John Bigelow

“ Franklin there submitted a plan for organizing a system of colonial defence which was adopted and reported; it provided for a president-general of all the colonies to be appointed by the crown, and a grand council to be chosen by the representatives of the people of the several colonies. The colonies so united, he thought, would be sufficiently strong to defend themselves; and there would then be no need of troops from England. Had this course been pursued, the subsequent pretence for taxing America would not have been furnished, and the bloody contest it occasioned might have been avoided. ”

“ His country owes much to him for his service in various public capacities; the world owes much to the fruits of his pen; but his greatest contribution to the welfare of mankind, probably, was what he did by his example and life to dignify manual labour. While Diderot was teaching the dignity of labour in France and the folly of social standards that proscribed it, Franklin was illustrating it in America, and proving by his own most conclusive example that
"Honour and fame from no condition rise." ”

“ Though Franklin was far from being insensible to what are termed worldly considerations, his public life was singularly free from any vulgar or degrading trace of self seeking; he never is found making the public interests secondary to his own ”

“ In this paper Franklin combated the popular delusion that the people and wealth of the colonies were necessarily so much population and wealth abstracted from the mother country, and he estimated that the population of the colonies, by doubling once in every twenty-five years, would, at the end of a century, give a larger English population beyond the Atlantic than in England, without at all interfering with the growth of England in either direction. ”

“ Since the introduction of the art of printing, it would be difficult to name any discovery which has exerted a more important influence upon the industries and habits of mankind.
In 1754 a war with France was impending, and Franklin, who by this time had become the most important man in the colony of Pennsylvania, was sent to a congress of commissioners from the different colonies, ordered by the Lords of Trade to convene at Albany, to confer with the chiefs of the Six Nations for their common defence. ”

“ Unhappily the repeal of the Stamp Act was a concession to the commercial interests of the mother country not to the political dogmas of the colonists. The king's party was more irritated than instructed by its defeat, and instead of surrendering any of [17] its pretensions to tax the colonies, almost immediately brought in a bill, which was passed, asserting the absolute supremacy of parliament over the colonies, and in the succeeding parliament another bill, which also passed, imposing duties on the paper, paints, glass, and tea imported by the colonies. ”

“ Governor Franklin had a son who also was not born in wedlock, named William Temple Franklin. He was brought up by his grandfather and served him in the capacity of private secretary daring most of his residence in France, and after his return to the United States. Franklin tried repeatedly but unsuccessfully to have the young man appointed to some subordinate mission. He had been brought up in France, his education was strangely deficient, and he does not seem to have left an altogether favourable impression upon his countrymen abroad or at home after his return. ”

“ The "Philadelphia experiments," as they were called, were performed in the presence of the royal family in Paris, and became the sensation of the period. The Royal Society of London found it necessary to reconsider its action, published a summary of the experiments in its Transactions, and, as Franklin afterwards averred, more than made him amends for the slight with which it had before treated him, by electing [8] him an honorary member, exempting him from the customary payments, and sending him for the rest of his life a copy of the Transactions. ”

“ The sum expected from this tax being only £100,000, it was thought the colonists would soon be reconciled to it. This was evidently Franklin's hope, which he did his utmost to realize. Writing home to a friend shortly after the passage of the Act he said, "The tide was too strong for us. We might as well have hindered the sun's setting; but since it is down, my friend, and it may be long before it rises again, let us make as good a night of it as we can. We may still light candles. Frugality and industry will go a great way towards indemnifying us. ”

“ Franklin, who was a rapid composer, ingenious and full of resources, soon came to be recognized by the public as the master spirit of the shop, and to receive flattering attentions from prominent citizens who had had opportunities of appreciating his cleverness. ”

“ Early in the year of 1764 Grenville, the prime minister, had sent for the agents of the American colonies resident in London, and told them that the war with France which had just terminated had left upon England a debt of £73,000,000 sterling, and that he proposed to lay a portion of this burthen upon the shoulders of the colonists by means of a stamp duty, unless the colonists could propose some other tax equally productive and less inconvenient. ”

