The next letter on freedom of speech was, or purported to be, an extract from the _London Journal_, and is written in such a totally masculine spirit that the reader might well have exclaimed like Hugh Evans in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_: "I like not when a "oman has a great peard; I spy a great peard under her m.u.f.fler." This is one of its masculine sentiments: "Who ever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; a _Thing_ Terrible to Publick Traytors."
And this is another, phrased very much as Grover Cleveland might have phrased it. "The Administration of Government is nothing else but the Attendance of the _Trustees of the People_ upon the Interest and Affairs of the People."
The next letter inveighs against hypocritical pretenders to religion. It had for some time, Silence says, been a question with her whether a commonwealth suffers more by hypocritical pretenders to religion, or by the openly profane; but she is inclined to think that the hypocrite is the most dangerous person of the two, especially if he sustains a post in the Government, and his conduct is considered as it regards the public. The local application of these remarks to Boston at the time could be left to take care of itself.
The next letter gives us another peep under Silence"s petticoats, for it advances a plan for the insurance of widows, worked out with actuarial precision, and bearing the unmistakable earmarks of the projecting spirit of the founder of the Junto. "For my own Part," Silence ends, "I have nothing left to live on, but Contentment and a few Cows; and tho" I cannot expect to be reliev"d by this Project, yet it would be no small Satisfaction to me to See it put in Practice for the Benefit of Others."
The next letter contains a missive from Margaret After cast, a forlorn Virgin, well stricken in years and repentance, to Silence, in which the writer, prompted by the provision for widows proposed by Silence, begs her to form a project also for the relief of "all those penitent Mortals of the fair s.e.x, that are like to be punish"d with their Virginity until old Age, for the Pride and Insolence of their Youth."
The next letter is a clever discourse on drunkenness. It hints at the truth that Franklin afterwards insisted upon in the "Dialogue between Horatio and Philocles" that we must stint sensual pleasure to really enjoy it, and sets forth a vocabulary of cant terms for intoxication similar to that subsequently published by him in the _Pennsylvania Gazette_.
The next letter is on the forbidding subject of night-walkers. The familiarity that it exhibits with the peripatetic side of Boston Common after dark at that day makes it a little difficult for us to understand why Franklin should ever have had occasion to tell us in the _Autobiography_, as he does, how on his second voyage from Boston to New York, a grave, sensible, matronlike Quakeress rescued him from the clutches of two young women, who afterwards proved to be a couple of thievish strumpets.
The final letter in the series is on the danger of religious zeal, if immoderate.
We have referred to these letters at some length, not only because they are not too immature to be even now read with pleasure for their wit and humor, but because they help to give us a still more faithful idea of the rebellious youth of Franklin, which, if it had not been so full of scornful protest against the whole system of New England Puritanism, might have shaded off, with the chastening effects of time, into too pa.s.sive a type of liberalism for such a career as his.
From the Dogood letters Benjamin pa.s.sed as we have seen to the editorship of the _Courant_ and to the gibes at the Boston clergy and magistracy, which ended in his ignominious flight from that city. But never was there a time in his youth, however restive under the check-rein, when his love of books was not the chief resource of his life. When on his return from Boston to Philadelphia, after receiving his father"s blessing, it was the fact that he had a great many books with him which led Governor Burnet of New York to send for him, and to show him his large library, and to discourse with him at considerable length about books and authors. He had previously begun to have "some acquaintance among the young people" of Philadelphia "that were lovers of reading," and subsequently came those academic strolls with Osborne, Watson and Ralph through the woods along the Schuylkill. And later even London, with all its tumult and dissipation, could not long extinguish his thirst for the sweet, cool wells of human thought and sentiment from which the soul of a gifted boy drinks with such pa.s.sionate eagerness. Circulating libraries were unknown at that time, but he agreed on reasonable terms with Wilc.o.x, a bookseller, with an immense collection of second-hand books, whose shop was next door to his place of lodging in Little Britain, that he might take home and read and return any of his wares. We have already quoted the pa.s.sages in the _Autobiography_ in which he tells us that, during the eighteen months that he was in London in his youth, he spent little upon himself except in seeing plays, and for books; and that he read considerably.
