The True Benjamin Franklin Part 15

At this time France and England were temporarily at peace. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 had resulted in a sort of cessation of hostilities, which France was using to push more actively her advantages on the Ohio River and in the Mississippi Valley. She intended to get behind all the colonies and occupy the continent to the Pacific Ocean.

The efforts of Great Britain to check these designs, including the expeditions of the youthful Washington to the Ohio, need not be given here.[21] England broke the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and what is known as the Seven Years' War began with the memorable defeat of Braddock.

Franklin was sent by the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly to Braddock's head-quarters in Virginia to give any a.s.sistance he could and to prevent Braddock from making a raid into Pennsylvania to procure wagons, as he had threatened. The journey was made on horseback in company with the governors of New York and Ma.s.sachusetts, and on the way Franklin had an opportunity to observe the action of a small whirlwind, which he reported in a pleasant letter to Mr. Collinson. It was while on this visit that Franklin appears in Thackeray's "Virginians," in which he is strangely described as a shrewd, bright little man who would drink only water.

He told Braddock that there were plenty of wagons in Pennsylvania, and he was accordingly commissioned to procure them. He returned to Philadelphia, and within two weeks had delivered one hundred and fifty wagons and two hundred and fifty pack-horses. He had received only eight hundred pounds from Braddock, and was obliged to advance two hundred pounds himself and give bond to indemnify the owners of such horses as should be lost in the service. Claims to the amount of twenty thousand pounds were afterwards made against him, and he would have been ruined if the government, after long delay, had not come to his rescue. Such disinterested service was not forgotten, and his popularity was greatly increased.

He had the year before been one of the representatives of Pennsylvania in the convention at Albany, where he had offered a plan for the union of all the colonies, which was generally approved, and I shall consider this plan more fully in another chapter. It was intended, of course, primarily to enable the colonies to make more effective resistance against the French and Indians, and as an additional a.s.sistance he suggested that a new colony be planted on the Ohio River. The establishment of this colony was a favorite scheme with him, and he urged it again many years afterwards while in England.

As a member of the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly he joined the Quaker majority in that body and became one of its leaders. This majority was in continual conflict with the governor appointed by William Penn's sons, who were the proprietors of the province. The government of the colony was divided in a curious way. The proprietors had the right to appoint the governor, judges, and sheriffs, or, in other words, had absolute control of the executive offices, while the colonists controlled the Legislature, or a.s.sembly, as it was called, and in this a.s.sembly the Quakers exercised the strongest influence.

During the seventy years that the colony had been founded the a.s.sembly had built up by slow degrees a body of popular rights. It paid the governor his salary, and this gave it a vast control over him; for if he vetoed any favorite law it could retaliate by cutting off his means of subsistence. This right to withhold the governor's salary const.i.tuted the most important principle of colonial const.i.tutional law, and by it not only Pennsylvania but the other colonies maintained what liberty they possessed and saved themselves from the oppression of royal or proprietary governors.

Another right for which the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly always strenuously contended was that any bill pa.s.sed by it for raising money for the crown must be simply accepted or rejected by the governor. He was not to attempt to force its amendment by threats of rejection, or to interfere in any way with the manner of raising the money, and was to have no control over its disburs.e.m.e.nt. The king had a right to ask for aid, but the colony reserved the right to use its own methods in furnishing it.

These rights the proprietors were constantly trying to break down by instructing their governors to a.s.sent to money and other bills only on certain conditions, among which was the stipulation that they should not go into effect until the king's pleasure was known. They sent out their governors with secret instructions, and compelled them to give bonds for their faithful performance. When the governors declined to reveal these instructions, the a.s.sembly thought it had another grievance, for it had always refused to be governed in this manner; and was now more determined than ever to maintain this point because several bills had been introduced in Parliament for the purpose of making royal instructions to governors binding on all the colonial a.s.semblies without regard to their charters or const.i.tutions.

These were all very serious designs on liberty, and the proprietors took advantage of the war necessities and Braddock's defeat to carry them out in the most extreme form. The home government was calling on all the colonies for war supplies, and Pennsylvania must comply not only to secure her own safety but under fear of displeasing the Parliament and king. If under such pressure she could be induced to pa.s.s some of the supply bills at the dictation of the governor, or with an admission of the validity of his secret instructions, a precedent would be established and the proprietary hold on the province greatly strengthened.

