Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed, Volume 2 (of 2)

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 constitutes 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 principally 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 anticipating 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 destitute 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 associated 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 pass through the luminous and tapestried cells of his spacious 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 prone 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 mass of men, as he was. How naturally such methods of instruction belonged to him is well illustrated 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 Æsop 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 entitled 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 circumstances 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, Hella, 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, assuming 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, assert 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 associations 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, Damn 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 passages in other contributions made by Franklin, in one assumed 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 ingratitude 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 Constitution. 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," illustrates 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 illustration, 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 circumference of the earth, are other facts elicited by the questions of the catechism. It concludes in this manner: