Benjamin Franklin

“ I wish it were possible, from this instance, to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they may be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America an hundred years hence, I should prefer to any ordinary death, the being immersed in a cask of Madeira wine, with a few friends till that time, to be then recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! ”

“ Those, who fear, that exportation may so far drain the country of corn, as to starve ourselves, fear what never did, nor ever can happen. They may as well, when they view the tide ebbing towards the sea, fear, that all the water will leave the river. The price of corn, like water, will find its own level. The more we export, the dearer it becomes at home; the more is received abroad, the cheaper it becomes there; and as soon as these prices are equal, the exportation stops of course. As the seasons vary in different countries, the calamity of a bad harvest is never universal. ”

“ On the contrary, I affirm, that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder, that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty. ”

“ Suppose we include in the definition of luxury all unnecessary expence, and then let us consider, whether laws to prevent such expence are possible to be executed in a great country, and whether, if they could be executed, our people generally would be happier, or even richer. Is not the hope of being one day able to purchase and enjoy luxuries, a great spur to labour and industry? May not luxury therefore produce more than it consumes, if, without such a spur, people would be, as they are naturally enough inclined to be, lazy and indolent? ”

“ My proposal then is, to leave the liberty of the press untouched, to be exercised in its full extent, force, and vigour, but to permit the liberty of the cudgel to go with it, pari passu. Thus, my fellow citizens, if an impudent writer attacks your reputation—dearer perhaps to you than your life, and puts his name to the charge, you may go to him as openly, and break his head. If he conceals himself behind the printer, and you can nevertheless discover who he is, you may, in like manner, way-lay him in the night, attack him behind, and give him a good drubbing. ”

“ In the first place, I have always been loth to seek for any new hypothesis, or particular law of nature, to account for any thing that may be accounted for from the known, general, and universal law of nature; it being an argument of the infinite wisdom of the author of the world, to effect so many things by one general law. Now I had thought that the rising and support of water in air, might be accounted for from the general law of gravitation, by only supposing the spaces occupied by the same quantity of water increased. ”

“ Might not that woman, by her labour, have made the reparation ordained by God, in paying fourfold? Is not all punishment, inflicted beyond the merit of the offence, so much punishment of innocence? In this light, how vast is the annual quantity, of not only injured but suffering innocence, in almost all the civilized states of Europe! ”

“ It is, however, some comfort to reflect, that, upon the whole, the quantity of industry and prudence among mankind exceeds the quantity of idleness and folly. Hence the increase of good buildings, farms cultivated, and populous cities filled with wealth, all over Europe, which a few ages since were only to be found on the coasts of the Mediterranean; and this notwithstanding the mad wars continually raging, by which are often destroyed in one year the works of many years peace. So that we may hope the luxury of a few merchants on the coast will not be the ruin of America. ”

“ When the vapours reach in the pipe from the clouds near to the earth, it is no wonder now to those who understand electricity, that flashes of lightning should descend by the spout, as in that of Rome. ”

“ But ought it not (if there were a vis inertiæ) to have not only the force 1 f, but an additional force equal to the force of vis inertiæ, that obstinate power by which a body endeavours with all its might to continue in its present state, whether of motion or rest? I say, ought there not to be an opposing force equal to the sum of these?—The truth however is, that there is no body, how large soever, moving with any velocity, how great soever, but may be stopped by any opposing force, how small soever, continually applied. At least all our modern philosophers agree to tell us so. ”

“ For want of good reading, pieces published with a view to influence the minds of men, for their own or the public benefit, lose half their force. Were there but one good reader in a neighbourhood, a public orator might be heard throughout a nation with the same advantages, and have the same effect upon his audience, as if they stood within the reach of his voice. ”

“ For many years past, I have rarely met with a case of a smoky chimney, which has not been solvable on these principles, and cured by these remedies, where people have been willing to apply them; which is indeed not always the case; for many have prejudices in favour of the nostrums of pretending chimney-doctors and fumists, and some have conceits and fancies of their own, which they rather chuse to try, than to lengthen a funnel, alter the size of an opening, or admit air into a room, however necessary; for some are as much afraid of fresh air as persons in the hydrophobia are of fresh water. ”

“ Our American commerce is, I confess, a little in this way. We sell our victuals to the islands for rum and sugar; the substantial necessaries of life for superfluities. But we have plenty, and live well nevertheless, though, by being soberer, we might be richer.
The vast quantity of forest land we have yet to clear, and put in order for cultivation, will for a long time keep the body of our nation laborious and frugal. Forming an opinion of our people and their manners, by what is seen among the inhabitants of the sea-ports, is judging from an improper sample. ”

“ After employing your people in robbing the Dutch, strange is it, that, being put out of that employ by peace, they still continue robbing, and rob one another? Piraterie, as the French call it, or privateering, is the universal bent of the English nation, at home and abroad, wherever settled. ”

“ If we cease our cruises against the christians, how shall we be furnished with the commodities their countries produce, and which are so necessary for us? If we forbear to make slaves of their people, who, in this hot climate, are to cultivate our [460] lands? Who are to perform the common labours of our city, and of our families? Must we not then be our own slaves? And is there not more compassion and more favour due to us mussulmen, than to those christian dogs?—We have now above fifty thousand slaves in and near Algiers. ”

