A Benjamin Franklin Reader

by Walter Isaacson

  A few among them, of a mongrel race, derived from a mixture with wolves and foxes, corrupted by royal promises of great rewards, deserted the honest dogs and joined their enemies.

  The dogs were finally victorious: a treaty of peace was made, in which Lion acknowledged them to be free, and disclaimed all future authority over them.

  The mongrels not being permitted to return among them, claimed of the royalists the reward that had been promised.

  A council of the beasts was held to consider their demand.

  The wolves and the foxes agreed unanimously that the demand was just, that royal promises ought to be kept, and that every loyal subject should contribute freely to enable his majesty to fulfill them.

  The horse alone, with a boldness and freedom that became the nobleness of his nature, delivered a contrary opinion.

  “The King,” said he, “has been misled, by bad ministers, to war unjustly upon his faithful subjects. Royal promises, when made to encourage us to act for the public good, should indeed be honorably acquitted; but if to encourage us to betray and destroy each other, they are wicked and void from the beginning. The advisers of such promises, and those who murdered in consequence of them, instead of being recompensed, should be severely punished. Consider how greatly our common strength is already diminished by our loss of the dogs. If you enable the King to reward those fratricides, you will establish a precedent that may justify a future tyrant to make like promises; and every example of such an unnatural brute rewarded will give them additional weight. Horses and bulls, as well as dogs, may thus be divided against their own kind, and civil wars produced at pleasure, till we are so weakened that neither liberty nor safety is any longer to be found in the forest, and nothing remains but abject submission to the will of a despot, who may devour us as he pleases.”

  The council had sense enough to resolve: that the demand be rejected.

  Seducing the French

  After he had concluded a peace agreement with Britain in November 1782, Franklin had the difficult duty of explaining to foreign minister Vergennes why the Americans had breached their obligations to France, which was still at war with Britain, by negotiating a treaty without consulting him. After sending Vergennes a copy of the signed accord, which he stressed was provisional, Franklin called upon him at Versailles the following week. The French minister remarked, coolly but politely, that “proceeding in this abrupt signature of the articles” was not “agreeable to the [French] King.”

  When Franklin followed up with a brash request for yet another French loan, along with the information that he was transmitting the peace accord to Congress, Vergennes took the opportunity to protest officially. It was lacking in propriety, he wrote Franklin, for him “to hold out a certain hope of peace to America without even informing yourself on the state of negotiation on our part.” America was under an obligation not to consider ratifying any peace until France had also come to terms with Britain.

  Franklin’s response, which has been called “a diplomatic masterpiece” and “one of the most famous of all diplomatic letters,” combined a few dignified expressions of contrition with appeals to France’s national interest. Using the French word bienséance, which roughly translates to “propriety,” Franklin sought to minimize the American transgression.

  There was little Vergennes could do. Forcing a showdown, as Franklin had warned, would drive the Americans into an even faster and closer alliance with Britain. So, reluctantly, he let the matter drop, and he even agreed to supply yet another French loan.

  “Two great diplomatic duelists had formally crossed swords,” the Franklin scholar Carl Van Doren noted, “and the philosopher had exquisitely disarmed the minister.” Yes, but perhaps a better analogy would be to Franklin’s own favorite game of chess. From his opening gambit that led to America’s treaty of alliance with France to the endgame that produced a peace with England while preserving French friendship, Franklin mastered a three-dimensional game against two aggressive players by exhibiting great patience when the pieces were not properly aligned and carefully exploiting strategic advantages when they were.

  TO VERGENNES, DECEMBER 17, 1782

  Sir,

  …Nothing has been agreed in the preliminaries contrary to the interests of France; and no peace is to take place between us and England till you have concluded yours. Your observation is however apparently just, that in not consulting you before they were signed, we have been guilty of neglecting a point of bienséance. But as this was not from want of respect for the king whom we all love and honor, we hope it may be excused; and that the great work which has hitherto been so happily conducted, is so nearly brought to perfection, and is so glorious to his reign, will not be ruined by a single indiscretion of ours. And certainly the whole edifice falls to the ground immediately, if you refuse on this account to give us any farther assistance. I have not yet dispatched the ship, and shall wait upon you on Friday for your answer.

  It is not possible for any one to be more sensible than I am, of what I and every American owe to the king, for the many and great benefits and favors he has bestowed upon us. All my letters to America are proofs of this; all tending to make the same impressions on the minds of my countrymen, that I felt in my own. And I believe that no prince was ever more beloved and respected by his own subjects, than the king is by the people of the United States. The English, I just now learn, flatter themselves they have already divided us. I hope this little misunderstanding will therefore be kept a perfect secret, and that they will find themselves totally mistaken.

  With great and sincere respect, I am, sir, your excellency’s most obedient and most humble Servant,

  B. Franklin

  To Polly on Her Mother and the Futility of War

  During his final year in France, Franklin learned that his dear landlady and companion from London, Margaret Stevenson, had died. To her daughter Polly, who had remained his affectionate friend, Franklin expressed his grief and also the hope that she would join him in Paris before he returned to America. Polly did so, and she also would later join him in America where she would be with him until he died.

