Benjamin Franklin

Nought o word spak he more than was nede.

He was no formal literary critic such as Boileau, Lessing, or Coleridge, and no acknowledged arbiter of taste, such as Dr. Johnson. Yet Franklin, in voluminous practice, enjoying tremendous international vogue, proved that his theories bore the acid test of effectiveness. Indirectly he challenged his readers to honor principles of rhetoric which could so trenchantly serve the demands of his catholic pen, and make him one of the most widely read of all Americans.

IV. FRANKLIN AS PRINTER AND JOURNALIST

Franklin was a printer chiefly because of two proclivities which were basic in his personality from childhood to old age--a bent toward practical mechanics ("handiness") and a fondness for reading (bookishness). Further, he was a journalist and publisher chiefly because he was a printer.

A thorough printer is both an artisan and an artist; he has both the manual dexterity of a good workman and the aesthetic appreciation of the amateur of beauty. Franklin always took pride in his ability to handle the printer's tools, from the time when, at the age of twelve, he became "a useful hand"[i-162] in the print shop of his brother James, until the very end of his life. One of the pleasantest anecdotes of the old printer is that which tells of his visit to the famous Didot printing establishment in Paris, when he stepped up to a press, and motioning the printer aside, himself took possession of the machine and printed off several sheets. Then the American amba.s.sador smiled at the gaping printers and said, "Do not be astonished, Sirs, it is my former business."[i-163]

Even in his boyhood, it was a pleasure to Franklin "to see good workmen handle their tools," and he tells in his autobiography how much this feeling for tools meant to him throughout his life.[i-164] His flair for invention, though founded on this same "handiness," was not always directed toward the production of tools; but in the two fields of "philosophical" experimentation and the printing trade, his dexterity and cleverness in making needful instruments and devices were invaluable.

Partly because of the fact that printers' supplies must be imported from England, and partly because of his natural tool-mindedness, Franklin manufactured more of his own supplies than any other American commercial printer before or since. He cast type, made paper molds, mixed inks, made contributions to press building, did engraving, forwarded experiments in stereotyping, and worked at logotypy. Long after he had retired from the printing business. Franklin continued to influence developments in that field. It is a common saying among printers that one never forgets the smell of printer's ink. Franklin kept touch with his former business through various partners.h.i.+ps, through correspondence with printer friends, through the establishment of a private press in his home at Pa.s.sy during his amba.s.sadors.h.i.+p to France, and through his personal supervision of the education of his grandson in "the art preservative of arts." "I am too old to follow printing again myself,"

he wrote to a friend, "but, loving the business, I have brought up my grandson Benjamin to it, and have built and furnished a printing-house for him, which he now manages under my eye."[i-165]

As to just how adept Franklin was on the distinctively aesthetic side of printing, critics must differ. It has been customary to a.s.sume that the output of his shop was far superior to that of the several other printing houses in the colonies.[i-166] Such broad generalizations are misleading, however; and it is certainly possible to find Parks and even Bradford imprints which compare favorably enough with some of Franklin's. In typography, the phase of printing which affords the widest aesthetic scope, Franklin was by no means a genius. William Parks, of Annapolis and later of Williamsburg, was at least Franklin's peer during the seventeen-thirties and 'forties in the artistic arrangement of type; and William G.o.ddard, who practiced the art a little later in several of the colonies, was his superior. Yet Franklin was an outstanding printer in a region blessed with few good presses. The difference between him and most of the other colonial printers may be stated thus: Franklin maintained a high average of workmanlike (though not inspired) performance, while his contemporaries were inclined to be slovenly, inaccurate, and generally careless.