The Quakers, especially those comprising the majority in the a.s.sembly, were not at heart opposed to war or to granting war supplies. As they expressed it in the preamble to one of their laws, they had no objection to others bearing arms, but were themselves principled against it. If the others wished to fight, or if it was necessary for the province to fight, they, as the governing body, would furnish the means. Franklin relates how, when he was organizing the a.s.sociators, it was proposed in the Union Fire Company that sixty pounds should be expended in buying tickets in a lottery, the object of which was to raise money for the purchase of cannon. There were twenty-two Quakers in the fire company and eight others; but the twenty-two, by purposely absenting themselves, allowed the proposition to be carried.

The Quaker a.s.sembly voted money for war supplies as liberally and as loyally as the a.s.sembly of any other colony; but at every step it was met by the designs of the governor to force upon it those conditions which would be equivalent to a surrender of the liberties of the colony.

Thus, in 1754 it voted a war supply of twenty thousand pounds, which was the same amount as Virginia, the most active of the colonies against the French, had just subscribed, and was much more than other colonies gave.

New York gave only five thousand pounds, Maryland six thousand pounds, and New Jersey nothing. But the governor refused his a.s.sent to the bill unless a clause was inserted suspending it until the approval of the king had been obtained, and this condition the a.s.sembly felt bound to reject.

During the whole seven years of the war these contests with the governor continued; and the members of the a.s.sembly, to show their zeal for the war, were obliged at times to raise the money on their own credit without submitting their bill to the governor for his approval. In these struggles Franklin bore a prominent part, drafting the replies which the a.s.sembly made to the governor's messages, and acquiring a most thorough knowledge of all the principles of colonial liberty. At the same time he continued to enjoy jovial personal relations with the governors whom he resisted so vigorously in the a.s.sembly, and was often invited to dine with them, when they would joke with him about his support of the Quakers.

The disputes were increased about the time of Braddock's defeat by a new subject of controversy. As the a.s.sembly was pa.s.sing bills for war supplies which had to be raised by taxation, it was thought to be no more than right that the proprietary estates should also bear their share of the tax. The proprietors owned vast tracts of land which they had not yet sold to the people, and as the war was being waged for the defence of these as well as all the other property of the country, the a.s.sembly and the people in general were naturally very indignant when the governor refused his consent to any bill which did not expressly exempt these lands from taxation. The amount a.s.sessed on the proprietary land was trifling,--only five hundred pounds; but both parties felt that they were contending for a principle, and when some gentlemen offered to pay the whole amount in order to stop the dispute, it was rejected.

The proprietors, through the governor, offered a sort of indirect bribe in the form of large gifts of land,--a thousand acres to every colonel, five hundred to every captain, and so on down to two hundred to each private,--which seemed very liberal, and was an attempt to put the a.s.sembly in an unpatriotic position if it should refuse to exempt the estates after such a generous offer. But the a.s.sembly was unmoved, and declined to vote any more money for the purposes of the war, if it involved a sacrifice of the liberties of the people or enabled the proprietors to escape taxation. "Those," said Franklin, "who would give up essential liberty for the sake of a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

But the proprietors were determined to carry the point of exemption of their estates, and as a clamor was being raised against them in England for defeating, through their governor, the efforts of the a.s.sembly to raise money for the war, they sent over word that they would subscribe five thousand pounds for the protection of the colony. Such munificence took the a.s.sembly by surprise, and an appropriation bill was pa.s.sed without taxing the proprietary estates. But popular resentment against the proprietors was raised to a high pitch when it was discovered that the five thousand pounds was to be collected out of the arrears of quit-rents due the proprietors. It was merely a clever trick on their part to saddle their bad debts on the province, have their estates exempted from taxation, and at the same time give themselves a reputation for generosity.

The defeat of Braddock in July, 1755, was followed in September and October by a terrible invasion of the Indians, who ma.s.sacred the farmers almost as far east as Philadelphia. Evidently something more was necessary to protect the province than the mere loose organization of the a.s.sociators, and a militia law drafted by Franklin was pa.s.sed by the Quaker a.s.sembly. The law had a long preamble attached, which he had prepared with great ingenuity to satisfy Quaker scruples. It was made up largely of previous Quaker utterances on war, and declared that while it would be persecution, and therefore unlawful in Pennsylvania, to compel Quakers to bear arms against their consciences, so it would be wrong to prohibit from engaging in war those who thought it their duty. The Quaker a.s.sembly, as representing all the people of the province, would accordingly furnish to those who wanted to fight the legal means for carrying out their wish; and the law then went on to show how they should be organized as soldiers.