“ Those mathematicians, who have endeavoured to improve the swiftness of vessels, by calculating to find the form of least resistance, seem to have considered a ship as a body moving through one fluid only, the water; and to have given little attention to the circumstance of her moving through another fluid, the air. It is true that when a vessel sails right before the wind, this circumstance is of no importance, because the wind goes with her; but in every deviation from that course, the resistance of the air is something, and becomes greater in proportion as that deviation increases. ”

“ What signifies philosophy that does not apply to some use?—-May we not learn from hence, that black clothes are not so fit to wear in a hot sunny climate or season, as white ones; because in such clothes the body is more heated by the sun when we walk abroad, and are at the same time heated by the exercise, which double heat is apt to bring on putrid dangerous fevers? That soldiers and seamen, who must march and labour in the sun, should in the East or West Indies have an uniform of white? ”

“ Who can now find the vacancy made in Sweden, France, or other warlike nations, by the plague of heroism 40 years ago; in France, by the expulsion of the protestants; in England, by the settlement of her colonies; or in Guinea by a hundred years exportation of slaves, that has blackened half America? The thinness of the inhabitants in Spain is owing to national pride, and idleness, and other causes, rather than to the expulsion, of the Moors, or to the making of new settlements. ”

“ If indeed any government is so imprudent, as to lay its hands on imported corn, forbid its exportation, or compel its sale at limited prices, there the people may suffer some famine from merchants avoiding their ports. But wherever commerce is known to be always free, and the merchant absolute master of his commodity, as in Holland, there will always be a reasonable supply.
When an exportation of corn takes place, occasioned by a higher price in some foreign countries, it is common to raise a clamour, on the supposition, that we shall thereby produce a domestic famine. ”

“ Commerce perfects the arts, but more the mechanical than the liberal, and this for an obvious reason; it softens and enervates the manners. Steady virtue and unbending integrity are seldom to be found where a spirit of commerce pervades every thing; yet the perfection of commerce is, that every thing should have its price. ”

“ If it be a good thing, pray, Messieurs the Public, take your share of it, by indemnifying us a little out of your public treasury. In doing a good thing, there is both honour and pleasure—you are welcome to your share of both. ”

“ I cannot be of opinion with you that it is too late in life for you to learn to swim. The river near the bottom of your garden affords a most convenient place for the purpose. And as your new employment requires your being often on the water, of which you have such a dread, I think you would do well to make the trial; nothing being so likely to remove those apprehensions as the consciousness of an ability to swim to the shore, in case of an accident, or of supporting yourself in the water till a boat could come to take you up. ”

“ If we really believe, as we profess to believe, that the law of Moses was the law of God, the dictate of divine wisdom, infinitely superior to human; on what principles do we ordain death as the punishment of an offence, which, according to that law, was only to be punished by a restitution of fourfold? To put a man to death for an offence, which does not deserve death, is it not a murder? ”

“ By the help of these, artful men overpower their wisdom, and dupe its possessors: and if we may judge, by the acts, arrets, and edicts, all the world over, for regulating commerce, an assembly of great men is the greatest fool upon earth.
I have not yet, indeed, thought of a remedy for luxury. I am not sure that in a great state it is capable of a remedy, nor that the evil is in itself always so great as it is represented. ”

“ The public treasure is the treasure of the nation, to be applied to national purposes. And when a duty is laid for a particular public and necessary purpose, if, through smuggling, that duty falls short of raising the sum required, and other duties must therefore be laid to make up the deficiency, all the additional sum laid by the new duties and paid by other people, though it should amount to no more than a halfpenny or a farthing per head, is so much actually picked out of the pockets of those other people by the smugglers and their abettors and encouragers. ”

“ But it must be remembered, that at this time the manners of a people were not distinct from that of their soldiery, for the use of standing armies has deprived a military people of the advantages they before had over others; and though it has been often said, that civil wars give power, because they render all men soldiers, I believe this has only been found true in internal wars following civil wars, and not in external ones; for now, in foreign wars, a small army, with ample means to support it, is of greater force than one more numerous, with less. ”

“ It has long been a supposition of mine, that the iron contained in the surface of the globe has made it capable of becoming, as it is, a great magnet; that the fluid of magnetism perhaps exists in all space; so that there is a magnetical north and south of the universe, as well as of this globe, and that if it were possible for a man to fly from star to star, he might govern his course by the compass; that it was by the power of this general magnetism this globe became a particular magnet. In soft or hot iron the fluid of magnetism is naturally diffused equally ”

“ Thus the sun shining on a morning fog, dissipates it; clouds are seen to waste in a sun-shiny day.
But cold condenses and renders visible the vapour; a tankard or decanter filled with cold water will condense the moisture of warm clear air on its outside, [6] where it becomes visible as dew, coalesces into drops, descends in little streams.
The sun heats the air of our atmosphere most near the surface of the earth; for there, besides the direct rays, there are many reflections. Moreover, the earth itself being heated, communicates of its heat to the neighbouring air. ”