In the later years of his life Franklin gave no little attention to fine printing, though as a dilettante rather than as a commercial printer. In France he was friendly with Francois Ambroise Didot, the greatest French printer of his times, and put his grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache to school in Didot's establishment. With Pierre Simon Fournier, who ranked next to Didot among French printers, Franklin corresponded from time to time. In England the American printer maintained touch with prominent pract.i.tioners of his craft from the time of his first visit abroad until his death. Samuel Palmer, Franklin's first London employer, was but a mediocre printer; but John Watts, to whose house the young American went after a year at Palmer's, stood much higher in his vocation.[i-167] Both Watts and Palmer were patrons of William Caslon, from whom Franklin later bought type. But John Baskerville, Caslon's rival, was the founder whom Franklin did most to encourage and to bring to the attention of discriminating printers. The English printer with whom Franklin was upon the terms of greatest intimacy--and that for many years--was William Strahan, member of Parliament, King's Printer, and a successful publisher. Strahan was a man of parts, a great letter writer, and a friend of David Hume and Samuel Johnson. The latter referred to the Strahan shop as "the greatest printing house in London."[i-168] Another correspondent was John Walter, logotyper, press builder, and founder of the London _Times_.[i-169] In all his letters to his printer friends, Franklin shows not only a lively interest in improvements and inventions for the trade, but also an increasing interest in the artistic side of printing and type-founding.

The "bookish inclination" which Franklin credits in the _Autobiography_ with being the quality that decided his father to make a printer of him, appertained to the trade because printers were commonly publishers and sellers of books and pamphlets, and often editors and publishers of newspapers. How the young Franklin satisfied his literary urge in the print shop of his brother James is a familiar story, and his theories of writing are traced in another section of this Introduction. The contribution to literature which he made as a publisher of original books is negligible, but he did his part both as publisher and bookseller to spread that bookishness to which he felt that he owed much of his own success. Like all publishers before and since, he was forced by his customers to issue books of a lower sort than he could fully approve in order to float editions of more desirable works: he tells plaintively of his public's preference for "Robin Hood's Songs" over the Psalms of his beloved Watts.[i-170] In still another way, Franklin promoted the bookishness of his community: he founded the first of American circulating libraries, and he built up for himself one of the largest private libraries in the country.[i-171]

Journalism was a common by-product of the printing trade. When Franklin and Meredith took over Keimer's _The Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette_ in 1729, there were six other newspapers being published in the colonies--three in Boston and one each in New York, Philadelphia, and Annapolis. The Williamsburg press had a newspaper a few years later, but the other two printing towns in the colonies had to wait some thirty years for journalistic ventures--a newspaper in New London and a magazine in Woodbridge.[i-172]

The fundamental question to be asked in a.n.a.lyzing a newspaper may be stated thus: What is the editorial conception of the primary function of the press? Franklin had received his early newspaper training on his brother's _New England Courant_, which frankly acknowledged entertainment as its primary function and relegated news to a minor place. Of his contemporaries in 1729, the oldest, the _Boston News-Letter_, held the publication of news to be its sole function; while the _Boston Gazette_, the _New York Gazette_, and the _Maryland Gazette_ took much the same att.i.tude. In the main, they were rather dreary reprints of stale European news. Bradford's _American Weekly Mercury_, in Philadelphia, gave somewhat more attention to local news; but with the exception of the Franklin-Breintnal _Busy-Body_ papers, contributed in 1728-1729 in order to bring Keimer to his knees, the _Mercury_ gave very little attention to the entertainment function. Only the _New England Weekly Journal_, carrying on something of the tradition of the old _Courant_, dealt largely in entertainment as well as in news.

This bi-functional policy was the one adopted by Franklin's _Pennsylvania Gazette_, which was always readable and amusing at the same time that it was newsy.

Of the editorial or opinion-forming function of newspapers there was little evidence in Franklin's paper,[i-173] at least in the field of politics. The obvious reason was the active governmental censors.h.i.+p. It remained for John Peter Zenger to introduce that function into colonial journalism in the _New York Weekly Journal_ in 1733: his struggle for the freedom of the press is well known.[i-174] But the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ never became in any degree a political organ while Franklin edited it; and his first political p.r.o.nouncement was published not in his paper but in a pamphlet, _Plain Truth_, issued just before his retirement from editorial duties.

Two common misconceptions in regard to Franklin's newspaper call for correction: (1) The _Pennsylvania Gazette_ was not connected as forerunner or ancestor with the _Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_. The _Gazette_, a newspaper to the end, closed its file in 1815;[i-175] the _Post_, a story paper, issued its Volume I, Number 1, in 1821. Throughout much of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the _Post_ carried the legend "Founded in 1821" on its front page; and not until after the Curtis Publis.h.i.+ng Company bought it in 1897 did it begin to print the words "Founded A.D. 1728 by Benjamin Franklin" on its cover. The sole connection of the _Post_ with Franklin lies in the fact that it was first issued from an office at 53 Market Street which Franklin had once occupied.[i-176] (2) Franklin did not publish a "chain" of newspapers. A "chain" implies some kind of co-operative connection between the various members, but the several papers which Franklin helped to finance had no such relations.h.i.+p. In some he was a six-years partner,[i-177] keeping his interest until the resident publisher, usually a former employee, was established; to some he made loans or, in the case of relatives, gifts.[i-178]

One of his journalistic ventures which is not mentioned in the _Autobiography_ is the _General Magazine_, of 1741. It missed by three days being the first of American magazines: Andrew Bradford had learned of Franklin's project and, with his _American Magazine_, beat him in the race for priority. But the _American Magazine_ was a failure in three monthly numbers, while Franklin's periodical, though more readable, died after its sixth issue.[i-179] As an initial episode in the history of American magazines, the _General Magazine_ has a certain eminence; but Franklin's neglect of it when writing his _Autobiography_, after the events of nearly fifty busy years had apparently crowded it out of his memory, is sufficient commentary on its unimportance.

To the end of his life Franklin was proud of his trade of printing, with its handmaiden journalism. His last will and testament begins: "I, Benjamin Franklin, Printer...." Though clearly not the chief interest of his life, it was one to which he was fundamentally and consistently attached.

V. FRANKLIN'S ECONOMIC VIEWS

An eighteenth-century colonial who wrote on paper money, interest, value, and insurance, who discussed a theory of population and the economic aspects of the abolition of slavery, who championed free trade, and who probably lent Adam Smith some information used in his _Wealth of Nations_, who was an empirical agriculturist, who was "half physiocratic before the rise of the physiocratic school"--such a colonial has, indeed, claims to being America's pioneer economist.

Franklin's hatred of negro slavery was conditioned by more than his humanitarian bias. It may be seen that his indictments of black cargoes were the resultant of an interplay of his convictions that economically slavery was enervating and dear and of his abstract sense of religious and ethical justice. One should not minimize, however, his distrust of slavery on other than economic bases. He was acutely influenced by the Quakers of his colony who, like gadflies, were stinging slaveholders to an awareness of their blood traffic, and by the rise of English humanitarianism. In his youth he had published (first edition, 1729; second, 1730), with no little danger to himself and his business, Ralph Sandiford's _A Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times_, an Amos-like vituperative attack on the "unrighteous Gain" of slaveholding.

He also published works of Benjamin Lay and John Woolman.[i-180] Friend of Anthony Benezet, Benjamin Rush, Fothergill, and Granville Sharp, and after 1760 a member of Dr. Bray's a.s.sociates, he lent his voice and pen to denouncing slavery on religious and ethical grounds; and in England, after

His letter to Anthony Benezet (London, July 14, 1773), however, clearly indicates that for economic, as well as humanitarian reasons, he had sought freedom for slaves:

I am glad to hear that such humane Sentiments prevail so much more generally than heretofore, that there is Reason to hope our Colonies may in time get clear of a Practice that disgraces them, and, without producing any equivalent Benefit, is dangerous to their very Existence.[i-187]

