Jr. John T. Morse

So has ended the first stage, in the benign presence of Hymen. The period of youth may be regarded as over; but the narrative thereof, briefly as it has been given, is not satisfactory. One longs to help out the outline with color, to get the expression as well as merely the features of the young man who is going to become one of the greatest men of the nation. Many a writer and speaker has done what he could in this task, for Franklin has been for a century a chief idol of the American people. The Boston boy, the boy printer, the runaway apprentice, the young journeyman, friendless and penniless in distant London, are pictures which have been made familiar to many generations of schoolboys; and the trifling anecdote of the bread rolls eaten in the streets of Philadelphia has for its only rival among American historical traditions the more doubtful story about George Washington, the cherry-tree, and the little hatchet.

Yet, if plain truth is to be told, there was nothing unusual about this sunrise, no rare tints of divine augury; the luminary came up in every-day fashion. Franklin had done much reading; he had taken pains to cultivate a good style in writing English; he had practiced himself in dispute; he had adopted some odd notions, for example vegetarianism in diet; he had at times acquired some influence among his fellow journeymen, and had used it for good; he had occasionally fallen into the society of men of good social position; he had kept clear of the prevalent habit of excessive drinking; sometimes he had lived frugally and had laid up a little money; more often he had been wasteful; he had been very dissolute, and in sowing his wild oats he had gone down into the mud. His autobiography gives us a simple, vivid, strong picture, which we accept as correct, though in reading it one sees that the lapse of time since the occurrences narrated, together with his own success and distinction in life, have not been without their obvious effect. By the time he thought it worth while to write those pages, Franklin had been taught to think very well of himself and his career. For this reason he was, upon the one hand, somewhat indifferent as to setting down what smaller men would conceal, confident that his fame would not stagger beneath the burden of youthful wrong-doing; on the other hand, he deals rather gently, a little ideally, with himself, as old men are wont to acknowledge with condemnation tempered with mild forgiveness the foibles of their early days. It is evident that, as a young man, Franklin intermingled sense with folly, correct living with dissipation, in a manner that must have made it difficult for an observer to forecast the final outcome, and which makes it almost equally impossible now to form a satisfactory idea of him. He is not to be disposed of by placing him in any ready-made and familiar class. If he had turned out a bad man, there would have been abundance in his early life to point the moralist's warning tale; as he turned out a very reputable one, there is scarcely less abundance for panegyrists to expatiate upon. Certainly he was a man to attract some attention and to carry some weight, yet not more than many another of whom the world never hears. At the time of his marriage, however, he is upon the verge of development; a new period of his life is about to begin; what had been dangerous and evil in his ways disappears; the breadth, originality, and practical character of his mind are about to show themselves. He has settled to a steady occupation; he is industrious and thrifty; he has gathered much information, and may be regarded as a well-educated man; he writes a plain, forcible style; he has enterprise and shrewdness in matters of business, and good sense in all matters,—that is the chief point, his sound sense has got its full growth and vigor, and of sound sense no man ever had more. Very soon he not only prospers financially, but begins to secure at first that attention and soon afterward that influence which always follow close upon success in practical affairs. He becomes the public-spirited citizen; scheme after scheme of social and public improvement is suggested and carried forward by him, until he justly comes to be one of the foremost citizens of Philadelphia. The enumeration of what he did within a few years in this small new town and poor community will be found surprising and admirable.

His first enterprise, of a quasi public nature, was the establishment of a library. There were to be fifty subscribers for fifty years, each paying an entrance fee of forty shillings and an annual due of ten shillings. He succeeded only with difficulty and delay, yet he did succeed, and the results were important. Later a charter was obtained, and the number of subscribers was doubled. "This," he says, "was the mother of all the North American subscription libraries, now so numerous.... These libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans, made the common traders and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defense of their privileges." "Reading became fashionable," he adds. But it was not difficult to cultivate the desire for reading; that lay close to the surface. The boon which Franklin conferred lay rather in setting the example of a scheme by which books could be cheaply obtained in satisfactory abundance.

From the course of this business he drew one of those shrewd, practical conclusions which aided him so much in life. He says that he soon felt "the impropriety of presenting one's self as the proposer of any useful project that might be supposed to raise one's reputation in the smallest degree above that of one's neighbors, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project. I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and stated it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go about and propose it." This method he found so well suited to the production of results that he habitually followed it in his subsequent undertakings. It was sound policy; the self-abnegation helped success; the success secured personal prestige. It was soon observed that when "a number of friends" or "a few gentlemen" were represented by Franklin, their purpose was usually good and was pretty sure to be carried through. Hence came reputation and influence.