In his _Gazette_ Franklin published a Dialogue written by himself, which was intended to answer criticisms on the law and especially the objections of those who were disgusted because the new law exempted the Quakers. Why, it was asked, should the combatant portion of the people fight for the lives and property of men who are too cowardly to fight for themselves? These objectors required as delicate handling as the Quakers, and Franklin approached them with his usual skill.

"Z. For my part I am no coward, but hang me if I will fight to save the Quakers.

"X. That is to say, you will not pump ship, because it will save the rats as well as yourself."

As a consequence of his success in writing in favor of war, the philosopher, electrician, and editor found himself elected colonel of the men he had persuaded, and was compelled to lead about five hundred of them to the Lehigh Valley, where the German village of Gnadenhutten had been burnt and its inhabitants ma.s.sacred. He had no taste for such business, and would have avoided it if he could; for he never used a gun even for amus.e.m.e.nt, and would not keep a weapon of any kind in his house. But the province with its peace-loving Quakers and Germans had never before experienced actual war, nor even difficulties with the Indians, and Franklin was as much a military man as anybody.

So the philosopher of nearly fifty years, famous the world over for his discoveries in electricity and his "Poor Richard's Almanac," set forth in December, slept on the ground or in barns, arranged the order of scouting parties, and regulated the serving of grog to his men. He built a line of small forts in the Lehigh Valley, and during the two months that he was there no doubt checked the Indians who were watching him all the time from the hilltops, and who went no farther than to kill ten unfortunate farmers. He had no actual battle with them, and was perhaps fortunate in escaping a surprise; but he was very wily in his movements, and in his shrewd common-sense way understood Indian tactics. He has left us a description in one of his letters how a force like his should, before stopping for the night, make a circuit backward and camp near their trail, setting a guard to watch the trail so that any Indians following it could be seen long before they reached the camp.

He, indeed, conducted his expedition in the most thorough and systematic manner, marching his men in perfect order with a semicircle of scouts in front, an advance-guard, then the main body, with scouts on each flank and spies on every hill, followed by a watchful rear-guard. He observed all the natural objects with his usual keen interest, noting the exact number of minutes required by his men to fell a tree for the palisaded forts he was building. After two months of roughing it he could not sleep in a bed on his return to Bethlehem. "It was so different," he says, "from my hard lodging on the floor of a hut at Gnadenhutten with only a blanket or two."

Very characteristic of him also was the suggestion he made to his chaplain when the good man found it difficult to get the soldiers to attend prayers. "It is perhaps beneath the dignity of your profession,"

said Franklin, "to act as steward of the rum; but if you were only to distribute it after prayers you would have them all about you." The chaplain thought well of it, and "never," Franklin tells us, "were prayers more generally or more punctually attended."

On the return of the troops to Philadelphia after their two months'

campaign they had a grand parade and review, saluting the houses of all their officers with discharges of cannon and small-arms; and the salute given before the door of their philosopher colonel broke several of the gla.s.ses of his electrical apparatus.

The next year, 1756, brought some relief to the colonists by Armstrong's successful expedition against the Indians at Kittanning. But the year 1757 was more gloomy than ever. Nothing was wanting but a few more soldiers to enable the French to press on down the Mississippi and secure their line to New Orleans, or to fall upon the rear of the colonies and conquer them. The proprietors of Pennsylvania took advantage of the situation to force the a.s.sembly to abandon all its most cherished rights. The new governor came out with full instructions to a.s.sent to no tax bill unless it exempted the proprietary estates, to have the proprietary quit-rents paid in sterling instead of Pennsylvania currency, and to a.s.sent to no money bill unless the money to be raised was appropriated for some particular object or was to be at the disposal of the governor and a.s.sembly jointly.

Their attack on the liberties of the province was well timed; for, the English forces having been everywhere defeated, the a.s.sembly felt that it must a.s.sist in the prosecution of the war at all hazards. It therefore resolved to waive its rights for the present, and pa.s.sed a bill for raising thirty thousand pounds to be expended under the joint supervision of the a.s.sembly and the governor. So the proprietors gained one of their points, and they soon gained another. The a.s.sembly was before long obliged to raise more money, and voted one hundred thousand pounds, the largest single appropriation ever made. It was to be raised by a general tax, and the tax was to include the proprietary estates.

The governor objected, and the a.s.sembly, influenced by the terrible necessities of the war, yielded and pa.s.sed the bill in February, 1757, without taxing the estates.