  TO POLLY STEVENSON HEWSON, JANUARY 27, 1783

  The departure of my dearest friend, which I learn from your last letter, greatly affects me. To meet with her once more in this life, was one of the principal motives of my proposing to visit England again before my return to America. The last year carried off my friends Dr. Pringle and Dr. Fothergill, and Lord Kames, and Lord le Despencer; this has begun to take away the rest, and strikes the hardest. Thus the ties I had to that country, and indeed to the world in general, are loosened one by one, and I shall soon have no attachment left to make me unwilling to follow.

  I intended writing when I sent the 11 books, but I lost the time in looking for the 12th. I wrote with that; and I hope it came to hand. I therein asked your counsel about my coming to England. On reflection, I think I can from my knowledge of your prudence foresee what it will be; viz. Not to come too soon, lest it should seem braving and insulting some who ought to be respected. I shall therefore omit that journey till I am near going to America; and then just step over to take leave of my friends, and spend a few days with you. I purpose bringing Ben with me, and perhaps may leave him under your care.

  At length we are in peace, God be praised; and long, very long may it continue. All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. When will mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their differences by arbitration? Were they to do it even by the cast of a dye, it would be better than by fighting and destroying each other.

  Spring is coming on, when traveling will be delightful. Can you not, when your children are all at school, make a little party, and take a trip hither? I have now a large house, delightfully situated, in which I could accommodate you and two or three friends; and I am but half an hours drive from Paris.

  In looking forward twenty five years seems a long period; but in looking back, how short! Could you
imagine that ’tis now full a quarter of a century since we were first acquainted! It was in 1757. During the greatest part of the time I lived in the same house with my dear deceased friend your mother; of course you and I saw and conversed with each other much and often. It is to all our honors, that in all that time we never had among us the smallest misunderstanding. Our friendship has been all clear sunshine, without any the least cloud in its hemisphere. Let me conclude by saying to you what I have had too frequent occasions to say to my other remaining old friends, the fewer we become, the more let us love one another. Adieu, and believe me ever, Yours most affectionately,

  B. Franklin

  A Critique of Excess Wealth

  Franklin’s affection for the middle class, and its virtues of hard work and frugality, meant that his social theories tended to be a blend of conservatism (as we have seen, he was dubious of generous welfare laws that led to dependency among the poor) and populism (he was opposed to the privileges of inheritance and to wealth idly gained through ownership of large estates). From Paris he expanded on these ideas by questioning the morality of excess personal wealth, most notably in letters to his friends Robert Morris in America and Benjamin Vaughan in London. Franklin’s antipathy to excess wealth also led him to defend high taxes, especially on luxuries.

  To some of his contemporaries, both rich and poor, Franklin’s social philosophy seemed an odd mix. In fact, however, it formed a very coherent leather-apron outlook. Franklin’s blend of beliefs would become part of the outlook of much of America’s middle class: its faith in the virtues of hard work and frugality, its benevolent belief in voluntary associations to help others, its conservative opposition to handouts that led to laziness and dependency, and its slightly ambivalent resentment of unnecessary luxury, hereditary privileges, and an idle landowning leisure class.

  TO ROBERT MORRIS, DECEMBER 25, 1783

  Sir,

  …The remissness of our people in paying taxes is highly blamable, the unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see in some resolutions of town meetings, a remonstrance against giving Congress a power to take as they call it, the people’s money out of their pockets though only to pay the interest and principal of debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the point. Money justly due from the people is their creditor’s money, and no longer the money of the people, who, if they withhold it, should be compelled to pay by some law.

  All property indeed, except the savage’s temporary cabin, his bow, his matchcoat, and other little acquisitions absolutely necessary for his subsistence, seems to me to be the creature of public convention. Hence the public has the right of regulating descents & all other conveyances of property, and even of limiting the quantity & the uses of it. All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual & the propagation of the species, is his natural right which none can justly deprive him of: but all property of the public, who by their laws have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the welfare of the public shall demand such disposition. He that does not like civil society on these terms, let him retire & live among savages. He can have no right to the benefits of society who will not pay his club towards the support of it…

  With sincere regard & attachment, I am ever, dear sir, your most &c

  TO BENJAMIN VAUGHAN, JULY 26, 1784

  Dear friend,

  …You ask what remedy I have for the growing luxury of my country, which gives so much offence to all English travelers without exception. I answer that I think it exaggerated, and that travelers are no good judges whether our luxury is growing or diminishing. Our people are hospitable, and have indeed too much pride in displaying upon their tables before strangers the plenty and variety that our country affords. They have the vanity too of sometimes borrowing one another’s plate to entertain more splendidly strangers being invited from house to house, and meeting every day with a feast, imagine what they see is the ordinary way of living of all the families where they dine; when perhaps each family lives a week after upon the remains of the dinner given. It is, I own, a folly in our people to give such offence to English travelers. The first part of the proverb is thereby verified, that fools make feasts. I wish in this case the other were as true, and wise men eat them. These travelers might one would think find some fault they could more decently reproach us with, than that of our excessive civility to them as strangers.