In December, 1732, he says, "I first published my Almanack, under the name of Richard Saunders," price five pence, thereby falling in with a common custom among the colonial printers. Within the month three editions were sold; and it was continued for twenty-five years thereafter with an average sale of 10,000 copies annually, until "Poor Richard" became a nom de plume as renowned as any in English literature. The publication ranks as one of the most influential in the world. Its "proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality as the means of procuring wealth and thereby securing virtue," were sown like seed all over the land. The almanac went year after year, for quarter of a century, into the house of nearly every shopkeeper, planter, and farmer in the American provinces. Its wit and humor, its practical tone, its shrewd maxims, its worldly honesty, its morality of common sense, its useful information, all chimed well with the national character. It formulated in homely phrase and with droll illustration what the colonists more vaguely knew, felt, and believed upon a thousand points of life and conduct. In so doing it greatly trained and invigorated the natural mental traits of the people. "Poor Richard" was the revered and popular schoolmaster of a young nation during its period of tutelage. His teachings are among the powerful forces which have gone to shaping the habits of Americans. His terse and picturesque bits of the wisdom and the virtue of this world are familiar in our mouths to-day; they moulded our great-grandparents and their children; they have informed our popular traditions; they still influence our actions, guide our ways of thinking, and establish our points of view, with the constant control of acquired habits which we little suspect. If we were accustomed still to read the literature of the almanac, we should be charmed with its humor. The world has not yet grown away from it, nor ever will. Addison and Steele had more polish but vastly less humor than Franklin. "Poor Richard" has found eternal life by passing into the daily speech of the people, while the "Spectator" is fast being crowded out of the hands of all save scholars in literature. At this period of his life he wrote many short fugitive pieces, which hold some of the rarest wit that an American library contains. Few people suspect that the ten serious and grave-looking octavos, imprinted "The Works of Benjamin Franklin," hide much of that delightful kind of wit that can never grow old, but is as charming to-day as when it came damp from the press a century and more ago. How much of "Poor Richard" was actually original is a sifting not worth while to make. Franklin said: "I was conscious that not a tenth part of the wisdom was my own which he ascribed to me, but rather the gleanings that I had made of the sense of all ages and nations." No profound wisdom is really new, but only the expression of it; and all that of "Poor Richard" had been fused in the crucible of Franklin's brain.

But the famous almanac was not the only pulpit whence Franklin preached to the people. He had an excellent ideal of a newspaper. He got news into it, which was seldom done in those days, and which made it attractive; he got advertisements into it, which made it pay, and which also was a novel feature; indeed, Mr. Parton says that he "originated the modern system of business advertising;" he also discussed matters of public interest. Thus he anticipated the modern newspaper, but in some respects improved in advance upon that which he anticipated. He made his "Gazette" a vehicle for disseminating information and morality, and he carefully excluded from it "all libeling and personal abuse." The sheet in its every issue was doing the same sort of work as "Poor Richard." In a word, Franklin was a born teacher of men, and what he did in this way in these his earlier days gives him rank among the most distinguished moralists who have ever lived.

What kind of morality he taught is well known. It was human; he kept it free from entangling alliances with any religious creed; its foundations lay in common sense, not in faith. His own nature in this respect is easy to understand but difficult to describe, since the words which must be used convey such different ideas to different persons. Thus, to say that he had the religious temperament, though he was skeptical as to all the divine and supernatural dogmas of the religions of mankind, will seem to many a self-contradiction, while to others it is entirely intelligible. In his boyhood one gets a flavor of irreverence which was slow in disappearing. When yet a mere child he suggested to his father the convenience of saying grace over the whole barrel of salt fish, in bulk, as the mercantile phrase would be. By the time that he was sixteen, Shaftesbury and Collins, efficiently aided by the pious writers who had endeavored to refute them, had made him "a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine;" and while he was still his brother's apprentice in Boston, he fell into disrepute as a skeptic. Apparently he gathered momentum in moving along this line of thought, until in England his disbelief took on for a time an extreme and objectionable form. His opinions then were "that nothing could possibly be wrong in the world; and that vice and virtue were empty distinctions, no such things existing." But the pamphlet, already mentioned, in which he expressed these views, was the outburst of a youthful free-thinker not yet accustomed to his new ideas; not many years passed over his head before it "appear'd not so clever a performance as [he] once thought it;" and in his autobiography he enumerates it among the "errata" of his life.

It was not so very long afterward that he busied himself in composing prayers, and even an entire litany, for his own use. No Christian could have found fault with the morals therein embodied; but Christ was entirely ignored. He even had the courage to draw up a new version of the Lord's Prayer; and he arranged a code of thirteen rules after the fashion of the Ten Commandments; of these the last one was: "Imitate Jesus and Socrates." Except during a short time just preceding and during his stay in London he seems never to have been an atheist; neither was he ever quite a Christian; but as between atheism and Christianity he was very much further removed from the former than from the latter. He used to call himself a deist, or theist; and said that a deist was as much like an atheist as chalk is like charcoal. The evidence is abundant that he settled down into a belief in a personal God, who was good, who concerned himself with the affairs of men, who was pleased with good acts and displeased with evil ones. He believed also in immortality and in rewards in a life to come. But he supported none of these beliefs upon the same basis on which Christians support them.

Unlike the infidel school of that day he had no antipathy even to the mythological portions of the Christian religion, no desire to discredit it, nor ambition to distinguish himself in a crusade against it. On the contrary, he was always resolute to live well with it. His mind was too broad, his habit of thought too tolerant, to admit of his antagonizing so good a system of morals because it was intertwined with articles of faith which he did not believe. He went to church frequently, and always paid his contribution towards the expenses of the society; but he kept his commendation only for those practical sermons which showed men how to become virtuous. In like manner the instruction which he himself inculcated was strictly confined to those virtues which promote the welfare and happiness of the individual and of society. In fact, he recognized none other; that which did not advance these ends was but a spurious pretender to the title of virtue.