But it was determined to carry on its contest with the governor in another way, and resolved to send two commissioners to England to lay before the king and Privy Council the conduct of the proprietors. The first avowed object of the commissioners was to secure the taxing of the proprietary estates, and the second was to suggest that the proprietorship be abolished and the province taken under the direct rule of the crown. Franklin and Isaac Norris, the Speaker of the a.s.sembly, were appointed commissioners, but Norris being detained by ill health, Franklin started alone.

He set forth as a sort of minister plenipotentiary to London, where he had at one time worked as a journeyman printer. He had left London an obscure, impoverished boy; he was returning as a famous man of science, retired from worldly business on an a.s.sured income. He remained in England for five years, and so full of pleasure, interesting occupation, and fame were those years that it is remarkable that he was willing to come back to Pennsylvania.

He secured lodgings for himself and his son William at Mrs. Stevenson's, No. 7 Craven Street. Here he lived all of the five years and also during his subsequent ten years' residence in London. He had been recommended to her house by some Pennsylvania friends who had boarded there; but he soon ceased to be a mere lodger, and No. 7 Craven Street became his second home. He and Mrs. Stevenson became firm friends, and for her daughter Mary he formed a strong attachment, which continued all his life. His letters to her are among the most beautiful ever written by him, and he encouraged her to study science. "In all that time," he once wrote to her, referring to the happy years he had spent at her mother's house, "we never had among us the smallest misunderstanding; our friendship has been all clear sunshine, without the least cloud in its hemisphere."

Mrs. Stevenson took care of the small every-day affairs of his life, advised as to the presents he sent home to his wife, a.s.sisted in buying them, and when a child of one of his poor English relatives needed a.s.sistance, she took it into her house and cared for it with almost as tender an interest as if she had been its mother. Many years afterwards, in a letter to her written while he was in France, Franklin regrets "the want of that order and economy in my family which reigned in it when under your prudent direction."[22]

The familiar, pleasant life he led with her family is shown in a little essay written for their amus.e.m.e.nt, called "The Craven Street Gazette."

It is a burlesque on the pompous court news of the English journals.

Mrs. Stevenson figures as the queen and the rest of the family and their friends as courtiers and members of the n.o.bility, and we get in this way pleasant glimpses of each one's peculiarities and habits, the way they lived, and their jokes on one another.

He had an excellent electrical machine and other apparatus for experiments in her house, and went on with the researches which so fascinated him in much the same way as he had done at home. It was at No. 7 Craven Street that he planned his musical instrument, the armonica, already described, and exhibited it to his friends who came to see his electrical experiments. He quickly became a member of all the learned societies, was given the degree of doctor of laws by the universities of St Andrew's, Edinburgh, and Oxford, and soon knew all the celebrities in England. But he does not appear to have seen much of that burly and boisterous literary chieftain, Dr. Johnson. This was unfortunate, for Franklin's description of him would have been invaluable.

Peter Collinson, to whom his letters on electricity had been sent, of course welcomed him. He became intimate with Dr. Fothergill, the fashionable physician of London, who had a.s.sisted to make his electrical discoveries known. This was another of his life-long friendships: the two were always in perfect sympathy, investigating with the enthusiasm of old cronies everything of philosophic and human interest.

Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen and one of the foremost men of science of that time, became another bosom friend, and Franklin furnished him the material for his "History of Electricity." William Strahan, the prosperous publisher and friend of Dr. Johnson, also conceived a great liking for the Pennsylvania agent. Strahan afterwards became a member of Parliament, and was fond of saying to Franklin that they both had started life as printers, but no two printers had ever risen so high. He was a whole-souled, jovial man, wanted his son to marry Franklin's daughter, and wanted Mrs. Franklin to come over to England and settle there with her husband, who, he said, must never go back to America. He used to write letters to Mrs. Franklin trying to persuade her to overcome her aversion to the sea, and he made bets with Franklin that his persuasions would succeed.

We need not wonder that Franklin spent five years on his mission, when he was so comfortably settled with his own servant in addition to those of Mrs. Stevenson, his chariot to drive in like an amba.s.sador, and his son William studying law at the inns of court. During his stay, and about the year 1760, William presented him with an illegitimate grandson, William Temple Franklin. This boy was brought up exclusively by his grandfather, and scarcely knew his father, who soon married a young lady from the West Indies. In his infancy Temple was not an inmate of the Craven Street house, but he lived there afterwards during his grandfather's second mission to England, and accompanied him to France.

The birth of Temple and his parentage were probably not generally known among Franklin's English friends during this first mission. It has been said also that William's illegitimacy was not known in London, but this is unlikely. It did not, however, interfere with the young man's advancement; for in 1762, just before Franklin returned to America, William was appointed by the crown governor of New Jersey. This honor, it is said, was entirely unsolicited by either father or son, and the explanation usually given is that it was intended to attach the father more securely to the royal interest in the disputes which were threatening between the colonies and the mother country.

