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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

SELF-REVEALED

A BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDY BASED MAINLY ON HIS OWN WRITINGS

BY

WILLIAM CABELL BRUCE

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOLUME II

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
_The Knickerbocker Press_
1917


COPYRIGHT, 1917
BY
W. CABELL BRUCE

_The Knickerbocker Press, New York_




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                      PAGE

I.--FRANKLIN'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS         1

II.--FRANKLIN AS A MAN OF BUSINESS             26

III.--FRANKLIN AS A STATESMAN                  95

IV.--FRANKLIN AS A MAN OF SCIENCE             350

V.--FRANKLIN AS A WRITER                      423

INDEX                                         531




Benjamin Franklin

Self-Revealed




CHAPTER I

Franklin's Personal Characteristics


The precise explanation of the great concourse of friends that Franklin
drew about him, at the different stages of his long journey through the
world, is to be found partly in his robust, honorable character and mental
gifts. The sterner virtues, which are necessarily the foundations of such
esteem as he enjoyed, he possessed in an eminent degree. An uncommonly
virile and resolute spirit animated the body, which was equal in youth to
the task of swimming partly on and partly under water from near Chelsea to
Blackfriars, and of exhibiting on the way all of Thevenot's motions and
positions as well as some of its own, and which shortly afterwards even
sported about the becalmed Berkshire in the Atlantic almost with the
strength and ease of one of the numerous dolphins mentioned by Franklin in
his Journal of his voyage on that ship from England to America. He hated
cruelty, injustice, rapacity and arbitrary conduct. It was no idle or
insincere compliment that Burke paid him when he spoke of his "liberal and
manly way of thinking." How stoutly his spirit met its responsibilities in
Pennsylvania, prior to the Declaration of Independence, we have seen. The
risks incident to the adoption of that declaration it incurred with the
same fearless courage. Of all the men who united in its adoption, he,
perhaps, was in the best position to know, because of his long residence in
England, and familiarity with the temper of the English monarch and his
ministry, what the personal consequences to the signers were likely to be,
if the American cause should prove unsuccessful. He had a head to lose even
harder to replace than that of his friend Lavoisier, he had a fortune to be
involved in flame or confiscation, the joy of living meant to him what it
has meant to few men, and more than one statement in his writings affords
us convincing proof that, quite apart from the collective act of all the
signers in pledging their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the "glorious
cause," he did not lose sight of the fact that the Gray Tower still stood
upon its ancient hill with its eye upon the Traitor's Gate, and its bosom
stored with instruments of savage vengeance. Indeed, it was the thought
that his son had been engaged against him in a game, in which not only his
fortune but his neck had been at stake, that made it so difficult for him,
forgiving as he was, to keep down the bile of violated nature. But, when
the time came for affixing his signature to the Declaration, he not only
did it with the equanimity of the rest, but, if tradition may be believed,
with a light-hearted intrepidity like that of Sir Walter Raleigh jesting on
the scaffold with the edge of the axe. "We must all hang together,"
declared John Hancock, when pleading for unanimity. "Yes," Franklin is said
to have replied, "we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we
shall all hang separately."

The inability of old age, partly from sheer loss of animal vigor, and
partly from the desire for peace, produced by the general decline in
vividness of everything in a world, that it is about to quit, to assert
itself with the force of will and temper, that belongs to us in our prime,
is one of the most noticeable phenomena of the later stages of human
existence. But John Adams to the contrary, the evidence all tends to show
that the resolution of character exhibited by Franklin in the heyday of his
physical strength he exhibited to the last. He was always slow to anger.
Independent of the remarkable self-control, which enabled him to preserve a
countenance, while Wedderburn was traducing him, as fixed as if it had been
carved out of wood, his anger was not kindled quickly, among other reasons
because he was too wise and just not to know that, if we could lay aside
the sensitiveness of exaggerated self-importance, there would be but little
real occasion for anger in the ordinary course of human life. But when
meanness, injustice or other aggravated forms of human depravity were to be
rebuked, the indignation of Franklin remained deliberate, judicious,
calculating and crushing to the last. One illustration of this we have
already given in his letter to Captain Peter Landais. Others we shall have
brought to our attention in several of his letters to Arthur Lee. Upon
these occasions, angry as he was, he was apt to make out his case with very
much the same cool completeness as that with which he demonstrated in a
letter to the British Post Office that it would be a mistake to shift His
Majesty's mails from the Western to the Eastern Post Route in New Jersey.
The time never came when he was not fully as militant as the occasion
required, though never more so.