One is tempted to make many quotations from Franklin's writings in this connection; but two or three must suffice. In 1743 he wrote to his sister:—

"There are some things in your New England doctrine and worship which I do not agree with; but I do not therefore condemn them, or desire to shake your belief or practice of them. We may dislike things that are nevertheless right in themselves. I would only have you make me the same allowance, and have a better opinion both of morality and your brother."

In 1756 he wrote to a friend:—

Throughout his life he may be said to have very slowly moved nearer and nearer to the Christian faith, until at last he came so near that many of those somewhat nondescript persons who call themselves "liberal Christians" might claim him as one of themselves. But if a belief in the divinity of Christ is necessary to make a "Christian," it does not appear that Franklin ever fully had the qualification. When he was an old man, in 1790, President Stiles of Yale College took the freedom of interrogating him as to his religious faith. It was the first time that any one had ever thus ventured. His reply[3] is interesting: "As to Jesus of Nazareth," he says, "I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is like to see." But he thinks they have been corrupted. "I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequences, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and more observed; especially as I do not see that the Supreme takes it amiss by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any peculiar marks of his displeasure." His God was substantially the God of Christianity; but concerning Christ he was generally reticent and non-committal.

Whatever were his own opinions, which undoubtedly underwent some changes during his life, as is the case with most of us, he never introduced Christianity, as a faith, into any of his moral writings. A broad human creature, with a marvelous knowledge of mankind, with a tolerance as far-reaching as his knowledge, with a kindly liking for all men and women; withal a prudent, shrewd, cool-headed observer in affairs, he was content to insist that goodness and wisdom were valuable, as means, towards good repute and well-being, as ends. He urges upon his nephew, about to start in business as a goldsmith, "perfect honesty;" and the reason he gives for his emphasis is, that the business is peculiarly liable to suspicion, and if a man is "once detected in the smallest fraud ... at once he is ruined." The character of his argument was always simple. He usually began with some such axiom as the desirability of success in one's enterprises, or of health, or of comfort, or of ease of mind, or a sufficiency of money; and then he showed that some virtue, or collection of virtues, would promote this result. He advocated honesty upon the same principle upon which he advocated that women should learn to keep accounts, or that one should hold one's self in the background in the presentation of an enterprise such as his public library; that is to say, his advocacy of a cardinal virtue, of acquiring a piece of knowledge, or of adopting a certain method of procedure in business, ran upon the same line, namely, the practical usefulness of the virtue, the knowledge, or the method, for increasing the probability of a practical success in worldly affairs. Among the articles inculcating morality which he used to put into his newspaper was a Socratic Dialogue, "tending to prove that whatever might be his parts and abilities, a vicious man could not properly be called a man of sense."

He was forever at this business; it was his nature to teach, to preach, to moralize. With creeds he had no concern, but took it as his function in life to instruct in what may be described as useful morals, the gospel of good sense, the excellence of common humanity. About the time in his career which we have now reached this tendency of his had an interesting development in its relationship to his own character. He "conceiv'd the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection." It is impossible to recite the details of his scheme, but the narration constitutes one of the most entertaining and characteristic parts of the autobiography. Such a plan could not long be confined in its operation to himself alone; the teacher must teach; accordingly he designed to write a book, to be called "The Art of Virtue," a title with which he was greatly pleased, as indicating that the book was to show "the means and manner of obtaining virtue" as contradistinguished from the "mere exhortation to be good, that does not instruct or indicate the means." A receipt book for virtues! Practical instructions for acquiring goodness! Nothing could have been more characteristic. One of his Busy-Body papers, February 18, 1728, begins with the statement that: "It is said that the Persians, in their ancient constitution, had public schools in which virtue was taught as a liberal art, or science;" and he goes on to laud the plan highly. Perhaps this was the origin of the idea which subsequently became such a favorite with him. It was his

Long years afterward, in 1760, he wrote about it to Lord Kames:—

He was then full of zeal to give this instruction. A year later he said: "You will not doubt my being serious in the intention of finishing my 'Art of Virtue.' It is not a mere ideal work. I planned it first in 1732.... The materials have been growing ever since. The form only is now to be given." He even says that "experiments" had been made "with success;" one wonders how; but he gives no explanation. Apparently Franklin never definitely abandoned this pet design; one catches glimpses of it as still alive in his mind, until it seems to fade away in the dim obscurity of extreme old age. He said of it that it was only part of "a great and extensive project that required the whole man to execute," and his countrymen never allowed Franklin such uninterrupted possession of himself.

