Benjamin Franklin

“ It was absurd to suppose that a people which could produce a man of that scope, in character and intellect, could long remain in a condition of political dependence. It would have been preposterous to have had Franklin die a colonist, and go down to posterity, not as an American, but as a colonial Englishman. He was a microcosm of the coming nation of the United States; all the better moral and intellectual qualities of our people existed in him, save only the dreamy philosophy of the famous New England school of thinkers. ”

“ Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston, Massachusetts, January 17, 1706 (January 6, Old Style) , of humble parents, was one of the heroes of the War of Independence, one of the cleverest of American diplomats, and one of the greatest American politicians and statesmen. But this was not all: he possessed so many talents that he can only be described properly as a universal genius.
Franklin’s life is one huge catalogue of performances, hard indeed to tabulate, for he went from one thing to another with remarkable rapidity and excelled in everything that he undertook. ”

“ Thus, by studying into things every chance he had, Benjamin Franklin became not only one of the most learned men in the world, but the greatest inventor of his time. He was honored with the title of Doctor of Philosophy by the greatest universities in Europe. Better than this, he was known and loved by the people all over the world.
While the War for Independence was under way, the leaders of the new nation, called the United States of America, came to Doctor Franklin and urged him to go to France and persuade the king and the people to help the United States. ”

“ On his arrival in Philadelphia in 1723, Benjamin Franklin began to make himself a commonwealth builder, and for more than thirty years he was one of the motive forces in that colony. From the first he found himself more at home in Philadelphia than in Boston. A man never overdisposed to self-denial, he enjoyed the comfort, the good dinners, the pleasant associations, the building up of social forces. Still, at that time Franklin had a much greater interest in Benjamin Franklin than in the community around him. ”

“ And that Franklin completely succeeded in rooting out the last vestige of dogmatism in his nature we not only have his testimony but that of Jefferson, who was not even born when he resolved to do it. "It was one of the rules which, above all others, made Dr. Franklin the most amiable of men in society," he said, "never to contradict anybody." Long before this, when Franklin was only in his forty-fifth year, James Logan wrote of him to Peter Collinson in these words: "Our Benjamin Franklin is certainly an extraordinary man, one of a singular good judgment, but of equal modesty." ”

“ Such was Benjamin Franklin, as mirrored for the most part in his own written and oral utterances. Whether his fame is measured by what he actually accomplished, or by the impression that he made upon his contemporaries, or by the influence that he still exercises over the human mind, he was a truly great man. ”

“ But no one can read the life of Franklin without feeling that there never was a time when his heart was not wholly true to the just rights of America. In America, he might miss the companionship of the learned and distinguished friends from whose conversation he derived so much profit and pleasure in England and France. Only such a capital as London or Paris could fully gratify the social and intellectual wants of a man whose survey of human existence was so little subject to cramping restrictions of any kind. ”

“ Thus there lived, as it were, two Benjamin Franklins, Benjamin Franklin the honest Philadelphia printer, who quietly prosecuted his trade during the first part of the eighteenth century, setting an example of industry and thrift which was destined afterward to exert an influence over half the world—and Benjamin Franklin the great American statesman, who flourished in the last part of the same century, and occupied himself in building and securing the foundations of what will perhaps prove the greatest political power that any human combination has ever formed. ”

“ We find Franklin in a state of rebellion against the prevailing tone of thought, writing against it in his brother’s newspaper at the risk of imprisonment, and in a manner more bitter and violent than anything he afterwards composed. If he had remained in Boston it is not likely that he would ever have taken seriously to science, for all his energies would have been absorbed in fighting those intolerant conditions which smothered all scientific inquiries. ”

“ Benjamin Franklin's reputation, according to John Adams, "was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them." [i-1] The historical critic recognizes increasingly that Adams was not thinking idly when he doubted whether Franklin's panegyrical and international reputation could ever be explained without doing "a complete history of the philosophy and politics of the eighteenth century." ”

“ In 1776, however, he served on the committee named by the Continental Congress to draft the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had an important part in the successful negotiation of the Treaty of Alliance between France and the United States, in 1778, which was largely responsible for the success of the Revolution. Upon his return to Philadelphia, he was elected President of Pennsylvania, and, in 1787, he was a delegate to the Federal Constitutional Convention. After a long and worthy life, Benjamin Franklin died in his home on April 17, 1790, at the age of 84. ”

“ And last, though by no means least, the Craft can point with proud and glorious satisfaction to Benjamin Franklin!—He is an example, of whom, not only Printers, but the world may be proud. The Society of him who called, and tamed, the lightning from the clouds, has been sought and courted by the proudest monarchs of the earth! Other benefactors of mankind have lived—but none whose brow has been wreathed with prouder laurels than that of Franklin. ”

“ In reading the life of Benjamin Franklin, the most lasting impressions left upon the mind are those of versatility and abundance. His varied genius lent itself without effort to the minutest details of such commonplace things as the heating and ventilation of rooms, the correction of smoky chimneys and naval architecture and economy. ”

“ The business career of Franklin did not move upon such an exalted plane as his scientific or political career, but it was the basis on which the entire superstructure of his renown as a philosopher and a statesman was built up; inasmuch as it was his early release from pecuniary cares which enabled him to apply himself with single-minded devotion to electrical experiments, and to accept at the hands of the people of Pennsylvania the missions to England which opened up the wider horizon of his postmeridian life. ”