And his integrity was as marked as his courage. "Splashes of Dirt thrown
upon my Character, I suffered while fresh to remain," he once said. "I did
not chuse to spread by endeavouring to remove them, but rely'd on the
vulgar Adage _that they would all rub off when they were dry_." And such
was his reputation for uprightness that, as a rule, he could neglect
attacks upon his character with impunity. The one vaunt of his life, if
such it can be called, was his statement to John Jay that no person could
truthfully declare that Benjamin Franklin had wronged him. A statement of
that kind, uttered by an even better man than Franklin, might well be
answered in the spirit that prompted Henry IV of France, when his attention
was called to a memorial inscription, which asserted that its subject never
knew fear, to remark, "Then he never snuffed a candle with his fingers."
But that Franklin was a man of sterling probity is unquestionable.[1] "We
ought always to do what appears best to be done without much regarding what
others may think of it," he wrote to William Carmichael, and, at more than
one trying crisis of his career, he rose without difficulty to the
requirements of his maxim. Lord North had little love for him, but he is
credited with the remarkable statement, during the American War, that, in
his belief, Franklin was the only man in France whose hands were not
stained with stock jobbery. When the false charge was made that Franklin
had never accounted for one of the many millions of livres entrusted to him
by our French ally, no pride could suffer more acutely than did his from
its inability to disprove the charge immediately. When enemies, to whom he
had never given any just cause of offence whatever, were calumniating him
towards the close of his life, his desire to leave the reputation of an
honest man behind him became the strongest of his motives. The flattering
language of great men, he said in his _Journal of the Negotiation for Peace
with Great Britain_, did not mean so much to him when he found himself so
near the end of life as to esteem lightly all personal interests and
concerns except that of maintaining to the last, and leaving behind him the
tolerably good character that he had previously supported. Still later he
wrote to Henry Laurens, accepting the offer of that true patriot and
gentleman to refute the slanders with regard to his career in France, and
saying:

     I apprehend that the violent Antipathy of a certain
     person to me may have produced some Calumnies, which,
     what you have seen and heard here may enable you easily
     to refute. You will thereby exceedingly oblige one, who
     has lived beyond all other Ambition, than that of dying
     with the fair Character he has long endeavoured to
     deserve.[2]

When the negotiations for peace between Great Britain and the United States
began, Richard Oswald, the envoy of Lord Shelburne, told Franklin that a
part of the confidence felt in him by the English Ministry was inspired by
his repute for open, honest dealing. This was not a mere diplomatic
_douceur_, but a just recognition of his candid, straightforward conduct in
his commerce with men. He was very resourceful and dexterous, if need were,
and, in his early life, when he was promoting his own, or the public
interests, he exhibited at times a finesse that bordered upon craftiness;
but, when Wedderburn taxed him with duplicity, he imputed to Franklin's
nature a vice incompatible with his frank, courageous disposition. It was
his outspoken sincerity of character that enabled him, during the American
War, to retain the attachment of his English friends even when he was
holding up their land as one too wicked for them to dwell in.

His intellectual traits, too, were of a nature to win social fame. In his
graphic description of Franklin in extreme old age, Doctor Manasseh Cutler,
of Massachusetts, brings him before us with these telling strokes of his
pencil:

     I was highly delighted with the extensive knowledge he
     appeared to have of every subject, the brightness of
     his memory, and clearness and vivacity of all his
     mental faculties, notwithstanding his age. His manners
     are perfectly easy, and everything about him seems to
     diffuse an unrestrained freedom and happiness. He has
     an incessant vein of humour, accompanied with an
     uncommon vivacity, which seems as natural and
     involuntary as his breathing.

