by you for me than you apprehend.” If so, Franklin promised, that money along with his other income would allow him to stay retired. “My circumstances will be sufficiently affluent, especially as I am not inclined to much expense. In this case I have no purpose of being again concerned in printing.”22

  The expiration of the partnership meant that Franklin would lose about £650 in income a year, which stoked his sense of economy. His life in London was a middle-class mix of frugality and indulgence. Although he did not entertain or live in the grand style that might be expected of someone of his stature, he liked to travel, and his accounts show that he ordered top-quality beer for his home at 30 shillings a barrel (a sharp contrast to his first stay in London, when he preached the virtues of bread and water over beer). His efforts at economy were mainly directed at his wife. In June of 1767 he wrote her:

  A great source of our income is cut off, and if I should lose the post office, which…is far from being unlikely, we
should be reduced to our rents and interests of money for a subsistence, which will by no means afford the chargeable housekeepings and entertainments we have been used to. For my own part I live here as frugally as possible not to be destitute of the comforts of life, making no dinners for anybody and contenting myself with a single dish when I dine at home; and yet such is the dearness of living here that my expenses amaze me. I see too by the sums you have received in my absence that yours are very great, and I am very sensible that your situation naturally brings you a great many visitors, which occasion an expense not easily to be avoided…But when people’s incomes are lessened, if they cannot proportionally lessen their outgoings they must come to poverty.23

  What made the letter particularly cold was that it was written in response to the news that their daughter had fallen in love and hoped for his approval to marry. Sally had grown into a distinguished fixture in Philadelphia society, attending all the balls and even riding in the carriage of Franklin’s adversary Governor Penn. But she fell in love with a man who seemed to be of questionable character and financial security.

  Richard Bache, the suitor in question, had emigrated from England to work as an importer and marine insurance broker with his brother in New York, and then he headed to Philadelphia to open a dry goods store on Chestnut Street. Charming to women but hapless in business, Bache had been engaged to Sally’s best friend, Margaret Ross. When Margaret became fatally ill, she made a deathbed request for Sally to take care of Bache for her, and Sally was quite willing to oblige.24

  For Deborah, deciding what to do in her husband’s absence was an overwhelming responsibility. “I am obliged to be father and mother,” she wrote Franklin, with a tinge of accusation. “I hope I act to your satisfaction, I do so according to my best judgment.”