Benjamin Franklin was born at Boston in New England, January 6, 1706. His father was a non-conformist, who had emigrated in 1682, and followed the trade of a tallow-chandler. Benjamin was one of the youngest of fourteen children, and, being intended for the ministry, was sent for a year to the Boston Grammar School; after which, poverty compelled his father to remove him, at ten years old, to assist in his business. The boy disliked this occupation so much, that he was bound apprentice to an elder brother, who was just established at Boston as a printer. Though but twelve years of age, he soon learnt all his brother could teach him; but the harsh treatment he met with, which he says first inspired him with a hatred for tyranny, made him resolve to emancipate himself on the first opportunity. All his leisure time was spent in reading; and having exhausted his small stock of books, he resorted to a singular expedient to supply himself with more. Having been attracted by a treatise on the advantages of a vegetable diet, he determined to adopt it, and offered to provide for himself, on condition of receiving half the weekly sum expended on his board. His brother willingly consented; and by living entirely on vegetables he contrived to save half his pittance to gratify his voracious appetite for reading. He continued the practice for several years, and attributes to it his habitual temperance and indifference to the delicacies of the table.

Some time before this the elder Franklin had set up a newspaper, the second ever published in America, which eventually gave Benjamin a pretext for breaking through the trammels of his apprenticeship. In consequence of some remarks which gave offence to the provincial authorities, the former was imprisoned under a warrant from the Speaker of the Assembly; and his discharge was accompanied with an order, that “James Franklin should no longer print the New England Courant.” In this dilemma the brothers agreed that it should be printed for the future in Benjamin’s name; and to avoid the censure that might fall on the elder as printing it by his apprentice, the old indenture was cancelled, and a new one signed which was to be kept secret; but fresh disputes arising, Benjamin took advantage of the transaction to assert his freedom, presuming that his brother would not dare to produce the secret articles. Expostulation was vain; but the brother took care to spread such reports as prevented him from getting employment at Boston. He determined therefore to go elsewhere; and, having sold his books to raise a little money, he set off without the knowledge of his friends, and wandered by way of New York to Philadelphia, where he found himself at seventeen with a single dollar in his pocket, friendless and unknown. He succeeded, however, at last in procuring employment with a printer of the name of Keimer, with whom he remained seven months. By some accident he was thrown in the way of the Governor, Sir William Keith, who promised to be of service to him in his business, if he could persuade his father to establish him in Philadelphia. His father, however, refused to advance any money, thinking him too young to be established in a concern of his own. He therefore once more engaged himself with Keimer, and remained with him a year and a half.

The favour of the Governor, who promised him introductions and a letter of credit, led Franklin to undertake a voyage to England, with a view of improving himself in his trade, and procuring a set of types. But he was severely disappointed, when, at the end of the voyage, upon applying to the Captain who carried the Governor’s despatches, he learnt that there were no letters for him, and that Governor Keith was one of that large class of persons who are more ready to excite expectations than to fulfil them. He soon however got employment, and, with frugality, contrived to maintain both himself and his friend Ralph, who had accompanied him to England on a literary speculation, which, after many failures in verse and prose, procured him at last a nook in the Dunciad, and a pension from the Prince of Wales, whose cause he had espoused in print against George II.

During his voyage he attracted the notice of a merchant named Denham, who, again meeting him in London, became fond of him, and engaged his services as a clerk. After remaining a year and a half in London, he returned with Mr. Denham to Philadelphia. During this voyage he drew up a scheme for self-examination, and several prudent rules for the guidance of his future conduct, to which he steadily adhered through life. Indeed the remarkable success of most of his undertakings may be traced in a great measure to this faculty of profiting early by the lessons of experience, and abiding rigorously by a resolution once made.

He had scarcely returned half a year when his patron died, leaving him again on the world at the age of twenty-one. But he had now acquired so much skill in his business, that he was gladly received at advanced wages into Keimer’s printing-house.

About this time he set on foot a club, called “The Junto,” consisting of twelve persons of his own age, most of whom proved eminent men in after-life. This association had much influence on his fortunes, particularly when, having quarrelled with Keimer, he was induced to establish himself in partnership with a fellow-journeyman named Meredith, and needed both interest and money. By 1729 he had saved enough to buy out his partner, and make himself sole proprietor of the printing-house. In the following year he married a young woman named Reade, to whom he had been attached before he went to England.