A matter more easy of accomplishment was the drawing up a creed which he thought to contain "the essentials of every known religion," and to be "free of everything that might shock the professors of any religion." He intended that this should serve as the basis of a sect, which should practice his rules for self-improvement. It was at first to consist of "young and single men only," and great caution was to be exercised in the admission of members. The association was to be called the "Society of the Free and Easy;" "free, as being, by the general practice and habit of the virtues, free from the dominion of vice; and particularly by the practice of industry and frugality free from debt, which exposes a man to confinement and a species of slavery to his creditors." It is hardly surprising to hear that this was one of the very few failures of Franklin's life. In 1788 he professed himself "still of the opinion that it was a practicable scheme." One hardly reads it without a smile nowadays, but it was not so out of keeping with the spirit and habits of those times. It indicates at least Franklin's appreciation of the power of fellowship, of association. No man knew better than he what stimulus comes from the sense of membership in a society, especially a secret society. He had a great fondness for organizing men into associations, and a singular aptitude for creating, conducting, and perpetuating such bodies. The Junto, a child of his active brain, became a power in local public affairs, though organized and conducted strictly as a "club of mutual improvement." He formed it among his "ingenious acquaintance" for the discussion of "queries on any point of morals, politics, or natural philosophy." He found his model, without doubt, in the "neighborhood benefit societies," established by Cotton Mather, during Franklin's boyhood, among the Boston churches, for mutual improvement among the members. [4] In time there came a great pressure for an increase of the number of members; but Franklin astutely substituted a plan whereby each member was to form a subordinate club, similar to the original, but having no knowledge of its connection with the Junto. Thus sprang into being five or six more, "The Vine, The Union, The Band," etc., "answering, in some considerable degree, our views of influencing the public opinion upon particular occasions." When Franklin became interested in any matter, he had but to introduce it before the Junto for discussion; straightway each member who belonged to any one of the other societies brought it up in that society. Thus through so many active-minded and disputatious young men interest in the subject speedily percolated through a community of no greater size than Philadelphia. Franklin was the tap-root of the whole growth, and sent his ideas circulating throughout all the widespreading branches. He tells us that in fact he often used this efficient machinery to much advantage in carrying through his public and quasi public measures. Thus he anticipated more powerful mechanisms of the like kind, such as the Jacobin Club; and he himself, under encouraging circumstances, might have wielded an immense power as the creator and occult, inspiring influence of some great political society.

Besides his didactic newspaper, his almanac even more didactic, the Junto, the subscription library, the Society of the Free and Easy, his system of religion and morals, and his scheme for acquiring all the virtues, Franklin was engaged in many other matters. He learned French, Italian, and Spanish; and in so doing evolved some notions which are now beginning to find their way into the system of teaching languages in our schools and colleges. In 1736 he was chosen clerk to the General Assembly, and continued to be reËlected during the next fourteen years, until he was chosen a member of the legislature itself. In 1737 he was appointed postmaster of Philadelphia, an office which he found "of great advantage, for, tho' the salary was small, it facilitated the correspondence that improv'd my newspaper, increased the number demanded, as well as the advertisements to be inserted, so that it came to afford me a considerable income. My old competitor's newspaper declined proportionably, and I was satisfied without retaliating his refusal, while postmaster, to permit my papers being carried by the riders."

Soon afterward he conferred a signal benefit on his countrymen by inventing an "open stove for the better warming of rooms, and at the same time saving fuel,"—the Franklin stove, or, as he called it, "the Pennsylvania fireplace." Mr. Parton warmly describes it as the beginning of "the American stove system, one of the wonders of the industrial world." Franklin refused to take out a patent for it, "from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz.: That as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously." This lofty sentiment, wherein the philanthropist got the better of the man of business, overshot its mark; an ironmonger of London, who did not combine philosophy and philanthropy with his trade, made "some small changes in the machine, which rather hurt its operation, got a patent for it there, and made a little fortune by it."

A little later Franklin founded a philosophical society, not intended to devote its energies to abstractions, but rather to a study of nature, and the spread of new discoveries and useful knowledge in practical affairs, especially in the way of farming and agriculture. Franklin always had a fancy for agriculture, and conferred many a boon upon the tillers of the soil. A good story, which may be true, tells how he showed the fertilizing capacity of plaster of Paris. In a field by the roadside he wrote, with plaster, this has been plastered; and soon the brilliant green of the letters carried the lesson to every passer-by.

In 1743 Franklin broached the idea of an academy; but the time had not quite come when the purse-strings of well-to-do Pennsylvanians could be loosened for this purpose, and he had no success. It was, however, a project about which he was much in earnest, and a few years later he returned to it with better auspices. He succeeded in getting it under weigh by means of private subscriptions. It soon vindicated its usefulness, drew funds and endowments from various sources, and became the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin tells an amusing story about his subsequent connection with it. Inasmuch as persons of several religious sects had contributed to the fund, it was arranged that the board of trustees should consist of one member from each sect. After a while the Moravian died; and his colleagues, having found him obnoxious to them, resolved not to have another of the same creed. Yet it was difficult to find any one who did not belong to, and therefore unduly strengthen, some sect already represented. Finally Franklin was mentioned as being "merely an honest man, and of no sect at all." The recommendation secured his election. It was always a great cause of his success and influence that nothing could be alleged against his correct and respectable exterior and prudent, moderate deportment.

He now endeavored to reorganize the system, if system it can be called, of the night-watch in Philadelphia. His description of it is picturesque:—

But even Franklin's influence was overmatched by this task. An abuse, nourished by copious rum, strikes its roots deep, and many years elapsed before this one could be eradicated.