In other words, whatever knowledge Franklin had was readily available for
social purposes, and suffused with the gaiety and humor which are so
ingratiating, when accompanied, as they were in his case, by the desire to
please and do good.[3] "He had wit at will," is the testimony of an
unfriendly but honest witness, John Adams. His humor it would be difficult
to over-emphasize. It ranged from punning, trifling, smutty jests and horse
laughter to the sly, graceful merriment of Addison and the bitter realism
of Swift. It irradiated his conversation, his letters, his writings, his
passing memoranda, at times even his scientific essays and political
papers. "Iron is always sweet, and every way taken is wholesome and
friendly to the human Body," he states in his _Account of the New-Invented
Pennsylvanian Fireplaces_; but his waggish propensity is too much for him,
and he adds, "except in Weapons." Jefferson said that Franklin was not
allowed to draft the Declaration of Independence for fear that he would
insert a joke in it. So far as his humor assumed literary forms, we shall
speak of it in another place. We are concerned with it now only so far as
it influenced his conversation. In the _Autobiography_ he tells us that his
reputation among his fellow-printers at Watts's Printing House in London as
"a pretty good _riggite_, that is, a jocular verbal satirist," helped to
support his consequence in the society. In the same book, he also tells us
that later, wishing to break a habit that he was getting into of
prattling, punning and joking, which made him acceptable to trifling
company only, he gave Silence the second place in his little _Book of
Virtues_. "What new story have you lately heard agreeable for telling in
conversation?" was one of the standing questions, of his conception, which
were to be answered by the members of the Junto at each of its meetings.
And, even when he was in his eighty-third year, he could say to Elizabeth
Partridge that, notwithstanding the gout, the stone and old age, he enjoyed
many comfortable intervals, in which he forgot all his ills, and amused
himself in reading or writing, or in conversation with friends, joking,
laughing and telling merry stories, as when she first knew him a young man
about fifty. His puns at times were as flat as puns usually are, and some
of his stories could hardly have prospered in the ear that heard them, if
they had not been set off by high animal spirits and contagious good humor.
But some of those that crept into his letters, whether original or
borrowed, are good enough for repetition. He seems to have had one for
every possible combination of circumstances. "The Doctor," Miss Adams
observes, "is always silent unless he has some diverting story to tell, of
which he has a great collection." The mutinous and quarrelsome temper of
his soldiers at Gnadenhutten, when they were idle, put him in mind of the
sea-captain, who made it a rule to always keep his men at work, and who
exclaimed, upon being told by his mate, that there was nothing more to
employ them about, "_Oh, make them scour the anchor._" His
absent-mindedness, when electrocuting a turkey, in setting up an electric
circuit through his own body, which cost him the loss of his consciousness,
and a numbness in his arms and the back of his neck, which did not wear off
until the next morning, put him in mind of the blunderer who, "being about
to steal powder, made a hole in the cask with a hot iron." At times, there
was a subjective quality about his stories which lifted them above the
level of mere jests. When the suggestion was made that, in view of the
favor conferred upon America by the repeal of the Stamp Act by Parliament,
America could not, with any face of decency, refuse to defray the expense
incurred by Great Britain in stamping so much paper and parchment, Franklin
did not lack an apposite story in which a hot iron was again made to
figure.

     The whole Proceeding [he said] would put one in Mind of
     the Frenchman that used to accost English and other
     Strangers on the Pont-Neuf, with many Compliments, and
     a red hot Iron in his Hand; _Pray Monsieur Anglois_,
     says he, _Do me the Favour to let me have the Honour of
     thrusting this hot Iron into your Backside?_ Zoons,
     what does the Fellow mean! Begone with your Iron or
     I'll break your Head! _Nay Monsieur_, replies he, _if
     you do not chuse it, I do not insist upon it. But at
     least, you will in Justice have the Goodness to pay me
     something for the heating of my Iron._

This story was too good not to have a sequel.

     As you observe [he wrote to his sister Jane] there was
     no swearing in the story of the poker, when I told it.
     The late new dresser of it was, probably, the same, or
     perhaps akin to him, who, in relating a dispute that
     happened between Queen Anne and the Archbishop of
     Canterbury, concerning a vacant mitre, which the Queen
     was for bestowing on a person the Archbishop thought
     unworthy, made both the Queen and the Archbishop swear
     three or four thumping oaths in every sentence of the
     discussion, and the Archbishop at last gained his
     point. One present at this tale, being surprised, said,
     "But did the Queen and the Archbishop swear so at one
     another?" "O no, no," says the relator; "that is only
     _my way_ of telling the story."

Another rather elaborate story was prompted by Franklin's disapproval of
the Society of the Cincinnati.

    The States [he said in his famous letter to his
    daughter] should not only restore to them the _Omnia_ of
    their first Motto (omnia reliquit servare rempublicam)
    which many of them have left and lost, but pay them
    justly, and reward them generously. They should not be
    suffered to remain, with (all) their new-created
    Chivalry, _entirely_ in the Situation of the Gentleman
    in the Story, which their _omnia reliquit_ reminds me
    of.... He had built a very fine House, and thereby much
    impair'd his Fortune. He had a Pride, however, in
    showing it to his Acquaintance. One of them, after
    viewing it all, remark'd a Motto over the Door
    [Transcriber's note: The = represents a dash above the
    O] "[=O]IA VANITAS." "What," says he, "is the Meaning
    of this [=O]IA? It is a word I don't understand." "I
    will tell you," said the Gentleman; "I had a mind to
    have the Motto cut on a Piece of smooth Marble, but
    there was not room for it between the Ornaments, to be
    put in Characters large enough to be read. I therefore
    made use of a Contraction antiently very common in Latin
    Manuscripts, by which the _m's_ and _n's_ in Words are
    omitted, and the Omissions noted by a little Dash above,
    which you may see there; so that the Word is _omnia_,
    OMNIA VANITAS." "O," says his Friend, "I now comprehend
    the Meaning of your motto, it relates to your Edifice;
    and signifies, that, if you have abridged your _Omnia_,
    you have, nevertheless, left your VANITAS legible at
    full length."

The determination of the enemies of America after the Revolution to have it
that, in spite of all appearances to