Franklin's view of the economic disabilities of slavery is best expressed in _Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, Etc._ (1751). Arguing against British restraint of colonial manufactures, he observed that "'tis an ill-grounded Opinion that by the Labour of slaves, _America_ may possibly vie in Cheapness of Manufactures with _Britain_. The Labour of Slaves can never be so cheap here as the Labour of working Men is in _Britain_."[i-188] With arithmetic based on empirical scrutiny of existing conditions, resembling the mode of economists following Adam Smith, he charged that slaves are economically unprofitable due to the rate of interest in the colonies, their initial price, their insurance and maintenance, their negligence and malevolence.[i-189] In addition, "Slaves... pejorate the Families that use them; the white Children become proud, disgusted with Labour, and being educated in Idleness, are rendered unfit to get a Living by Industry."[i-190] Slaves are hardly economical investments in terms of colonial character. Looking to the "_English_ Sugar _Islands_"

where Negroes "have greatly diminish'd the Whites," and deprived the poor of employment, "while a few Families acquire vast Estates," he realized that "population was limited by means of subsistence,"[i-191]

which foreshadowed the more pessimistic progressions of Malthus. Having just maintained that "our People must at least be doubled every 20 Years,"[i-192] and intuitively suspecting that the means for subsistence progress more slowly, he exclaimed, "Why increase the Sons of _Africa_, by planting them in _America_, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red?"[i-193] He saw mere economic extravagance as the short-time effect of slavery; he feared that the long-time effect would be to create an aristocracy subsisting at the head of a vast brood of slaves and poor whites.[i-194]

It was inevitable in a state having no staple crop, such as rice, sugar, tobacco, or cotton, which offered at least economic justification for negro slavery, that abolition of slaves should be urged partially on purely economic grounds, and that Pennsylvania should have been the first colony to legislate in favor of abolition, in 1780. Although one may feel that economic determinism is overly simple and audacious in its doctrinaire interpretations, one can not refuse to see the extent to which economics tended to b.u.t.tress humane and religious factors in Franklin's mind to make him a persuasive champion of abolition.[i-195]

_A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency_[i-196] has been appraised as "by far the ablest and most original treatise that had been written on the subject up to 1728 and was probably the most widely read work on paper currency that appeared in colonial America."[i-197] That Franklin's interest in paper money was not unique, one may gather from the fact that between 1714 and 1721 "nearly thirty pamphlets appeared" on this subject in Ma.s.sachusetts alone.[i-198] One of the 1728 theses at Harvard, answered in the affirmative, was: "Does the issue of paper money contribute to the public good?"[i-199] "Since there was a scarcity of circulating medium, caused by the constant drain of specie for export," explains Mr. D. R.

Dewey, "it is not strange that projects for converting credit into wealth should have sprung up in the colonies."[i-200] Franklin argued in his _Modest Enquiry_[i-201] that (1) "A plentiful Currency will occasion Interest to be low," (2) it "will occasion the Trading Produce to bear a good Price," (3) it "will encourage great Numbers of labouring and Handicrafts Men to come and settle in the Country," and (4) it "will occasion a less consumption of European Goods, in proportion to the Number of the People." Thus he saw paper money as a "Morrison's Pill,"

promising to cure all economic ills.[i-202] It has been suggested that as a printer Franklin naturally would favor issues of paper money. In view of his later apostasy one should note that in this essay Franklin apparently accepted the current mercantilist notions, best expressed here in his conviction that paper money will secure a favorable balance of trade. Demands for emissions of paper money were inevitable in a colony in the grip of such a restrictive commercial policy as British mercantilism. It must be observed, however, that Franklin differed from the proper mercantilists to the extent that simple valuable metals were not to be measures of value. Deriving his idea from Sir William Petty, Franklin took labor as the true measure of value,[i-203]--a position later held by Karl Marx. In his preoccupation with the growth of manufactures and favorable balances of trade, Franklin gave no suggestions that at least by 1767 he was to become an exponent of agrarianism and free trade. One wonders to what extent his warnings against the purchase of "unnecessary Householdstuff, or any superfluous thing," his inveterate emphasis on industry and frugality, were conditioned by his view that such indulgence would essentially cause a preponderance of imports, hence casting against them an unfavorable trade balance.[i-204]