In 1732 he began to publish ‘Poor Richard’s Almanack.’ It was interspersed with many prudential maxims, which were printed with additions, in a collected form, in 1757, and have been translated into many languages. The annual sale of this Almanack reached 10,000 copies, and, as it was continued for twenty-five years, was very profitable to the author.

In 1736 he was appointed Clerk to the Assembly of Pennsylvania, and obtained their printing. The next year he was made Deputy Postmaster, and introduced so many judicious reforms into his department, that it began to bring in a considerable revenue, though up to that time it had before barely paid its own expenses. He also carried into effect many improvements at Philadelphia, as his credit with his fellow-townsmen increased; invariably taking care to introduce them as “the idea of a few friends,” or “the plan of some public spirited persons,” thus avoiding the odium which attaches to the corrector of abuses, and eventually securing the credit of having made useful suggestions. In these schemes he was well seconded by the “Junto.” Some of them were—Institutions for watching, paving, and lighting the city; the Union Fire Company, still, we believe, in useful operation; a Philosophical Society; an Academy for Education, now grown up into the University of Pennsylvania; and the City Hospital. But many of these improvements were brought forward at a later period; for until 1748, when he took a partner, his time was almost exclusively occupied in his printing-office.

Being now, comparatively, a man of leisure, he devoted more attention to philosophical pursuits and to public business, for which his fellow-citizens began to find his habits and talents exceedingly well suited. He became, in succession, magistrate, alderman, and member of the Assembly; and nothing of importance was transacted without his assistance or advice.

The first public mission in which he was engaged, was to a tribe of Indians in 1750, which was successful. In 1753 he was appointed Postmaster-General, with a salary of £300 a year.

The next year he produced a plan for the union of the American Provinces, for mutual defence against an apprehended invasion by the French from the Canada frontier. This seems to have been the first time that such an idea was broached; and, as he was fond of saying, like all good motions it was kept alive, though not carried into effect at the time.

Pennsylvania was then ruled by an Assembly elected annually, and a Governor appointed by the descendants of William Penn, who resided in England, and were the feudal lords of the soil. This anomalous kind of government naturally led to misunderstandings, which were among the causes that mainly contributed to alienate the affections of the provinces from the mother country. The Proprietaries, as they were called, laid claim to immunity from taxation, upon grounds which the Assembly refused to admit; and the Governor and his officers taking part with the Proprietaries, to whom they were indebted for their appointments, a controversy grew up, which was never entirely disposed of while the connexion with Great Britain subsisted. In this dispute Franklin took an active share, and sided with the opposition, rejecting frequent overtures from the government; with which, however, he continued to keep on good terms, never losing sight of the duty of a citizen, in supporting the authority of the laws, and defending the state against its foreign and domestic enemies by his writings and example. In following this course on various occasions, especially that of the French invasion from Canada, he not only warmly exerted himself in person, but advanced a good deal of money, which, to the disgrace of the British Government, was never wholly repaid.

In 1757 he was appointed to manage the controversy with the Proprietaries in England. Thither he accordingly repaired after some vexatious delays, and proceeded in the object of his mission with his accustomed energy; and though he met with many obstacles, his efforts were at length successful, and the Penns gave up their claim to be exempt from contributing to the burdens of the state. But they still held the power of appointing the Governor, which the Province wished to be transferred to the Crown, and the dispute was afterwards renewed. The conduct of Franklin in this affair gained him so much credit in America, that he received the additional appointments of Agent for Maryland, Massachusetts, and Georgia, each of which provinces had grievances of its own requiring redress.

During this absence in England, Franklin was presented by the Universities of St. Andrew’s and Oxford with the degree of D.C.L., and took his place as Fellow of the Royal Society, which honour, with many similar distinctions, had been conferred upon him some years before for his discoveries in electricity. The chief of these were, the identity of electricity with lightning, and the mode of protecting buildings by pointed metallic conductors. The simplification which he effected in the theory of electricity, by showing how all the phenomena are explicable by the hypothesis of a single electric fluid, forms a remarkable example of philosophical generalization, and a lasting monument of its author’s genius^[3]. He was also consulted on American affairs by Lord Chatham, who, by his advice, as it is believed, withdrew a part of the British force then acting with the King of Prussia, and directed it with so much secrecy and success against Canada, that the French had no intelligence of the danger of the province till they heard of its irretrievable loss.