The _Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain_, which he wrote while in London, of little value as it was in itself, yet also aided in confirming his literary tendencies; for it arrested the attention of Lyons, the author of _The Infallibility of Human Judgment_, who introduced him to Bernard Mandeville, the author of the _Fable of the Bees_, "a most facetious, entertaining companion," and Dr. Henry Pemberton, the author of _A View of Sir I. Newton"s Philosophy_.
The love of reading, thus acquired by Franklin in early life, never deserted him, and was afterwards strengthened by his own ever-increasing library, which, before his death, became so large that he had to build a s.p.a.cious room for its reception at his home in Philadelphia, the books owned by the other members of the Junto, the extensive library of James Logan at Stenton, and the collections of the Philadelphia Library Company.
Even when his private business was too exacting to allow him time for any other form of recreation, he still found time for reading, including the acquirement of several modern languages, and the consequence was that, when he began to write in earnest, he was well supplied with all the materials for literary workmanship.
While Franklin never became a professional writer, he was very scrupulous about the typographical dress of what he wrote and not a little of a purist in his choice of words. Nor does he seem to have been less averse than authors usually are to editorial mutilation. Among his letters is one to Woodfall, the printer of Junius" Letters, asking him to take care that the compositor observed "strictly the Italicking, Capitalling and Pointing"
of the copy enclosed with the letter. Referring in a letter to William Franklin to a reprint in the _London Chronicle_ of his "Edict by the King of Prussia," he said:
It is reprinted in the _Chronicle_, where you will see it, but stripped of all the capitaling and italicing, that intimate the allusions and mark the emphasis of written discourses, to bring them as near as possible to those spoken: printing such a piece all in one even small character, seems to me like repeating one of Whitefield"s sermons in the monotony of a schoolboy.
On another occasion he was led by the alterations made in the text of one of his papers to write to William Franklin in these terms: "The editor of that paper, one Jones, seems a Grenvillian, or is very cautious, as you will see by his corrections and omissions. He has drawn the teeth and pared the nails of my paper, so that it can neither scratch nor bite."
Among the many delightful letters of Franklin is one that he wrote in his extreme old age to Noah Webster, acknowledging the receipt of a copy of the latter"s _Dissertations on the English Language_, and applauding his zeal for preserving the purity of the English language both in its expressions and p.r.o.nunciation; and in correcting the popular errors into which several of the States were continually falling with respect to both. In this letter, the writer again takes occasion to reprobate the use in New England of the word "improved" in the sense of "employed." The word in that signification appears to have been decidedly obnoxious to him, for he had previously banned it in a letter to Jared Eliot. Among the ludicrous instances that he gave in his letter to Webster of its use in its perverted sense was an obituary statement to the effect that a certain deceased country gentleman had been for more than thirty years _improved_ as a justice of the peace. He also found, he said, that, during his absence in France, several newfangled words had been introduced into the parliamentary vocabulary of America, such as the verb formed from the substantive "Notice," as "_I should not have NOTICED this, were it not that the Gentleman_, &c.," the verb formed from the substantive "Advocate," as "_the Gentleman who ADVOCATES or has ADVOCATED that Motion_, &c.," and the verb formed from the substantive "progress," the most awkward and abominable of the three, as "_the committee, having PROGRESSED resolved to adjourn_." He also found that the word "opposed," though not a new word, was used in a new manner, as "_the Gentlemen who are OPPOSED to this Measure_." From these verbal criticisims he pa.s.sed to the advantages that had inured to the French language from obtaining the universal currency in Europe previously enjoyed by Latin. It was perhaps, he thought, owing to the fact that Voltaire"s treatise on Toleration was written in French that it had exerted so sudden and so great an effect on the bigotry of Europe as almost entirely to disarm it. The English language bid fair to occupy a place only second to that of the French, and the effort therefore should be to relieve it still more of all the difficulties, however small, which discouraged its more general diffusion. A book, ill-printed, or a p.r.o.nunciation in speaking, not well articulated, would render a sentence unintelligible, which from a clear print, or a distinct speaker, would have been immediately comprehended.
