A Benjamin Franklin Reader

by Walter Isaacson

  Look round the world and see the millions employed in doing nothing, or in something that amounts to nothing when the necessaries and conveniences of life are in question. What is the bulk of commerce, for which we fight and destroy each other but the toil of millions for superfluities to the great hazard and loss of many lives by the constant dangers of the sea. How much labor spent in building and fitting great ships to go to China and Arabia for tea and for coffee, to the West Indies for sugar, to America for tobacco! These things cannot be called the necessaries of life, for our ancestors lived very comfortably without them.

  A question may be asked, could all these people now employed in raising, making or carrying superfluities, be subsisted by raising necessaries? I think they might. The world is large, and a great part of it still uncultivated. Many hundred millions of acres in Asia, Africa and America, are still forest, and a great deal even in Europe. On 100 acres of this forest a man might become a substantial farmer; and 100,000 men employed in clearing each his 100 acres, (instead of being as they are French hairdressers) would hardly brighten a spot big enough to be visible from the moon, unless with Herschel’s telescope, so vast are the regions still in [the] world unimproved.

  ’Tis however some comfort to reflect that upon the whole the quantity of industry and prudence among mankind exceeds the quantity of idleness and folly. Hence the increase of good buildings, farms cultivated, and populous cities filled with wealth all over Europe, which a few ages since were only to be found on the coasts of the Mediterranean. And this notwithstanding the mad wars continually raging, by which are often destroyed in one year the works of many years’ peace. So that we may hope the luxury of a few merchants on the sea coast, will not be the ruin of America.

  One reflection more, and I will end this long rambling letter. Almost all the parts of our bodies require some expense. The feet demand shoes, the legs stockings, the rest of the body clothing, and the belly a good deal of victuals. Our eyes, though exceedingly useful, ask when reasonable, only the cheap assistance of spectacles, which could not much impair our finances. But the eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine houses nor fine furniture. Adieu, my Dear Friend. I am Yours ever,

  B. Franklin

  On Hereditary Honors

  and the Turkey

  Franklin focused much of his writing on his egalitarian, anti-elitist ideas for building a new American society based on middle-class virtues. His daughter Sally sent him newspaper clippings about the formation of a hereditary order of merit called the Society of the Cincinnati, which was headed by General Washington and open to distinguished officers of the American army who would pass the title down to their eldest sons. Franklin ridiculed the concept. The Chinese were right, he said, to honor the parents of people who earned distinction, for they had some role in it. But honoring a worthy person’s descendants, who had nothing to do with achieving the merit, “is not only groundless and absurd but often hurtful to that posterity.” Any form of hereditary aristocracy or nobility was, he declared, “in direct opposition to the solemnly declared sense of their country.”

  He also, in the letter, made fun of the symbol of the new Cincinnati order, a bald eagle, which had also been selected as a national symbol. That provoked one of Franklin’s most famous riffs about America’s values and the question of a national bird.

  TO SARAH BACHE, JANUARY 26, 1784

  My dear Child,

  Your care in sending me the news papers is very agreeable to me. I received by Capt. Barney those relating to the Cincinnati. My opinion of the institution cannot be of much importance. I only wonder that when the united wisdom of our nation had, in the articles of confederation, manifested their dislike of establishing ranks of nobility, by authority either of the Congress or of any particular state, a number of private persons should think proper to distinguish themselves and their posterity from their fellow citizens, and form an order of hereditary knights, in direct opposition to the solemnly declared sense of their country. I imagine it must be likewise contrary to the good sense of most of those drawn into it, by the persuasion of its projectors, who have been too much struck with the ribbons and crosses they have seen among them, hanging to the button-holes of foreign officers. And I suppose those who disapprove of it have not hitherto given it much opposition, from a principle a little like that of your mother, relating to punctilious persons, who are always exacting little observances of respect, that if people can be pleased with small matters, it is pity but they should have them.

