E302 
 
 F8 S97 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 QDDD57Et.7^7 
 

 
 N ^-e- 0^ .* 
 
 ? ^ 
 
 

 H o 
 
THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 BY 
 
 LINDSAY SWIFT 
 
^ TffK ^ 
 
 
 VI 
 
 
 .*4^- 
 
 ft 
 
 111 
 
 
 ^^-y- 
 
 ^'^"^^itofB.l_.uB^UAaO^ 
 
 PUBLISH EDJjlT 
 
 BO ^ '«■'«*:?«' 
 
r 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 LINDSAY SWIFT 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 
 MDCCCCX 
 
Copyright, igio 
 By Small, Maynard ^ Company 
 
 {hicorporated) 
 
 Entered at Stationers'' Hall 
 
 £"302 
 
 Press of 
 Geo, H. Ellis Co., Boston, U.S.J. 
 
 €'Cf.A:a7Sl4 3 
 
3 
 
 - Ihe photogravure used as a frontispiece 
 Z to tds volume is from a small hronze medal 
 ^ in lossession of the Boston Public Library. 
 ^ Thepresent engraving is by John Andrew 
 <So Snj Boston. 
 
SAMUEL ABBOTT GREEN 
 
 WHO HAS INSPIRED MANY TO CHERISH THE 
 MEMORY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 This is not a biography of Benjamin 
 Franklin^ nor is it a critical survey of his 
 relations to and services for the young nation 
 of which he was -—to use the language of his 
 day — a veritable nursing father. It is ynore 
 than anything else a series of impressions, 
 brought, I trust, into some kind of harmony 
 and sequence, of the career of the most won- 
 derful American. If the truth about a man 
 may be conceived of as prismatic, then each 
 side of such a life as Franklin lived may be 
 considered, as in his case has often been done 
 well and interestingly, with calmness and 
 balance ; but let the crystal be looked at as a 
 whole, and the result is astonishing and daz- 
 zling. These impressions have been formed 
 during twenty-five years of a never-wearying 
 intimacy with the great man'' s doings, sayings, 
 and writings, including three readings of 
 practically all his published works. It is my 
 faidt, and not F^^anklin's, if the enthusiasm 
 of so many years fails to be catching among 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 a few of the possible readers of this en- 
 deavour. 
 
 To my cherished friend and loyal partner 
 in the building of this small book, Edwin 
 Munroe Bacon, I owe a very Tceen gratitude. 
 If I furnished most of the timber , he certainly 
 did a generous share in raising the structure, 
 when I needed help as competent as his. 
 
 The portrait is from a bronze medallion 
 owned by the Public Library of the City of 
 Boston, and not used so often a^ to make it 
 other than interesting. 
 
 LINDSAY SWIFT. 
 
 Boston, July 11, 1910. 
 
cheo:n^ology 
 
 1706 
 
 Born in Boston, January 17 (January 6, 
 
 O.S.). 
 
 1714 
 
 Sent to the grammar school. 
 
 1715 
 to a school 
 metic. 
 
 Went to a school for writing and arith 
 
 1716 
 Taken from school to assist his father in 
 the latter' s business of tallow-chandler 
 and soap-boiler. 
 
 1718 
 Sent to his cousin SamuePs shoj) to learn 
 the cutler's trade. Later an apprentice 
 in his brother James's printing-house. 
 
 1719 
 Composed and printed ^^The Lighthouse 
 Tragedy" and a sailor's song on the 
 ^'Taking of Teach the Pirate." 
 
xii CHEONOLOGY 
 
 1721 
 Employed on his brother's newspaper, 
 the New- England Couranty started this 
 year. Began contributing to its col- 
 umns under the pseudonym of ' ' Silence 
 Dogood." 
 
 1722-23 
 In charge of the Courant during his 
 brother's imprisonment for printing 
 matter objectionable to the authorities, 
 and afterward its ostensible publisher. 
 
 1723 
 Ran away from his brother, and got 
 work in Keimer's printing-house in 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 1724 
 Patronised by Governor Keith, of Penn- 
 sylvania. Eevisited Boston at Sir Will- 
 iam's suggestion to solicit his father's 
 assistance in setting up a printing-house. 
 Failed to obtain it, and later arrived 
 in London, where he found he had been 
 deceived by Keith' s promises. Obtained 
 employment in Palmer's printing-house. 
 
CHEONOLOGY xiii 
 
 1725-26 
 Went from Palmer's to Watts' s printing- 
 house, where he remained during the 
 rest of his stay in London. Became an 
 expert swimmer, and proposed to set 
 up a swimming school in London. Pub- 
 lished (1725) A Dissertation on Liberty 
 and Necessityj Pleasure and Pain. 
 
 1726 
 Eeturned to Philadelphia with Mr. Den- 
 ham, a Quaker merchant, to enter his 
 employ. 
 
 1727 
 
 Fell ill of pleurisy, and composed his 
 epitaph. Eecovered, and returned to 
 Keimer's printing-house. Employed in 
 Burlington, New Jersey, on a job of 
 printing paper money. 
 
 1728 
 Instituted the Junto, club and debating 
 society. Formed a partnership with 
 Hugh Meredith, and set up for himself. 
 
xiv CHEONOLOGY 
 
 1729 
 Took up the publication of the Pennsyl- 
 vania Gazette^ and became an editor and 
 public printer. Got the work of print- 
 ing the Pennsylvania paper money. 
 Published A Modest Enquiry into the Nat- 
 ure and Necessity of a Paper -Currency. 
 
 1730 
 
 Dissolved partnership with Meredith, 
 and continued alone. Added a little 
 stationer's shop to his business. 
 September 1, married Deborah Read 
 (then Mrs. Eogers). 
 
 1731 
 Founded the Philadelphia Library. 
 
 1732 
 
 Began the publication of Poor Richard? s 
 
 Almanac (for 1733). 
 
 His son Francis Folger Franklin born. 
 
 1733 
 Began the study of modern languages in 
 his spare hours. 
 
CHRONOLOGY xv 
 
 1735 
 
 Published A Defense of the Bev. Mr. 
 HemphilV s Observations ; 
 A Letter to a Friend in the Country j Con- 
 taining the Substance of a Sermon Preach'' d 
 at Philadelphia, in the Congregation of The 
 Bev. Mr. Hemphill; 
 
 Some Observations on the Proceedings 
 against The Bev. Mr. Hemphill. 
 
 1736 
 Established the Union Fire Company. 
 Chosen clerk of the General Assembly of 
 Pennsylvania. 
 His son Francis died of small-pox. 
 
 1737 
 Appointed postmaster of Philadelphia. 
 
 1741 
 Began the publication of a monthly 
 magazine, the first planned and the sec- 
 ond issued in the American colonies. 
 After six months it ^^ quietly expired. ^^ 
 
 1742 
 Invented the Franklin stove. 
 
xvi CHEONOLOGY 
 
 1743 
 Drew up '^Proposals for Establishing an 
 Academy." 
 
 1744 
 Established the American Philosophical 
 Society. 
 
 His daughter Sarah born. 
 Published An Accou7it Of the New In- 
 vented Fennsylvanian Fire- Places, 
 
 1746 
 His attention first drawn to electricity. 
 Published Reflections on Courtship and 
 Marriage : In Two Letters to a Friend. 
 
 1747 
 Stimulated the establishment of a militia 
 by the government, and fostered the or- 
 ganisation of a voluntary association for 
 the general defence of the city and 
 province. 
 
 Published Flain Truth : Or, Serious Con- 
 siderations On the Fresent State of the 
 City of Fhiladelphia and Frovince of 
 Fennsylvania. 
 
CHEONOLOGY xvii 
 
 1748 
 Took David Hall as a partner. 
 
 1749 
 Founded his proposed Academy, which 
 became the Academy and Charitable 
 School of the Province of Pennsylvania, 
 and ultimately developed into the Uni- 
 versity of Pennsylvania. 
 
 1751 
 Published, in London, Experiments and 
 Observations on Mectricity made at Phila- 
 delphia in America, 
 
 1752 
 Proved the identity of electricity and 
 lightning by experimenting with a kite. 
 Made a member of the Eoyal Society of 
 London. 
 
 Invented the lightning rod. 
 Elected to civic positions, and a member 
 of the General Assembly for Philadelphia. 
 
 1753 
 Member of a commission from the Council 
 and Assembly to confer with the Indians 
 of Carlisle with respect to a treaty. 
 
xviii CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1753 (continued) 
 Appointed; jointly with William Hunter, 
 Postmaster-General of America. 
 Given tlie degree of Master of Aj-ts by 
 Harvard College and by Yale College. 
 Eeceived the Sir Godfrey Copley medal 
 from the Eoyal Society of London. 
 Published, in London, Supplemental Ex- 
 periments and Observations on Electricity. 
 
 1754 
 Commissioner for Pennsylvania at a con- 
 gress of commissioners at Albany to con- 
 fer with the chiefs of the Six Nations. 
 Drew up his Plan for a Union of the 
 Colonies. 
 
 Published, in London, New Experiments 
 and Observations on Electricity made at 
 Philadelphia in America, 
 
 1755 
 Aided General Braddock by establishing 
 a system of transportation of military 
 stores. 
 
CHRONOLOGY xix 
 
 1756 
 Entered military servicej in charge of tlie 
 north-western frontier. 
 
 1757 
 Sent to London as agent for the province 
 of Pennsylvania. 
 
 1759 
 Eeceived the degree of Doctor of Laws 
 from the University of St. Andrews, 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 Freedom of the city conferred upon him 
 by the corporation of Edinburgh. 
 Much time this year devoted to electrical 
 experiments in England. 
 Published, in London, Some Account of 
 the Success of Inoculation for the Small-Fox 
 in England and America. 
 Published, in London, Fardble against 
 Persecution. 
 
 1760 
 His mission on the issue with the Proprie- 
 taries brought to a successful close. 
 First separate edition of the Way to 
 
XX CHEONOLOGY 
 
 1760 (^continued') 
 Wealth (^^Father Abraham's Speech," 
 from Poor Bicliard''s Almanac) published. 
 Published, in London, The Interest of 
 Great Britain Considered, With Regard to 
 her Colonies. 
 
 1761 
 In the autumn made a tour of Holland. 
 
 1762 
 Eeceived the degree of Doctor of Civil 
 Laws from the University of Oxford. 
 
 1763 
 Travelled through the northern colonies 
 to inspect their several post-offices. 
 Appointed one of the commissioners for 
 Pennsylvania to dispose of the public 
 money appropriated for raising and pay- 
 ing forces to act against the Indians. 
 
 1764 
 Defeated of re-election to the Assembly 
 in an exciting voting contest. 
 Appointed by the Assembly agent of the 
 
CHEONOLOGY xxi 
 
 1764 (continued) 
 House to present their petition to the 
 King for a change of government. 
 Sailed for England in November. 
 Published A Narrative of the late Massa- 
 cres, in Lancaster County; 
 Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of 
 our Fuhlic Affairs; 
 
 A Petition to the King, for changing the 
 Proprietary Government of Pennsylvania 
 into a Royal Government; 
 BemarJcs on a late Protest Against the 
 Appointment of Mr. Franklin an Agent for 
 this Province. 
 
 1765 
 Presented to Grenville copy of the reso- 
 lution of the Pennsylvania Assembly 
 against the proposed Stamp Act. 
 
 1766 
 Efforts to obtain the repeal of the Stamp 
 Act. His examination before the House 
 of Commons^ followed by repeal. 
 Eeappointed agent by the Pennsylvania 
 Assembly. 
 
xxii CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1766 (continued) 
 Published, in London, The Examination 
 of Dr. Benjamin FranMinj etc. 
 Pnblislied, in London, Physical and Me- 
 teorological Observations. 
 
 1768 
 Authorised to act as agent in London 
 for Georgia. 
 
 1769 
 Chosen by the House of Representatives 
 of New Jersey as agent for that province. 
 
 1770 
 Appointed by the General Court agent 
 for Massachusetts. 
 
 1771 
 Visited Ireland, and received by the Irish 
 Parliament at Dublin. Also visited 
 Scotland. 
 
 Wrote the first part of his Autobiog- 
 raphy. 
 
 1772 
 Transmitted the Hutchinson - Oliver 
 letters to Massachusetts. 
 
CHEONOLOGY xxiii 
 
 1772 (continued) 
 Published, in London, Two Letters, ad- 
 dressed to the Eight Bev, PrelateSj who a 
 second Time rejected the Dissenters' Bill. 
 
 1773 
 Examination before the Privy Council 
 on the petition of the Massachusetts As- 
 sembly for the removal of Governor 
 Hutchinson. 
 
 Published, in the London Advertiser, 
 Rules for Beducing a Great Empire to a 
 Small One. Later (1793) issued in pam- 
 phlet form. 
 
 Published, in London, [Lord Despen- 
 ser's] Abridgement of the Boole of Com- 
 mon Prayer. Franklin wrote the pref- 
 ace and abridged the Catechism and 
 Psalms. 
 
 1774 
 
 Dismissed from the office of deputy post- 
 master-general of ^orth America. 
 Published, in London, Of the Stilling of 
 Waves hy means of Oil; 
 
xxiv CHEONOLOGY 
 
 1774 (continued) 
 Experiments and Observations on Elec- 
 tricity made at Philadelphia. , . . To which 
 are added, Letters and Papers on Fhilosoph- 
 icdl Subjects. 
 
 1775 
 Eeturned to Philadelphia. 
 May 6, elected by the Pennsylvania 
 Assembly a delegate to the Continental 
 Congress. The same month elected Post- 
 master-General of the colonies. 
 
 1776 
 One of three commissioners sent on a 
 fruitless mission to Canada. Presided 
 over the Constitutional Convention of 
 Pennsylvania. Elected by the Con- 
 tinental Congress one of a committee to 
 frame a Declaration of Independence. 
 Elected one of three commissioners to 
 France. In December arrived in France. 
 
 1778 
 Formally received at the French court. 
 Appointed minister plenipotentiary to 
 France. 
 
CHRONOLOGY xxv 
 
 1778 (conUriued) 
 Issued at Passy the bagatelle, The 
 Mphemera; an emblem of Human Life» 
 
 1779 
 Wrote the Morals of Chess, afterward 
 published in many editions. 
 Issued from his press, at Passy, The 
 Whistle. To Madame Brillon. 
 
 1780 
 Issued from his press, at Passy, The Dia- 
 logue between Franklin and the Gout 
 
 1781 
 Appointed a member of the commission 
 to negotiate a treaty of peace between 
 England and the United States. 
 
 1784 
 Resumed work on his Autobiography. 
 Issued from his press, at Passy, Advice to 
 such as would remove to America; and Be- 
 marJcs Concerning the Savages of North 
 America. 
 
xxvi CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1785 
 His resignation as minister to France 
 accepted by Congress. Returned to 
 Philadelphia in September. 
 Elected president of the Commonwealth 
 of Pennsylvania. 
 
 1786 
 Re-elected president of Pennsylvania. 
 Published Maritime Observations: In a 
 letter from Doctor Franklin to Mr. Alphon- 
 siis Le Boy, member of several Academies, 
 in Paris. 
 
 1787 
 
 Again re-elected to the presidency of 
 Pennsylvania. Appointed a delegate to 
 the convention which framed the Con- 
 stitution of the United States. 
 Published Observations on the Causes and 
 Cure of SmoJcy Chimneys. 
 
 1788 
 Brought the Autobiography down to 
 1757. 
 
CHEONOLOGY xxvii 
 
 1789 
 Contributed to the press papers in behalf 
 of the abolition of slavery. 
 Wrote, but did not publish during his 
 life, Observations Belative to the Intentions 
 of the Original Founders of the Academy 
 in Philadelphia. 
 
 1790 
 
 Died in Philadelphia, April 17, aged 
 eighty- four years and three months. 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 I. 
 
 To send any one who reads these 
 compact pages back to the fount and ori- 
 gin of all essential knowledge of Frank- 
 lin, his own immortal Autobiography, 
 is motive enough for writing them. 
 Many have considered him, and from 
 various standpoints. In later years Mr. 
 Paul Leicester Ford views him polygon- 
 ally. Professor McMaster as a man of 
 letters, and Mr. Morse as an American 
 statesman, but all have drawn on the 
 original vintage, reduced to suit a large 
 variety of palates. Parton's second 
 pressing is still so excellent reading that 
 only a condensation of the most straight- 
 forward sort can hope to find an excuse 
 for itself on the plea of novelty. 
 
 A man who first begins to write of 
 himself when sixty-five years of age is 
 able to discard irrelevancies and to ig- 
 nore trivialities. With a past of already 
 
2 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 great achievement and a still more won- 
 derful old age before him, Franklin felt 
 no need for false shame, for it was his 
 object to account for his career and not 
 to extenuate his weaknesses or to mag- 
 nify his renown. It was with no awk- 
 wardness therefore that he speaks of the 
 ^'poverty and obscurity" in which he 
 was born on January 6 (O.S.), 1706, 
 in the town of Boston, in the Province 
 of Massachusetts-Bay, of Josiah and a 
 second wife Abiah (Folger) Franklin. 
 He was his father's fifteenth child — 
 there being in all seventeen — and his 
 mother's eighth. About where the 
 building formerly occupied by the Bos- 
 ton Fast now stands, below the corner 
 of Milk Street and Washington, then 
 Marlborough Street, was his birthplace ; 
 and on his natal day he was hurried to 
 the Old South Meeting-house opposite — 
 the first South meeting-house that the 
 Old South replaced — and piously dedi- 
 cated to the God of his fathers, — borne 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 3 
 
 there, so legend has it, in the arms of his 
 own mother. The family, which took its 
 name from the estate of its members as 
 English freeholders, was from North- 
 amptonshire, and, if socially obscure, 
 was not mean. Josiah came with his 
 first wife to New England in 1682 : his 
 second wife, Franklin's mother, was the 
 daughter of Peter Folger, ^^a godly, 
 learned Englishman ' ' ; and thus on both 
 sides Franklin came of an unmixed 
 stock, of the sort which takes most 
 kindly and readily to transplantation. 
 He himself was almost a perfect proto- 
 type of what we understand to be Ameri- 
 canism, — resourceful, shrewd, somewhat 
 idealistic, and largely practical j as a 
 citizen, generous and helpful j but, as an 
 individual, dextrous to win advantage 
 beyond the point where the scrupulous 
 draw the line. 
 
 Franklin went to grammar school 
 when he was eight years old, but ^^I do 
 not remember when I could not read,'' 
 
4 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 he says. From Grandfatlier Folger lie 
 inherited a doleful tendency to verse- 
 making. From his paternal uncle Ben- 
 jamin, who was also poetically inclined, 
 and who was ^^a great attender of ser- 
 mons,'^ he learned a rough sort of short- 
 hand, and received a bent toward books. 
 In arithmetic he ^^made no progress," 
 though proving himself so fair a scholar 
 in other respects that he was, at ten 
 years of age, put to his father's trade of 
 ^^sope" -boiling and tallow- chandlering. 
 His astonishing normality was shown by 
 an early desire to go to sea, but he went 
 no further than to sail small boats with 
 other boys. In these sports he was 
 ^^ commonly allowed to govern." The 
 elder Franklin had this aptitude for 
 leadership, and was frequently consulted, 
 by grander people than he himself pre- 
 tended to be, for his opinion on town and 
 church affairs. Life with the Frank- 
 lins was simplicity itself. Conversation, 
 meant to be instructive and perhaps ele- 
 
BENJAMm FRANKLIN 5 
 
 vating, was cultivated. What went into 
 the heads above the board was held to be 
 of more consequence than the food itself. 
 In later years Franklin wrote signifi- 
 cantly: ^'To this day if I am asked I can 
 scarcely tell a few hours after dinner 
 what I dined upon.'^ This indifference 
 to the joys of the palate has been noticed 
 in men of extraordinary ability. Cau- 
 tious habits and evenness of temperament 
 carried the father through eighty-nine 
 years and the mother through eighty- 
 five years of a life which they undoubt- 
 edly enjoyed after their own sober and 
 discreet fashion. 
 