In 1751 Parliament pa.s.sed an act regulating in the New England colonies the issue of paper money and preventing them "from adding a legal tender clause thereto"; in 1764 Parliament forbade issue of legal tender money in any of the colonies. As a member of the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly, Franklin had successfully sponsored issues of paper money; in London, following the 1764 act, he urged that one of the causes breeding disrespect for Parliament was "the prohibition of making paper money among [us]."[i-205] Economics blends into politics when we remember that the 1764 restraining legislation was "one of the factors in the subsequent separation, for it caused some of the suffering that inevitably follows in the wake of an unsound monetary policy whose onward course is suddenly checked."[i-206] In 1766 Franklin was yet an ardent imperialist, who sought politically and economically to keep whole "that fine and n.o.ble China Vase, the British Empire." His _Remarks and Facts Concerning American Paper Money_ (1767), in answer to Lord Hillsborough's Board of Trade report circulated among British merchants, is an ardent plea for legal tender paper money. He argued that British merchants (since yearly trade balances had regularly been in their favor) had not been deprived of gold and silver, that paper money _had worked_ in the Colonies,[i-207] and that British merchants had lost no more in their colonial dealings than was inevitable in war times.

Franklin concluded that since there were no mines in the colonies, paper money was a necessity (arguing here very shrewdly that even English silver "is obliged to the legal Tender for Part of its Value"). Hence, at least for colonies deserving it, the mother country should take off the restraint on legal tender. What Franklin seems not to have known and what the merchants had actually felt (they had their accounts staring at them) was that in the past, especially after 1750, much of the legal tender was in effect nothing but inconvertible fiat money. Mr. Carey quotes from an uncollected item, Franklin's "The Legal Tender of Paper Money in America," in which he threatened that "if the colonies were not allowed to issue legal-tender notes there was no way in which they could retain hard money except by boycotting English goods."[i-208] Franklin suggested (to S. Cooper, April 22, 1779) that depreciation may not be unmixed evil, since it may be viewed as a tax: "It should always be remembered, that the original Intention was to sink the Bills by Taxes, which would as effectually extinguish the Debt as an actual Redemption."[i-209] Not a little Machiavellian for one who was not blind to the sanct.i.ty of contracts!

With the Revolution and the attendant depreciation in currency, Franklin tended to warn against over-issues.[i-210] Like Governor Hutchinson, who said that "the morals of the people depreciate with the currency,"

Franklin confessed in 1783 "the many Mischiefs, the injustices, the Corruption of Manners, &c., &c., that attended a depreciating Currency."[i-211] There is no evidence to show that Franklin dissented from the conservative prohibition in the Const.i.tutional Convention of 1787 against issues of legal tender paper.[i-212]

Deborah Logan (in a letter in 1829) stated that Franklin "once told Dr.

Logan that the celebrated Adam Smith, when writing his 'Wealth of Nations,' was in the habit of bringing chapter after chapter as he composed it, to himself, Dr. Price and others of the literati; then patiently hear [_sic_] their observations, and profit by their discussion and criticism--even sometimes submitting to write whole chapters anew, and even to reverse some of his propositions."[i-213]

James Parton observed that the allusions to the colonies which "const.i.tute the experimental evidence of the essential truth of the book" were supplied by Franklin.[i-214] But Rae reasonably counters: "It ought of course to be borne in mind that Smith had been in the constant habit of hearing much about the American Colonies and their affairs during his thirteen years in Glasgow from the intelligent merchants and returned planters of that city."[i-215]

In general, we may conclude that Franklin and Smith were exponents of free trade in proportion as they were reactionaries against British mercantilism. Each in his reaction tended to elevate the function of agriculture beyond reasonable limits. Unlike the physiocrats and Franklin, however, Adam Smith did not hold that, in terms of wealth-producing, manufacturers were sterile. Even if Franklin saw only agriculture as _productive_, he was not blind to the utility of manufactures, especially after the break with the mother country, when he realized that home industry must be developed to supply the colonial needs formerly satisfied by British exports.[i-216]