  In this view, perhaps I should not myself, if my advice had been asked, have objected to their wearing their ribbon and badge according to their fancy, though I certainly should to the entailing it as an honor on their posterity. For honor worthily obtained, as that for example of our officers, is in its nature a personal thing, and incommunicable to any but those who had some share in obtaining it. Thus among the Chinese, the most ancient, and, from long experience, the wisest of nations, honor does not descend but ascends. If a man from his learning, his wisdom or his valor, is promoted by the emperor to the rank of mandarin, his parents are immediately entitled to all the same ceremonies of respect from the people, that are established as due to the mandarin himself; on this supposition, that it must have been owing to the education, instruction, and good example afforded him by his parents that he was rendered capable of serving the public. This ascending honor is therefore useful to the state as it encourages parents to give their children a good and virtuous education. But the descending honor, to posterity who could have had no share in obtaining it, is not only groundless and absurd, but often hurtful to that posterity, since it is apt to make them proud, disdaining to be employed in useful arts, and thence falling into poverty and all the meannesses, servility and wretchedness attending it; which is the present case with much of what is called the noblesse in Europe. Or if, to keep up the dignity of the family, estates are entailed entire on the eldest male heir, another pest to industry and improvement of the country is introduced, which will be followed by all the odious mixture of pride and beggary, and idleness that have half depopulated Spain, occasioning continual extinction of families by the discouragements of marriage and improvement of estates.

  I wish therefore that the Cincinnati, if they must go on with their project, would direct the badges of their order to be worn by their parents instead of handing them down to their children. It would be a good precedent, and might have good effects. It would also be a kind of obedience to the fourth commandment, in which God enjoins us to honor our father and mother, but has no where directed us to honor our children. And certainly no mode of honoring those immediate authors of our being can be more effectual, than that of doing praiseworthy actions, which reflect honor on those who gave us our education; or more becoming than that of manifesting by some public expression or token that it is to their instruction and example we ascribe the merit of those actions.

  But the absurdity of descending honors is not a mere matter of philosophical opinion, it is capable of mathematical demonstration. A man’s son, for instance, is but half of his family, the other half belonging to the family of his wife. His son too, marrying into another family, his share in the grandson is but a fourth; in the great grandson, by the same process, it is but an eighth. In the next generation a sixteenth: the next a thirty-second. The next a sixty-fourth. The next an hundred and twenty-eighth. The next a two hundred and fifty-sixth: and the next a five hundred and twelfth. Thus in nine generations, which will not require more than 300 years, (no very great antiquity for a family) our present chevalier of the order of Cincinnatus share in the then existing knight will be but a 512th part; which, allowing the present certain fidelity of American wives to be insured down thro’ all those nine generations, is so small a consideration, that methinks no reasonable man would hazard for the sake of it the disagreeable consequences of the jealousy, envy and ill-will of his countrymen.

 
; Let us go back with our calculation from this young noble, the 512th. part of the present knight, thro’ his nine generations till we return to the year of the institution. He must have had a father and mother, they are two. Each of them had a father and mother, they are four. Those of the next preceding generation will be eight; the next sixteen; the next thirty-two; the next sixty-four; the next one hundred and twenty-eight; the next two hundred and fifty-six; and the ninth in this retrocession five hundred and twelve, who must be now existing, and all contribute their proportion of this future Chevalier de Cincinnatus. These with the rest make together as follows: 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 total 1022.

  One thousand and twenty-two men and women contributors to the formation of one knight. And if we are to have a thousand of these future knights there must be now and hereafter existing one million and twenty two thousand fathers and mothers who are to contribute to their production, unless a part of the number are employed in making more knights than one. Let us strike off then the 22,000 on the supposition of this double employ, and then consider whether after a reasonable estimation of the number of rogues, and fools, and royalists and scoundrels and prostitutes that are mixed with and help to make up necessarily their million of predecessors, posterity will have much reason to boast of the noble blood of the then existing set of Chevaliers de Cincinnatus. I hope therefore that the order will drop this part of their project, and content themselves as the knights of the garter, bath, thistle, St. Louis and other orders of Europe do, with a life enjoyment of their little badge and ribbon, and let the distinction die with those who have merited it. This I imagine will give no offence. For my own part, I shall think it a convenience when I go into a company where there may be faces unknown to me, if I discover by this badge the persons who merit some particular expression of my respect; and it will save modest virtue the trouble of calling for our regard, by awkward round-about intimations of having been heretofore employed in the continental service.

  The gentleman who made the voyage to France to provide the ribbons and medals has executed his commission. To me they seem tolerably done, but all such things are criticized. Some find fault with the Latin, as wanting classic elegance and correctness; and since our nine universities were not able to furnish better Latin, it was pity, they say, that the mottos had not been in English. Others object to the title, as not properly assumable by any but General Washington, who served without pay. Others object to the bald eagle, as looking too much like a dindon, or turkey.

  For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree near the river, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes it from him. With all this injustice, he is never in good case but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank coward: the little king bird not bigger than a sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the king birds from our country, though exactly fit for that order of knights which the French call chevaliers d’industrie. I am on this account not displeased that the figure is not known as a bald eagle, but looks more like a turkey. For in truth the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours, the first of the species seen in Europe being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and served up at the wedding table of Charles the Ninth. He is besides, though a little vain and silly, a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.