In the summer of 1762 he returned to Philadelphia, where he received public thanks, and a grant of £5000 for his services. His popularity was such, that he had been re-elected annually to the Assembly, and he immediately resumed the active part which he had formerly taken in its proceedings.

Among other projects for reform, that relating to the appointment of Governor, which the Proprietaries seem to have exercised with very little regard to the public interest, gave rise to much stormy discussion during the next two years. Franklin’s share in it procured him many enemies, who succeeded in preventing his election in 1764. Yet, a strong petition to the Crown on the subject having been disregarded, he was a second time appointed agent for enforcing the views of the Assembly upon the authorities in England. When there, he by no means limited his exertions to this narrow point: minor dissensions were now merging in the final struggle for national independence, to which the passing of the Grenville Stamp Act in 1763 gave the immediate impulse. Franklin reprobated this tax as arbitrary and illegal, when it was first reported to the Assembly; and his writings in the papers against it with his examination in Parliament, are thought to have contributed much to its repeal under the Rockingham administration, in 1766.

In this and the three next years he paid several visits to the Continent, where he was received with much distinction. He began already to record his observations upon the part the different powers would be likely to take in case of a rupture between England and her colonies: an event which a thorough knowledge of the temper of both led him, even thus early, to contemplate as by no means improbable. The closure of the port of Boston in 1773, and the quartering of troops in the town, filled up the measure of discontent. Franklin was then agent for three provinces besides Pennsylvania; and their remonstrances, which he lost no opportunity of forcing on the attention of the English public as well as the Government, found in him a most efficient supporter. At length, finding all his efforts to bring about a reconciliation entirely fruitless, and having met with much misconstruction and personal indignity at the hands of successive administrations, he resigned his agencies and set sail for Philadelphia, where he arrived in the spring of 1775, after an absence of eleven years.

In the preceding autumn a Congress of delegates from the Assemblies of all the provinces, the idea of which seems to have originated with Franklin, had met at Philadelphia; and their first act was to sign a Declaration of Rights, which had been transmitted to Franklin and the other agents for presentation. The day after his return he was himself elected to serve in this Congress for Pennsylvania, and was intrusted with the management of several important negotiations. In the mean time collisions had taken place between the troops at Boston and the inhabitants, which led to the actions of Lexington and Bunker’s Hill. These events quickened the deliberations of the Congress; and after one more fruitless petition for redress, the Declaration of Independence was published, July 4, 1776, and warlike preparations were actively commenced. The English Ministry now sent out Lord Howe, with full powers to concede every thing but absolute independence; but as the Commissioners appointed to confer with him, of whom Franklin was one, were instructed to treat upon no other terms, the negotiation abruptly terminated.

After his return from a short but unsuccessful mission to Canada, Dr. Franklin had been appointed President of the Convention for settling the constitution of Pennsylvania; but he had not long held the office before his services were again put in requisition by the Congress, as head of the Commission to the Court of France, with powers to negotiate loans, purchase stores, and grant letters of marque. He consented, with all the alacrity of youth, to undertake this charge, though in his 71st year; and, crossing the Atlantic for the fourth time, arrived in France with his colleagues before the end of 1776, and took up his residence at Passy, a village near Paris. The nation at large received the Commission with open arms, and rendered them much assistance, in which the Government secretly participated. But it was not till the surrender of Burgoyne’s army, in October 1777, that the reluctance of the Court to hazard a war with England was overcome. The treaty of alliance, and recognition of the United States, was signed in February 1778, and war immediately was declared against England.

The principal object of the Commission being thus gained, Franklin still continued in France with the character of plenipotentiary during the seven remaining years of the war, till 1783, when England consented to recognize the independence of her late colonies. The definitive treaty for that purpose was signed by himself, and on the part of England by David Hartley, September 3, 1783.