II. 
 
 The father's trade was not to the boy's 
 liking, not so much because he felt above 
 it as because it presented to his active 
 mind no healthy and stimulating obsta- 
 cles. He was already showing aptitude 
 for mechanical devices, and was storing 
 his receptive mind with such reading as 
 he was able to procure with his small 
 spending money. Toward the Fil- 
 grwi's Progress, Plutarch's lAves, and 
 mostly, perhaps, to Cotton Mather's 
 Essays to do Good, he shows a deep grati- 
 tude. At twelve he was indentured as 
 a printer's apprentice to his brother 
 James till his coming of age, partly be- 
 cause he was bookish and partly because 
 the sea still held out its alluring charms 
 to the restless boy. 
 
 His reading, which continued late 
 into the nights, tended to make him dis- 
 putatious, a fault into which, Franklin 
 says, persons of good sense seldom fall, 
 
BEl^JAMIN FEANKLIN 7 
 
 ^'except lawyers, university men, and 
 men of all sorts that liave been bred at 
 Edinburgh/^ — a very sour observation 
 for so complacent a man as Franklin to 
 make, though it betrays the not uncom- 
 mon suspiciousness of the unacademic 
 mind. Among the various polemics 
 which he held with his chum, John 
 Collins, was one on '^the propriety of 
 educating the female sex,'^ in which the 
 young apprentice took, as he usually 
 did, the right side. These and other 
 ambitious strivings to further his knowl- 
 edge of books and to model himself after 
 the best style, in particular that of the 
 Spectator, brought upon him the atten- 
 tion of his own family, if of no one else. 
 His radicalism in matters of religion 
 early showed itself by an evasion, as far 
 as he was able, of ^^the common attend- 
 ance on public worship.'^ The eyes of 
 his understanding were levelled in all 
 directions of human interest, usually 
 with entire sanity, sometimes with the 
 
8 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 perversity of mere youth. He even 
 ventured a prolonged experiment in the 
 vegetable diet, when he was sixteen, 
 and found it intellectually profitable. 
 At this time he happened on three 
 books of particular value to him, 
 Locke's On the Human Understanding, 
 The [Port Royal] Art of Thinking, and 
 the before- mentioned Essays to do Good, 
 by Cotton Mather. It is wonderful how 
 readily he seized on the essence of books. 
 His reading in Xenophon's Memorabilia 
 helped to lead him into that extremely 
 tolerant method of argument which never 
 forsook him. The Greek restraint and 
 euphemism corresponded happily with 
 his own mental cheerfulness, and he con- 
 ducted all argumentation with an easy 
 and broad-shouldered effect of strength 
 and responsibility. 
 
 Law and journalism have been the 
 two surest roads for American ambition 
 to travel. Benjamin Franklin veered 
 naturally enough into work on his 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 9 
 
 brother James's newspaper, the fourth 
 to be undertaken in the English colonies. 
 There was no legal career open in Bos- 
 ton in those days, but, had there been, 
 the lad would not have been inclined to 
 follow it. The apprentice soon began 
 to send modest contributions to this New- 
 Mngland Courantj first anonymously, then 
 openly, somewhat to the irritation of the 
 brother, a rather dour body, who oc- 
 casionally beat the young contributor, 
 not because the latter was vicious, but 
 because he was abler than his surly 
 master. This fraternal treatment filled 
 Franklin with ^^that aversion to arbi- 
 trary power,'' as he says, ^^that has stuck 
 to me through my whole life." A little 
 man would have grown up to bully 
 others as he was himself bullied, but 
 Franklin was small in nothing except 
 his economies, and then only to himself. 
 When James Franklin was imprisoned 
 for publishing matter offensive to the 
 General Court, the younger brother con- 
 
10 BEIsTJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 ducted the paper, whicli a little later 
 by a pardonable trick (in the return of 
 his indenture with his discharge written 
 on the back of it, and the substitution 
 privately of a new one for the remainder 
 of the term) appeared under the name 
 of Benjamin Franklin. One trick led 
 to another. The new publisher, having 
 secured his indenture, soon refused to 
 hold himself bound by the new and 
 secret agreement, and left his brother. 
 For this he was promptly blacklisted by 
 all the master printers in Boston, and this 
 experience sent him at the age of seven- 
 teen on a three days' voyage, in company 
 with his friend Collins, to i^ew York, 
 and thence, finding no employment there, 
 on a turbulent passage to 2^ew Jersey, 
 and overland, mostly on foot, to Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
HL 
 
 Early on a Sunday morning, clad in 
 workaday clothes and travel-stained, 
 Benjamin Franklin arrived in this enter- 
 prising town, which henceforth was to 
 divide the honours with Boston as having 
 fostered the most comprehensive genius 
 of American life. With a Dutch dollar 
 and a shilling's worth of copper in his 
 pocket the Boston-bred lad sought to buy 
 ^'bisket,'' but had to content himself 
 with three penny rolls. After saunter- 
 ing past the house where lived Deborah 
 Eead, who was later to be his wife, he 
 found himself in a Quaker meeting- 
 house, where he fell asleep. 
 
 He soon secured employment with one 
 Keimer, a rather inefficient printer, the 
 poorer of the only two then in Philadel- 
 phia, who, himself an author, was fonder 
 of books than of making them. Lodg- 
 ing was taken with Mr. Eead, and 
 Franklin began to live comfortably, 
 
12 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 ^'forgetting Boston as much as lie 
 could. '^ Being of good address, lie won 
 tlie attention of Sir William Keith, gov- 
 ernor of the province, who would have 
 the boy to dine occasionally at his own 
 table, much to the astonishment of 
 Keimer. Encouraged by offers of the 
 governor to turn the public printing 
 into his hands if he would set up on his 
 own account, and by the promise of Sir 
 William that, to obtain Josiah Frank- 
 lin's assistance in the venture, he would 
 undertake to reconcile the father and 
 son, Franklin took passage for Boston in 
 April, 1724, after seven months' ab- 
 sence. 
 
 Though this unbiblical prodigal re- 
 turned, to the joy of his family, with five 
 pounds sterling in his pocket, the elder 
 brother carried out his part of the famil- 
 iar parable by turning his back on such 
 audacious prosperity. James Franklin 
 was something of a churl, and this visit, 
 in which were flourished dazzling hand- 
 
be:n^jamin feanklin is 
 
 fuls of silver, ^ ^offended Mm extremely.'^ 
 Josiah Franklin declined, thongli cour- 
 teously. Governor Keith's suggestion that 
 he set up the enterprising young printer 
 in business, but was evidently impressed 
 by the attention of so important a per- 
 sonage. The frugal old man gave his 
 approbation and blessing to his son as he 
 started for New York by the way of 'New- 
 port, where lived Benjamin's brother 
 John, who was glad to see his relative, 
 and commissioned him to collect a con- 
 siderable debt. The voyage from IsTew- 
 port to New York was safely passed. 
 There his old chum Collins again crossed 
 his adventurous way, changed by brandy- 
 drinking from an industrious and studious 
 lad into a purposeless young man. The 
 sturdy printer, not deserting his besotted 
 friend, took him in tow to Philadelphia. 
 Not long afterward Collins, still in debt 
 to his benefactor, took passage for the 
 Barbadoes, and disappeared from Frank- 
 lin's ken. At this time was committed 
 
14 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 one of those ^^ errata'^ of wMcli Frank- 
 lin, in a sort of lustratory mood, was 
 fond of confessing. This erratum was, in 
 plain, the embezzlement of money which 
 he had been charged to collect for a 
 trustful New Englander, a friend of his 
 brother John. The sin was committed, 
 as this sin so often is, not to help himself, 
 but another, — the worthless Collins. 
 
 It was also about this time that, 
 tempted by that most irresistible of all 
 odours to the hungry man, — fried fish, — 
 he abjured vegetarianism and fell back 
 for a while amiably into the dietary 
 traces. But he continued to experiment 
 with food, and induced the long-bearded 
 and gluttonous Keimer, with whom he 
 had again resumed business relations, to 
 adopt a simple method, at a cost of 
 eighteen pence a week each, until 
 Keimer weakly fell from grace under the 
 blandishments of roast pig. Self-im- 
 provement in one way and another was 
 never out of Franklin's mind, and his 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 15 
 determination and fixity of purpose are 
 never better shown than by his friend- 
 ships, especially with men of his own 
 age. Osborne, Watson, and Ealph, who 
 afterward became a literary man in a 
 small way, and Benjamin himself took 
 Sunday strolls, argued, compared notes, 
 criticised each other freely, though in 
 the main amiably. 
 
 In his nineteenth year, having come 
 to a good understanding with Miss Eead 
 as to the strength of their mutual affec- 
 tion, and having taken berth with Ealph 
 on the '^annual ship'' which plied be- 
 tween London and Philadelphia, Frank- 
 lin, within a few days of his nineteenth 
 birthday, reached London on December 
 24, 1724. 
 
IV. 
 
 Franklin at once learned that he had 
 been lied to by Governor Sir William 
 Keith, by whose flatteries and promises 
 he had been led to take this voyage. Hum- 
 bugged as he was by the great man, im- 
 perturbable good nature led him to write 
 Keith down as '^otherwise an ingenious, 
 sensible man, a pretty good writer, and 
 good governor for the people.'^ 
 
 Ealph became a hanger-on at the lit- 
 erary and theatrical kennels of the day, 
 while his virtuous pal went to his trade 
 at Palmer's shop in Bartholomew Close. 
 A very good specimen of Franklin's 
 skill in composition at this time exists in 
 the second edition of Wollaston's Beligion 
 of Nature, to which Franklin wrote a re- 
 ply, A Dissertation on Liberty and Neces- 
 sity, Pleasure and Fain, which proved too 
 sceptical to suit his master. This pam- 
 phlet was ^^ another erratum,'^ not so 
 great a one, however, as forgetting ^^by 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 17 
 
 degrees ' ' the engagement with Miss Bead, 
 and omitting to write her more than one 
 letter, and that one only to tell her that 
 he was ^^not likely soon to return." 
 
 The next erratum was more serious, 
 but frankly told. Ealph, forgetting his 
 own wife and child, had taken up with 
 a young milliner. In Ealph's absence 
 from London his friend sought to take 
 his place. The lady's affections, if irreg- 
 ular, were loyal, and Franklin was not 
 only discomfited, but by his treachery 
 gave the poetaster a chance to relieve his 
 jealous anger by repudiating all former 
 obligations, monetary and other, to his 
 more prudent associate. 
 
 Franklin's literary venture with the 
 Beligion of Nature brought him into some 
 vivacious company of a bookish turn 
 who gathered at an ale-house. From that 
 time on till his first experience in London 
 ended he worked at Watts 's printing- 
 house, near Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was 
 here that he set his intemperate fellows 
 
18 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 the admirable example of not drinking 
 beer during working hours. He kept 
 himself strong and well on water, while 
 they guzzled after the immutable fashion 
 of the British workman. ^'Thus/' he 
 rather sadly comments, ^Hhese poor 
 devils keep themselves always under." 
 Failing, on a change of work, to set up 
 the usual five shillings for drink, Ben- 
 jamin was so thoroughly ignored, and so 
 worried by the ^^chappel ghost," that 
 he at last yielded to his tormentors. He 
 was, however, able to bring the force of 
 his example to bear on some of the 
 printers in regard to habits of food 
 and drink, and the shrine of St. Monday 
 was correspondingly deserted. 
 
 The young American's bodily strength 
 was then as remarkable as his mental 
 vigour. He could carry upstairs and 
 down a large locked ^^form" of type in 
 each hand, — a feat at which his fellows 
 wondered, for one form at a time was 
 usually carried, requiring the use of both 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 19 
 
 arms. At swimming he was from boy- 
 hood to mature life a marvel. On one 
 occasion he swam from Chelsea to Black- 
 friars, ^^ performing on the way many 
 feats of activity." Years afterward he 
 suggested that the Channel might be 
 crossed by a swimmer lying on his back 
 and drawn by a kite. Fearless in all 
 experimentation, it is a wonder that 
 Franklin did not essay this feat himself. 
 So fond, indeed, was he of fresh air and 
 clean water that he seems almost to have 
 discovered their hygienic uses to men. 
 In this as in many other ways he was 
 essentially a modern. 
 
 Tired at last of London, he agreed with 
 Mr. Denham, an old Quaker merchant 
 then there, to return to Philadelphia as 
 his clerk for fifty pounds a year, Pennsyl- 
 vania money, — a less sum than he was 
 earning in England. It is fortunate that 
 he so planned, else had he been tempted, 
 under the patronage of Sir William 
 Wyndham, to open a swimming school. 
 
20 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 After eighteen months spent sometimes 
 in folly, but mostly in wise living, Frank- 
 lin sailed on July 23, 1726, from Graves- 
 end, a ^ ^ cursed biting place . ' ^ ^ ^ Albion, 
 farewell ! " he exclaims in his lively jour- 
 nal of the voyage, as he watches the cliffs 
 of England fade. The weariness of travel 
 was relieved at draughts, a game in which 
 he much delighted, and then again at 
 cards. Franklin sagely observes that one 
 should not care for consequences in play, 
 for, of two persons equal in skill, he who 
 has the more anxiety is sure to lose. 
 What with philosophical and social ob- 
 servations, the catching of dolphins, the 
 meeting and passing of vessels, the voyage 
 wore on, till at the end of about ten 
 weeks the young Franklin began to feel 
 the exhilaration common to all who have 
 sailed westward from the fogs and clouds 
 of England to the gay, clear air of Amer- 
 ica, and presently he was again at home 
 in Philadelphia. 
 
On landing, he soon learned that his 
 neglect of Miss Eead had borne fruit, for 
 she had been induced by friends to marry 
 a worthless potter, named Eogers, who 
 soon ran off to the West Indies, where he 
 supposedly died. 
 
 Franklin's new employer, Denham, 
 opened a store, and gave him a large re- 
 sponsibility in the venture, until both fell 
 sick. Franklin was brought so low by 
 pleurisy that he felt loath to recover. 
 Economical even when bargaining with 
 death, he felt that, if he lived, he should 
 ^'have all that disagreeable work to do 
 over again." A virtuous contempt of 
 the incident of dissolution was character- 
 istic of his large nature, though he was 
 prudent to a degree in matters of health 
 and wise living. 
 
 On the death of Denham and after 
 some hesitation, Franklin again entered 
 Keimer's employ, and brought the latter^ s 
 
22 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 printing business up to a better standard. 
 His resourcefalness led him to make 
 moulds and matrices to sui)ply a sad de- 
 ficiency of ^^ sorts," to engrave occasion- 
 ally, and to make ink. So useful a ser- 
 vant, if he works unselfishly, is seldom 
 appreciated, and it was in the order of 
 human nature that the fatuous Keimer 
 should find an early occasion to dismiss 
 his factotum. For a short time he re- 
 turned to Keimer' s ofi&ce to help him out 
 on a job of printing paper money for New 
 Jersey, to facilitate which Franklin con- 
 trived a copper-plate press. Meanwhile 
 he had arranged with a Welshman, Hugh 
 Meredith, also an employe of Keimer' s, 
 whom Franklin had helped to forsake 
 strong drink, to set up a separate estab- 
 lishment. 
 
 The Autobiography halts at this place 
 a moment to explain its author's attitude 
 at that time toward religion and morals. 
 Brought up by his parents ^^ piously in 
 the Dissenting way, ' ' he found himself at 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 23 
 
 fifteen no little of a sceptic. Perversely 
 tui^ned in favour of Deism by reading some 
 of Sir Eobert Boyle's Lectures which were 
 directed against it, he came to regard the 
 optimistic conclusions of the deistic doc- 
 trine of little practical value. While 
 still rejecting Eevelation, he did, how- 
 ever, hold fast to the certitudes that 
 ^Hruth, sincerity and integrity ^^ were of 
 prime importance. He thus was able to 
 assert that he had a ^^ tolerable character 
 to begin the world with/' though in his 
 original draught he states that there were 
 some foolish intrigues with low women, — 
 an admission which he allowed himself 
 on the margin to modify considerably. 
 No trace of spiritual exaltation appears 
 in this frank confession, but there is at 
 all times evident a reaching forward to 
 a homely, practical, and not unworthy 
 standard of life. 
 
 The year of his start with Meredith, 
 or in 1728, he had founded the Junto, 
 fijst called the Leather Apron, that 
 
24 be:n^jamin feanklin 
 
 small but admirable beginning of 
 greater things. On Friday evenings this 
 little club met to discuss philosophy, 
 morals, and doubtless the questions of 
 the day, in a spirit of equanimity and 
 good faith. The first members were a 
 scrivener's clerk, a mathematician, a sur- 
 veyor, a shoemaker, afterward a mathe- 
 matician, a joiner, a merchant's clerk, 
 Franklin himself, and three fellow- work- 
 men of his at Keimer's. Two of these 
 associates afterward became surveyors- 
 general, and one a merchant of note; but 
 the names of all of them have passed 
 into oblivion, except that of the founder. 
 Many and varied were the questions put 
 and answered, and great was the indirect 
 good done these young men by their 
 serious endeavour. 
 
 It was a time of prodigious industry 
 for the young firm, and twenty-four hours 
 were hardly long enough to suit their 
 measure of the day. ^^The industry of 
 that Franklin," said Dr. Baird, a Scotch- 
 
BEISTJAMIN FEANKLIK 25 
 man^ ^ ' is superior to anytMng I ever saw 
 of the kind 5 I see him still at work when 
 I go home from the club ; and he is at 
 work again before his neighbours are out 
 of bed.^^ 
 
 By a little manoeuvring Franklin at 
 the age of twenty-three (1729) came into 
 possession of a paper which Keimer, se- 
 cretly informed of a similar intention on 
 Franklin's part, had started, but which 
 languished for about nine months on a 
 subscription list of not more than ninety 
 names. This paper was speedily turned 
 into the famous Pennsylvania Gazette, and 
 soon gave its publisher not only reputa- 
 tion, but good returns, though Keimer 
 in his announcement admitted that it 
 did not so ^^ quadrate'' with his circum- 
 stances as to enable him to go on with 
 the venture. Meredith, Franklin's part- 
 ner, had the failing common to printers 
 in those days, and was no help. The in- 
 ability of Meredith's father to come for- 
 ward with a promised loan would have 
 
26 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 thrown the already prosperous Gazette 
 into difficulties, had it not been for the 
 loyal offer of two Junto friends, Coleman 
 and Grace. Easy terms were made with 
 Meredith to withdraw, and the partner- 
 ship was dissolved in July, 1730. 
 