Instead of diminishing, however, the obstacles to the extension of the English language, Franklin declared, had increased. The practice, for ill.u.s.tration, of beginning all substantives with a capital letter, which had done so much to promote intelligibility, had been laid aside. And so, from the same fondness for an even and uniform appearance, had been the practice of italicizing important words, or words which should be emphasized when read. Another innovation was the use of the short round s instead of the long one which had formerly served so well to distinguish a word readily by its varied aspect. Certainly the omission of these prominent letters made the line appear more even, but it rendered it less immediately legible; as the paring all men"s noses might smooth and level their faces, but would render their physiognomies less distinguishable. All these, Franklin said, were improvements backwards, and cla.s.sed with them too should be the modern fancy that gray printing--read with difficulty by old eyes--unless in a very strong light and with good gla.s.ses, was more beautiful than black. A comparison between a volume of the _Gentleman"s Magazine_, printed between the years 1731 and 1740, and one printed in the last ten years would demonstrate the contrary. Lord Chesterfield pleasantly remarked this difference to Faulkener, the printer of the _Dublin Journal_, when he was vainly making encomiums on his own paper as the most complete of any in the world. "But, Mr. Faulkener," said my Lord, "don"t you think it might be still farther improved by using Paper and Ink not quite so near of a Colour"? Another point in favor of clear and distinct printing was that it afforded the eye, when it was being read aloud, an opportunity to take a look forward in time to supply the voice with the proper modulations for coming words. But, if words were obscurely printed or disguised by omitting the capitals and the long s, or otherwise, the reader was apt to modulate wrong, and, finding that he had done so, would be obliged to go back, and begin the sentence again, with a loss of pleasure to his hearers.
Two features, however, of the old system of printing did not meet with the approval of Franklin. It was absurd to place the interrogation point at the end of a sentence where it is not descried until it is too late for the inflection of interrogation to be given. The practice of the Spanish of putting this point at the beginning of the sentence was more sensible. The same reasoning was applicable to the practice of putting the stage direction "aside" at the end of a sentence.
Nice, however, as were the prejudices of Franklin with respect to the use of words, some of his own did not escape the vigilant purism of Hume, who, notwithstanding his admiration for Franklin, as the first great man of letters produced by America, was, where fastidious diction was concerned, not unlike John Randolph of Roanoke, whose exquisite fidelity to correct English impelled him even on his death-bed, when asked whether he _lay_ easily, to reply with marked emphasis, "I _lie_ as easily as a dying man can." After reading Franklin"s Canada pamphlet and essay on Population, Hume took exception to several of his expressions; as is shown by one of the latter"s letters to him.
I thank you [wrote Franklin] for your friendly admonition relating to some unusual words in the pamphlet. It will be of service to me. The "_pejorate_"
and the "_colonize_," since they are not in common use here, I give up as bad; for certainly in writings intended for persuasion and for general information, one can not be too clear; and every expression in the least obscure is a fault. The "_unshakeable_" too, though clear, I give up as rather low. The introducing new words, where we are already possessed of old ones sufficiently expressive, I confess must be generally wrong, as it tends to change the language; yet, at the same time, I can not but wish the usage of our tongue permitted making new words, when we want them, by composition of old ones whose meanings are already well understood. The German allows of it, and it is a common practice with their writers. Many of our present English words were originally so made; and many of the Latin words. In point of clearness, such compound words would have the advantage of any we can borrow from the ancient or from foreign languages. For instance, the word _inaccessible_, though long in use among us, is not yet, I dare say, so universally understood by our people, as the word _uncomeatable_ would immediately be, which we are not allowed to write. But I hope with you, that we shall always in America make the best English of this Island our standard, and I believe it will be so.