William and his father were on very good terms at this time. Every summer they took a little tour together, and on one occasion travelled in Holland. On a visit they made to the University of Cambridge they were entertained by the heads of colleges, the chancellor, and the professors in the most distinguished manner, discussed new points of science with them, and with Professor Hadley experimented on what was then a great wonder, the production of cold by evaporation. They wandered also to the old village of Ecton, where the Franklins had lived poor and humble for countless generations, saw many of the old people, and copied inscriptions on tombstones and parish registers. But Scotland they enjoyed most of all. There they met Lord Kames, the author of the "Elements of Criticism," and the historians Hume and Robertson. It was an atmosphere of philosophy and intelligence which Franklin thoroughly enjoyed. "The time we spent there," he wrote to Lord Kames, "was six weeks of the _densest_ happiness I have met with in any part of my life."

During his stay in England the war against the French and Indians, which was raging when he left America, came to a close, and Quebec and Canada were surrendered. It became a question in settling with France whether it would be most advantageous for Great Britain to retain Canada or the Guadeloupe sugar islands, and there were advocates on both sides.

Franklin published an admirable argument in favor of retaining Canada, without which the American colonies would never be secure from the Indians instigated by the French, and the acquisition of Canada would also tend to a grander development of the British empire. It was an able appeal, but there is no evidence that it alone influenced the final decision of the ministry, as has been claimed, any more than there is evidence that Franklin suggested the policy of William Pitt which had brought the war to a successful close. There were many advocates of these opinions and suggestions, and Franklin was merely one of them, though unquestionably an able one.

He also published his essay on the "Peopling of Countries" and an article in favor of the vigorous prosecution of the war in Europe.

These, with his pleasures and experiments in science, occupied most of the five years, and the work of his mission, though well done, was by no means absorbing.

When he arrived, in July, 1757, he had, under the advice of Dr.

Fothergill, first sought redress from the proprietors themselves before appealing to the government; but meeting with no success, he tried the members of the Privy Council, and first of all William Pitt, the great minister who was then conducting the war against France and recreating England. But he could not even secure an interview with that busy minister, which is a commentary on the extravagant claims of those who say that Franklin suggested Pitt's policy.

Two years and more pa.s.sed without his being able to accomplish anything except enlighten the general public concerning the facts of the situation. An article appeared in the _General Advertiser_ abusing the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly, and his son William replied to it. The reply being extensively copied by other newspapers, the son was set to work on a book now known as the "Historical Review of Pennsylvania," which went over the whole ground of the quarrels of the a.s.sembly with the proprietors and their deputy governors. It was circulated quite widely, some copies being sold and others distributed free to important persons.

But it is doubtful whether it had very much influence, for it was an extremely dull book, and valuable only for its quotations from the messages of the governors and the replies of the a.s.sembly.

His opportunity to accomplish the main object of his mission came at last by accident. The a.s.sembly in Pennsylvania were gradually starving the governor into submission by withholding his salary, and under pressure for want of money, he gave his a.s.sent to a bill taxing the proprietary estates. The bill being sent to England, the proprietors opposed it before the Privy Council as hostile to their rights, and obtained a decision in their favor in spite of the arguments of Franklin and his lawyers. But Franklin secured a reconsideration, and Lord Mansfield asked him if he really thought that no injury would be done the proprietary estates by the a.s.sembly, for the proprietors had represented that the colonists intended to tax them out of existence.

Franklin a.s.sured him that no injury would be done, and he was immediately asked if he would enter into an engagement to a.s.sure that point. On his agreeing to do this, the papers were drawn, the a.s.sembly's bill taxing the estates was approved by the crown, and from that time the a.s.saults of the proprietors on the liberties of the colony were decisively checked.

Franklin was now most furiously attacked and hated by the proprietary party in Pennsylvania, but from the majority of the people, led by the Quakers, he received increased approbation and applause, and his willingness to risk his own personal engagement, as in the affair with Braddock, was regarded as an evidence of the highest public spirit.

He remained two years longer in England on one pretext or another, and no doubt excuses for continuing such a delightful life readily suggested themselves. He returned in the early autumn of 1762, receiving from the a.s.sembly three thousand pounds for his services, and during the five years of his absence he had been annually elected to that body. For a few months he enjoyed comparative quiet, but the next year he was again in the turmoil of a most bitter political contest.