 The previous year Franklin wrote and 
 published A Modest Enquiry into the Nature 
 and Necessity of a Pamper- Currency, which 
 was a powerful stimulant to the cause 
 of paper money, then popular, though 
 ^^the rich men disliked it." More cur- 
 rency was issued, and Franklin was given 
 the job of printing it, — ^^a very profit- 
 able jobb,'' as he says, and not put down 
 as one of his errata. In ten years the 
 volume of paper had increased from 
 £15,000 to £80,000, and gave much 
 temporary prosperity, though Franklin 
 later admitted that ^^ there are limits 
 beyond which the quantity may be 
 hurtful.'^ 
 
 Business was now rushing with the 
 young printer-editor. He added a 
 
BENJAMm FRANKLIN 27 
 stationer's shop^ and began to pay his 
 debts. He studied frugality as a science, 
 and gave attention to personal appear- 
 ance. Ostentatiously, be would some- 
 times wheel his paper stock home on a 
 barrow a la honest tradesman, for even 
 a great man may be a prig. Franklin 
 never went ^ ' a fishing or shooting, ' ^ and 
 only read books because the doing so was 
 ^'seldom, snug and gave no scandal. '^ 
 No wonder he grew prosperous! Mean- 
 while Keimer and his luckless successor, 
 Harry, failed and went to the Barba- 
 does, leaving Bradford as Franklin's 
 sole competitor in Philadelphia. 
 
 The wife of Godfrey, the glazier, at 
 whose house Franklin was then living, 
 thought the rising young man would 
 make a fit mate for the daughter of a 
 relation. Franklin was not coy or ill- 
 disposed to the match, but, the settlement 
 being less than would suffice to pay his 
 printing-house debts, he calmly suggested 
 that the parents of the girl mortgage 
 
28 BEKJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 their house to make up the sum! This 
 affair fell through, but left him favour- 
 ably inclined to the wedded state. In- 
 timacy began again with the Eead 
 family, and he was married to Deborah 
 on September 1, 1730. Franklin, if 
 shrewd, was venturesome, and this 
 marriage, postponed by his own none too 
 scrupulous neglect, was in keeping with 
 his willingness to run a fair risk for a 
 good bargain. There was no certainty 
 in regard to the supposed death of Miss 
 Eead's first husband, and this may have 
 been thought by Franklin to be an offset 
 to the wretched irregularities in which 
 he admits that he had been engaged 
 just before his taking a wife. Such 
 follies were the commonplace wanderings 
 of unrestrained youth, and his discerning 
 mind, if not the loftiness of his ideals, 
 soon taught him the essential vulgarity 
 of promiscuous unchastity. Balancing 
 then the possible illegality of the mar- 
 riage against his own rather timorous 
 
BEN^JAMIK FRANKLm 29 
 wantonness, the couple took their 
 chances, and the venture prospered. 
 
 With this important event ends that 
 part of the Autobiography begun in 
 1771, while Franklin, then agent of the 
 colonies, was staying in England with his 
 friend, Bishop Shipley. Not until he 
 was at Passy, in 1784, as minister to 
 France, did he again take up the narra- 
 tive. 
 
YI. 
 
 He was particularly urged to this 
 second effort to complete his masterpiece 
 by his friend Benjamin Yaughan, who 
 wanted to see Franklin's career placed 
 in comparison ^' with the lives of various 
 public cut-throats and intriguers, and 
 with absurd monastic self-tormentors or 
 vain literary triflers.'' The sincere 
 wishes of a friend prevailed on the old 
 man's feelings, and he begins again by 
 rehearsing with commendable pride his 
 share in starting what proved to be in 
 effect, if not in name, the first public 
 library in this country. 
 
 Books and bookshops in 1730 were few 
 in the towns of Philadelphia and l^ew 
 York. There was intellectual life in 
 Boston, then the chief town of the colo- 
 nies, but certainly no irradiating literary 
 influence. The base of mental supplies 
 was London, and London was a long way 
 off. About fifty subscribers of forty shill - 
 
be:n^jamik feai^klik 31 
 
 ings each down, and ten shillings a year 
 thereafter, were found willing to start 
 the scheme of a subscription library. 
 In this project, as in everything else, 
 Franklin showed his incomparable good 
 sense by putting himself behind the 
 vague shelter of a '^number of friends/^ 
 who had urged him to start the scheme. 
 Most of the subscribers were young 
 tradesmen, naturally jealous of any one 
 who showed himself forthputting. Thus 
 early Franklin learned that the hidden 
 is the stronger power, and that only 
 small men ^^ claim" merit for deeds 
 performed. 
 
 He began, he tells us, to thrive won- 
 derfully In his business and in his 
 general life. His wife was no laggard 
 herself, and helped her husband in ways 
 not commonly thought possible or de- 
 sirable by less clever women. Yet it was 
 thrifty Deborah who first introduced 
 luxury into the household in the shape 
 of a china bowl and a silver spoon. 
 
32 BEl^JAMIN FEANKLIN" 
 This extravagance was, as a matter of 
 course, intended for her honoured hus- 
 band, who years later, when in London, 
 used to send her all manner of fine 
 things, rich patterns of cloths, and the 
 latest thing from the London shops. The 
 Franklins grew to love comfortable and 
 ample living, but never with ostentation. 
 He found it possible to live many years 
 away from his ^^dear child," as he 
 always called her in his letters, but he 
 never forgot her or the fact that she was 
 a woman with tastes and fancies. This 
 loyalty to each other was of a varying 
 character, but the existence of it cannot 
 be doubted. He pays full tribute to her 
 worth in the Autobiography. 
 
 Concrete expression of American hu- 
 mour definitely began in the year 1732, 
 when the first issue of Poo)^ Bichard^s Al- 
 manac appeared. There was already the 
 spoken word of Yankee wit, Dutch 
 phlegm, Pennsylvania shrewdness, and 
 all the incipient and various particles 
 
benjami:n^ franklik 33 
 
 of what even as early as the Eevolu- 
 tion had begun to shape into a national 
 way of looking at the minor tragedies 
 and comedies of domestic and civil life 
 in that quizzical, consciously shy, and 
 self-deprecating way that the world 
 calls American. In the cool, dry ichor of 
 Franklin's veins ran all the potentialities 
 of this God-given racial quality. For 
 twenty- five years this Almanac, success- 
 ful from the start, gave forth annually and 
 abundantly the fertile humour of Eichard 
 Saunders. Homely wisdom, good sense, 
 jests, both broad and keen as the license 
 of the times allowed, continued long to 
 amuse and instruct the English Colonies 
 of ]^orth America. In 1757 Franklin gar- 
 nered the best of these proverbs and mots 
 into a sort of logical continuity, first 
 known as Father Abraham'' s Speech, but 
 passed into universal knowledge under 
 the name of The Way to Wealth, It may 
 safely be said that it is the American 
 classic par excellence, and shares with 
 
34 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom'' s Ca&m the honour 
 of having passed by translation into more 
 other tongues than anything else thus far 
 bearing the stamp of our national si)irit. 
 He was meanwhile making a success of 
 his paper, introducing modern ideas into 
 its columns and lifting journalism above 
 the personalities and narrowness of a 
 provincial press. He was as good a news- 
 paper man in his day as Greeley in his. 
 It is hard to think of Franklin as having 
 at that time moments of leisure, yet he 
 continued to wander a little afield by 
 espousing the cause of a young Irish Pres- 
 byterian preacher named Hemphill, and 
 even wrote a few controversial sermons 
 for his friend. He also gave his scant 
 spare hours to the study of languages, be- 
 ginning with French, of which he soon 
 made himself so much a master ^^as to be 
 able to read the books with ease. ' ' Then 
 he undertook Italian, pursuing this study 
 along with chess, playing under an agree- 
 ment with his fellow- i^layer, another 
 
BENJAMIE^ FEANKLIN 35 
 student, that the victor in every game 
 should impose a task in grammar or 
 translation which the vanquished must 
 perform upon honour before the next 
 meeting. ^ ^ As we played pretty equally 
 we thus beat one another into that lan- 
 guage. '' 
 
 He lost in the year 1736, of small-pox, 
 Francis Folger Franklin, his only son 
 born in wedlock. It was Franklin's re- 
 gret that the child had not been inocu- 
 lated, for it was not his way to neglect 
 any method which pointed forward. His 
 only other child born in lawful wedlock 
 was his daughter Sarah, usually called 
 Sally, born September 11, 1744. She 
 married in 1767 Eichard Bache, of 
 Philadelphia, and from her have de- 
 scended all in whose veins runs legiti- 
 mately the Benjamin Franklin blood. 
 The same year that his little Frank died 
 he was chosen to the lucrative position of 
 clerk of the General Assembly. About 
 this time he found opportunity to visit 
 
36 BE:ti[JAMIK FEANKLIN 
 Boston, from which, he had been absent 
 for ten years. Eeturning thence, he 
 went to I^Tewport, where now lived his 
 brother James, though in declining 
 health. 
 
 The now prospering young printer 
 usually kept good company, and, if he 
 could not always enjoy the society of 
 superiors, took rather good care that his 
 equals were of the right sort. But in 
 the year 1737 he seems to have fallen 
 into evil hands, and the short experi- 
 ence did him no good. He was a Free- 
 mason, and respected his relation with 
 the Masonic body to the day of his 
 death. He permitted himself, however, 
 to take part, a very small part, in the 
 mock initiation of a young apprentice 
 who wished to join the order. The 
 youth's master and others indulged in 
 various forms of horse-play which event- 
 ually led to the would-be novitiate's 
 death. Franklin was not present at the 
 tragic ceremonies, and in fact had even 
 
BEI^JAMIIS^ FRANKLIN 37 
 withdrawn himself from participation in 
 the indecencies practised on the witless 
 youth. The whole affair was not in con- 
 sonance with the general character of 
 Franklin, who never showed, so far as 
 his own words disclose, any fondness for 
 practical jokes or other boisterous con- 
 duct. It was an erratum which he 
 passes by in his Autobiography un- 
 noticed, but Bradford in the Mercury 
 made the most of the incident. 
 
 The same year of this untoward hap- 
 pening, however, Franklin received the 
 postmastership of which Bradford had 
 been relieved for inefficiency, and par- 
 ticularly for failures to make any returns 
 whatever of his accounts to the general 
 office for over five years. This position 
 naturally tended to increase his already 
 swelling good fortune, and he was able, 
 by reason of the opportunity which suc- 
 cess affords, to give himself more largely 
 to the public welfare. His newspaper, 
 thanks to the wider channel made for its 
 
38 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 circulation through the post-of&ce, spread 
 in influence and paid well, — so well, in 
 fact, that the editor fell into a tempta- 
 tion common to men of push and enter- 
 prise. He wanted to start a magazine, 
 and felt so pleased with the idea that, in 
 spite of his wise adage about keeping 
 secrets to one's self, he whispered the 
 scheme. Another publisher was infected 
 with the idea, and Franklin's The Gen- 
 eral Magazine, which appeared on Febru- 
 ary 16, 1741, was antedated by The 
 American Magazine by just three days. 
 Had Franklin held his tongue, — as he so 
 often advised others to do, — he would 
 have had the honour of publishing the 
 first American specimen of i)eriodical 
 literature. His rival, Andrew Bradford, 
 gave up after issuing three numbers, but 
 Franklin held out for six months, and 
 then, after considerable loss, stopped his 
 magazine, which was very creditable in 
 appearance, though totally unlike the rest 
 of Franklin's usual typographical work. 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 39 
 
 Curiously, there was a later American 
 Magazine published in Boston from 
 1743 to 1746, in the imprint of which 
 Franklin appears as the seller in Phila- 
 delphia. It was a more imposing affair, 
 and marked a step in advance of Frank- 
 lin's modest venture, which, however, 
 had a quiet distinction of its own with 
 its ^ ' Ich dien ' ' plumes on the neat title- 
 page and a generally trig look withal. 
 If it was his first essay into side paths 
 of publishing, it was also the last, and 
 we must remember that he had not the 
 whitened bones of other adventurers to 
 deter him from this erratum, — one of 
 which he says nothing in his Autobi- 
 ography. One peculiarity of this short- 
 lived magazine was that it had and 
 sought no subscriptions, but tried to de- 
 pend on the merit of each issue for the 
 favour of the public. 
 
 With about fifteen brother printers, 
 mostly young men, ^^ staked'' by him in 
 five colonies as well as in Jamaica and 
 
40 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 Antigua, from whom lie drew, as a rule, a 
 third of the profits made by each 5 with a 
 prosperous newspaper and a popular and 
 also lucrative almanac; with the print- 
 ing of the colony's paper money safe in 
 his own hands, as well as the power which 
 the postmastership necessarily conferred 
 upon him, — it is no wonder that Ben- 
 jamin Franklin waxed powerful, and 
 that Mr. Smyth, his latest biographer, 
 found in his career at this time a fore- 
 cast of the merger, or trust, of to-day. 
 He did not, however, grow ostentatious 
 in proportion to his growing wealth and 
 power, but tried faithfully to live up to 
 the thrifty inculcations of his own Poor 
 Eichard. 
 
 By 1748, when only forty-two years 
 old, he began to dream, like a Euro- 
 pean, of preparing for old age and its 
 well-established comforts. David Hall, 
 a Scotchman, recommended to him by 
 AYilliam Strahan, his English printer- 
 friend, had for several years been his 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 41 
 active and capable partner. Having 
 put his printing-house under the care of 
 this partner and having absolutely left 
 off bookselling and removed to a quieter 
 part of the town, Franklin now hoped to 
 be quite master of his own time, — '^no 
 longer, as the song has it, at every one's 
 call but my own. ' ' Cherishing the same 
 hope, he had refused engaging further in 
 public affairs. ^^Thus you see,'' he 
 wrote his friend Golden, ^^I am in a fair 
 way of having no other tasks but such as 
 I shall like to give myself, and of enjoy- 
 ing what I look upon as a great happi- 
 ness, leisure to read, study, make experi- 
 ments, and converse at large with such 
 ingenious and worthy men as are pleased 
 to honour me with their friendship or 
 acquaintance, on such points as may 
 produce something for the common ben- 
 efit of mankind, uninterrupted by the 
 little cares and fatigues of business." 
 Could there have been a greater delu- 
 sion than this pretty programme? 
 
YII. 
 
 Franklin does not label all his wan- 
 derings ^ ^errata,'' but is so frank about 
 stating them that it may well be doubted 
 whether he knew his moral bearings at 
 times. When he was chosen clerk of 
 the General Assembly of Pennsylvania 
 (1736), he soon saw that the position was 
 not only a good one in itself, but that it 
 enabled him to ^^work" the members to 
 get legislative printing into his own 
 hands. This and ^^ other occasional 
 jobbs^' were clear instances of '^ graft" 
 in its primitive sense, where a man se- 
 cures an extraordinary advantage or 
 profit, aside from his salary, by reason 
 of holding a certain office. But these 
 were the days of the Walpole administra- 
 tion in the mother- country, and a young 
 printer, with his fortune still to make, 
 had no loud call to be sensitive in such 
 matters when English statesmen were 
 setting the worst possible example. It 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 43 
 
 is wholly probable that to the insensitive 
 Franklin ^^jobbs'' of this sort were the 
 properest way in the world of getting 
 ahead. The next year he stepped into 
 the deputy postmaster-generalship in 
 Philadelphia only to find that his news- 
 paper grew apace when his own hands 
 ran the machinery by which he could 
 distribute it more readily and receive 
 more advertisements and correspondence 
 from a wider field. Instead of revenging 
 himself on Bradford who had found ways, 
 when he was in of&ce, to hinder the 
 course of Franklin's paper through the 
 mails, he adopted no cheap methods to 
 injure his old rival. 
 
 The associations of young men in this 
 country for self-betterment have, since 
 early colonial days, in many cases, per- 
 haps in most cases, frequently found 
 themselves drifting into the absorbing 
 life of local politics. They w^ere potent 
 just before the Ee volution, and even in 
 anti-slavery days found ready opportu- 
 
44 BEl^JAMIN FEANKLIN 
 nity to depart from their original pur- 
 poses. Some of them had an influence 
 which in these more critical times would 
 be considered baneful. In a cruder 
 period their reaching out into a wider 
 field was normal and, in the main, desir- 
 able. The Junto, for which Franklin 
 kept his affection as long as he lived, 
 was no exception to the general trend of 
 such organisations. As a rising man 
 and an influential member of this club, 
 and also as an of&ce-holder, the editor- 
 printer turned his attention to what we 
 should now call civic betterment. The 
 tip-staff in all ages has been something 
 of a mauvais sujet, and so Franklin, see- 
 ing the demoralised condition of the 
 city watch, unfolded his plans for one 
 more means of raising taxes to support 
 a constabulary. Soon this reform 
 went through. Next he brought about 
 an interest in better protection against 
 fire, and writing in 1784, when he was 
 an old man, he had the satisfaction of 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIK 45 
 saying that lie and one other still sur- 
 vived the other original members of the 
 Union Fire Company, set on its feet in 
 1736, by the agency of which Philadel- 
 phia was so well equipped that he 
 doubted whether there was ^^a city in 
 the world better provided with the 
 means of putting a stop to beginning 
 conflagrations." In both these excel- 
 lent reforms the Junto took the leading 
 part, but Franklin was the master 
 spirit. Another wholesome project 
 started by him was the proper cleaning 
 of streets, not only in Philadelphia, but 
 later in London. He certainly was 
 profiting by the exhortations of his boy- 
 ish Dogood Papers in his brother's New- 
 England Courant 
 
 At the same time with his efforts 
 toward civic betterment he was advanc- 
 ing reforms in the province. While, as 
 he wrote in the Autobiography, he had 
 ^'on the whole abundant reason to be 
 satisfied with" his '^ being established 
 
46 BEKJAMi:sr FEANKLIK 
 
 in Pennsylvania/' there were two things 
 he regretted, ^' there being no provision 
 for defence nor for a compleat education 
 of youth: no militia, no college. '^ To 
 meet the latter defect, he drew up his 
 ' Proposal for Establishing an Academy, ' ' 
 in 1743, from which ultimately came 
 the ^ ^Academy and Charitable School 
 of the Province of Pennsylvania,'' the 
 nucleus of the noble University of Penn- 
 sylvania. The former deficiency was 
 overcome through his publication in 
 1747 of his pamphlet Flain Truth, written 
 to promote a voluntary association of 
 the people for the defence of the province 
 against possible encroachments of the 
 Spanish and the French, the long-con- 
 tinued endeavours of the governor to pre- 
 vail with the Quaker Assembly to pass 
 a militia law and make other provisions 
 for defence having proved abortive. 
 Through his spirited leadership the vol- 
 untary association organised into com- 
 panies and regiments, and he supplied 
 
BEI^JAMIN FEANKLIN 47 
 devices and mottoes which were painted 
 on silk flags provided the companies by 
 the patriotic women of Philadelphia. 
 The building of a battery below the 
 town, with means furnished by a lottery, 
 was also stimulated by him. 
 
 Meanwhile he was serenely pursu- 
 ing his experiments and philosophical 
 studies. He had already invented the 
 Franklin stove, the Pennsylvania fire- 
 place, as he termed it, and declined a 
 patent for it upon the high principle 
 ^^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 5 and this we 
 should do freely and generously.^' The 
 next year, 1744, he laid the foundations 
 for the American Philosophical Society 
 '^for promoting useful knowledge among 
 the British Plantations of America,'' and 
 for corresponding with the learned socie- 
 ties of Europe; and in 1746 he had begun 
 his electrical experiments, in which his 
 
48 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 advance was so rapid that in a very few 
 years lie had proved the ^^ sameness" of 
 lightning with electricity, had made his 
 famous demonstration with the kite, had 
 invented the lightning rod, and had been 
 elected to the Eoyal Society upon his 
 merits as a scientist. 
 