“ Adams, yet was literally true; Franklin had the virtues, though dissevered from the tenets which that worthy Puritan dame conceived essential to the make-up of a genuine Christian. The time came when her husband would not have let her speak thus in praise of Benjamin Franklin.
In the spring of 1776 Congress was inconsiderate enough to impose upon Franklin a journey to Montreal, there to confer with General Arnold concerning affairs in Canada. It was a severe, even a cruel task to put upon a man of his age ”

“ Too often, even in the scholarly mind, Franklin has become a symbol, and it may be confessed, not a winged one, of the self-made man, of New-World practicality, of the successful tradesman, of the Sage of Poor Richard with his penny-saving economy and frugality. In short, the Franklin legend fails to transcend an allegory of the success of the doer in an America allegedly materialistic, uncreative, and unimaginative. ”

“ He was too sincere and logical a man to go before his God and ask assistance against a fault which he had not fully resolved to overcome, and that immediately. About a year after the date of his liturgy was born his illegitimate son William Franklin, who became Governor of New Jersey. If laws were as easily executed as enacted, Benjamin Franklin would have received, upon this occasion, twenty-one lashings at the public whipping-post of Philadelphia. ”

“ Benjamin Franklin was not born to greatness. He had none of the advantages which even the poorest boys may now enjoy. But he achieved greatness by always making the best use of such opportunities as came in his way. He was not afraid of work. He did not give up to discouragements. He did not overestimate his own abilities. He was earnest and faithful in little things; and that, after all, is the surest way of attaining to great things. There is no man to whom we Americans owe a greater debt of gratitude. Without his aid the American colonies would hardly have won independence. ”

“ Thomas Franklin, the eldest uncle of our Benjamin, learned the blacksmith's trade in his father's shop, but, aided by Squire Palmer and his own natural aptitude for affairs, became, as his nephew tells us, 'a conveyancer, something of a lawyer, clerk of the county court, and clerk to the archdeacon; a very leading man in all county affairs, and much employed in public business.'"
The quotation Mr. Parton makes, in his closing lines, is from a letter of Benjamin Franklin, addressed to Mrs. Deborah Franklin, dated London, 6 September, 1758. ”

“ Such an age could readily enough regard a man like Franklin as a true citizen of the world, a veritable friend of man and a torch-bearer of the new social and political freedom. It was also the era when it was the mode to indulge dreams of primitive beatitude and idyllic simplicity, and around no figure could such dreams more naturally gather than that of the venerable and celebrated man, whose thin white hair, worn straight without wig or powder, plain dress and frank, direct speech seemed to make him the ideal exemplar of a state of society devoid of monarch, aristocrat or hierarch. ”

“ The third year of his incumbency in the office of president of Pennsylvania expired in the autumn of 1788, and his physical condition precluded all idea of further official labors. Nature could not have committed such an incongruity, such a sin against æsthetic justice, as not to preserve Benjamin Franklin's life long enough to enable him to see the United States fairly launched as a real nation, with an established government and a sound constitution giving promise of a vigorous career. ”

“ No man could tell a better story, and few men could sing a better song than Benjamin Franklin. No one was deemed a suitable member of the club, who would not contribute his full quota to the entertainment or instruction. The questions proposed by Franklin for discussion, developed the elevated intellectual region his thoughts were accustomed to range. We give a few as specimens.
“Can any one particular form of government suit all mankind? ”

“ When Franklin was leaving London in 1775 the French ambassador called upon him and gave him to understand in no doubtful terms that France would be on the side of the colonies.
It is a mistake to suppose, as has sometimes been done, that some one person suggested to the French government, or that Franklin himself suggested or urged, the idea of weakening England by assisting America. It was a policy the wisdom of which was obvious to every one. As early as the time of the Stamp Act, Louis XV. sent De Kalb to America to watch the progress of the rebellion, and to foment it. ”

“ Benjamin Franklin was so wise a man in his way that nobody need be ashamed to learn from him. When in doubt as to whether he should do or not do a certain thing, he would sometimes take a sheet of paper, divide it by a perpendicular line into two columns, and then put down in writing the reasons for doing the thing in one column, and the reasons against it in the other, so as to have both sets of reasons bodily before him for comparison. ”

“ Josiah Franklin—who was Benjamin Franklin’s father—concluded to join a party of his neighbors and friends, who had determined, in consequence of the restrictions which they were under in England, in respect to their religious faith and worship, to emigrate to America. Mr. Franklin came accordingly to Boston, and there, after a time, Benjamin Franklin was born. The place of his birth was in Milk-street, opposite to the Old South Church. The humble dwelling, however, in which the great philosopher was born, has long since disappeared. ”

“ Self-made men of eminence have been quite numerous in America for a hundred years. Franklin was our first hero of this kind, and I am inclined to think our greatest. The others have achieved wealth or political importance; sometimes both. But Franklin achieved not only wealth and the reputation of a diplomatist and a statesman, but made himself a most accomplished scholar, a man of letters of world-wide fame, a philosopher of no small importance, and as an investigator and discoverer in science he certainly enlarged the domain of human knowledge. ”

“ Franklin’s wife had died while he was in England, and his daughter, Mrs. Sarah Bache, was now mistress of his new house, which had been built during his absence. The day after his arrival the Assembly made him one of its deputies in the Continental Congress which was soon to meet in Philadelphia. For the next eighteen months (from his arrival on the 5th of May, 1775, until October 26, 1776, when he sailed for France) every hour of his time seems to have been occupied with labors which would have been enough for a man in his prime, but for one seventy years old were a heavy burden. ”