Franklin has left behind him his own conception of what const.i.tutes a good piece of writing.
To be good [he says] it ought to have a tendency to benefit the reader, by improving his virtue or his knowledge. But, not regarding the intention of the author, the method should be just; that is, it should proceed regularly from things known to things unknown, distinctly and clearly without confusion. The words used should be the most expressive that the language affords, provided that they are the most generally understood. Nothing should be expressed in two words that can be as well expressed in one; that is, no synonymes should be used, or very rarely, but the whole should be as short as possible, consistent with clearness; the words should be so placed as to be agreable to the ear in reading; summarily it should be smooth, clear and short, for the contrary qualities are displeasing.
Though entirely familiar, as we know from one of his letters, with the fate that befell Gil Blas, when he was so imprudent as to comply with the invitation of his master, the Archbishop, Franklin did not shrink from the peril of telling Benjamin Vaughan at his request what the faults of his writings were; and the terms in which he performed this delicate and hazardous office were suggested in part at least by his own methods of composition.
Your language [he told Vaughan] seems to me to be good and pure, and your sentiments generally just; but your style of composition wants perspicuity, and this I think owing princ.i.p.ally to a neglect of method. What I would therefore recommend to you is, that, before you sit down to write on any subject, you would spend some days in considering it, putting down at the same time, in short hints, every thought which occurs to you as proper to make a part of your intended piece. When you have thus obtained a collection of the thoughts, examine them carefully with this view, to find which of them is properest to be presented _first_ to the mind of the reader that he, being possessed of that, may the more easily understand it, and be better disposed to receive what you intend for the _second_; and thus I would have you put a figure before each thought, to mark its future place in your composition. For so, every preceding proposition preparing the mind for that which is to follow, and the reader often antic.i.p.ating it, he proceeds with ease, and pleasure, and approbation, as seeming continually to meet with his own thoughts. In this mode you have a better chance for a perfect production; because the mind attending first to the sentiments alone, next to the method alone, each part is likely to be better performed, and I think too in less time.
The writings of Franklin as a whole were true to his literary ideals, for they are, as a rule, smooth, clear and short; and the paper of preliminary hints that he drew up for the composition of the _Autobiography_ was in accord with his advice to Vaughan in regard to the value of such aids to perspicuity. His familiar letters, agreeable as they are, bear evidence at times of haste and lack of revision, and even his more informal writings, other than letters, occasionally betray a certain sort of carelessness of construction and expression. This is conspicuously true of the _Autobiography_, and, indeed, it is one of the merits of that work, so perfectly is it in keeping with its easy, meandering narrative. But, generally speaking, the compositions of Franklin are fully in harmony with his best standards of literary accomplishment. They are flowing and euphonious, moving with a steady, smooth and sometimes powerful, current from things known to things unknown, distinctly and lucidly without confusion. They are as clear as a trout stream. If one of his sentences is read a second time, it is not for his meaning, but merely for a renewal of the gratification that the mind derives from a thought presented free from the slightest trace of intercepting obscurity. They are so concise that the endeavor to make an abstract of one of them is likely to result in a sacrifice of brevity. But smoothness, clearness, and brevity, are far from being the only merits of Franklin"s writings. He was not richly endowed with imagination; though he was by no means dest.i.tute of that sovereign faculty; placid and sober as the ordinary operations of his mind were. But Fancy, the graceful sister of Imagination, Invention, Wit and Humor, and remarkable powers of statement and reasoning, all, except humor in its more wayward moods, under the complete sway of a sound judgment, gave life and strength to almost all that he wrote. His similes and metaphors are often strikingly original and apt; never more so than when they light up with a sudden flash the dark core of some abstruse scientific problem. A vivacity of spirits