 By 1752 he was again in active public 
 service, busied in many affairs. He was 
 made an alderman of the city, and was 
 elected to the General Assembly. He 
 tried a little the of&ce of j ustice of the 
 peace by attending a few courts and sit- 
 ting on the bench to hear causes; but, 
 finding that he did not possess a sufficient 
 knowledge of the common law ^^to act 
 in that station with credit," he wisely 
 withdrew from it. Upon taking his 
 seat in the General Assembly, election 
 to which was repeated annually for ten 
 years, '^without my ever asking any 
 elector for his vote, or signifying directly 
 or indirectly any desire of being chosen," 
 he so worked his influence as to turn 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 49 
 
 over the lucrative clerkship to his son 
 William, born out of wedlock and taken 
 magnanimously into the new household 
 by Mrs. Franklin on her marriage. 
 The next year he was appointed one of 
 the commissioners to confer with the 
 Indians of Carlisle, the result of which 
 was a satisfactory treaty, and in course 
 of time his pamphlet, BemarTcs Concern- 
 ing the Savages of North America, The 
 same year came his appointment, jointly 
 with William Hunter, as Postmaster- 
 General of America by a commission 
 from the Postmaster- General in England. 
 The business of the office then occasioned 
 his taking a journey to New England, 
 and while he was there Harvard gave 
 him the degree of Master of Arts, with 
 which Yale had already honoured him, 
 in consideration of his electrical discov- 
 eries. The following year (1754), when 
 war with France was again threatening, 
 he went to Albany as a representative 
 from Pennsylvania to the congress of 
 
50 benjami:n^ feanklin 
 
 commissioners from the several colonies 
 to confer with the chiefe of the Six Na- 
 tions concerning means for mutual de- 
 fence. On this occasion he projected 
 and drew his famous plan for the union 
 of the colonies under one government, 
 known as the ^^Plan of Union/' which 
 failed of adoption, the colonial assem- 
 blies objecting because *^ there was too 
 much prerogative in it,'' while ^^in Eng- 
 land it was judg'd to have too much of 
 the democratic." 
 
 The next year he is found aiding 
 General Braddock at Fredericktown, in 
 stress for facilities to transport his stores 
 and military baggage, by the establish- 
 ment of a system of teams and pack- 
 horses, with such success and prompti- 
 tude that in less than two weeks ^^one 
 hundred and fifty waggons with two 
 hundred and fifty- nine carrying horses 
 were on their march for the camp," 
 while Braddock' s men, after scouring the 
 country roundabout, had been unable to 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 51 
 
 collect more than twenty-five teams, and 
 not all of them in serviceable condition. 
 He further aided this unhappy general 
 materially by arranging for the sending 
 of supplies of provisions after him upon 
 the march, advancing for the service 
 a thousand pounds of his (Franklin's) 
 own money. He rated Braddock as he 
 stands in history : ^^The general was, 
 I think, a brave man, and might prob- 
 ably have made a figure as a good officer 
 in some European war. But he had too 
 much self-confidence, too high an opinion 
 of the validity of regular troops, and 
 too mean a one of both Americans and 
 Indians.'^ 
 
 After Braddock' s defeat his own mili- 
 tary service began with his acceptance, 
 in December, of the command of the 
 troops to defend the frontier, and his 
 departure with his son William as 
 aide-de-camp. 
 
YIII. 
 
 It was the punctiliousness of the Pro- 
 prietary Government of Pennsylvania, 
 through its representative, Governor 
 Denny (who had brought back with 
 him the gold Sir Godfrey Copley medal 
 presented some time before by the Eoyal 
 Society to Franklin), which occasioned 
 the first sending of Franklin in an official 
 capacity to England. The first month 
 of 1756 had been spent by him in efficient 
 military service on the frontier, in the 
 last French and Indian war. He raised 
 and disciplined troops, established block- 
 houses, and erected Fort Allen on the 
 site of the completely destroyed village 
 of Gnadenhiitten. Content, apparently, 
 with his share of glory, he had declined 
 Governor Morris's promise to make him 
 a general if he would move on Fort 
 Duquesne, and his military honours rest 
 on his title of Colonel of the Eegiment 
 of Philadelphia, which he accepted 
 
BEKJAMIN FRANKLIN 53 
 
 shortly after. Affairs were in so bad 
 a condition, the losses by death and 
 destruction of pro^Derty so great, that 
 it was felt imperative to raise funds to 
 protect the i^rovince. The budget con- 
 sented to by the Assembly fell under 
 that estimated by the governor, who 
 threw it out. It was time to present 
 matters before a more effective authority 
 than the protector of the interests of the 
 Penns, and accordingly, in February, 
 1757, Franklin was appointed agent of 
 tlie province ^^to solicit and transact 
 the affairs thereof in Great Britain. '^ 
 The issue was the right of taxing the 
 proprietary estate in common with the 
 estates of the people. 
 
 The Proprietaries seem to have been 
 anxious to propitiate Franklin through 
 Denny, who, inspired by too much 
 madeira and a certain natural stupidity, 
 tried to offer ^^inducements'' to the 
 most astute man in Pennsylvania. 
 Franklin always knew on which side his 
 
54 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 bread was buttered, and lie also knew 
 the simple elements of right and wrong. 
 Therefore, he would have none of this 
 blundering effort at bribery, and ad- 
 hered to the popular side. On the 
 failure of the governor, who seems to 
 have maintained agreeable personal 
 relations with the unruly commoner, the 
 Assembly determined to resist the ob- 
 structive policy of the Proprietaries by 
 thus sending Franklin to England. 
 
 Then appeared Lord Loudon, who 
 managed to patch up some sort of 
 armistice before Franklin sailed, and 
 then decided to sail on the packet with 
 Franklin, to join the fleet headed for 
 Louisburg. If ever a man deserved the 
 titular distinction of ^^Cunctator," 
 Loudon is that man. Franklin arrived 
 in New York about the first of April, 
 his ^^ sea-stores" already gone ahead of 
 him, and June had nearly passed before 
 he sailed, owing to Loudon's delays and 
 indecisions. The governor's messenger, 
 
bekjami:n^ feanklin 55 
 
 Innis, said of this Fabian worthy that he 
 was ^^like St. George on the signs, al- 
 ways on horseback and never rides on. ' ' 
 Finally, after breaking away from 
 Loudon, who did not go to Louisburg 
 after all, Franklin arrived in London 
 late in July, 1757. 
 
 He was sought at once by distinguished 
 men of science and was honoured in vari- 
 ous ways, but, true to his early calling, 
 he looked up his printing associates of 
 thirty years before and ^^set up^' the 
 beer, the drinking of which he had 
 sedulously tried to stop or diminish 
 when he was a London printer bent 
 on improving the world after his own 
 standards. 
 
 Soon after his arrival a meeting was 
 arranged, through Dr. John Fothergill, 
 with the Proprietaries at the house of 
 Thomas Penn in Spring Garden. They 
 were represented by Mr. Paris as 
 counsel, a ^^ proud, angry man,^' with 
 whom Franklin soon refused to parley. 
 
56 BENJAMi:Nr FEANKLIN 
 
 Franklin's minutes of complaints were 
 then put into the hands of the attorney 
 and solicitor-general for their opinion. 
 A year went by, and no answer to 
 Franklin was forthcoming. A message 
 was finally sent direct to the Assembly, 
 in no way meeting Franklin's complaints, 
 but stating that some terms could be 
 arrived at if the Assembly ^^ would send 
 out some person of candour." The 
 message was not answered because Denny 
 agreed to an act taxing the proprietary 
 estate. The objection of the Proprie- 
 taries naturally followed, but the act was 
 sustained in the main, because Lord 
 Mansfield accepted the assurance of 
 Franklin that no inj ury would accrue to 
 the proprietary estate in case the act 
 were executed. Thus his first great 
 venture into the field of high negotia- 
 tions was a success. 
 
 There is no pleasanter episode in 
 Franklin's life than his experiences, 
 first begun on this mission, at 'No. 7 
 
BENJAMIK FEANKLIK 57 
 Craven Street, Strand, where lie lived 
 in great comfort in the lodgings of 
 Mrs. Margaret Stevenson, with whom 
 and her daughter Mary his friendship 
 lasted for many years. 
 
IX. 
 
 Although this first mission was 
 brought to a close in the summer of 1760, 
 Franklin remained in England two years 
 longer. While the slow- moving negotia- 
 tions were under way, he had employed 
 his ample leisure in further electrical 
 experiments, scientific studies, and philo- 
 sophical speculations 5 had enjoyed his 
 association with men of learning j had 
 travelled about England and also into 
 Scotland, where he spent six weeks of 
 the ^ ^ densest happiness ' ' he had ^ ^ met 
 with in any part of his life; had visited 
 the home of his ancestors; had written 
 more essays and skits; had carried on a 
 voluminous correspondence; and had in 
 1759 received the degree of Doctor of 
 Laws from the University of St. Andrews 
 at Edinburgh, to be followed three years 
 later by the honorary doctorate of civil 
 law from the University of Oxford. 
 
 With his mission off his hands, the re- 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 59 
 maining two years were largely given to 
 his advocacy of the retention of Canada 
 and its annexation to the British empire, 
 an end which was directly inflnenced by 
 his contributions to the public press and 
 the publication of the vigorous anony- 
 mous pamphlet, The Interest of Great 
 Britain Considered^ With Regard to her 
 Colonies, And the Acquisition of Canada 
 and Guadaloupe, now known to have been 
 written by him with the aid of his asso- 
 ciate, Eichard Jackson. 
 
 In the summer of 1761 he made the 
 tour of the Low Countries, returning to 
 London in season to witness the coro- 
 nation of George III. in September; and 
 the next summer he sailed for home, 
 after having had '^a most agreeable 
 time of it in Europe. '' He had added 
 to his circle numerous valued friends, 
 had contracted rare new friendships, and 
 had been flattered with much notice by 
 persons of distinction. It was shortly 
 before his departure that David Hume 
 
60 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 wrote him, '■ '■ America has sent us many 
 good things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, 
 indigo &c. ; but you are the first philoso- 
 pher, and indeed the first great man of 
 letters for whom we are beholden to her. ' ' 
 The return voyage, too, contributed to 
 his entertainment. He sailed in late 
 August in company with ten merchant- 
 ships under a convoy of a man-of-war, 
 and the weather was so favourable that 
 ^^ there were few days in which we could 
 not visit from ship to ship, dining with 
 each other and on board the man-of-war: 
 which made the time pass agreeably, 
 much more so than when one goes in a 
 single ship, for this was like travelling 
 in a moving village with all one's neigh- 
 boui'S about one. ' ' 
 
 He reached Philadelphia on the first 
 of November, and arrived '^safe and well 
 at my own door." He found his wife 
 and daughter in good health, ^Hhe latter 
 grown quite a woman, with many amiable 
 accomplishments" acquired in his ab- 
 
BE:N^JAMm FEANKLIN 61 
 
 sence of nearly six years; and Ms friends 
 ^^as hearty and affectionate as ever, with 
 whom my house was filled for many days 
 to congratulate me on my return." 
 
 He was soon again immersed in public 
 affairs. Upon his reappearance in the 
 Assembly he was voted three tliousand 
 pounds sterling for his services in Eng- 
 land and '^ their thanks delivered by the 
 Speaker. ^ ' In the following spring, 1763, 
 he set out on a tour of the northern col- 
 onies to inspect and regulate their post- 
 of&ces, and in this journey spent the 
 I summer, travelling some sixteen hundred 
 I miles. Through the following winter, 
 j during which the Assembly sat, ^^busi- 
 \ ness publick and private," he wrote, 
 I ^'devours all my time." Besides his 
 duty as an assemblyman, he had another 
 trust to execute, that ^^of being one of 
 the commissioners appointed by law to 
 dispose of the public money appropri- 
 ated to the raising and paying of an army 
 to act against the Indians and defend the 
 
62 BENJAMIK FRANKLIN 
 
 frontiers." Meanwhile arose the two 
 insurrections in December of the ' ' back 
 inhabitants" of the province, — chiefly 
 Scotch- Irish frontiersmen who conceived 
 the idea that the Quaker Assembly 
 would fail to provide adequate defences. 
 Twenty poor Indians, who had from the 
 first settlement of the province lived in 
 peace under the protection of the gov- 
 ernment, were barbarously massacred. 
 This roused Franklin's indignation and 
 gave him ^'a good deal of employment," 
 for the rioters threatened further mis- 
 chief and their actions were seemingly 
 approved by an increasing party. To 
 strengthen the hands of the weak govern- 
 ment by rendering the rioters' acts un- 
 popular and odious, he issued his fiery 
 pamphlet, A Narrative of the late Mas- 
 sacreSj in Lancaster County , of a Number of 
 Indians^ Friends of this Province, by Per- 
 sons Unhioicn. It had the effect intended, 
 and afterward, when a body of the rioters 
 marched toward the capital in de- 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 63 
 fiance of the government, with the 
 avowed intent of killing one hundred 
 and forty Indian converts under its 
 protection, he found little difficulty in 
 promptly forming, at the governor's re- 
 quest, an association of a thousand men 
 with arms for the defence of the govern- 
 ment and the Indians. In this crisis the 
 governor, now John Penn, made Frank- 
 lin's house for some time his headquar- 
 ters, and did everything by his advice, 
 ^^so that for about forty-eight hours I 
 was a very great man." The fighting 
 face that the defenders put on, and the 
 reasonings they used with the insurgents, 
 — Franklin was sent out with three others 
 to ^^meet and discourse them,'' — turned 
 them back and restoied quiet to the 
 city. Then he ^^ became a less man 
 than ever," for by his pamphlet and 
 these transactions he made himself many 
 enemies among the populace, and, seeing 
 in this an opportunity long desired by the 
 proprietary interests for his overthrow. 
 
64 BENJAMII^ FRAm^LII^ 
 
 the governor, despite tlie services Frank- 
 lin liad just rendered, joined the whole 
 weight of this interest to get him out of 
 the Assembly. At the next election, ac- 
 cordingly, a majority of '^ about twenty- 
 five in four thousand " managed to de- 
 feat the now undesirable candidate. 
 There was a lively time in old Phila- 
 delphia on voting day, and things were 
 done according to the most approved 
 modern methods to defeat the illustrious 
 commoner. 
 
Close upon his defeat as candidate 
 for membership to the Assembly came 
 his election by a vote of nineteen to 
 eleven in that body to present to the 
 king the petition, as aid to Eichard 
 Jackson, the provincial agent of Penn- 
 sylvania, which should perchance hasten 
 a royal instead of a proprietary govern- 
 ment. John Dickinson, one of those 
 virtuous men of great ability whose 
 genius leads them unerringly a few 
 points off the true course, fought against 
 this appointment of ^^ the man most ob- 
 noxious to his country' ' j but in spite of 
 this alleged public odium Benjamin 
 I Franklin, who replied to these and other 
 aspersions with an exasperating and well- 
 calculated moderation, was accompanied, 
 entirely to his own surprise, by an escort 
 of three hundred fellow- citizens on horse 
 to his ship sixteen miles down the river. 
 He arrived at London on December 10, 
 
66 BENJAMII^ FEANKLIN 
 1764, and again found lodging with Mrs. 
 Stevenson, the mother of Mary Steven- 
 son, later the wife of Dr. Hewson. For- 
 getting, if one can, the apparent ease 
 with which he reconciled himself to a 
 separation for ten years from home, wife, 
 and kindred, there is no pleasanter epi- 
 sode to recall in Franklin^ s career than 
 his relation with these kind people. His 
 letters reveal a most affectionate good- 
 will on both sides, and abound in many 
 playful allusions to the complete hold 
 which the great man had on the Steven- 
 son household. He always fitted easily 
 into any situation. Whether at the 
 court of France or as a lodger in a 
 London boarding-house, he was wholly 
 himself, unaffected by grandeur and un- 
 disturbed by simplicity. 
 
 The few months which he thought 
 would end his business of the petition 
 soon slipped away, and nothing was 
 gained. Meanwhile he had joined with 
 other colonial agents in unsuccessful 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 67 
 efforts against the famous Stamp Act 
 which George Grenville ^ succeeded in 
 passing through both Houses of Parlia- 
 ment in March, 1765. Franklin's philo- 
 sophic temperament rose superior to 
 moral and patriotic enthusiasm. On the 
 field of action he was impressed by the 
 futility of opposition and by that con- 
 centrated force which England has al- 
 ways been able to present when its mind 
 is made up on any course. Feeling as he 
 did, it was natural that Franklin, in 
 whom the statesman was as yet subordi- 
 nate to the philosopher, should look for 
 the wisest way out of a difficulty which 
 he believed to be unavoidable, and that 
 he should lend himself to Grenville' s 
 pretty scheme of selecting ' ^ discreet and 
 reputable" stamp distributors from the 
 colonists themselves by naming John 
 Hughes, a personal friend of his in 
 Philadelphia, as one of these distribu- 
 tors. Had Franklin then been making 
 the world his confessor, he might well 
 
68 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 have put this step down as an erratum. 
 Not one, probably, of the gallant horse 
 who saw him. depart for England could 
 now have been found to welcome him 
 home. His very friends and even his 
 family were in danger of the popular 
 hatred. Of all who aided or seemed to 
 aid the enforcement of the odious Act, 
 Mrs. Franklin alone seems, Aj ax-like, to 
 have defied danger. 
 
 But Franklin was then too old, as he 
 was always too wise, a man to care over- 
 much for surface agitations. If he missed 
 the point on this matter, it was because 
 he was on the wrong side of the Atlantic. 
 Moderate, peaceful by nature, the one 
 American who had a universal reputa- 
 tion which had to be respected, if it was 
 not liked, he kept his own counsel and 
 felt his way carefully. To Grenville 
 succeeded the ineffectual Eockingham 
 cabinet, and within a year the potent 
 antagonism of Pitt was felt against the 
 absurdity of taxing unrepresented sub- 
 
BEIS^JAMIK FEANKLIN 69 
 
 jects. Eight or wrong as Pitt's appeal 
 may have sounded to English con- 
 sciences, the non-importation agree- 
 ments, by which the colonies were learn- 
 ing to do without the manufactures of 
 the mother- country and finding out in a 
 measure their own domestic resources, 
 were touching the English pocket, and 
 that is a matter of life or death, not of 
 ethics. Lacking one month of a year 
 from the passage of the Act, Benjamin 
 Franklin gave testimony as to its expedi- 
 ency. l!^ot only was he equipped, as 
 every witness should be, to stand the 
 searching examination to which he with 
 others was subjected, but he was abso- 
 lutely master of the situation. It was 
 another instance of the extraordinary 
 opportunity which a provincial of su- 
 preme ability has sometimes to prove 
 himself the compeer of the administra- 
 tion of a central government. ^^^N^o, 
 they will never submit to it," was his 
 laconic but not impetuous answer to an 
 
70 BENJAMTO FEANKLIN 
 obvious question. And then the culmi- 
 nating assertion that ''■ the Parliament of 
 Great Britain has not, never had, and of 
 right never can have, without consent 
 given either before or after, power to 
 make laws of sufficient force to bind the 
 subjects of America in any case whatso- 
 ever, and particularly in taxation.'' 
 