  I shall not enter into the criticisms made upon their Latin. The gallant officers of America may not have the merit of being great scholars, but they undoubtedly merit much as brave soldiers from their country, which should therefore not leave them merely fame for their virtutis premium; which is one of their Latin mottos. Their esto perpetua another is an excellent wish, if they mean it for their country, bad, if intended for their order. The states should not only restore to them the omnia of their first motto which many of them have left and lost, but pay them justly, and reward them generously. They should not be suffered to remain with their new created chivalry entirely in the situation of the gentleman in the story, which their omnia reliquit reminds me of. You know every thing makes me recollect some story. He had built a very fine house, and thereby much impaired his fortune. He had a pride however in showing it to his acquaintance. One of them after viewing it all, remarked a motto over the door, o-ia vanitas. What, says he, is the meaning of this o-ia? ’Tis a word I don’t understand. I will tell you says the gentleman; I had a mind to have the motto cut on a piece of smooth marble, but there was not room for it between the ornaments to be put in characters large enough to be read. I therefore made use of a contraction anciently very common in Latin manuscripts, by which the ms and ns in words are omitted, and the omission noted by a little dash above, which you may see there, so that the word is omnia, omnia vanitas. O, says his friend, I now comprehend the meaning of your motto, it relates to your edifice; and signifies, that if you have abridged your omnia, you have nevertheless left your vanitas legible at full length. I am ever,

  Your affectionate Father,

  B. Franklin

  A Vision of America

  Franklin heard so frequently from people who wanted to emigrate to America that in early 1784 he printed a pamphlet, in French and in English, designed to encourage the more industrious of them while discouraging those who sought a life of upper-class leisure. His essay, “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America,” is one of the clearest expressions of his belief that American society was based on the virtues of the middle (or “mediocre,” as he sometimes called them, meaning it as a word of praise) classes of which he still considered himself a part. He purported to be describing the way America was, but he was also subtly prescribing what he wanted it to become. All in all, it was his best paean to the middle-class values he represented and helped to make integral to the new nation’s character.

  FEBRUARY, 1784

  Information to Those Who Would Remove to America

  Many persons in Europe having directly or by letters, expressed to the writer of this, who is well acquainted with North America, their desire of transporting and establishing themselves in that country; but who appear to him to have formed thro’ ignorance, mistaken ideas & expectations of what is to be obtained there; he thinks it may be useful, and prevent inconvenient, expensive & fruitless removals and voyages of improper persons, if he gives some clearer & truer notions of that part of the world than appear to have hitherto prevailed.

  He finds it is imagined by numbers that the inhabitants of North America are rich, capable of rewarding, and disposed to reward all sorts of ingenuity; that they are at the same time ignorant of all the sciences; & consequently that strangers possessing talents in the belles-lettres, fine arts, &c. must be highly esteemed, and so well paid as to become easily rich themselves; that there are also abundance of profitable offices to be disposed of, which the natives are not qualified to fill; and that having few persons of family among them, strangers of birth must be greatly respected, and of course easily obtain the best of those offices, which will make all their fortunes: that the governments too, to encourage emigrations from Europe, not only pay the expense of personal transportation, but give lands gratis to strangers, with Negroes to work for them, utensils of husbandry, & stocks of cattle. These are all wild imaginations; and those who go to America with expectations founded upon them, will surely find themselves disappointed.

  T
he truth is, that though there are in that country few people so miserable as the poor of Europe, there are also very few that in Europe would be called rich: it is rather a general happy mediocrity that prevails. There are few great proprietors of the soil, and few tenants; most people cultivate their own lands, or follow some handicraft or merchandise; very few rich enough to live idly upon their rents or incomes; or to pay the high prices given in Europe, for paintings, statues, architecture and the other works of art that are more curious than useful. Hence the natural geniuses that have arisen in America, with such talents, have uniformly quitted that country for Europe, where they can be more suitably rewarded. It is true that letters and mathematical knowledge are in esteem there, but they are at the same time more common than is apprehended; there being already existing nine colleges or universities, viz. Four in New England, and one in each of the provinces of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, all furnished with learned professors; besides a number of smaller academies: these educate many of their youth in the languages and those sciences that qualify men for the professions of divinity, law or physic. Strangers indeed are by no means excluded from exercising those professions, and the quick increase of inhabitants every where gives them a chance of employ, which they have in common with the natives. Of civil offices or employments there are few; no superfluous ones as in Europe; and it is a rule established in some of the states, that no office should be so profitable as to make it desirable…