In another enterprise Franklin shrewdly enlisted the boon-companion element on his side, with the result of immediate and brilliant success. He began as usual by reading a paper before the Junto, and through this intervention set the people thinking concerning the utter lack of any organization for extinguishing fires in the town. In consequence the Union Fire Company was soon established, the first thing of the kind in the city. Franklin continued a member of it for half a century. It was thoroughly equipped and efficiently conducted. An item in the terms of association was that the members should spend a social evening together once a month. The example was followed; other companies were formed, and fifty years later Franklin boasted that since that time the city had never "lost by fire more than one or two houses at a time; and the flames have often been extinguished before the house in which they began has been half consumed."

About this time he became interested in the matter of the public defenses, and wrote a pamphlet, "Plain Truth," showing the helpless condition of Pennsylvania as against the French and their Indian allies. The result was that the people were alarmed and aroused. Even the Quakers winked at the godless doings of their fellow citizens, while the enrollment and drill of a volunteer force went forward, and funds were raised for building and arming a battery. Franklin suggested a lottery, to raise money, and went to New York to borrow guns. He was very active and very successful; and though the especial crisis fortunately passed away without use being made of these preparations, yet his energy and efficiency greatly enhanced his reputation in Pennsylvania.

That Franklin had been prospering in his private business may be judged from the facts that in 1748 he took into partnership David Hall, who had been a fellow journeyman with him in London; and that his purpose was substantially to retire and get some "leisure ... for philosophical studies and amusements." He cherished the happy but foolish notion of becoming master of his own time. But his fellow citizens had purposes altogether inconsistent with those pleasing and comfortable plans which he sketched so cheerfully in a letter to his friend Colden in September, 1748. The Philadelphians, whom he had taught thrift, were not going to waste such material as he was. "The publick," he found, "now considering me as a man of leisure, laid hold of me for their purposes; every part of our civil government, and almost at the same time, imposing some duty upon me. The governor put me into the commission of the peace; the corporation of the city chose me of the common council, and soon after an alderman; and the citizens at large chose me a burgess to represent them in the Assembly." This last position pleased him best, and he turned himself chiefly to its duties, with the gratifying result, as he records, that the "trust was repeated every year for ten years, without my ever asking any elector for his vote, or signifying, either directly or indirectly, any desire of being chosen."

The next year he was appointed a commissioner to treat with the Indians, in which business he had so much success as can ever attend upon engagements with savages. He gives an amusing account of the way in which all the Indian emissaries got drunk, and of their quaint apology: that the Great Spirit had made all things for some use; that "when he made rum, he said, 'Let this be for the Indians to get drunk with;' and it must be so."

In 1751 he assisted Dr. Bond in the foundation of his hospital. The doctor at first tried to carry out his scheme alone, but could not. The tranquil vanity of Franklin's narration is too good to be lost: "At length he came to me, with the compliment that he found there was no such thing as carrying a public-spirited project through, without my being concerned in it. 'For,' says he, 'I am often asked by those to whom I propose subscribing. Have you consulted Franklin upon this business? and what does he think of it? And when I tell them that I have not (supposing it rather out of your line), they do not subscribe, but say they will consider of it.'" It is surprising that this artful and sugar-tongued doctor, who evidently could read his man, had not been more successful with his subscription list. With Franklin, at least, he was eminently successful, touching him with a consummate skill which brought prompt response and coÖperation. The result was as usual. Franklin's hand knew the way to every Philadelphian merchant's pocket. Respected as he was, it may be doubted whether he was always sincerely welcomed as he used to move from door to door down those tranquil streets, with an irresistible subscription paper in his hand. In this case private subscriptions were eked out by public aid. The legislature was applied to for a grant. The country members objected, said that the benefit would be local, and doubted whether even the Philadelphians wanted it. Thereupon Franklin drew a bill, by which the State was to give £2000 upon condition that a like sum should be raised from private sources. This was soon done. Franklin regarded his device as a novelty and a ruse in legislation. He complacently says: "I do not remember any of my political manoeuvres, the success of which gave me at the time more pleasure, or wherein, after thinking of it, I more easily excused myself for having made some use of cunning." Simple times, in which such an act could be described as a "manoeuvre" and "cunning!"

He further turned his attention to matters of local improvement. He got pavements laid; and even brought about the sweeping of the streets twice in each week. Lighting the streets came almost simultaneously; and in connection with this he showed his wonted ingenuity. Globes open only at the top had heretofore been used, and by reason of the lack of draft, they became obscured by smoke early in the evening. Franklin made them of four flat panes, with a smoke-funnel, and crevices to admit the air beneath. The Londoners had long had the method before their eyes, every evening, at Vauxhall; but had never got at the notion of transferring it to the open streets.