 It would be ridiculous to say that 
 Franklin posed on this his first of 
 several notable appearances in public. 
 He must have realised, as a man of ex- 
 traordinary discernment, that the situa- 
 tion was dramatic, and that the sur- 
 roundings lent themselves to make an 
 effective picture. There is a certain 
 staginess in any deliberative Assembly, 
 and Parliament was no exception. Per- 
 ceiving this, as doubtless he did, his 
 unerring sense may have told him that 
 entire simplicity and candour best became 
 the situation : that these qualities were in- 
 nate only made his attitude the stronger. 
 A few weeks later the Stamp Act was 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 71 
 definitely repealed, as much to the joy 
 of British exporters as of the colonists. 
 If Franklin's reputation had sagged a 
 little within the year, it rose at once to 
 dizzy heights. Success makes the spirits 
 bright, and even Franklin's complacency 
 responded to the change in his fortunes. 
 Some of his cleverest writings appeared 
 at this period. It was his keenest 
 pleasure to ^^joUy" his friends and now 
 and then the public. The admirable 
 dulness of the British mind was an in- 
 viting target for some of his sharpest 
 barbs. Never malicious, he felt sure that 
 his wit would not severely wound, and 
 that there was a good chance that he 
 would not be understood. It was hard 
 for the English to comprehend the re- 
 sources of America, when the colonists 
 began to do without manufactures. Ac- 
 cordingly, Franklin informs his British 
 readers that colonial sheep were so 
 blessed by nature that each ^^has a 
 little car or wagon on four little wheels" 
 
72 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 to keep its wool from dragging on the 
 ground. In tlie same skit he tells of the 
 plans in operation for a cod and whale 
 fishery in the '^Tipper Lakes/' where 
 the cod fly for safety from their huge 
 foe. ^'The grand leap of the whale in 
 the chase up the Falls of Niagara is es- 
 teemed by all who have seen it as one of 
 the finest spectacles in nature." His 
 Rules for Beducing a Great Empire to a 
 Small One even Swift might have been 
 glad to father, though it was lacking in 
 the great satirist's intensive scorn. 
 
 Thus writing to please himself and 
 perhaps others, unusually honoured in 
 England and in France, and intrusted 
 now with the agencies of New Jersey, 
 Georgia, and Massachusetts, the next few 
 years passed on still finding Franklin in 
 what seemed the home of his adoption. 
 He speaks hopefully in his letters of 
 returning home, but still he lingers, till 
 at last he does not pretend even to himself 
 that he is on the eve of departure. 
 
BENJAMIK FEANKLIN 73 
 If Benjamin Franklin was devotedly 
 attached to the land of his birth, he was 
 also true to the country which seemed at 
 that time to have adopted him. ^NTo im- 
 portant word of Franklin exists which 
 tends to show that he cherished the idea 
 of separation so long as cohesion was a 
 possibility. Shelburne's ministry could 
 not have been displeasing to him, for it 
 was the creation of the friendly Pitt, 
 and there is no telling what in the way 
 of reconciliation might have come to 
 pass, had it not been for Charles Towns- 
 hend, Shelburne's chancellor of the ex- 
 chequer. Townshend was cursed by the 
 audacity of brilliant parts, which is 
 even farther from the condition of su- 
 preme ability than is an honourable and 
 commendable stupidity. His galloping 
 career was cut short by death in the fall 
 of 1767, and three months later Lord 
 Hillsborough succeeded Shelburne as 
 secretary of state for America. Frank- 
 lin had a marvellous capacity for ^^get- 
 
74 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 ting along'' with men, but lie had a 
 latent impatience for routiuists and dry- 
 asdusts. Hillsborough was not to his 
 liking, and he showed it. As a result, 
 the new secretary, piqued by Franklin's 
 acid retorts, refused to recognise the 
 American as agent for Massachusetts, 
 though he had been appointed by a 
 vote of the House of Representatives of 
 that province. Shortly after Franklin 
 had the pleasure of causing the resigna- 
 tion of Hillsborough, who in the Board 
 of Trade opposed him and others in the 
 matter of the Walpole Grant (the grant 
 of a tract of land on the Ohio Eiver to 
 a company of which Thomas Walpole, 
 a London banker, was president). To 
 Hillsborough's inadequate objections, 
 which read absurdly to-day and may 
 have read so then, Franklin in turn i)re- 
 sented a reply to the Privy Council, 
 who voted down the noble lord, whom 
 Lord Dartmouth succeeded in August, 
 1773. Dartmouth was a good man, and 
 
BEI^JAMIN FEANKLIN 75 
 not unfriendly to the now recognised 
 Massachusetts agent, but the exigencies 
 of politics are severe. In a few months 
 occurred one of those dramatic events 
 which make Franklin^ s career appear so 
 vivid, — the famous episode which in- 
 flicted great damage on Franklin^ s im- 
 mediate reputation and peace of mind, 
 but which involved him inextricably on 
 the American side, while he was yet 
 sanely and moderately trying to play the 
 part of reconciler. 
 
 The story of the ^^ Hutchinson Let- 
 ters,'^ like many another event of his- 
 tory, is none the worse for an air of mys- 
 tery which even now surrounds it. The 
 fate of empires did not hang on its issue, 
 but there were some uncomfortable mo- 
 ments for Benjamin Franklin before the 
 tale was finally told. Here it must be 
 rehearsed with the greatest brevity. 
 
 It was common opinion that the Eng- 
 lish government acted wholly on its own 
 knowledge and prejudice in its stern and 
 
76 BENJAMIN FRANKLm 
 irritating attitude toward the colonies, 
 and in particular toward the town of 
 Boston. Franklin held this opinion^ and 
 expressed it freely. An Englishman, 
 whose name is still unknown, told him 
 that such severities resulted from infor- 
 mation and advice proffered by certain 
 Americans, and corroborated his asser- 
 tion by placing in Franklin's hands a 
 batch of indisputably authentic letters 
 written by Governor Thomas Hutch- 
 inson, Lieutenant-Governor Andrew 
 Oliver, and three others, every one of 
 them native-born residents of Massachu- 
 setts Bay. To-day we may think of 
 these gentlemen — for gentlemen they 
 surely were — as Eoyalists, Loyalists, To- 
 ries, Traitors, anything we please to con- 
 sider them ; but in their own times they 
 were flesh of our flesh, and not thought 
 of as aliens, unpopular as they may have 
 been. What these colonial bureaucrats 
 wrote ^^home'^ about the doings of the 
 rebellious people whom they governed 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 77 
 was calculated to affect the people of 
 Boston then very much as the pamphlet- 
 eering work of Anti-imperialists in the 
 same town in modern days affected the 
 American spirit in the West. It was just 
 j simple treason. Franklin hoped or — 
 , shall we dare to say? — pretended to hope 
 that the violent feeling of the colonists 
 against England would be modified, 
 j could they realise that the mother-coun- 
 I try had acted on the advice of some of 
 j their own leaders. Accordingly, under 
 ( a strict injunction that the letters should 
 , not he printed or have a public circula- 
 j tion, he gained permission to send them 
 ( to Massachusetts. They reached the 
 I hands of Thomas Gushing^ then speaker 
 I of the House of Eepresentatives. In 
 k some fashion, dishonourable, but explica- 
 I ble in those heated times, they found too 
 speedy a publicity, and were ordered to 
 j be printed by the Assembly in express 
 j violation of Franklin's injunction. The 
 letters created all the excitement to be 
 
78 BENJAMIK FEANKLIN 
 expected^ but not a whit of that abate- 
 ment of hostility to England for which 
 Franklin had looked ; only a rage against 
 the respectable writers, who in turn were 
 angry enough that the privacy of their 
 correspondence was thus violated. 
 
 Franklin as transmitter of the letters 
 was still undiscovered, but it was an easy 
 matter in England to learn that the ad- 
 dressee was William Whately, once pri- 
 vate secretary of Grenville. "Whately 
 was dead, and his papers had been vio- 
 lated. Who did it ? Thomas Whately, 
 executor of his brother's estate, and 
 John Temple were suspected. ^^Jack'^ 
 Temple, Governor Bowdoin's son-in-law, 
 was something of a blade and hot-headed. 
 He demanded that Thomas Whately 
 should assert positively that he, Temple, 
 had never misused his brother's letters, 
 to which he admitted he had had re- 
 course. This Whately was unable to do, 
 and, therefore, the two men, once friends, 
 fought with pistols. Their blood was 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 79 
 up and was Saxon^ not Gallic. Conse- 
 quently, they failed to see the lighter 
 side of such an encounter, which was not 
 without its amenities, though Whately 
 was badly wounded. At this point, 
 hoping to stay further bloodshed, Frank- 
 lin on December 23, 1773, admitted 
 over his own signature in the press that 
 it was he, as the Massachusetts agent, 
 who obtained and sent the letters to 
 Boston. He completely exonerated both 
 Whately and Temple from the least 
 complicity in the affair. In August 
 Franklin had placed before Lord Dart- 
 mouth the petition to the king from the 
 Massachusetts House, praying the removal 
 of Hutchinson and Oliver, but had heard 
 nothing of it. If Franklin in this matter 
 was not representative of the conscience of 
 the colonists, he certainly embodied their 
 audacity and spirit of resistance, or what 
 we should now call their ^^ nerve.'' 
 
 Here was a chance to put his courage 
 to a test, and he was accordingly sum- 
 
80 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 moned early in January, 1774, to appear 
 before the Committee for Plantation 
 Affairs. On that occasion he presented 
 to the committee the petition, with 
 copies of the papers in the case, and 
 asked for an adjournment, that he might 
 secure counsel. On January 29 hear- 
 ing was reopened in the Committee 
 Room of the Privy Council, known as 
 the Cockpit. His counsel, John Dunning 
 and John Lee, proved ineffective, and 
 Franklin was forced to bear alone the 
 terrific assault of Alexander Wedder- 
 burn, afterward Lord Loughborough, 
 counsel for Hutchinson and Oliver. 
 Invective and personal abuse were car- 
 ried to their highest point by Wedder- 
 burn, and these Franklin bore with 
 consummate dignity. He would not, 
 however, reveal the means by which he 
 gained possession of the papers. Repine 
 as we may over the question of political 
 ethics, it is nevertheless true that in 
 statesmanship and diplomacy a man 
 
be:n^jami:n^ feanklin si 
 
 may side with his cause. It is possible 
 to accuse Franklin of personal indeli- 
 cacy in sending the famous letters to 
 Massachusetts, hut in doing so he acted, 
 precipitately, no doubt, as if he were rep- 
 resenting the powers of a state in time 
 of war to employ unusual means to un- 
 cover the plans of the enemy. His 
 refusal to betray a personal trust, by 
 refusing to tell how he gained possession 
 of these papers, was the offset to the 
 other part of the transaction. But n othing 
 could save him from speedy punishment. 
 His years of mediation between the col- 
 onies and the mother- country, the re- 
 spect in which he had been so generally 
 held in England, counted him nothing. 
 The coarse abuse of Wedderburn, a 
 man of mean repute, whose career was 
 even then degenerating, expressed well 
 enough a rising sentiment against the 
 already disgraced colonial agent. Later 
 he was dismissed from the postmaster- 
 generalship of America. 
 
XL 
 
 As often happens, when personal 
 abuse is used instead of calm dissection 
 of facts, the victim of such abuse is 
 the gainer. Wedderburn thought, in 
 that famous scene in the Cockpit, to 
 destroy utterly the reputation and 
 standing of the old colonial agent, but 
 he went too far. Those in England who 
 were true to Franklin became still more 
 true. Many of them remained his friends 
 during the Eevolution. 
 
 His conciliatory sentiments are now 
 rapidly disappearing. In a fortnight he 
 writes to Thomas Gushing that he is at a 
 loss to know how peace and union are to 
 be maintained or restored between the 
 different parts of the empire. Although 
 he was able to say that he had ^^not lost 
 a single friend on the occasion," he be- 
 gan to turn his thoughts homeward. In 
 the time remaining to him in England 
 he showed no depression of spirits, but 
 
BEiij^jAMi:^^ fea:n^klin 83 
 
 busied himself^ as usual, with all sorts 
 of interests. He writes to Beccaria in 
 Italy on the resistance of a vacuum to 
 the passage of the electric fluid, and 
 thinks that this discovery may ultimately 
 give new light on the aurora borealis. 
 To Condor cet he gives information, geo- 
 logical and palseontological, regarding 
 parts of North America. He dines with 
 clergymen, litterateurs, scientific men, 
 politicians, statesmen, with all who 
 made the life of his day more vivid and 
 helpful to him. There were homely 
 gifts from home to share witli his friends 
 and enjoy, perhaps first of all, himself. 
 There were people to help by his advice, 
 and undertakings of every sort to en- 
 courage by his friendly aid. Nor did 
 he scorn to turn his grave attention to 
 the rendering of decayed meat sweet by 
 placing it in fixed air. Even the de- 
 fence of marriage with a deceased wife's 
 sister was not too remote to engage his 
 busy mind. These and other activities 
 
84 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 served no doubt to soothe the irritating 
 wound dealt him in the presence of his 
 enemies. Certain it is that in the short 
 year left he had little to say about heal- 
 ing the breach between England and her 
 American colonies. He was in effect an 
 Englishman no longer; and, when he 
 sailed for home on March 20, 1775, his 
 allegiance, nominal and real, practically 
 ceased. Still there did linger in Frank- 
 lin's pacific disposition a wish to do all 
 that he possibly could to preserve the 
 integrity of an imperial system in 
 which he continued to believe until 
 the last. Had it not been for the 
 ^ ^blunderers,'' he foresaw a possible 
 future in which ^^we might have gone 
 on extending our Western Empire, 
 adding Province to Province, as far as 
 the South Sea." 
 
 While aboard Captain Osborne's 
 ^^Pennsylvania Packet," bound home, 
 Franklin addressed to his ^'dear son" — 
 so soon to disappoint him bitterly by 
 
be:n^jami:n^ frai^klin 85 
 
 turning Loyalist — a long account of the 
 negotiations in London for effecting a 
 reconciliation. This circumstantial and 
 sometimes tiresome narrative gives all 
 that it is necessary to know of Frank- 
 lin's last efforts to hold to the old moor- 
 ings the new American ship of state, 
 now straining to be free. His confer- 
 ences with the Honourable Mrs. and Lord 
 Howe and with the great Chatham are 
 carefully set forth, but, since they all 
 came to nothing, have left a less deep 
 impression than many others of Frank- 
 lin's writings. Fine company never 
 ^^feazed" the easy-going colonial. 
 Going to keep one of his appointments 
 with Chatham, he was so absorbed in 
 a new pamphlet that he was carried a 
 mile beyond the statesman's gate. Yet, 
 like Thackeray, he was not displeased 
 with the intimacy with greatness, and 
 admits to not a little vanity on the occa- 
 sion of a visit from Chatham, at his 
 unpretentious lodging at the Stevensons' 
 
86 BENJAMm FEANKLIN 
 on Craven Street, exactly a year to a day 
 from the Cockpit episode. The unsuc- 
 cessfnl negotiations will not live except 
 in the careful memories of historians, 
 but from them was born one memorable 
 phrase, coined by the Earl of Chatham. 
 When he i)resented on February 1, 1775, 
 his ^^Provisional Act^' for settling the 
 troubles of America, he referred to 
 Franklin, with whom he had closely con- 
 sulted on the provisions of this Act, as 
 ^^an honour not to the English nation 
 only, but to human nature," and meant 
 it to be a deliberate reply to the dis- 
 dainful looks and sayings of the blunder- 
 ing majority directed against the Amer- 
 ican commoner as he leaned against the 
 bar in the Cockpit. 
 
 What the incomparable Pitt could not 
 effect was certainly too hard a problem 
 for the well-meaning Howe and his sister. 
 All that remained of their endeavours is 
 this statement of Franklin, who proves 
 by it that he had done his best to the 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 87 
 latest moment to avert what was bound 
 to happen. 
 
 The battle of Lexington had been 
 fought a little over a fortnight before 
 the 5th of May, when Franklin came 
 home. His wife had been dead five 
 months, but the house in which she had 
 faithfully carried out all the directions 
 of her husband awaited him. The un- 
 abated cheerfulness with which Franklin 
 managed to live for many years away 
 from the company of his good wife may 
 easily give rise to all sorts of surmises. 
 He sent her many choice gifts and sums, 
 not too frequent, and now and then 
 moderately ardent letters. He asked 
 and seemed to wish sincerely to have 
 her join him in England, but she felt 
 the usual terrors of the uneducated for 
 untried experiences, and refused to cross 
 the Atlantic. So he remained in great 
 contentment away from her, and she 
 stayed at home, carrying out his be- 
 hests as carefully as she could. He 
 
88 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 grew stronger in power and influence 
 and mental equipment every day : she 
 stayed where she was put, dutiful, but 
 unprogressive. He was a consummate 
 master of the use of his pen: she was 
 terribly illiterate, even for those days. 
 In 1784, when he was again taking 
 up the writing of his Autobiography, 
 which he meant for the eyes of all men, 
 he paid high tribute to his young wife, 
 of whom he says, ^^It was lucky for me 
 that I had one as much disposed to in- 
 dustry and frugality as myself. '^ But, 
 writing to her when she was an old 
 woman, three years before her death, 
 when she had already begun to fail in 
 mind and body, though perhaps he did 
 not realise the fact, he, in unloving 
 phrase, tells her that she was ^^not very 
 attentive to money matters'' in her 
 '^best days," and practically orders her 
 not to go about among his friends to 
 borrow money. His harshness may have 
 been necessary, but it is a sufficient rev- 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 89 
 elation of that masculine cruelty which 
 smiles abroad and wears a hard face at 
 home. Probably Deborah Franklin, like 
 many another simple-hearted wife, con- 
 doned such things as the foibles of 
 greatness. 
 
XII. 
 
 If Franklin felt for a moment the 
 loneliness of age on his return to Phila- 
 delphia, he was not allowed to cherish it, 
 for within a day from his arrival he was 
 made one of the three deputies from the 
 Assembly to the Continental Congress, 
 which met on May 10. As chairman of 
 the Committee of Safety for the province, 
 an of&ce which he held for eight months, 
 the old man was presiding from six to 
 nine in the morning; then went to the 
 sittings of Congress until four o'clock in 
 the afternoon. 
 
 As if serving on ten committees were 
 not enough for his nearly seventy years, 
 he accepted the office of Postmaster- Gen- 
 eral. Dismissed in disgrace as a deputy 
 by his mother- country, in a little more 
 than a year he was asked by the new 
 country to give to the highest position 
 possible to him the full benefit of his years 
 of experience in post-offices, and was 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 91 
 able to lay sure and lasting foundations 
 for this important branch of government. 
 If he was fond of revenge, Benjamin 
 Franklin often had a chance to indulge 
 a sweet tooth. As years before he had 
 also learned something of the nature of 
 preparation for service in the field and 
 had mobilised the Pennsylvania forces in 
 an efficient manner, so now he addressed 
 himself to the task of making ready for 
 a longer fight. Perhaps Washington, 
 with whom he conferred on the general 
 military condition at Cambridge camji 
 in October, 1775, remembered how 
 Franklin had raised in an incredibly 
 short time that baggage train of one hun- 
 dred and fifty wagons and pack-horses foi* 
 Braddock's expedition just twenty years 
 before. It is easy to forget amid the 
 general splendour of Franklin's career 
 or careers, as we may justly say, that he 
 made a respectable record as a soldier. 
 When Governor Morris commissioned 
 him to take charge of the north-western 
 
92 BE:N^JAMra FRANKLIK 
 frontier, lie actually had nearly six hun- 
 dred men under him in service, and de- 
 served, according to the words of a con- 
 temporary, "a statue for his prudence, 
 justice, humanity, and above all for his 
 patience." It is fair to assume, then, 
 that to Colonel, if not to Postmaster- 
 General Franklin, General Washington 
 gave a listening ear in those tentative 
 days in the camp before Boston. 
 