that nothing could long depress, accompanied by a quick but kindly sense of the ludicrous rises like bubbles of mellow wine to the surface of his intimate letters, and other lighter compositions; and, when a.s.sociated with conceptions lured from the bright heaven of invention, and elaborated with the utmost finish, as in the case of his Bagatelles, imparts to his productions a quality that does not belong to any but the best creations of literary genius. It is interesting to note how even the most intractable subject, the new-invented Pennsylvania fireplace, smoky chimneys, interest calculations become suffused with some sort of intellectual charm, born of absolute transparency of speech, if nothing else, as soon as they pa.s.s through the luminous and tapestried cells of his s.p.a.cious mind. That mind, indeed, like all minds of the same comprehensive character, in which the balance has not been lost between the subjective and objective faculties, was p.r.o.ne to see everything in large pictorial outlines. Fable, epilogue, parable, a story that was not so much the jest of a moment as the wisdom of all time, a historical incident, that pointed some grave moral, or enforced some invaluable truth, came naturally to his mind as they might well do to the minds of all men who are creed-founders, or teachers, in any sense, on a large scale, of the ma.s.s of men, as he was. How naturally such methods of instruction belonged to him is well ill.u.s.trated in the story told of him by John Adams. One evening, at a social gathering, shortly before he left England, at the close of his second mission to that country, a gentleman expressed the opinion that writers like aesop and La Fontaine had exhausted the resources of fable.
Franklin, so far from concurring with this view, declared that many new and instructive fables could still be invented, and, when asked whether he could think of one, replied that, if he was furnished with pen and paper, he would produce one forthwith. The pen and paper were handed to him, and, in a few minutes, he summed up the existing relations between England and America in this fable:
Once upon a time, an eagle, scaling round a farmer"s barn, and espying a hare, darted down upon him like a sunbeam, seized him in his claws, and remounted with him in the air. He soon found that he had a creature of more courage and strength than a hare; for which, notwithstanding the keenness of his eyesight, he had mistaken a cat. The snarling and scrambling of the prey was very inconvenient; and, what was worse, she had disengaged herself from his talons, grasped his body with her four limbs, so as to stop his breath, and seized fast hold of his throat with her teeth. "Pray,"
said the eagle, "let go your hold, and I will release you." "Very fine," said the cat, "I have no fancy to fall from this height, and be crushed to death. You have taken me up, and you shall stoop, and let me down." The eagle thought it necessary to stoop accordingly.
In the course of the preceding pages, we have had occasion to refer at considerable length to not a few of Franklin"s writings, but by no means to all. Among the best of his published pamphlets, is the one ent.i.tled _The Interest of Great Britain considered with regard to her Colonies and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe_. Remarkable as it may now seem, when the peace of 1763 between Great Britain and France was approaching, there was some division of opinion in the former country as to whether she should insist upon the cession by France to her of Canada or Guadeloupe, then one of the rich sugar islands of the West Indies; and the object of this pamphlet was to establish the superior claims of Canada. It is written with great lucidity and force of argument, and is especially valuable for its revelations of the extent to which the acquisition of Canada by England was opposed in England for fear that it would tend to augment the power and precipitate the independence of the American Colonies. Richard Jackson is alleged to have had a share in its composition, exactly what Benjamin Vaughan was unable to say after a careful investigation before the publication of his edition of Franklin"s writings in 1779. For our part, we find it difficult to believe that he could have had any considerable share in its production. Internal evidences of authorship are undoubtedly misleading, but it is hard to read this paper, so similar to Franklin"s other pamphlets in point of peculiarities of diction and method without exclaiming, "St. Dunstan or the Devil!" Its intimate, nay perfect, familiarity with Indian habits and characteristics could not well have been possessed by anyone who had never personally mixed with the Indians, and formed his knowledge of them from his own and other first-hand information.