Finally, each was, in varying degrees, an exponent of laissez faire.[i-217] Since we shall discover that politically Franklin was less a democrat than is often supposed, we may feel that his belief in free trade led him to embrace reservedly the principle of laissez faire, rather than that free trade, an economic concept, was but a fragment of a larger dogma, namely, that government should be characterized by its pa.s.sivity, frugality, and maximum negligence. V. L. Parrington quotes[i-218] from George Whately's _Principles of Trade_, which contained views congenial to Franklin:

When Colbert a.s.sembled some wise old merchants of France, and desired their advice and opinion, how he could best serve and promote commerce, their answer, after consultation, was, in three words only, _Laissez-nous faire_: "Let us alone." It is said by a very solid writer of the same nation, that he is well advanced in the science of politics, who knows the full force of that maxim. _Pas trop gouverner_: "Not to govern too much!" _which, perhaps, would be of more use when applied to trade, than in any other public concern_. (Present editors'

italics.)

Laissez faire in Franklin's as in Whately's view tended to be synonymous with free trade. Laissez faire was suggested by his insistence on free trade, as he progressively expressed his antipathy for mercantilism, rather than that free trade was simply a natural deduction from a more inclusive economic-political dogma.

Writing to the pro-colonial Jonathan s.h.i.+pley, Bishop of St. Asaph, whose "sweet Retirement" at Twyford he had long enjoyed, Franklin, seeing no hopes of a reconciliation between the colonies and Great Britain, uttered what marked him as the first American disciple of Quesnay's school of economic thought: "Agriculture is the great Source of Wealth and Plenty. By cutting off our Trade you have thrown us _to the Earth_, whence like _Antaeus_ we shall rise yearly with fresh Strength and Vigour."[i-219] Upon learning of the colonists' "Resolutions of Non-Importation" he wrote to "Cousin" Folger that they must promote their own industries, especially those of the "Earth and their Sea, the true Sources of Wealth and Plenty."[i-220] Learning that the colonists had threatened to boycott English manufacturers by creating their own basic industries, Franklin demurred in a letter to Cadwallader Evans: "Agriculture is truly _productive of new wealth_; manufacturers only change forms, and whatever value they give to the materials they work upon, they in the mean time consume an equal value in provisions, &c. So that riches are not _increased_ by manufacturing; the only advantage is, that provisions in the shape of manufactures are more easily carried for sale to foreign markets."[i-221] _Positions to be Examined, Concerning National Wealth_[i-222] affords a succinct statement of Franklin's agrarianism. "There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by _war_, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbours. This is _robbery_. The second by _commerce_, which is generally _cheating_. The third by _agriculture_, the only _honest way_, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of G.o.d in his favour, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry."[i-223] Dupont de Nemours, as early as 1769, had written: "Who does not know that the English have today their Benjamin Franklin, who has adopted the principles and the doctrines of our French economists?"[i-224] Before attempting to appraise the real indebtedness of Franklin to the physiocrats, it is well to seek to learn how he came in contact with their ideas, and especially why by the year 1767 he was acutely susceptible to their doctrine. In the summer of 1767, in the company of Sir John Pringle, Franklin went to Paris, not an unknown figure to the French savants, who were acquainted with his scientific papers already translated into French by D'Alibard. That he was feted by the Newtons of the physiocrats, Francois Quesnay and the elder Mirabeau, as "le Savant, le Geometre, le Physicien, l'homme a qui la nature permet de devoiler ses secrets,"[i-225] we are a.s.sured, when to De Nemours (July 28, 1768) he writes regretfully: "Be so good as to present my sincere respect to that venerable apostle, Dr. Quesnay, and to the ill.u.s.trious Ami des Hommes (of whose civilities to me at Paris I retain a grateful remembrance)...."[i-226] Having missed Franklin in Paris (1767), De Nemours had sent Franklin "un recueil des princ.i.p.aux traites economiques du Docteur Quesnay" and his own _Physiocratie_ (1768), which cast him in the role "of a propagandist of Physiocratie doctrines."[i-227] Franklin admitted, "I am perfectly charmed with them, and wish I could have stayed in France for some time, to have studied in your school, that I might by conversing with its founders have made myself quite a master of that philosophy."[i-228] That Franklin was not before 1767 unacquainted with the economistes we learn when he tells Dupont de Nemours that Dr. Templeman had shown him the De Nemours-Templeman correspondence when the latter was Secretary of the London Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. A second trip to Paris (in 1769) to confer with Barbeu Dubourg, an avowed physiocrat, concerning his forthcoming translation of Franklin's works, served to acquaint him still further with the doctrines of the new school.