 The greatest and most exacting period 
 of Franklin's life was soon to open, but 
 before he actually entered the field of 
 high diplomacy he had one more direct 
 service to render his country on this 
 continent. It has always been a dream 
 of continental largeness and vagueness — 
 perhaps not yet wholly dissipated — that 
 Canada and the United States might in 
 some way ^^get together.'' That such 
 an idea should gain strength among the 
 revolting colonies was most natural, 
 however slender the basis for any hopes 
 that Canada — always the more provin- 
 
i BENJAMm FEANKLIK 93 
 
 cial of the two great British posses- 
 sions — would disavow allegiance. How- 
 ever all this may have been, a commis- 
 sion was appointed in 1776 to go to 
 Montreal and make the necessary over- 
 tures. Samuel Chase, Benjamin Frank- 
 lin, and Charles Carroll, the signer, were 
 this commission, and with them went 
 John Carroll, later Roman Catholic 
 archbishop of Baltimore. According to 
 Franklin's own account the journey was 
 a hard one, and the result unsuccessful. 
 
 ' No money could be borrowed, and no 
 enthusiasm for separation was discover- 
 able. Franklin's health was injured in 
 this exposure to a northern spring, but 
 he found a good friend in John Carroll, 
 whom he afterward had the pleasure of 
 naming as the best man for an American 
 Roman Catholic bishop. 
 
 Back in Philadelphia by June, he was 
 in season to be chosen a delegate from 
 that town to a convention for the forma- 
 tion of a constitution. He was one of 
 
94 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 the five who drafted the Declaration of 
 Independence, and was elected on July 8 
 as president of this Constitutional Con- 
 vention, which chose him within two 
 weeks as a member of the Continental 
 Congress. Notwithstanding that he had 
 sat in a body which had just renounced 
 allegiance to the King of England, 
 Franklin still found it consistent with 
 patriotism and in harmony with his 
 fondness for all peaceful measures, when 
 they were possible, to accept a posi- 
 tion on the committee appointed by 
 Congress, consisting of John Adams, 
 Edward Rutledge and himself, to listen, 
 but hardly more than that, to the two 
 brothers. Lord and General William 
 Howe, who composed a commission of 
 reconciliation. It may be that Franklin 
 hoped that such a conference would bear 
 more fruit than the numerous meetings 
 with the Howe family in London, but, if 
 so, his hopes were in vain. Beyond a 
 courteous reception and good fare of 
 
BEI^JAMIN FRANKLIN 95 
 cold ham, mutton, claret, and other sub- 
 stantial things, the Americans gained 
 nothing from this meeting in the Staten 
 Island house to convince them that these 
 joint commissioners had authority large 
 enough to deal with the important issues 
 before them. No one has ever doubted 
 the sincerity of purpose or the good- will 
 of these brothers; but they were in this 
 fruitless interview at the mercy of far 
 abler men, and they lacked the capacity 
 for settling a problem, so far advanced 
 toward war, by the higher methods of 
 diplomacy. 
 
 With the last hope of mediation gone 
 and the Declaration of Independence 
 promulgated to do its effective work. 
 Congress had to face directly the prac- 
 tical side of revolution. So far the col- 
 onies had had sufficient vitality to resist 
 small and irregular efforts to maintain 
 the British authority. Skirmish had been 
 well met with skirmish, but all was spo- 
 radic, and the Americans were favoured 
 
96 be:njamin feanklin 
 
 by good fortune. The actual resources 
 of England liad not been tested in any 
 way. Money and European assistance 
 were naturally the first things to be 
 thought of. Three countries were ac- 
 tively hostile to the mother- country, and 
 France was the most important of these 
 three. France had lost her possessions in 
 North America a quarter of a century be- 
 fore, but her feelings in the matter were 
 chargeable to England rather than to the 
 colonies. What had been wrested from 
 her now remained loyal. There was, 
 therefore, no especial hostility to the 
 American cause; so far as it could be per- 
 ceived, '^ revanche'^ then played no part 
 in the sentiments of the French. But 
 they were watchful and had their plans, 
 it would seem, tentatively formed before 
 Congress had begun to turn hopefully to 
 Louis XVI. and his ministers. 
 
XIII. 
 
 No one need look, even in the great 
 Diplomatic Correspondence of the Eevo- 
 lution, for sentimental yearnings on the 
 part of these astute French managers 
 of statecraft to assist disinterestedly a 
 struggling group of colonies in rebellion 
 against a common foe. The situation 
 was a perfectly cold-blooded one which 
 faced the three commissioners, Benjamin 
 Franklin, Arthur Lee, and Silas Deane, 
 appointed later in 1776, to secure the 
 powerful aid of France. Franklin, a 
 month before he was seventy- one years 
 of age, arrived at IS'antes, used up by 
 the second hard experience of travel 
 within a twelvemonth. Well might 
 Lord Stormont, the British ambassador, 
 whom Franklin so unmercifully bull- 
 baited in the immediate future, write, 
 when he heard of his arrival, that he 
 looked upon him as a ^^ dangerous en- 
 gine," for Franklin ere long was able to 
 
98 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 put the noble lord in a ridiculous position 
 by a mot. It was clear to no one just 
 why Franklin had come to France. Some 
 thought that he was running away from 
 a cause soon to collapse, some that he 
 might eventually begin to negotiate with 
 England ; and, naturally, the majority 
 took the obvious view that he was seek- 
 ing in some form the support of France 
 for the American cause. There was no 
 doubt whatever about the sensation 
 that he made. It was impossible for 
 the English not to admire such a display 
 of their favourite virtue, manly courage. 
 The French, like the Gauls of old, ^ Etch- 
 ing for novelties," as Caesar found them, 
 welcomed him as a great curiosity, not 
 forgetting his reputation, already estab- 
 lished among them, as a man of science 
 and a philosopher. 
 
 He became at once so much the ^^man 
 of the hour'' that, in self-protection, he 
 was obliged to retreat to Passy, which 
 remained his headquarters during his 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 99 
 mission. There lie planned and trans- 
 acted his diplomatic work, there he 
 wrote his innumerable letters, among 
 them tender messages to charming 
 women, with whom he found time to play 
 the harmless but assiduous gallant, to 
 the disgust of the Adamses and the 
 frenzy of Arthur Lee. He even found 
 or made time to return to his early trade 
 of printing, and in his Passy house set 
 up a press, cast types, and printed vari- 
 ous jeux cf esprit which he distributed to 
 his friends. He brought this plant and 
 the fonts of type to America, not with- 
 out considerable trouble, and with this 
 material set up in business his grandson, 
 Benjamin Franklin Bache, later the 
 editor of the Aurora and a chief calum- 
 niator of Washington, who established, 
 or rather disestablished, Bache' s social 
 standing by refusing to receive him. 
 
 Seemingly, he was a man of large 
 leisure with an opportunity for doing 
 many little things. It is a not un- 
 
100 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 common trait in ability such as his to 
 work much harder out of sight than when 
 in the public gaze. Charming as was the 
 eifect which he produced by his hoii- 
 homie and his leisurely effect on a ner- 
 vous race, the errand on which he and 
 his associates were bent was serious in all 
 conscience, — literally, a ^^ gamble" for a 
 continent. By the last of December, 
 1776, they had audience with the Count 
 de Yergennes, minister for foreign affairs. 
 Their credentials were received, and 
 their wishes for a treaty of amity and 
 commerce pressingly stated. Their 
 memorial to Gerard de Eayneval, secre- 
 tary of the foreign office, presented soon 
 after, was met with some indirection, 
 certainly with no assurances of aid. It 
 was something, however, to secure two 
 million francs to be repaid without in- 
 terest, when the American government 
 was in a condition to pay its debts. So 
 far, so good. But Yergennes, however 
 friendly his intentions, was in no posi- 
 
benjami:n' feanklin loi 
 
 tion to give open offence to Lord Stor- 
 mont or his government. Stormont's 
 policy was to prevent vessels destined for 
 America, and often loaded with impor- 
 tant and necessary cargoes for carrying 
 on the various requirements of war, from 
 clearing from French ports. A large 
 portion of the impressive volumes of fac- 
 similes so patriotically edited by the late 
 Henry Stevens is taken up with the cor- 
 respondence occasioned by these harass- 
 ing delays. The French government was 
 powerless to take a positive stand in re- 
 gard to this holding up of outward bound 
 vessels, and Stormont pressed the ad- 
 vantage of his x>osition to the fullest. 
 The American commissioners meanwhile 
 were literally besieged by spies, their 
 mails were opened, in London, and even 
 in Paris. Franklin knew, or at least 
 admitted it as a possibility, that his own 
 secretary. Dr. Edward Bancroft, was be- 
 traying information ; but nothing dis- 
 turbed his equanimity, although it was 
 
102 BENJAMIIN^ FEANKLIN 
 necessary for the French police to safe- 
 guard the ^^respectable old man'' from 
 l^ossible assassination. 
 
 The correspondence and daily busi- 
 ness of these commissioners was^ we may 
 well believe, exacting to the last degree. 
 There was no corps of young attaches to 
 which much detail might have advisedly 
 been intrusted, no busy little army of 
 stenographers and typewriters capable 
 of turning off finished pages almost as 
 soon as the words were uttered. Every- 
 thing had to be done with the care and 
 precision which characterised the digni- 
 fied processes of diplomacy of the eigh- 
 teenth century. It was painful work, 
 but it remains a credit to American po- 
 litical ability and method. The sailing- 
 masters of the little fleet of American 
 vessels had to be instructed, warned, 
 placated. They, too, were harried by 
 British spies, who caught them by the 
 sticky lime of dissipation, always dear 
 to the easy-going sailor-man, and to be 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 103 
 
 enjoyed at its gayest in la helle France. 
 Perhaps one of the hardest tasks which 
 befeU Franklin was that of cooling 
 down gently, yet decisively, the large 
 military aspirations of young French- 
 men, many of them of important lineage 
 and position, but some of them advent- 
 urers pure and simple. The record of 
 military service rendered this country 
 by gallant French of&cers is so brilliant 
 that we may be forgiven a smile when 
 we reflect what would have been the 
 effect on our army, our commissariat, 
 and our military chest, had all the as- 
 piring geniuses who sought to rid Amer- 
 ica of Britain's chains found their way 
 here. But Franklin was equal to oc- 
 casions such as these, and, though 
 sorely tried by their applications, — sup- 
 plications they often were, — managed to 
 convey his refusal without giving offence. 
 Some of his letters to applicants are mar- 
 vels of polite ingenuity. 
 
 More important than the demands of 
 
104 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 ravening sea-dogs, some of whom proved 
 to be arrant knaves or insolently insub- 
 ordinate, or than the importunity of 
 aspirants for glory beyond-sea, was the 
 need of securing the assistance of other 
 European countries. Franklin had ab- 
 sorbed so much of the attention of the 
 French people that a way to gratify the 
 ambition of the other American diplo- 
 mats fortunately opened toward other 
 fields of diplomacy. Arthur Lee, al- 
 ready furiously jealous and suspicious of 
 Franklin, essayed to interest Spain and 
 Russia in our fortunes, but without suc- 
 cess. Carmichael failed at the outset to 
 attract Sweden, while John Adams later 
 went to Holland, Francis Dana to Eussia, 
 Izard to Tuscany. None of them success- 
 fully influenced these various countries, 
 and France remained through the war 
 the true diplomatic stamping-ground. 
 
 There was not so much talk about 
 ^^ republican simplicity'^ as there was 
 later when our government was at last 
 
BE^JAMII^ FRAKKLIN 105 
 a going concern, with, the Federalist 
 machinery running and the Republi- 
 cans filled with dread, real or assumed, 
 of aristocratic tendencies in our official 
 life. We were not wholly free from 
 monarchical habits of good living in 
 high life, and our representatives in 
 Europe, especially in Paris, lived com- 
 fortably. Although Franklin's style, 
 according to Vergennes, was ^^ modest," 
 he spent about fifteen thousand dollars a 
 year. He drew, however, in a recorded 
 fifteen months only a trifle over twelve 
 thousand dollars. It is more than one 
 hundred and thirty years since this time 
 when Franklin and those about him ac- 
 complished much because they set up no 
 eccentric and novel standards of living 
 in the midst of a well-established civil- 
 isation ; yet to this day this country 
 has never settled to its own satisfac- 
 tion whether its foreign representatives 
 should set a peculiar social pace or fol- 
 low that which is found awaiting them. 
 
106 BENJAMIK FEANKLIN 
 These matters did not trouble Franklin, 
 for lie drew upon his own reasonably 
 large fortune, and in respect to unself- 
 ishness of this sort was as nobly patri- 
 otic as Washington himself. According 
 to Albert H. Smyth, he discharged the 
 ^^ varied duties of merchant, consul, 
 commissioner, and plenipotentiary, ' ^ 
 subject all the while to drafts from Con- 
 gress upon loans which it was assumed 
 that he had made from the French gov- 
 ernment. He seems to have paid his 
 personal secretary, his grandson William 
 Temple Franklin, out of his own purse, 
 for making copies of and caring for the 
 vast correspondence incidental to his 
 labours, a sum which at no time reached 
 over fifteen hundred dollars a year. To 
 the day of his death he had pleaded in 
 vain for a settlement of the accounts be- 
 tween him and the government, which he 
 literally carried on his back for nine 
 years. Had Benj amin Franklin rendered 
 no other service to his country or showu 
 
BENJAMm FEANKLIN 107 
 ability in no other way, his financial ser- 
 vices to the United States would entitle 
 him to gratitude too large ever to be 
 fully repaid. That the government was 
 at its wits^ end for money is only an ex- 
 planation, hardly an excuse. Any one 
 but a Franklin would have been driven 
 to madness by the exactions made upon 
 him by Congress, through the reluctant 
 Morris, but, since he was Benjamin 
 Franklin, he shouldered through the 
 mess. Perhaps that carelessness and 
 lack of order against which he had 
 striven — on paper — early in life, by 
 means of binding ^^ rules of conduct,'' 
 and of which he was insultingly accused 
 by Arthur Lee, and even by the honour- 
 able but fussy John Adams, may have 
 saved him from final despair. What he 
 could not perform, he let go, like the wise 
 man he was. But, if he was accused of 
 slovenly methods of routine, no charge of 
 personal gain can be made against him. 
 He had boundless opportunity to enrich 
 
108 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 himself, — vast sums passed through his 
 hands, possible commissions were spread 
 before his eyes. Able Americans since 
 his day, men without a fraction of his 
 commercial and money-getting genius, 
 have fallen victims to temptations less 
 alluring. But Franklin's record is 
 white, although he made no loud pre- 
 tences to austerity and even took a tol- 
 erant view of the adventurings of Silas 
 Deane, and probably was more amused 
 than scandalised at that political his- 
 trion, the lively and audacious Beau- 
 marchais and his little, mysterious bank- 
 ing house of Hortalez et Cie. Job-like, 
 he found his associates, nominally his 
 friends, more trying or elusive even 
 than his open enemies. Only on the 
 rarest occasion did he lift his voice or 
 use his pen against any of them, and 
 then with a display of serenest dignity. 
 
XIV. 
 
 It is difficult to tell the complicated 
 tale of Franklin in France. There were 
 many chapters, and the threads of narra- 
 tive run in many directions. It is not 
 necessary to disentangle these threads or 
 to make continuity out of confusion. 
 The main object of the commissioners 
 was to secure an effectual treaty of amity 
 and commerce, and then of alliance for 
 mutual defence. Lord Stormont's object 
 was to prevent such plans, and it was 
 the part of Yergennes to be gracious to 
 America and make no open breach, at 
 least not yet, with England. So at first 
 matters went on, — things do not drag in 
 Paris, — the situation growing tenser, 
 and harder for the commissioners than 
 for any one else. To their surprise came 
 a sudden and happy conclusion for the 
 anxious envoys. The French were full 
 of enthusiasm for the ^ ' insurgents, ' ' but, 
 in spite of Franklin's efforts, had no dis- 
 
110 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 position to put money into the American 
 Eevolution as an investment. Vergennes, 
 forced by Stormont, moved rather threat- 
 eningly against the violations of the 
 neutrality laws by privateers, which 
 were actually hurrying prizes out of 
 French ports. This statesman even felt 
 obliged to oppose the publication of 
 Dubourg's translation, made at the in- 
 stance of Franklin, of our various State 
 constitutions. The public meanwhile, 
 in cafes and in the streets, grew hotter 
 and hotter, so far as zeal counts, for the 
 American cause, and in the centre of all 
 the tumult was the picturesque figure of 
 an old man of simple garb, benign of 
 countenance, spectacled and fur- capped, 
 a true homme du peuple^ yet withal a 
 cool and calculating manipulator of great 
 destinies. 
 
 But under all this froth there was a 
 good brew. Enthusiasm had a substan- 
 tial basis. Washington's capture of the 
 Hessians at Trenton in December, 1776, 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 111 
 
 and the defeat of the British at Princeton 
 a few days later, gave joy in Paris, but 
 it was not comparable to that caused by 
 the news of Burgoyne's surrender at 
 Saratoga on October 17, 1777. The 
 official news reached the French govern- 
 ment on December 4. Twelve days later 
 the commissioners were told that the in- 
 dependence of America would be recog- 
 nised, and that the treaties would be 
 made. These treaties were signed on 
 February 6, 1778, and the envoys, who 
 up to this time were recognised only as 
 private citizens, were received at court 
 and this diplomatic achievement made 
 public. No wonder that a British spy 
 wrote that Doctor Franklin ^4s all life 
 and full of spirits," though he did not 
 fail to add defiantly, if illiterately, '^pos- 
 siably his course may be stopped shortly. ' ' 
 The old man, in plainest but most de- 
 corous attire, no wig upon his venerable 
 head, no buckles on his shoes, no sword 
 at his side, was received as American 
 
112 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 commissioner, in mid-March, at the 
 court of Louis XYI. A month later 
 the Oomte d'Estaing had sailed with the 
 French fleet for America. Not France 
 alone, but England, experienced the crisis 
 caused by Burgoyne's sarrender. The 
 party of peace, never despicable in size 
 or importance, grew in strength at this 
 time. Franklin was in continual corre- 
 spondence from this time on with such 
 men as David Hartley and Dr. John 
 Fothergill, — old associates in higher 
 matters than the killing of human beings, 
 and grave, determined lovers of peace. 
 It was the natural object of these and 
 other noble-minded Englishmen to dis- 
 cover a plan for ending the war without 
 abasing England. Franklin was as hu- 
 mane as they, but entertained no proj- 
 ect which did not involve a consider- 
 ation of America's independence. That 
 to him was already an accomplished fact. 
 It was John Adams who brought prim 
 order out of annoying, even ridiculous 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 113 
 chaos, when he supplanted Silas Deane 
 who had been recalled by Congress, and 
 who advised that Franklin be made sole 
 plenipotentiary to France. 
 