For a long while Franklin was employed by the postmaster-general of the colonies as "his comptroller in regulating several offices and bringing the officers to account." In 1753 the incumbent died, and Franklin and Mr. William Hunter, jointly, were appointed his successors. They set to work to reform the entire postal service of the country. The first cost to themselves was considerable, the office falling more than £900 in debt to them during the first four years. But there-afterward the benefit of their measures was felt, and an office which had never before paid anything to that of Great Britain came, under their administration, "to yield three times as much clear revenue to the crown as the post-office of Ireland." Franklin narrates that in time he was displaced "by a freak of the ministers," and in happy phrase adds, "Since that imprudent transaction, they have received from it—not one farthing!" In this connection it may be worth while to quote Franklin's reply to a request to give a position to his nephew, a young man whom he liked well, and otherwise aided. "If a vacancy should happen, it is very probable he may be thought of to supply it; but it is a rule with me not to remove any officer that behaves well, keeps regular accounts, and pays duly; and I think the rule is founded on reason and justice."

At this point in his autobiography he records, with just pride, that he received the degree of Master of Arts, first from Yale College and afterward from Harvard. "Thus, without studying in any college, I came to partake of their honors. They were conferred in consideration of my improvements and discoveries in the electric branch of natural philosophy."

An interesting page in the autobiography concerns events in the year 1754. There were distinct foreshadowings of that war between England and France which soon afterward broke out, beginning upon this side of the water earlier than in Europe; and the lords of trade ordered a congress of commissioners from the several colonies to assemble at Albany for a conference with the chiefs of the Six Nations. They came together June 19, 1754. Franklin was a deputy from Pennsylvania; and on his way thither he "projected and drew a plan for the union of all the colonies under one government, so far as might be necessary for defense and other important general purposes." It was not altogether a new idea; in 1697 William Penn had suggested a commercial union and an annual congress. The journal of the congress shows that on June 24 it was unanimously voted that a union of the colonies was "absolutely necessary for their security and defense." The Massachusetts delegation alone had been authorized to consider the question of a union, and they had power to enter into a confederation "as well in time of peace as of war." Franklin had already been urging this policy by writings in the "Gazette," and now, when the ideas of the different commissioners were brought into comparison, his were deemed the best. His outline of a scheme, he says, "happen'd to be preferr'd," and, with a few amendments, was accordingly reported. It was a league rather than a union, somewhat resembling the arrangement which came into existence for the purposes of the Revolution. But it came to nothing; "its fate," Franklin said, "was singular." It was closely debated, article by article, and having at length been "pretty unanimously accepted, it came before the colonial assemblies for ratification." But they condemned it; "there was too much prerogative in it," they thought. On the other hand, the board of trade in England would not approve it because it had "too much of the democratic." All which led Franklin to "suspect that it was really the true medium." He himself acknowledged that one main advantage of it would be "that the colonies would, by this connection, learn to consider themselves, not as so many independent states, but as members of the same body; and thence be more ready to afford assistance and support to each other," etc. It was already the national idea which lay, not quite formulated, yet distinct enough in his mind. It was hardly to be expected that the home government would fail to see this tendency, or that they would look upon it with favor. Franklin long afterward indulged in some speculations as to what might have been the consequences of an adoption of his scheme, namely: united colonies, strong enough to defend themselves against the Canadian French and their Indian allies; no need, therefore, of troops from England; no pretext, therefore, for taxing the provinces; no provocation, therefore, for rebellion. "But such mistakes are not new; history is full of the errors of states and princes.... The best public measures are seldom adopted from previous wisdom but forc'd by the occasion." But this sketch of what might have been sounds over-fanciful, and the English were probably right in thinking that a strong military union, with home taxation, involved more of danger than of safety for the future connection between the colonies and the mother country.

There was much uneasiness, much planning, theorizing, and discussing going on at this time about the relationship between Great Britain and her American provinces; earlier stages of that talk which kept on growing louder, more eager, and more disputatious, until it was swallowed up in the roar of the revolutionary cannon. Among others, Shirley, governor of Massachusetts, concocted a scheme and showed it to Franklin. By this an assembly of the governors of all the colonies, attended by one or two members of their respective councils, was to have authority to take such measures as should seem needful for defense, with power to draw upon the English treasury to meet expenses, the amount of such drafts to be "re-imbursed by a tax laid on the colonies by act of Parliament." This alarming proposition at once drew forth three letters from Franklin, written in December, 1754, and afterward published in the "London Chronicle" in December, 1766. His position amounted to this: that the business of self-defense and the expense thereof were matters neither beyond the abilities of the colonies, nor outside their willingness, and should therefore be managed by them. Their loyalty could be trusted; their knowledge must be the best; on the other hand, governors were apt to be untrustworthy, self-seeking, and ignorant of provincial affairs. But the chief emphasis of his protest falls against taxation without representation. He says:—

And so on; traversing beforehand the same ground soon to be so thoroughly beaten over by the patriot writers and speakers of the colonies. In a very few years the line of argument became familiar, but for the present Franklin and a very few more were doing the work of suggestion and instruction for the people at large, teaching them by what logic their instinctive convictions could be maintained.