Franklin's agrarianism[i-229] is congruent with physiocracy[i-230] in as far as he observed that agriculture alone, of the many industries, produced a surplus of wealth after all of the expenses of production had been paid.[i-231] Each laborer produced more than enough to satisfy his own needs. This surplus the economistes termed the _produit net_. A worker in manufactures, it was a.s.sumed, consumed foodstuffs and other materials in proportion to the value he created in his manufacturing process. Hence there obviously could be no _produit net_ accruing from manufactures. Like the physiocrats, Franklin felt that manufactures were _sterile_, to the extent that no new wealth was created. The physiocrats believed, however, that laborers in manufacturing industries _could_ create a _produit net_ if they stinted themselves in consuming foodstuffs, et cetera, but it was argued that this prudential asceticism was not a characteristic habit. To this extent at least the physiocrats were empirical.

Free trade no less than agrarianism characterized physiocracy. Although Franklin indicated his antagonism toward governmental restraint of trade, internal and among nations, in his antipathy toward British mercantilism, it was not until after he became impregnated with French doctrine that he began to express very fully his advocacy of free trade.

After Connecticut imposed a 5% duty on goods imported from neighboring colonies, Franklin wrote to Jared Eliot in 1747 that it was likely that the duty would devolve on the consumer and be "only another mode of Taxing" the purchaser. In addition he recognized that smuggling, virtually a colonial art, would cause the "fair Trader" to "be undersold and ruined."[i-232] He urged that the import duty might suggest selfishness, and might also tend to deter Connecticut commerce. Here, it must be admitted, Franklin did not sanction free trade with a priori appeals to the "natural order," the key in the arch of physiocracy. He rather appealed to the instincts and observations of the prudential tradesman. His _Plan for Regulating Indian Affairs_ (1766), unlike his 1747 letters, _suggested_ (if it did not express concretely) inviolable laws of commerce in the words: "It seems contrary to the Nature of Commerce, for Government to interfere in the Prices of Commodities....

It therefore seems to me, that Trade will best find and make its own Rates; and that Government cannot well interfere, unless it would take the whole Trade into its own hands... and manage it by its own Servants at its own Risque."[i-233] To Dupont de Nemours he admitted that British mercantilism had not achieved "that wisdom which sees the welfare of the parts in the prosperity of the whole."[i-234] To Sir Edward Newenham, representing the County of Dublin, he expressed admiration for Irish efforts to secure freedom of commerce, "which is the right of all mankind." "To enjoy all the advantages of the climate, soil, and situation in which G.o.d and nature have placed us, is as clear a right as that of breathing; and can never be justly taken from men but as a punishment for some atrocious crime."[i-235] Three years before he met Quesnay (though after he had read Dupont de Nemours's letters to Templeman), Franklin sanctioned free trade through appeal to other than utilitarian prudence: first he admitted that British restraint of colonial commerce, for example with the West Indies, will tend to prevent colonists from making remittances for British manufactured goods, since "The Cat can yield but her skin." Then with a suggestion of philosophic generalization he hoped that "In time perhaps Mankind may be wise enough to let Trade take its own Course, find its own Channels, and regulate its own Proportions, etc."[i-236] Restraint of manufactures "deprive[s] us of the Advantage G.o.d & Nature seem to have intended us.... So selfish is the human Mind! But 'tis well there is One above that rules these Matters with a more equal Hand. He that is pleas'd to feed the Ravens, will undoubtedly take care to prevent a Monopoly of the Carrion."[i-237] Glorifying the husbandman and suggesting that trade restrictions disturb a natural order, Franklin wrote to David Hartley in 1783 that Great Britain has tended to impede "the mutual communications among men of the gifts of G.o.d, and rendering miserable mult.i.tudes of merchants and their families, artisans, and cultivators of the earth, the most peaceable and innocent part of the human species."[i-238]