 Though there was still an incredible 
 amount to do, the business was prac- 
 tically now in Franklin's hands, and he 
 was free to have his table littered and 
 his papers in disorder, if he so chose to 
 have them. Things went better, although 
 they went none too easily. He could, 
 however, look about him a little and 
 draw a long breath when he wished. 
 He was still the rage, — no man who ever 
 lived was ever more so. The various 
 biographies are full of this extraordinary 
 popularity, which extended to every 
 article of his attire and to his personal 
 peculiarities. 
 
 It is impossible to write of the endless 
 enthusiasm for everything he did or was 
 without going over again one or another 
 well-beaten biographical trail. Not only 
 were there put on the market Franklin 
 
114 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 snuff-boxes, stoves, portraits, busts, com- 
 mon articles of ornament or use, but 
 he himself was honoured by election to 
 learned societies, chief among them the 
 Academie des Sciences, as a foreign associ- 
 ate. Italy, Spain, Eussia, honoured him 
 greatly, but always as a man of science, 
 as a philosopher, not as a statecrafts- 
 man. It is impossible not to suppose that 
 Franklin was delighted at all this hom- 
 age, — from the passing, frivolous sort, 
 gone in an hour, had he made a political 
 misstep, to the graver sort which recog- 
 nised in him the embodiment of the 
 spirit of the age in science and progress 
 and of the new republican genius over 
 seas. What wonder is it that the 
 man who made a phrase (ga ird) that 
 lived through a wilder revolution than 
 our own, uttered in hours of discour- 
 agement to put new life into our cause, 
 — what wonder is it that, buoyant, hope- 
 ful, though old in years, he failed in 
 prophetic instinct, and had no percep- 
 
BENJAMIK FEANKLIN 115 
 
 tions of the hideous commotions under- 
 ground to break out only ten years later! 
 He was not a young man to see visions, 
 but for an old man he dreamed few 
 dreams of the past, and lived intensely 
 in a vivid and engrossing j)resent. To 
 say that his head was turned by all 
 this adulation would be to fail utterly 
 to understand the composition of that 
 head, as well balanced and composed a 
 structure as ever surmounted a human 
 body. 
 
 The one thorn in Franklin's com- 
 placent frame at this period was John 
 Adams, who returned to Europe almost 
 a year and a half after Franklin had 
 been left in sole charge in Paris. He, 
 too, was a great man, and great men 
 oftentimes cannot sleep in the same bed, 
 especially in political life. Fortunately, 
 these two at heart each had an enormous 
 respect for the other's main purposes. 
 In the sifting process of history these 
 differences amount to little more than 
 
116 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 this, that Franklin thought that Adams 
 was too fussy, and the latter thought 
 that his compeer was not fussy enough. 
 Both were undoubtedly right, — certainly 
 no part of the cause they served so glori- 
 ously was in the least injured by their 
 differing attitudes. 
 
 The main object of his presence in 
 France Franklin never suffered to be 
 turned aside by such minor distractions 
 as the quarrels of the captains, the 
 importunities of adventurers, or the 
 humiliating opposition of such men as 
 Izard and the Lees. He was there to 
 raise money to prosecute the war and 
 to make the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence a living force. In all, up to 1783, 
 he had secured from the French govern- 
 ment 18,000,000 livresy to be paid finally 
 by 1798; 10,000,000 livres tournois ob- 
 tained in Holland, for which the French 
 king made himself responsible; and, 
 lastly, 9,000,000 livres tournois as ^^gratu- 
 itous assistance fi'om the pure generosity 
 
BENJAMm FEANKLIN 117 
 
 of the King. ' ' Of this last gift, 1, 000, 000 
 livres were, so to speak, lost in transit 
 from the Eoyal Treasury to the banking- 
 house of M. Grand, It is a mystery not 
 yet solved. Mr. Smyth says, ^^It has 
 been traced to the doors of Beanmar- 
 chais's bank J beyond that point all 
 knowledge of it ceases.'' Yet it was the 
 fervid Beaumarchais, who, on hearing 
 of the news of Burgoyne's surrender 
 brought to France by Jonathan Loring 
 Austin, made such haste to Paris and to 
 Franklin that he nearly killed himself in 
 a carriage, — a bearer of glad tidings, 
 this buoyant, not scrupulous, yet by no 
 means hateful gambler with destiny, 
 Caron de Beaumarchais. 
 
XV. 
 
 With the progress of American affairs, 
 during his absence, no brief estimation 
 of Franklin's career need have much to 
 do. To astonish and enrapture France, 
 while at the time he was gaining every 
 point in financing the war, — that was his 
 task, and it was after a while an accom- 
 plished fact. Meanwhile the Eevolu- 
 tionary cause was advancing, freshly 
 energised by the needful sinews, the 
 livres tournois so skilfully diverted into 
 our empty chest. As our prospects 
 brightened, the friends of peace in Eng- 
 land waxed bolder, and the govern- 
 ment' s policy waned. There was rumour 
 of the possibility of peace, tentative 
 talks were held and messages written, 
 but this basis for negotiations was un- 
 sound as long as the British clung to the 
 vain hope of a reconciliation and sought 
 to continue colonial dependence. There 
 was another obstacle to progress in these 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 119 
 
 irenic negotiations. It would be easy to 
 concede much to America, could but the 
 mother- country ^^ avenge the faithless 
 and insolent conduct of France.'^ 
 
 No one understood better than Franklin 
 how much was due to France or how 
 scrupulously our obligations to her must 
 be kept in any acts, diplomatic or other- 
 wise, which pointed to a better under- 
 standing with England. A man as 
 brilliant as Mr. Blaine might seem to 
 forget such an agreement as the Clayton- 
 Bulwer treaty, but it is impossible that 
 Benjamin Franklin could forget the 
 treaties of amity and commerce and 
 alliance for mutual defence signed in 
 February, 1778. He really loved and 
 trusted France and even Yergennes as 
 much as a wise and experienced old 
 man could implicitly trust anything or 
 anybody in a world so uncertain, even 
 for an optimist. From an ardent lover 
 of England, he had come to dislike and 
 distrust her political methods, and what 
 
120 BENJAMIK FEANKLIN 
 little hate there was in his ample nature 
 was freely expressed for her arbitrariness. 
 He never withheld his scorn from the 
 amiable Hartley or from any of the va- 
 rious Englishmen who sought long for 
 some accommodation by which peaceful 
 measures might be considered. 
 
 It is a wholly unnecessary task to go 
 into the least detail of the negotiations. 
 They are, to say the truth, tiresome in the 
 extreme, and, when intelligible, not in 
 any way luminous. But they went on 
 sporadically until Cornwallis gave it up 
 at Yorktown in October, 1781. Even 
 after that event, when N^orth saw that 
 '^all was over," Franklin spurned the 
 suggestion that England and America 
 treat separately, without the partnership 
 of France. The ^orth ministry lasted 
 five months longer. Eichard Oswald, 
 under the new Eockingham ministry, now 
 enters on the scene, armed with good 
 sense and reasonably full discretionary 
 powers, but with no commission to treat. 
 
BEKJAMIK FEANKLIN 121 
 
 The efforts of George Grenville to deal 
 with France, and that meant with Yer- 
 gennes, on somewhat parallel lines, may 
 be neglected in this brief consideration. 
 These efforts came to naught when the 
 Shelburne ministry came in on the death 
 of Rockingham. Oswald's powers were 
 now increased. When at last he was 
 enabled by his government to treat with 
 the United States of America rather 
 than with ^^ Colonies or Plantations/^ 
 matters began to go forward. 
 
 Then happened a strange thing. Jay 
 and Adams were suspicions of the ulti- 
 mate intentions of Vergennes, and doubted 
 his ingenuousness in regard to American 
 as contrasted with French interests. 
 They believed that Franklin was in some 
 way deceived. Franklin, on the other 
 hand, was anxious to complete the business 
 before Parliament met again, and finally 
 yielded to his two fellow- commissioners. 
 Parliament did not meet until December 
 5, 1782, and on November 30 prelimi- 
 
122 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 nary and provisional articles were 
 signed. Not until a treaty of peace 
 had been executed between France and 
 England was this treaty to be made de- 
 finitive. The long and the short of it 
 was that Franklin — for on him must the 
 greatest responsibility rest — had negoti- 
 ated with England alone without direct 
 communication with the French court. 
 It was his unpleasant task to inform 
 Vergennes, as he did the next day, of the 
 secret conclusion of the preliminary 
 treaty, contrary to the definite instruc- 
 tions of Congress, and certainly contrary 
 to the obligations implied and expressed 
 which rested upon him personally to be 
 oi)en and loyal to Yergennes. The letter 
 of the astute French statesman to Frank- 
 lin was not a billet-doux, nor was Frank- 
 lin' s reply without a touch of over-ex- 
 planation when no explanation ought 
 to have been necessary. But the incident 
 really went no further, and the definitive 
 treaties between the three powers were 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 123 
 
 signed on September 3, 1783. Strategi- 
 cally, the signing of the treaties with 
 France in 1778 was the most significant 
 act of Franklin^ s life, but his part in the 
 treaty of peace was certainly the crowning 
 act. Yet there was a fly in the ointment, 
 and an uneasy sense of something wan ting- 
 to make it a serene and perfect ceremony. 
 Yergennes in his letter to Luzerne, 
 the French minister to the United States, 
 accused Franklin of yielding ^ ^ too easily 
 to the bias of his colleagues,'^ Jay and 
 Adams, ^^ who do not pretend to recog- 
 nise the rules of courtesy in regard to 
 us." He did so yield, but we may well 
 believe not '^too easily,'' and really 
 against his own judgment. It were a 
 long argument to defend or to attack 
 Franklin successfully on this the great 
 critical act of his career, one far more 
 fraught with consequences than his 
 publication of the Hutchinson- Oliver 
 letters. In both cases he compromised 
 something, — perhaps it was his personal 
 
124 BENJAMm FEAKKLIN 
 honour. But successful statecraft seems 
 unhappily to involve the necessity of 
 compromise. The final answer to all dis- 
 cussion in this complicated problem will 
 have to be that Franklin^ through no fault 
 or virtue of his, by yielding to the honest, 
 irascible Adams and the courteous, up- 
 right, suspicious Jay, proved himself to 
 have had some interior wisdom greater 
 than his understanding, for it is beyond 
 much peradventure that the two ob- 
 structionists to his desire for openness 
 with France were mainly right in their 
 fears and hesitations. 
 
 So practically were ended the great 
 services abroad of the American pleni- 
 potentiary who during many years past 
 had said and written with almost tire- 
 some iteration that there was no good 
 war and no bad peace. He remained in 
 France to conclude commercial treaties 
 with Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, 
 Morocco, and lastly with Prussia to stop 
 privateering. 
 
XVI. 
 
 In spite of trying circumstances of 
 
 many kinds, Franklin continued his life 
 
 1 in Paris. The old friendly relations with 
 
 individuals and with the whole iDeople 
 
 continued to the last. Born in Boston, 
 
 where the holy zeal of the early days 
 
 I was passing and only the austerity re- 
 
 ' mained, he seemed notwithstanding to 
 
 I have no trace of Puritanism in his mar- 
 
 j row. John Adams, born much later, had 
 
 i enough for them both. Franklin, if we 
 
 I will but admit it, was really an English- 
 
 I man, — a man of national, not colonial 
 
 I build. He was a Middle-States man by 
 
 ^ adoption, and assimilated easily the 
 
 ; larger complacency of Pennsylvania 
 
 ways. The worldliness of Parisian life 
 
 troubled him as an old man as little 
 
 as Boston Puritanism interested him 
 
 when a boy. His orbit was large, and, 
 
 above all things, he was not parochial. 
 
 It is difficult not to believe that his in- 
 
126 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 tense affectation of a supposedly Amer- 
 ican dress, with its ultra- republican 
 simplicity, was a harmless pose. How- 
 ever all this may be, he undoubtedly 
 conversed enjoy ably with philosophers 
 and wits, saw life of every kind without 
 being in the least affected unfavourably 
 by extravagances. He ate good dinners 
 and drank good liquors, in spite of his 
 gout, of which he wrote as of a cherished 
 friend. But, above all things, he liked 
 the company of clever women, and they 
 adored him. 
 
 Nothing in the life of any man can be 
 more diverting or innocent than his let- 
 ters to the daughter of Bishop Jona- 
 than Shipley, to whom he wrote the 
 famous epitaph on the squirrel, one 
 of his cleverest jeux d^ esprit, or to 
 Mary Stevenson, at whose mother^ s 
 house in Craven Street Franklin lodged 
 so long and so happily when in London. 
 His letters to Miss Stevenson are full of 
 his best humour and good sense, yet these 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 127 
 
 two friends could write on serious matters. 
 In fact, this charming young lady had 
 an astonishingly well-supplied mind, and 
 was always ready to improve it. On 
 these occasions the Doctor would reply 
 as gravely as to a member of the Eoyal 
 Society. In some of these Shipley and 
 Stevenson letters Franklin appears to his 
 best advantage as a sprightly, courteous 
 gentleman of the world, never pedantic, 
 never advancing too far in his sallies of 
 robustious humour. 
 
 In his letters to French women, how- 
 ever, the spirit of gallantry is evident, — 
 too evident for those who then and since 
 had no relish for such epistolary chat- 
 terings. Had this disrelish not existed, 
 it is improbable that the sixscore of 
 letters written him by Madame Brillon, 
 to whose daughter Franklin wished to 
 marry his grandson William Temple 
 Franklin, would have remained unpub- 
 lished until Mr. Smyth gave us the best 
 of them in the last volume of his defini- 
 
128 BEKJAMIN FRAKKLIN 
 tive edition of the Works. The worst 
 that one can say of Franklin in this 
 whole matter is that toward that large 
 and complicated subject known as the 
 ^^ ladies" he was soft. Some men do 
 not like to be called Cher Pajya, espe- 
 cially when they are old or getting to 
 be so, but Franklin liked it. He spent 
 much time, and doubtless much energy, — 
 since tender letters are seldom sponta- 
 neous, — in communing with a woman who 
 assures him that her ^^soul is pure, 
 simple, frank." She was not simple, 
 however frank, when she skilfully put 
 aside Franklin's proposal that her 
 daughter and his grandson should be 
 married. To say that she was a French 
 woman is to say that she was clever. 
 If she was tantalising, she was also pru- 
 dent. She tells him that no one loves 
 him more than she does, but refuses him 
 a treasure ^^ which does not belong to me. 
 I guard it and will always guard it care- 
 fully." There is abundant reason to 
 
BEJS^JAMII^ FEANKLIK 129 
 suppose in glancing over these many let- 
 ters, written in her extravagant humour 
 and in Franklin's indifferent yet viva- 
 cious French, that the old man was not 
 wholly satisfied to be ^^good Papa'' to 
 his Chere Jille. Madame Brillon may 
 not have bettered, though she did not 
 lower, his ethical standards, but she did 
 correct his French assiduously, and that 
 is much to be grateful for when one is 
 seventy-five. So verging sometimes, in 
 their epistolary fashion, on the flowery 
 edge of temptation, the French lady was 
 always the more dainty in her risky 
 steps, while ' ' My Lord the Ambassador, ' ' 
 as she calls him, treads at times heavily, 
 even coarsely. 
 
 And there was Madame Helvetius of 
 Auteuil, almost beloved of Franklin, and 
 quite despised by Abigail, wife of John 
 Adams. Sixty years had not taken away 
 her power to charm, nor had they 
 taught her to spell. Her letters lack 
 the sparkle of Madame Br illon's, and are 
 
130 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 heavier with sentiment. She was a 
 '^kindly old soul/' in the common par- 
 lance, and drew about her distinguished 
 men of every sort, — men, however, who 
 probably did not object to shine by con- 
 trast with their hostess j but Mrs. Adams 
 thought her dirty. In one of his famous 
 jeux W esprit J the ^ ^ Visit to the Elysian 
 Fields," Franklin makes her the frank- 
 est sort of an offer of his hand, but in a 
 post-mortem kind of way, for he imagines 
 in the similitude of a dream, not in the 
 choicest taste, that his wife and Helve- 
 tius have happily paired off, and so re- 
 turns to earth and Madame Helvetius 
 with the cry, '■ ' Let us avenge ourselves. ' ' 
 But Mesdames Brillon and Helvetius 
 were not anxious to ally themselves 
 directly or indirectly to the house of 
 Franklin, and remained only good 
 friends to their American hero. There 
 were other charming women to admire 
 and be admired in France, but these 
 two were first in his affections. 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 131 
 Mr. Smyth, in Ms rapid summary of 
 Franklin's life which closes the defini- 
 tive edition, draws a picture of Frank- 
 lin sitting in his Philadelphia home on 
 his return, attended by his ^^very gross 
 and rather homely' ' daughter, visited by 
 curious or homage-paying visitors, while 
 his thoughts wander back to the pleasant 
 land of France and the brilliant men and 
 engaging women with whom he lived for 
 years on such intimate and agreeable 
 terms. One can but wonder whether 
 the aged and fast dissolving philosopher 
 contrasted his American home — and he 
 always seemed to have loved a home in 
 spite of his long and easily borne absences 
 — with that gayer life. Did he ever smile 
 grimly to himself at the strange, almost 
 inexplicable misspelling of his daughter's 
 married name which Madame Helv6tius 
 used in her letters, and wish that the pros- 
 perous old French lady had softened her 
 heart, so that he might have ended his 
 days in her agreeable company? 
 
XVII. 
 
 In 1785 Franklin bethought himself 
 of getting home. He was now in his 
 eightieth year; his life-work was really 
 done — so Jie thought — and he was in a 
 feeble condition from the gout and gravel. 
 Thomas Jefferson had been appointed 
 his successor in March, and in May 
 Franklin received the permission of Con- 
 gress to return. The French king gave 
 him a magnificent present, — a mini- 
 ature of himself surrounded by a 
 wreath of over four hundred diamonds, — 
 a litter of the queen, drawn by mules, 
 ^^who walk steadily and easily, '^ was 
 provided for the journey to Havre, — a 
 necessarily slow journey because bodily 
 disturbance gave him pain. There was 
 a vast amount of baggage on which the 
 English customs collected no duty. Ar- 
 rived at Southampton from Havre, he 
 went to the Isle of Wight. He saw some 
 of his old English friends, and sailed 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 133 
 
 from Cowes in a Philadelphia packet- 
 boat, July 28, 1785. Among those who 
 bade him farewell was his son, William 
 Franklin, long alienated from his father 
 by his espousal of the Loyalist cause. 
 How sincere was the reconciliation no 
 one can say : there was at least the out- 
 ward aspect of paternal and filial de- 
 corum. Before he sailed, he visited Mar- 
 tin's salt-water hot bath and fell asleep 
 in the water, on his back, watch in 
 hand, and kept this position for nearly 
 an hour. Did ever another philosopher 
 in undress so utilise his time 1 
 
 If there were wanting anything to 
 attest the extraordinary nature of Frank- 
 lin' s ability, one fact would be enough. 
 Experienced travellers, even in these days 
 of comfortable going, agree that mental 
 work at sea is impracticable and gener- 
 ally impossible. Yet this wonderful man 
 spent the seven weeks of his voyage in 
 writing memorable things, among them 
 a treatise on smoky chimneys, another 
 
134 BENJAMi:^^ FEANKLIN 
 
 on the Gulf Stream and other maritime 
 facts and problems, and yet a third on 
 the burning of pit- coal. On Wednesday, 
 September 14, on a flood-tide and a 
 morning breeze he came in sight of 
 ^ ' dear Philadelphia. " ^ ' We landed at 
 Market Street Wharf, where we were 
 received by a crowd of people with huz- 
 zas, and accompanied with acclamations 
 quite to my door. Found my family 
 well. God be praised and thanked for 
 all his Mercies ! " Such was the home- 
 coming of Benjamin Franklin, vener- 
 ated, in spite of some discordant criticism 
 which has lasted to this day, by two con- 
 tinents for reasons which appeal to the 
 good sense and discernment of common 
 humanity. 
 