The arguments, too, employed in the pamphlet to allay English jealousy of colonial aggrandizement, are the same that are found scattered through Franklin"s other writings. There is also the fact that the authorship of the paper is referred to in the paper itself throughout in the first person singular. There is also the fact that in the same letter to Hume, in which Franklin disclaims the authorship of the _Historical Review_, he told him, in reply to one of his criticisms, that he gave up as rather low the word "unshakeable," used in the Canada pamphlet, but said nothing to indicate that the pamphlet was not wholly his own. More conclusive are the words in the paper of hints upon which the composition of the _Autobiography_ was based. "_Canada delenda est_. My Pamphlet. Its reception and effect."
Certainly a man, whose relations to his own productions were always marked by an uncommon degree of modesty, if not of indifference, and whose generosity in awarding due credit to the labors of others was one of his most striking and laudable qualities, was scarcely the man to have used such words as these about a pamphlet, mainly or largely the work of another hand. There is besides the fact that in the Franklin collection of the Pennsylvania Historical Society there is a copy of the pamphlet indorsed in the handwriting of Franklin as presented "to the Rev. Dr. Mayhew, from his humble servt, the Author."
In view of these circ.u.mstances we should say that the probabilities decidedly are that the connection of Jackson with the pamphlet, whatever it may have been, was of a purely subordinate character.
The papers, written by Franklin from time to time during the controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies, before the sword grew too impatient to remain in its scabbard, such as his letters to the _London Chronicle_ and the _London Public Advertiser_, his Answers to Strahan"s _Queries respecting American Affairs_, his essay on _Toleration in Old England and New England_, his _Tract relative to the Affair of Hutchinson"s Letters_, and his _Account of Negotiations in London for effecting a Reconciliation between Great Britain and the American Colonies_ were, taken as a whole, pamphleteering or narration of a very interesting and effective order. The substance of the majority of them is found in his Examination before the House of Commons, as the quintessence of most that is best in _Poor Richard"s Almanac_ is found in Father Abraham"s Speech. They are written, as a rule, in a singularly clear and readable style, present with unusual skill and cogency all the points of the colonial argument, and display the insight of an almost faultlessly honest and sane intelligence into the true obligations and interests of the mother country and her disaffected children. Among these graver productions, Franklin also contributed to the American controversy, in addition to the humorous letter to the press, in which he held up to English ignorance of America, as one of the finest spectacles in nature, the grand leap of the whale, in his chase of the cod up Niagara Falls, two papers worthy of the satirical genius of Swift. One is his _Edict by the King of Prussia_ and the other is his _Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One_. In the first piece, Frederick the Great is gravely credited with an edict, in which, after reciting that Great Britain was colonized in the beginning by subjects of his renowned ducal ancestors, led by Hengist, Horsa, h.e.l.la, Uff, Cerdicus, Ida and others, he proceeds to impose _seriatim_ upon the English descendants of these German colonists in terms, exactly like those employed by the prohibitory and restrictive statutes of Great Britain, bearing upon the commerce and industry of America, all the disabilities and burdens under which America labored. The parallel is sustained with unbroken spirit and the happiest irony from beginning to end. After all the manacles by which the freedom of America was restrained have been duly fastened by the arbitrary mandates of the edict upon Great Britain herself, it concludes with these words:
We flatter ourselves, that these our royal regulations and commands will be thought just and reasonable by our much-favoured colonists in England; the said regulations being copied from their statutes of 10 and 11 William III. c. 10, 5 Geo. II. c. 22, 23 Geo. II. c.
29, 4 Geo. I. c. 11, and from other equitable laws made by their parliaments; or from instructions given by their Princes; or from resolutions of both Houses, entered into for the good government of their _own colonies in Ireland and America_.