That Franklin was not without his influence in eighteenth-century economic thought we may gather from Dugald Stewart's opinion that "the expressions _laissez-faire_ and, _pas trop gouverner_ are indebted chiefly for their extensive circulation to the short and luminous comments of Franklin, which had so extraordinary an influence on public opinion in the old and new world."[i-239] Mr. Carey maintains that Franklin, unlike the physiocrats, inveighed against trade regulations because they led to smuggling rather than because to any important degree they violated the "natural order." The physiocrats are tenuous, amorphous, and ambiguous when they seek to define _L'Ordre naturel_. At times Dupont de Nemours seems to identify it with a primitivistic past.[i-240] Quesnay, on the other hand, says: "Natural right is indeterminate in a state of nature. The right only appears when justice and labour have been established."[i-241] Again, he a.s.serts: "By entering society and making conventions for their mutual advantage men increase the scope of natural right without incurring any restriction of their liberties, for this is just the state of things that enlightened reason would have chosen."[i-242] Natural order is a "providential order": "Its laws are irrevocable, pertaining as they do to the essence of matter and the soul of humanity. They are just the expression of the will of G.o.d."[i-243] According to the physiocrats, the laws of the natural order are "unique, eternal, invariable, and universal."[i-244]

Now it is true that nowhere did Franklin a.s.sert that his advocacy of laissez faire and agrarianism was neatly dependent on these a priori bases. Even though this is true, there are references (quoted above) which seem to suggest that trade restrictions are violations of the very nature of things. It is not wholly fanciful (bearing in mind Franklin's adoration of a Deity who is the creator and sustainer of immutable, universal physical laws which together present the mind with the concept of a vast, wonderfully harmonized physical machine) to conjecture to what extent this matchless physical harmony tended to challenge him with the possibility of discovering a parallel economic machine operating according to immutable laws capable of proof and human adaptability.

O. H. Taylor has shown that "The evolution of the idea of 'laws' in economics has closely paralleled its evolution in the natural sciences."[i-245] In searching for these economic constants, "the economic mechanism was regarded as a wise device of the Creator for causing individuals, while pursuing only their own interests, to promote the prosperity of society; and for causing the right adjustment to one another of supplies, demand, prices, and incomes, to take place automatically, in consequence of the free action of all individuals."[i-246] After giving due weight to the fact that Franklin saw in the doctrine of the physiocrats trenchant arguments to b.u.t.tress his attacks on British mercantilism, one has cogent evidence for at least raising the question, To what extent may his apprehension of a demonstrable physical harmony have suggested to his speculative mind an economic a.n.a.logy?[i-247]

VI. FRANKLIN'S POLITICAL THEORIES

Plague of the Pennsylvania proprietaries, propagandist of the American Revolution, moderator of the Const.i.tutional Convention, Franklin was all through his life a politician and statesman in an age characterized above all by political speculations and changes in the destiny of states. Colonial patriot, "arch rebel of King George III," "idol of the court of Versailles," Franklin was a cyclopedia of political strategy and principles. Only through a genetic survey of Franklin the political theorist can one hope to understand his mind as he changed from imperialist, to revolutionist, to the patriarch of the Const.i.tutional Convention who, like a balance wheel, moderated the extreme party factions.

In the early 1720's, Franklin had breathed a Boston air saturated with discontent between the royal governor and the governed. By 1730 he was printer to the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly and in 1736 was appointed clerk to that body. Yet one learns little of his political biases until 1747, when he published _Plain Truth_. In 1729 he genially a.s.serted that he was "no Party-man,"[i-248] and in 1746 temperately stated,