  I have not indeed yet thought of a remedy for luxury. I am not sure that in a great state it is capable of a remedy. Nor that the evil is in itself always so great as it is represented. Suppose we include in the definition of luxury all unnecessary expense, and then let us consider whether laws to prevent such expense are possible to be executed in a great country; and whether if they could be executed, our people generally would be happier or even richer. Is not the hope of one day being able to purchase and enjoy luxuries a great spur to labor and industry? May not luxury therefore produce more than it consumes, if without such a spur people would be as they are naturally enough inclined to be, lazy and indolent?

  To this purpose I remember a circumstance. The skipper of a shallop employed between Cape May and Philadelphia, had done us some small service for which he refused pay. My wife understanding that he had a daughter, sent her as a present a new-fashioned cap. Three years after, this skipper being at my house with an old farmer of Cape May his passenger, he mentioned the cap and how much his daughter had been pleased with it; but says he it proved a dear cap to our congregation. How so? When my daughter appeared in it at meeting, it was so much admired, that all the girls resolved to get such caps from Philadelphia; and my wife and I computed that the whole could not have cost less than a hundred pound. True says the farmer, but you do not tell all the story; I think the cap was nevertheless an advantage to us; for it was the first thing that put our girls upon knitting worsted mittens for sale at Philadelphia, that they might have wherewithal to buy caps and ribbons there; and you know that that industry has continued and is likely to continue and increase to a much greater value, and answers better purposes. Upon the whole I was more reconciled to this little piece of luxury; since not only the girls were made happier by having fine caps, but the Philadelphians by the supply of warm mittens.

  In our commercial towns upon the seacoast, fortunes will occasionally be made. Some of those who grow rich, will be prudent, live within bounds, and preserve what they have gained for their posterity. Others fond of showing their wealth, will be extravagant and ruin themselves. Laws cannot prevent this, and perhaps it is not always an evil to the public. A shilling spent idly by a fool, may be picked up by a wiser person who knows better what to do with it. It is therefore not lost. A vain silly fellow builds a fine house, furnishes it richly, lives in it expensively, and in a few years ruins himself, but the masons, carpenters, smiths and other honest tradesmen have been by his employ assisted in maintaining and raising their families, the farmer has been paid for his labor and encouraged, and the estate is now in better hands.

  In some cases indeed certain modes of luxury may be a public evil in the same manner as it is a private one. If there be a nation for instance, that exports its beef and linen to pay for its importations of claret and porter, while a great part of its people live upon potatoes and wear no shirts, wherein does it differ from the sot who lets his family starve and sells his clothes to buy drink? Our American commerce is I confess a little in this way. We sell our victuals to your islands for rum and sugar; the substantial necessaries of life for superfluities. But we have plenty and live well nevertheless; though by being soberer we might be richer. By the by, here is just issued an arret of council, taking off all the duties upon the exportation of brandies, which it is said will render them cheaper in America than your rum, in which case there is no doubt but they will be preferred, and we shall be better able to bear your restrictions on our commerce. There are views here by augmenting their settlements of being able to supply the growing people of North America with
the sugar that may be wanted there. On the whole I guess England will get as little by the commercial war she has begun with us as she did by the military. But to return to luxury.

  The vast quantity of forest lands we yet have to clear and put in order for cultivation, will for a long time keep the body of our nation laborious and frugal. Forming an opinion of our people and their manners by what is seen among the inhabitants of the seaports, is judging from an improper sample. The people of the trading towns may be rich and luxurious, while the country possesses all the virtues that tend to private happiness and public prosperity. Those towns are not much regarded by the country. They are hardly considered as an essential part of the states. And the experience of the last war has shown, that their being in possession of the enemy, did not necessarily draw on the subjection of the country, which bravely continued to maintain its freedom and independence not withstanding.

  It has been computed by some political arithmetician, that if every man and woman would work four hours each day on something useful, that labor would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life, want and misery would be banished out of the world, and the rest of the 24 hours might be leisure and pleasure.

  What occasions then so much want and misery? It is the employment of men and women in works that produce neither the necessaries nor conveniences of life, who, with those who do nothing, consume the necessaries raised by the laborious.

  To explain this: the first elements of wealth are obtained by labor from the earth and waters. I have land and raise corn. With this if I feed a family that does nothing, my corn will be consumed and at the end of the year I shall be no richer than I was at the beginning. But if while I feed them I employ them, some in spinning others in hewing timber and sawing boards, others in making bricks &c for building; the value of my corn will be arrested, and remain with me, and at the end of the year we may all be better clothed and better lodged. And if instead of employing a man I feed, in making bricks, I employ him in fiddling for me, the corn he eats is gone, and no part of his manufacture remains to augment the wealth and the conveniences of the family. I shall therefore be the poorer for this fiddling man, unless the rest of my family work more or eat less to make up for the deficiency he occasions.