He further ingeniously showed that the colonists were already heavily taxed in ways from which they could not escape. Taxes paid by British artificers came out of the colonial consumers, and the colonists were compelled to buy only from Britain those articles which they would otherwise be able to buy at much lower prices from other countries. Moreover, they were obliged to sell only in Great Britain, where heavy imposts served to curtail the net profits of the producer. Even such manufactures as could be carried on in the colonies were forbidden to them. He concluded:—

A third letter discussed a proposition advanced by Shirley for giving the colonies representation in Parliament. Franklin was a little skeptical, and had no notion of being betrayed by a kiss. A real unification of the two communities lying upon either side of the Atlantic, and even a close approximation to proportionate representation, would constitute an excellent way out of the present difficulties. But he saw no encouragement to hope for this.

In fact, the project of laying direct internal taxes upon the colonies by act of Parliament was taking firm root in the English mind, and colonial protests could not long stay the execution of the scheme. Even such grants of money as were made by some of the colonial legislatures were vetoed, on the ground that they were connected with encroachments, schemes for independence, and an assumption of the right to exercise control in the matter of the public finances.[5] The Penns rejoiced. Thomas Penn wrote, doubtless with a malicious chuckle: "If the several assemblies will not make provision for the general service, an act of Parliament may oblige them here." He evidently thought that it would be very wholesome if government should become incensed and severe with the recalcitrants.

During his discussion with Shirley, Franklin had been upon a visit to Boston. He "left New England," he says, "slowly, and with great reluctance;" for he loved the country and the people. He returned home to be swept into the hurly-burly of military affairs. War appropriations came hard from the legislature of the Quaker province; but the occasion was now at hand when come they must. In the autumn of 1755 £60,000 were voted, chiefly for defense, and Franklin was one of the committee in charge of the expenditure. The border was already unsafe, and formal hostilities on a large scale were close at hand. France and England must fight it out for the possession of the new continent, which, boundless as it then seemed, was yet not big enough to admit of their both dwelling in it. France had been steadily pressing upon the northern and western frontiers of the British colonies, and she now held Crown Point, Niagara, the fort on the present site of Pittsburg, and the whole valley of the Ohio River. It seemed that she would confine the English to the strip along the coast which they already occupied. It is true that she offered to relinquish the Ohio valley to the savages, to be a neutral belt between the European nations on either side of it. But the proposal could not be accepted; the French were much too clever in managing the Indians. Moreover, it was felt that they would never permanently desist from advancing. Then, too, the gallant Braddock was on his way across seas, with a little army of English regulars. Finally, the disproportion between the English and French in the New World was too great for the former to rest satisfied with a compromise. There were about 1,165,000 whites in the British provinces, and only about 80,000 French in Canada. The resources, also, of the former were in every respect vastly greater. These iron facts must tell; were already telling. Throughout this last deadly grapple, now at hand, the French were in desperate earnest. History records few struggles wherein the strength of a combatant was more utterly spent, with more entire devotion, than was the case with these Canadian-French provinces. Every man gave himself to the fight, so literally that no one was left to till the fields, and erelong famine began its hideous work among the scanty forces. The English and Americans, on the other hand, were far from conducting the struggle with the like temper as the French; yet with such enormous advantages as they possessed, if they could not conquer a satisfactory peace in course of time, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. So no composition could be arranged; the Seven Years' War began, and to open it with becoming Éclat Braddock debarked, a gorgeous spectacle in red and gold. Yet still there had as yet been in Europe no declaration of hostilities between England and France; on the contrary, the government of the former country was giving very fair words to that of the latter; and in America the British professed only to intend "to repel encroachments."[6]

Franklin had to take his share of the disasters attendant upon the fatal campaign of Braddock. According to his notion that foolish officer and his two ill-behaved regiments should never, by good rights, have been sent to the provinces at all; for the colonists, being able and willing to do their own fighting, should have been allowed to undertake it. But eleven years before this time the Duke of Bedford had declared it a dangerous policy to enroll an army of 20,000 provincials to serve against Canada, "on account of the independence it might create in those provinces, when they should see within themselves so great an army, possessed of so great a country by right of conquest." This anxiety had been steadily gaining ground. The home government did not choose "to permit the union of the colonies, as proposed at Albany, and to trust that union with their defense, lest they should thereby grow too military and feel their own strength, suspicions and jealousies being at this time entertained of them." So it was because the shadow of the Revolutionary War already darkened the visions of English statesmen that the gallant array of soldiery, with the long train of American attendants, had to make that terrible march to failure and death.

The Assembly of the Quaker province was sadly perturbed lest this arbitrary warrior, encamped hard by in Virginia, should "conceive violent prejudices against them, as averse to the service." In their alarm they had recourse to Franklin's shrewd wit and ready tongue. Accordingly, he visited Braddock under pretense of arranging for the transmission of mails during the campaign, stayed with him several days, and dined with him daily. There were some kinds of men, perhaps, whom Braddock appreciated better than he did Indians; nor is it a slight proof of Franklin's extraordinary capacity for getting on well with every variety of human being that he could make himself so welcome to this testy, opinionated military martinet, who in every particular of nature and of training was the precise contrary of the provincial civilian.