 It was his expressed hope to be left in 
 peace, but he had yet to receive many 
 honours, chief among them the presi- 
 dency of Pennsylvania. The American 
 Philosophical Society, the University of 
 Pennsylvania, and the Assembly of that 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 135 
 
 Commonwealth addressed him in a 
 formal way. He was also a delegate to 
 the Convention of States, convened in 
 1787, for deliberation on a National Con- 
 stitution, and he attended the meetings 
 faithfully, although walking was now 
 difficult to him on account of his infirm- 
 ities. There was truth in his remark 
 made on his return, that his countrymen, 
 having eaten his flesh, were resolved to 
 pick his bones. But he probably liked 
 the insistence on his remaining a public 
 and active figure. His mind was still 
 alert. He took the same interest ia 
 everything. Even a two-headed snake 
 taken from the Schuylkill was not be- 
 neath his attention. Of greater import 
 to him must have been the news of a 
 ^^boat moved by a steam engine which 
 rows itself against tide in our river." 
 This was Fitch's invention, and he saw 
 the possibilities of it, even stating it as 
 his belief that it would ^^ become gener- 
 ally useful," but even his far-reaching 
 
136 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 mind could not guess how useful. He 
 met all happenings witt his usual com- 
 placency. To his sister Jane, his fa- 
 vourite from early life, he wrote, ^^ I have 
 long been accustomed to receive more 
 blamC; as well as more praise, than I 
 have deserved." But his two ancient 
 foes, the gout and the gravel, of which 
 he always spoke with ironical respect 
 and with a real gratitude that they were 
 not worse, were gaining on his years and 
 his strength. 
 
 For the last two years of his life 
 Franklin had withdrawn largely from 
 public affairs and service, but continued 
 to write letters and some papers of con- 
 siderable though not the first importance. 
 In 1789 he wrote his Observations Relative 
 to the Intentions of the Original Founders 
 of the Academy in Philadelphia, in which he 
 brought forward with all his usual vigour 
 his favourite theory that the English 
 language should be taught '^grammati- 
 cally and as a language.' ' While he did 
 
be:njamin fea:n'klin 137 
 
 not undervalue learning, lie regarded — 
 and did not hesitate to say it — the teach- 
 ing of Latin and Greek as equivalent to 
 the habit of wearing the hat under the 
 arm, long after the use of wigs had made 
 the practice necessary; ''the chapeau 
 bras of modern literature" he called 
 them. The annals of the leading Amer- 
 ican university for the past twenty years 
 will show that this position taken by 
 Franklin has, a hundred years later, 
 grown to be a guiding principle, — first 
 the English language, then the rest if you 
 will. He was interested in the abolition 
 of the slave-trade, and was i)resident of 
 the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting 
 the Abolition of Slavery. His signing the 
 memorial of the society presented to the 
 National House of Eepresentatives on 
 February 12, 1789, was his last act of 
 a public nature. On March 23 of the 
 year, less than a month before his death, 
 he sent to the Federal Gazette an ironical 
 skit alleged to have been delivered by 
 
138 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 Sicli Mehemet Ibrahim, of Algiers, in 
 defence of slavery. 
 
 Small things as well as great still en- 
 gaged his yet active intelligence. His 
 zeal for good printing, good paper, good 
 type, never died in him, though it must 
 be said that he left no remarkable typo- 
 graphical monument as evidence of his 
 faith. In fact, he was less fertile in device 
 as a printer than in anything he achieved. 
 In his trade he was really a conservative, 
 and as late as 1789 was regretting the 
 growing disuse of italic letters and of 
 the long ^S," comparing the monotonous 
 effect thus produced to the paring of all 
 men's noses smooth and level with their 
 faces, though it rendered ^Hheir physi- 
 ognomies less distinguishable." He dis- 
 liked what he called ^^gray printing," 
 and his letter of December, 1789, to 
 Noah "Webster tells him that the Phila- 
 delphia edition of his famous American 
 Spelling Book is miserably printed and 
 on ^^ wretched paper." He always re- 
 
be:n^jamin feanklin 139 
 
 spected the usages of his craft, if he did 
 not do much to better them. One flash 
 of the old zeal for improving things is 
 seen in his suggestion to put an interro- 
 gation at the beginning of a question in- 
 stead of at the end. 
 
 On March 9, 1790, he wrote that famous 
 letter to Ezra Stiles, president of 
 Yale College, with whom existed a 
 friendship) of uncommon strength and 
 mutual trust. In it he affirms nearly all 
 of the religious faith which he was will- 
 ing to profess, and it never suffers by 
 repetition. Few philosophical minds 
 of the eighteenth century went further, 
 and most of them did not go so far. 
 ^^Here/' he says with memorable brev- 
 ity, ^ Ms my creed. '^ ^^I believe in one 
 God, the creator of the universe. That 
 he governs it by his Providence. That 
 he ought to be worshipped. That the 
 most acceptable service we render to him 
 is doing good to his other children. That 
 the soul of man is immortal, and will be 
 
140 BE:N^JAMI]Sr FEANKLIN 
 treated with justice in another life respect- 
 ing its conduct in this. These I take to be 
 the fundamental points in all religion, and 
 I regard them as you do in whatever sect 
 I meet with them.'' He wrote in bed 
 on March 24 to his sister Jane a cheerful 
 letter for one in his condition, reiterating 
 that, though his malady was severe, he 
 could reflect with fortitude on how many 
 more horrible evils the human body is 
 subject to, and that he has been blessed 
 with ^^a long life of health . . . free from 
 them all. ' ' The last letter he ever wrote 
 was to Thomas Jefferson on April 8, re- 
 calling with perfect clearness his memory 
 of the St. Croix Eiver boundary and 
 sending him a map of Passamaquoddy 
 Bay. 
 
 Nine days later he died, on April 17, 
 1790, at the age of eighty- four years and 
 three months. An aposteme, which had 
 formed in the lungs, suddenly burst. 
 His strength did not enable him suffi- 
 ciently to throw off the discharge, and it 
 
BE:^JAMIN FRAKKLIK 141 
 
 is safe to say that septicaemia from the 
 absorption of the remaining pus was the 
 direct cause of the death. Whatever 
 may be our view of the philosophy and 
 the religion — if so we may call it — of 
 Benjamin Franklin, there is no doubt 
 whatever that they were steadfast aids 
 to his composure as he neared and met 
 his end. The nearest approach he made 
 to a murmur at his pain were the words, 
 reputed to have been his last, ^^A dy- 
 ing man can do nothing easy." By a 
 curious turn of destiny this great apostle 
 of good sense, this philosopher so free 
 from whimsies and small prejudices, is 
 supposed, if we may believe the words 
 as recorded by John Adams of his at- 
 tending physician, Dr. John Jones, to 
 have succumbed neither to the gout nor 
 the stone, but to a cold caught by sitting 
 in the cold current coming through an 
 open window. For half a century he 
 had been proclaiming that colds were not 
 caught simply by the coldness of the air, 
 
142 be:n^jamin^ franklin 
 
 but by draughts, moisture, and other con- 
 comitants. This proves nothing of course 
 except that, when one is nearly ninety, it 
 is unwise to test too strongly the hy- 
 I)otheses of middle life. He was, how- 
 ever, a famous therapist, as well as a 
 multitude of other excellent things, and 
 deserves no ridicule because he fell a 
 victim to his own empirical tests. His 
 funeral and burial were as impressive as 
 his life had been simple. Of the re- 
 spect shown by persons, institutions, 
 and political bodies every biography 
 speaks at length. His memory was 
 honoured in every possible way, — in 
 public meeting, resolutions, addresses, 
 and orations, — but in no way more 
 signally than by the printers of Paris, 
 who, on the occasion of a memorial meet- 
 ing, caused to be set up, printed, and dis- 
 tributed to the audience the speech de- 
 livered by one of their number. 
 
 If the French printers thus signalised 
 the one calling of which Franklin was 
 
BENJAMII^ FEANKLIK 143 
 most proud, he in his last will did not per- 
 mit the fact to be forgotten, for this formal 
 paper begins, '^I, Benjamin Franklin, 
 of Philadelphia, printer," and then 
 goes on to say also, as if of secondary im- 
 port, ^ ^ late Minister Plenipotentiary from 
 the United States of America to the Court 
 of France, now President of the State of 
 Pennsylvania." There is a slight but a 
 sure ring of a commoner's defiance in thus 
 putting occupation before office, or it may 
 have been a harmless vanity to run up the 
 crescendo of achievements. It was a 
 famous will and carefully considered. No 
 item therein contained is so well remem- 
 bered as that relating to the sums devised 
 to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia. 
 These sums which were to have accrued 
 according to his shrewd and authorita- 
 tively correct calculations have not 
 turned out to be so large by a great deal 
 as he thought they must, but they are 
 respectably large. From the Boston 
 fund has been established the worthy 
 
144 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 Franklin Union with its trades-school 
 and other practical aids to aspiring 
 youth. On the large plate glass of a 
 bank in Philadelphia many have seen 
 the legend: ^^ Estate of Benjamin 
 Franklin. Estate of Stephen Girard." 
 The potent influence of his life and of 
 his honestly earned fortune still abides 
 in a concrete and substantial way in the 
 city of his adoption. 
 
XYIII. 
 
 The world — two worlds rather — have 
 seen fit to ignore the defects of this most 
 unusual man and to remember his virtues 
 and his accomplishments as the qualities 
 of few men, since history began, have 
 been remembered. The minutiaG of his 
 excellences are recalled. His witty say- 
 ings, his wise proverbs, are so familiar 
 that they are part of the common mental 
 inheritance of the race and are hardly 
 now attributable to the author of them. 
 Like the Bible and Shakespeare, his 
 homely wisdom has lost its personal 
 attribution. It is indeed a wonderful 
 record. If one thinks of humble be- 
 ginnings and great endings, one thinks 
 of Franklin. The name occurs to every 
 one who speaks of the dawn of electrical 
 knowledge, of the growth of printing in 
 this country, of the post-office system, of 
 protection against fire, of early journal- 
 ism, of the first successes in the pub- 
 
146 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 lication of books, of the foundation of 
 free libraries and free schools and col- 
 leges. In American art we must con- 
 sider the innumerable busts, engravings, 
 medals, paintings, and other attempts to 
 preserve the features of this plain Ameri- 
 can. ■ He ventured into the field of the- 
 ology, philanthropy, philology, ethics, 
 and even of military affairs. It would 
 be a hard task to say whether he stands 
 higher in reputation as a scientist or 
 as a diplomat, for surely science and 
 diplomacy have little in common, and 
 few men have achieved greatness in both 
 callings ; yet it would be safe to say that 
 he was pre-eminent in both. His own 
 time thought so, and there is no reason 
 to dispute the decision now. 
 
BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 The few titles here given will amply 
 serve as a guide to a reasonably full 
 knowledge of Franklin's life and writ- 
 ings. A host of books have been written 
 about him, many of them dealing with 
 particular episodes of his career. Of 
 his own writings many editions of no 
 real consequence have appeared since the 
 first issuance of his famous Autobiog- 
 raphy. These editions generally contain 
 this Life, some of his best-known essays, 
 and almost without exception the famous 
 Way to Wealth, which was a garnering of 
 the more familiar sayings first incorpo- 
 rated in the Foor EicharcVs Almanacs. 
 With the publication of John Bigelow's 
 edition of the Life in 1874 begins the 
 latest and only important knowledge 
 of Franklin from a modern standpoint. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 BoGGESS, Arthur Clinton, and Emma 
 Eepplier Witmer. Calendar of the 
 
14:8 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Papers of Benjamin Franklin in the 
 Library of the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania. (Philadelphia, 1908.) 
 
 Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin 
 Franklin in the Library of the Ameri- 
 can Philosophical Society. Edited by I. 
 Minis Hays (Philadelphia, 1908. 5 vols. ). 
 
 The Extraordinary Library of 
 Samuel W. Pennypacker. Part I. 
 To be sold, December 14, 1905. (Phila- 
 delphia, 1905.) Part I. contains books 
 printed by Benjamin Franklin, books 
 from the library of Benjamin Franklin, 
 letters written by Benjamin Franklin 
 and his son, William Franklin, etc. 
 Ford, Paul Leicester. Franklin 
 bibliography. A list of books written 
 by or relating to Benjamin Franklin. 
 (Brooklyn, K Y., 1889.) Up to the time 
 of his death Mr. Ford was an indefati- 
 gable student of Franklin and collector of 
 Frankliniana. This bibliography still 
 remains the best, although it is over 
 
BIBLIOGEAPHY 149 
 
 twenty years old. Its immediate pre- 
 decessor was the Catalogue of Works re- 
 lating to Benjamin Franklin in the 
 Boston Public Library, including the 
 Collection given by Dr. Samuel Abbott 
 Green. [Compiled by Lindsay Swift.] 
 United States. Libraky of Con- 
 gress. Division of Manusckipts. 
 List of the Benjamin Franklin Papers in 
 the Library of Congress. Compiled under 
 the direction of Worthington C. Ford 
 (Washington, 1905). 
 
 WORKS BY FRANKLIN 
 
 Works. . . . With notes and a life of the 
 author. By Jared Sparks (Boston, 1836- 
 40: Hilliard, Gray & Co. 10 vols.). 
 This edition of Franklin's works super- 
 seded the edition in six volumes [Phila- 
 delphia, 1809-18, Duane], edited by 
 his grandson, William Temple Franklin. 
 It was in turn superseded by : 
 Complete Works. . . . Compiled and 
 edited by John Bigelow (N"ew York, 
 
150 BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 1887-88: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 10 
 vols.). 
 
 Writings. . . . Collected and edited 
 with a life and introduction by Albert 
 Henry Smyth (i^ew York, 1905-07: 
 The Macmillan Co. 10 vols. ). This may 
 safely be regarded as the definitive edition 
 of Franklin's works and as taking the 
 place of the Bigelow edition, sets of 
 which have now grown scarce. 
 
 Autobiography. Edited from his man- 
 uscripts with notes and introduction 
 by John Bigelow (Philadelphia, 1868 : 
 Lippincott & Co.). Later editions fol- 
 lowed. Out of the great number of edi- 
 tions of the Autobiography this is the 
 first in point of time which demands 
 the attention of the modern reader. 
 Afterward expanded into : 
 
 Life. . . • , written by himself. ]N"ow 
 first edited from original manuscripts 
 and from his printed correspondence and 
 other writings by John Bigelow (Phila- 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 151 
 
 delphia, 1874: Lippincott & Co. 3 
 vols.). A ^^ fifth edition, enriched/' 
 was published in 1905. 
 
 Autobiography . . . , and a sketch of 
 Franklin's life from the point where the 
 Autobiography ends, drawn chiefly from 
 his old letters. With notes and a chrono- 
 logical historical table. (Boston, [1896] : 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co. [Eiverside 
 Literature Series. ] ) An inexpensive and 
 serviceable edition, quite good enough 
 for ordinary use. 
 
 Autobiography. With an introduction 
 by Woodrow Wilson. (New York, 1901 : 
 The Century Co. [The Century Clas- 
 sics.] ) 
 
 Autobiography of Benjamin Frank- 
 lin. (Boston, 1906: Houghton, Mifflin & 
 Co.) Beautifully printed, but without 
 any especial distinction of editing. 
 Franklin's life was told in homely fash- 
 ion for plain people, and seems to require 
 no splendid raiment to adorn it. Like 
 
152 BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 a fine-looking man of toil, it appears to 
 
 best advantage in workaday clothes. 
 
 Poor Eichard's Almanac and other 
 papers. With notes. (Boston, 1886: 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co. [Eiverside Lit- 
 erature Series.]) Serviceable and inex- 
 pensive, but not so useful as: 
 
 ^^The Sayings of Poor Eichard." 
 The prefaces, proverbs, and poems of 
 Benjamin Franklin, originally printed 
 in Foor Eichard' s Almanac from 1733-58. 
 Collected and edited by Paul Leicester 
 Ford (New York, 1890: G. P. Putnam's 
 Sons [Knickerbocker E^uggets]). 
 Selections from the Writings of 
 Benjamin Franklin. Edited by U. 
 Waldo Cutler (:N'ew York [1905] : Crowell 
 & Co. [Handy Volume Classics]). Con- 
 tains a sketch of Franklin's life. 
 The Wisdom of Benjamin Franklin: 
 being reflections and observations of men 
 and events, not included in Poo)^ Eichard s 
 Almanac. Chosen from his collected 
 
BIBLIOGEAPHY 153 
 
 papers, with introduction by John J. 
 Murphy (New York, 1906: Brentano). 
 
 works about franklin 
 Fisher, Sydney George. The True 
 Benjamin Franklin. (Philadelphia, 
 1899: J. B. LippincottCo.) 
 Ford, Paul Leicester. The Many- 
 sided Franklin. (Kew York, 1899: 
 The Century Co.) If one were obliged 
 to limit himself to the reading of a single 
 work relating to Franklin, — excepting 
 always the Autobiography, — Mr. Ford's 
 book might surely be that one. He 
 unearthed many hidden or stray facts, 
 and combined them in a vivid and pict- 
 uresque fashion. 
 
 Hale, Edward Everett, and Edward 
 Everett Hale, Jr. Franklin in 
 France. From original documents, 
 most of which are now published for the 
 first time. (Boston, 1887-88: Eoberts 
 Brothers. 2 vols. ) 
 MoMaster, John Bach. Benjamin 
 
154 BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 Franklin as a Man of Letters. 
 (Boston, 1887 : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
 [American Men of Letters. ] ) Still holds 
 its place as a satisfactory consideration 
 of the literary side of Franklin's life, 
 and a worthy companion to: 
 Morse, John Torrey, Jr. Benjamin 
 Franklin. (Boston, 1889: Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co. [American Statesmen.]) 
 Various later editions. A short, yet com- 
 prehensive account of Franklin's career, 
 with emphasis on the political side. 
 
 More, Paul Elmer. Benjamin 
 Franklin. (Boston, 1900 : Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co. [Eiverside Biographical 
 Series.] ) A compact account, showing an 
 intimate and critical knowledge. 
 
 Parton, James. Life and Times of 
 Benjamin Franklin. (IS'ew York, 1864 : 
 Mason. 2 vols.) Lively and readable, 
 like everything Parton wrote. A good 
 appetiser for the more solid feast of the 
 later estimates. 
 
 W 73 
 

 
 
 
 <. **^fr^* ,G* 
 
 o^ 'o • » « A 
 
 /^. 
 
 WERT 
 eOOKBI^ONC 
 Gfantvtlie, Pa 
 M«fCh ^pril 198S 
 
 
 O^ • 
 
 ,-4.* .••-•-•♦ 
 
 
 
 ^ '^ • *> S