“ He readily found employment at Palmer's, then a famous printer in Bartholomew Close, where, and afterwards at Wall's printing house, he continued to be employed until the 33d of July 1736, when he again set sail for Philadelphia in company with a Mr Dunham, whose acquaintance he had made on his voyage out, and who tempted him back by the offer of a position as clerk in a commercial business which he proposed to establish in Philadelphia. While in London Franklin had been engaged in setting up the type of a second edition of Wollaston's Religion of Nature. ”

“ Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are there fore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion." Instead of allowing the colonists to unite and defend themselves, the home Government sent over General Braddock with two regiments of regular English troops, whom the colonists were expected to maintain. ”

“ Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliament." But when the news of the passage of the Stamp Act reached the colonies, and its provisions came to be scanned, [1] the indiscretion of those who advised it was manifest. Meetings were held in all the colonies, where resolves were passed unanimously to consume no more British manufactures until the hateful Act was repealed. For simply recommending a trusty person to collect the tax, Franklin himself was denounced, and his family in Philadelphia was in danger of being mobbed. ”

“ Wherever he lived he was the inevitable centre of a system of influences always important and constantly enlarging; and dying, he perpetuated it by an autobiography which to this day not only remains one of the most widely read ant readable books in our language, but has had the distinction of enriching [29] the literature of nearly every other. No man has ever lived whose life has been more universally studied by his countrymen or is more familiar to them. ”

“ Franklin died in his own house, in Philadelphia, on the 17th of April 1790, and in the eighty-fifth year of his age. Since then, as in life, his fame has gone on increasing. No American has ever received such varied and extensive homage from his countrymen. There is no State in the United States, and there are few counties that have not a town called Franklin (Ohio has nineteen of them) ; scarce a town that does not boast of its Franklin Street, or its Franklin Square, or its Franklin hotel, or its Franklin bank, or its Franklin insurance company, and so on ”

“ The constant attendance at home, which is necessary for receiving and accepting your bills of exchange (a matter foreign to my ministerial functions) , to answer letters, and perform other parts of my employment, pre vents my taking the air and exercise which my annual journeys formerly used to afford me, and which contributed much to the preservation of my health. There are many other little personal attentions which the infirmities of age render necessary to an old man's comfort, even in some degree to the continuance of his existence, and with which business often interferes. ”

“ Nor did he exaggerate its importance, for in it were the germs of the revolt and independence of the North American colonies. "You Americans," said Grenville, "have wrong ideas of the nature of your constitution; you contend that the king's instructions to his governors are not laws, and think yourselves at liberty to regard or disregard them at your own discretion. But those instructions are not like the pocket instructions given to a minister going abroad for regulating his conduct in some trifling point of ceremony. They are first drawn up by judges learned in the law ”

“ When about to sign it, Hancock, one of his colleagues, is reported to have said, "We must be unanimous; there must be no pulling different ways; we must all hart; together." "Yes," replied Franklin, "we must hang together, or we will be pretty sure to hang separately." He was also chosen president of the convention called to frame a constitution for the State of Pennsylvania, which commenced its session on the 16th of July 1776. ”

“ Sensible as his countrymen were of the magnitude of their obligations to him, and of his increasing infirmities, it never seems to have occurred to them that they could dispense with his services. In the month succeeding his arrival he was chosen a member of the municipal council of Philadelphia, of which he was also unanimously elected chairman. He was soon after elected by the executive council and assembly president of Pennsylvania, by seventy-six out of the seventy-seven votes cast. ”

“ Thus he was avenged for his dismissal 18 months before from the office of deputy by being appointed to a place of higher rank and augmented authority. He planned all appeal for aid from the king of the French, and wrote the instructions of Silas Deane, a member of the congress, who was to convey it; he was sent as one of three commissioners to Canada, in one of the most inclement months of the year, on what proved an in effectual mission to persuade the Canadians to join the new colonial union ”

“ Congress not only declined to receive his resignation, but with its refusal sent him a commission, jointly with John Adams and John Jay, who had been the agent of the congress in Spain, to negotiate a peace. ”

“ He was selected by congress to discuss terms of peace with Admiral Lord Howe, who had arrived in New York harbour on the 12th of July 1776, to take command of the British naval forces in American waters, and on the 26th of September, upon the receipt of encouraging news from France, he was chosen unanimously to be one of three to repair to the court of Louis XVI. and solicit his support. ”