Franklin's own good will to the cause, or his ill luck, led him into an engagement, made just before his departure, whereby he undertook to procure horses and wagons enough for the transportation of the ordnance and all the appurtenances of the camp. It was not a personal contract upon his part to furnish these; he was neither to make any money, nor to risk any; he was simply to render the gratuitous service of inducing the Pennsylvania farmers to let out their horses, wagons, and drivers to the general. It was a difficult task, in which the emissaries of Braddock had utterly failed in Virginia. But Franklin conceived the opportunities to be better in his own province, and entered on the business with vigor and skill. Throughout the farming region he sent advertisements and circulars, cleverly devised to elicit what he wanted, and so phrased as to save him harmless from personal responsibility for any payment. Seven days' pay was to be "advanced and paid in hand" by him, the remainder to be paid by General Braddock, or by the paymaster of the army. He said, in closing his appeal: "I have no particular interest in this affair, as, except the satisfaction of endeavoring to do good, I shall have only my labor for my pains."

But he was not to get off so easily; for, he says, "the owners, ... alleging that they did not know General Braddock, or what dependence might be had on his promise, insisted on my bond for the performance, which I accordingly gave them." This was the more patriotic because Franklin was by no means dazzled by the pomp and parade of the doughty warrior, but on the contrary, reflecting on the probable character of the campaign, he had "conceived some doubts and some fears for the event." What happened every one knows. The losses of wagons and horses in the slaughter amounted to the doleful sum of £20,000; "which to pay would have ruined me," wrote Franklin. Nevertheless the demands began at once to pour in upon him, and suits were instituted. It was a grievous affair, and the end was by no means clear. It was easily possible that in place of his fortune, sacrificed in the public service, he might have only the sorry substitute of a claim against the government. But after many troubled weeks he was at length relieved of the heaviest portion of his burden, through General Shirley's appointment of a commission to audit and pay the claims for actual losses. Other sums due him, representing considerable advances which he had made at the outset in the business, and later for provisions, remained unpaid to the end of his days. The British government in time probably thought the Revolution as efficient as a statute of limitations for barring that account. At the moment, however, Franklin not only lost his money, but had to suffer the affront of being supposed even to be a gainer, and to have filled his own pockets. He indignantly denied that he had "pocketed a farthing;" but of course he was not believed. He adds, with delicious humor: "and, indeed, I have since learnt that immense fortunes are often made in such employments." Those, however, were simple, provincial days. In place of the money which he did not get, also of the further sum which he actually lost, he had to satisfy himself with the consolation derived from the approbation of the Pennsylvania Assembly, while also Braddock's dispatches gave him a good name with the officials in England, which was of some little service to him.

A more comical result of the Braddock affair was that it made Franklin for a time a military man and a colonel. He had escaped being a clergyman and a poet, but he could not escape that common fate of Americans, the military title, the prevalence of which, it has been said, makes "the whole country seem a retreat of heroes." It befell Franklin in this wise: immediately after Braddock's defeat, in the panic which possessed the people and amid the reaction against professional soldiers, recourse was had to plain good sense, though unaccompanied by technical knowledge. No one, as all the province knew, had such sound sense as Franklin, who was accordingly deputed to go to the western frontier with a small volunteer force, there to build three forts for the protection of the outlying settlements. "I undertook," he says, "this military business, though I did not conceive myself well qualified for it." It was a service involving much difficulty and hardship, with some danger; General Braddock would have made a ridiculous failure of it; Franklin acquitted himself well. What he afterward wrote of General Shirley was true of himself: "For, tho' Shirley was not bred a soldier, he was sensible and sagacious in himself, and attentive to good advice from others, capable of forming judicious plans, and quick and active in carrying them into execution." In a word, Franklin's military career was as creditable as it was brief. He was called forward at the crisis of universal dismay; he gave his popular influence and cool head to a peculiar kind of service, of which he knew much by hearsay, if nothing by personal experience; he did his work well; and, much stranger to relate, he escaped the delusion that he was a soldier. So soon as he could do so, that is to say after a few weeks, he returned to his civil duties. But he had shown courage, intelligence, and patriotism in a high degree, and he had greatly increased the confidence reposed in him by his fellow citizens.

Beyond those active military measures which the exigencies of the time made necessary, Franklin fell in with, if he did not originate, a plan designed to afford permanent protection in the future. This was to extend the colonies inland. His notions were broad, embracing much both in space and time. He thought "what a glorious thing it would be to settle in that fine country a large, strong body of religious, industrious people. What a security to the other colonies and advantage to Britain by increasing her people, territory, strength, and commerce." He foretold that "perhaps in less than another century" the Ohio valley might "become a populous and powerful dominion, and a great accession of power either to England or France." Having this scheme much at heart, he drew up a sort of prospectus "for settling two western colonies in North America;" "barrier colonies" they were called by Governor Pownall, who was warm in the same idea, and sent a plan of his own, together with Franklin's, to the home government.

It is true that these new settlements, regarded strictly as bulwarks, would have been only a change of "barrier," an advancement of frontier; they themselves would become frontier instead of the present line, and would be equally subject to Indian and French assaults. Still the step was in the direction of growth and expansion; it was advancing and aggressive, and indicated an appreciation of the enormous motive power which lay in English colonization. Franklin pushed it earnestly, interested others in it, and seemed at one time on the point of securing the charters. But the conquest of Canada within a very short time rendered defensive colonization almost needless, and soon afterward the premonitions and actual outbreak of the Revolution put an end to all schemes in this shape.