The second paper commences in this manner:
"An ancient Sage boasted, that, tho" he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a _great city_ of a _little one_. The science that I, a modern simpleton, am about to communicate, is the very reverse." Then, a.s.suming as a postulate that a great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges, the paper goes on to point out one by one as the best means for reducing such an empire to a small one the very British policies and abuses that were then producing incurable disaffection in the mind of America, and menacing the power and prestige of Great Britain herself. These two papers, though clothed in forms that belong to literature rather than to politics, a.s.sert the whole case of the Colonies against Great Britain almost, if not altogether, as fully as the Declaration of Independence afterwards did. They have in every respect the polished completeness given by Franklin to all the productions of his pen that called for the exercise of true literary art, and deserve to be included in any separate publication of the best creations of his literary genius. They both met with the popular favor that they merited. The Rules was read with such eagerness that it was reprinted in the _Public Advertiser_ at the request of many individuals and some a.s.sociations of individuals, and this notwithstanding the fact that it had been copied in several other newspapers and _The Gentleman"s Magazine_. So great was the demand for the issue of the _Advertiser_, in which the Edict appeared, that, the day after its appearance, Franklin"s clerk could obtain but two copies of it, though he endeavored to obtain more both at the office of the _Advertiser_ and elsewhere. Its authorship being unknown except to a few of the writer"s friends, he had the pleasure besides, he tells us, of hearing it spoken of in the highest terms as the keenest and severest piece that had been published in London for a long time. Lord Mansfield, he was informed, said of it that it was very able and artful indeed, and would do mischief by giving in England a bad impression of the measures of government, and in the Colonies by encouraging them in their contumacy.
Among the persons taken in by its apparent genuineness was Paul Whitehead.
I was down at Lord Le Despencer"s [Franklin wrote to William Franklin] when the post brought that day"s papers. Mr. Whitehead was there, too, (Paul Whitehead, the author of _Manners_,) who runs early through all the papers, and tells the company what he finds remarkable. He had them in another room, and we were chatting in the breakfast parlour, when he came running in to us, out of breath, with the paper in his hand.
Here! says he, here"s news for ye! _Here"s the King of Prussia, claiming a right to this kingdom!_ All stared, and I as much as anybody; and he went on to read it.
When he had read two or three paragraphs, a gentleman present said, _d.a.m.n his impudence, I dare say, we shall hear by next post that he is upon his march with one hundred thousand men to back this._ Whitehead who is very shrewd, soon after began to smoke it, and looking in my face said, _I"ll be hanged if this is not some of your American jokes upon us._ The reading went on, and ended with abundance of laughing, and a general verdict that it was a fair hit; and the piece was cut out of the paper and preserved in My Lord"s collection.
There are some humorous pa.s.sages in other contributions made by Franklin, in one a.s.sumed character or another, to the American controversy. The dialogue as well as the fable was, as the reader is aware, one of his striking methods of arresting popular attention when he wished to make an impression upon the popular mind. In an anonymous letter to the _Public Advertiser_, he undertook to defend Dr. Franklin from the charge of ingrat.i.tude to the Ministry, which had, it was alleged, given him the Post Office of America, offered him a post of five hundred a year in the Salt Office, if he would relinquish the interests of his country and made his son a colonial governor. As it was a settled point in government in England that every man had his price, it was plain, the letter declared, that the English Ministers were bunglers in their business, and had not given him enough. Their Master had as much reason to be angry with them as Rodrigue in the play with his apothecary for not effectually poisoning Pandolpho, and they must probably make use of the Apothecary"s Justification, as urged in the following colloquy:
SCENE IV. _Rodrigue_ and _Fell_, the Apothecary
_Rodrigue._ You promised to have this Pandolpho upon his Bier in less than a Week; "tis more than a Month since, and he still walks and stares me in the face.
_Fell._ True and yet I have done my best Endeavours. In various ways I have given the Miscreant as much Poison as would have kill"d an Elephant. He has swallow"d Dose after Dose; far from hurting him, he seems the better for it. He hath a wonderfully strong Const.i.tution. I find I can not kill him but by cutting his Throat, and that, as I take it, is not my Business.