He had of late years been afflicted with those painful disorders the gout and stone, and at last received permission to return, of which he availed himself the following spring, having just completed his 79th year. He was, as may be supposed, most enthusiastically received at Philadelphia, after an absence of eight years and a half; but the Congress, with an ingratitude which has often been justly laid to the charge of republics, made him no acknowledgment or compensation for his long and arduous services; and he felt the neglect rather keenly.

In a very short time we find him again busily engaged in public employments; first as a member of the Supreme Executive Council, and of the Commission for the settlement of the National Confederacy, and soon afterwards as President of the state of Pennsylvania, which he retained for the full legal period of three years. He was also a leading member in several societies for public and charitable purposes. One of the latter was a Society for the Abolition of Slavery, and his last public act was a memorial to Congress on this subject. He then wholly retired from public employments, after a life spent in labours through which nothing could have supported him but a consciousness of the high responsibilities of a mind gifted like his own, and the magnitude of the cause for which his powerful advocacy was so long engaged. He died about two years after his retirement, at the age of eighty-four, in the full enjoyment of all his faculties. Few men ever possessed such opportunities or talents for contributing to the welfare of mankind; fewer still have used them to better purpose: and it is pleasant to know, on his own authority, that such extensive services were rendered without any sacrifice of his own happiness. In his later correspondence he frequently alludes with complacency to a favourite sentiment which he has also introduced into his Memoirs;—“That he would willingly live over again the same course of life, even though not allowed the privilege of an author, to correct in a second edition the faults of the first.”

His remarkable success in life and in the discharge of his public functions is not to be ascribed to genius, unless the term be extended to that perfection of common sense and intimate knowledge of mankind which almost entitled his sagacity to the name of prescience, and made ‘Franklin’s forebodings’ proverbially ominous among those who knew him. His preeminence appears to have resulted from the habitual cultivation of a mind originally shrewd and observant, and gifted with singular powers of energy and self-control. There was a business-like alacrity about him, with a discretion and integrity which conciliated the respect even of his warmest political foes; a manly straight-forwardness before which no pretension could stand unrebuked; and a cool tenacity of temper and purpose which never forsook him under the most discouraging circumstances, and was no doubt exceedingly provoking to his opponents. Indeed his sturdiness, however useful to his country in time of need, was perhaps carried rather to excess; his enemies called it obstinacy, and accused him of being morose and sullen. No better refutation of such a charge can be wished for than the testimony borne to his disposition by Priestley (Monthly Magazine, 1782), a man whom Franklin was justly proud to call his friend. In private life he was most estimable; two of his most favourite maxims were, never to exalt himself by lowering others, and in society to enjoy and contribute to all innocent amusements without reserve. His friendships were consequently lasting, and chosen at will from among the most amiable as well as the most distinguished of both sexes, wherever his residence happened to be fixed.

His chief claims to philosophical distinction are his experiments and discoveries in electricity; but he has left essays upon various other matters of interest and practical utility; an end of which he never lost sight. Among these are remarks on ship-building and light-houses; on the temperature of the sea at different latitudes and depths, and the phenomena of what is called the Gulf-stream of the Atlantic; on the effect of oil poured upon rough water, and other subjects connected with practical navigation; and on the proper construction of lamps, chimneys, and stoves. His suggestions on these subjects are very valuable. His other writings are numerous; they relate chiefly to politics, or the inculcation of the rules of prudence and morality. Many of them are light and even playful; they are all instructive, and written in an excellent and simple style; but they are not entirely free from the imputation of trifling upon serious subjects. The most valuable of them is probably his autobiography, which is unfortunately but a fragment.

As a speaker he was neither copious nor eloquent; there was even a degree of hesitation and embarrassment in his delivery. Yet as he seldom rose without having something important to say, and always spoke to the purpose, he commanded the attention of his hearers, and generally succeeded in his object.

His religious principles, when disengaged from the scepticism of his youth, appears to have been sincere, and unusually free from sectarian animosity.

Upon the whole, his long and useful life forms an instructive example of the force which arises from the harmonious combination of strong faculties and feelings when so controlled by sense and principle that no one is suffered to predominate to the disparagement of the rest.

An excellent Life, in which his autobiography is included, with a collection of many of his miscellaneous writings, and much of his correspondence, has been published in six octavo volumes, by his grandson Temple Franklin, who accompanied him during his mission to France, and possessed the amplest means of verifying his statements by reference to the original papers.