_Rodrigue._ Then it must be mine.
Another letter, signed "A Londoner," ill.u.s.trates the difficulty which the sober good-sense of Franklin, always disposed to reduce things to their material terms, experienced in understanding the recklessness with which the British Government was hazarding the commercial value of the colonies.
To us in the Way of Trade comes now, and has long come [he said] all the superlucration arising from their Labours. But will our reviling them as Cheats, Hypocrites, Scoundrels, Traitors, Cowards, Tyrants, &c., &c., according to the present Court Mode in all our Papers, make them more our Friends, more fond of our Merchandise? Did ever any Tradesmen succeed, who attempted to drub Customers into his Shop? And will honest JOHN BULL, the Farmer, be long satisfied with Servants, that before his Face attempt to kill his _Plow Horses?_
In his eager desire to influence public sentiment in England in behalf of the Colonies, Franklin even devised and distributed a rude copper plate engraving, visualizing the woful condition to which Great Britain would be reduced, if she persisted in her harsh and unwise conduct towards her colonies. Many impressions of this engraving were struck off at his request on the cards which he occasionally used in writing his notes, and the design he also had printed for circulation on half sheets of paper with an explanation and a moral of his composition. The details of the ill.u.s.tration, which are all duly elucidated in the explanation, are those of abject and irredeemable ruin. The limbs of Britannia, duly labelled Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and New England respectively, lie scattered about her, and she herself, with her eyes and arm stumps, uplifted to Heaven, is seen sliding off the globe, with a streamer inscribed _Date Obolum Bellisario_ thrown across all that remains of her legs. Her shield, which she is unable to handle, lies useless by her side.
The leg, labelled New England, has been transfixed by her lance. The hand of the arm, labelled Pennsylvania, has released its grasp upon a small spray of laurel. The English oak has lost its crown, and stands a bare trunk with briars and thorns at its feet, and a single dry branch sticks out from its side. In the background are Britannia"s ships with brooms at their topmastheads denoting that they are for sale. The moral of the whole was that the Thames and the Ohio, Edinburgh and Dublin were all one, and that invidious discriminations in favor of one part of the Empire to the prejudice of the rest could not fail to be attended with the most disastrous consequences to the whole State.
Nothing produced by Franklin between the date of his return from his second mission to England and his departure from America for France needs to be noticed. The two or three papers from his pen, which belong to this period, are distinctly below his ordinary standards of composition. Nor are any of the graver writings composed by him during the remainder of his life with some exceptions very noteworthy. In one, his comparison of Great Britain and the United States in regard to the basis of credit in the two countries, he presented with no little ability the proposition that, by reason of general industry, frugality, ability, prudence and virtue, America was a much safer debtor than Britain; to say nothing of the satisfaction that generous minds were bound to feel in reflecting that by loans to America they were opposing tyranny, and aiding the cause of liberty, which was the cause of all mankind. The object of this paper was to forward the loan of two millions of pounds sterling that the United States were desirous of procuring abroad. Unfortunately, the matter was one not to be settled by argument but by the Bourse, which has a barometric reasoning of its own. In another paper, thrown into the form of a catechism, Franklin, by a series of clever questions and answers, brings to the attention of the world the fact that it would take one hundred and forty-eight years, one hundred and nine days and twenty-two hours for a man to count the English national debt, though he counted at the rate of one hundred shillings per minute, during twelve hours of each day. That the shillings, making up this enormous sum, would weigh sixty-one millions, seven hundred and fifty-two thousand, four hundred and seventy-six Troy pounds, that it would take three hundred and fourteen ships, of one hundred tons each, or thirty-one thousand, four hundred and fifty-two carts to move them, and that, if laid close together in a straight line, they would stretch more than twice around the circ.u.mference of the earth, are other facts elicited by the questions of the catechism. It concludes in this manner:
Q. When will government be able to pay the princ.i.p.al?
A. When there is more money in England"s treasury than there is in all Europe.