1771–1790 2026
This is an AI modernization of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin into contemporary English. The original is available from Standard Ebooks. Also available as an epub.
Benjamin Franklin wrote this book in four sittings spread over eighteen years, in two countries, and never finished it. He started in 1771, at sixty-five, while staying at the Bishop of St Asaph's house at Twyford in England, and he started it as a letter to his son William. He picked it up again thirteen years later at Passy, outside Paris, where he was the American minister to France; two friends had written begging him to go on, and both of their letters are printed in the text where he put them. The last two stints were written in Philadelphia, in 1788 and in the winter before his death in 1790. The complete text, from his own manuscript, was not printed until 1868.
Because he never finished it, the story stops around 1760. There is no Declaration of Independence in it, no Constitutional Convention, no peace treaty. A reader who comes for the statesman gets the printer instead: a chandler's son who runs away from his brother's Boston print shop at seventeen, walks into Philadelphia with three great puffy rolls under his arms, and spends the rest of the book setting type, buying out partners, and starting things — a newspaper, an almanac, a subscription library, a fire company, a militia, a hospital, an academy, a stove, and the kite. The last chapters are colonial politics, a long quarrel with the Penn family over whether their estates could be taxed.
The part everyone remembers is Chapter Nine. Franklin lists thirteen virtues, gives each a one-line precept, and rules a little book with seven columns and thirteen rows so he can mark a black spot for every fault committed that day. He works on one virtue a week, thirteen weeks to a cycle, four cycles a year. He reports how it went. Order defeated him, and the story he tells about that — a man buying an ax who decides he likes a speckled ax best — is the best thing in the chapter. Humility was added twelfth because a Quaker friend told him he was widely thought proud.
The voice is the reason to read it. He brags, then undercuts the brag; he calls his own mistakes errata, which is a printer's word for the misprints listed at the front of a book, and he uses it every time. On slavery the book says almost nothing. Franklin owned enslaved people during the years it covers and does not mention the fact, and the subject enters once, in an exchange of jokes over wine that this edition keeps as he wrote it. His public work against the slave trade came decades later, after the point where the narrative breaks off.
Twyford, at the Bishop of St. Asaph's, 1771.
Dear Son: I have always enjoyed collecting little stories about my ancestors. You may remember the questions I asked among the surviving relatives when you were with me in England, and the trip I made for exactly that purpose. It occurred to me that you might find it just as agreeable to know the circumstances of my own life — much of which is still unknown to you — and since I'm expecting a week of uninterrupted leisure here in my country retreat, I'm sitting down to write it all out for you. I have some other motives too. Having climbed from the poverty and obscurity I was born into, up to a comfortable fortune and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gotten this far through life with a considerable share of happiness, I thought my descendants might like to know the methods I used — which, with God's blessing, worked so well — since they may find some of them suited to their own situations, and worth imitating.
That happiness, when I've reflected on it, has sometimes led me to say that if it were offered, I'd have no objection to living the same life over again from the beginning — asking only for the advantage authors get with a second edition: the chance to correct some faults of the first. Along with correcting the faults, I'd change some of the unlucky accidents and events for more favorable ones. But even if that were refused, I'd still take the offer. And since no such repeat performance is on the table, the next best thing to living one's life over again seems to be recollecting that life — and making the recollection as durable as possible by writing it down.
In doing this I'll also be indulging the inclination, so natural in old men, to talk about themselves and their own past deeds. And I'll indulge it without boring anyone, since people who might otherwise feel obliged, out of respect for age, to sit and listen to me can read this or not, exactly as they please. And finally — I may as well confess it, since nobody would believe my denial anyway — I will probably be gratifying my own vanity a good deal. Honestly, I have hardly ever heard or read the opening words "Without vanity I may say..." without some vain thing following immediately after. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share of it they have themselves; but I give it fair treatment wherever I meet it, being convinced that it often does real good, both for the person who has it and for everyone within his reach. So in many cases it would not be entirely absurd for a man to thank God for his vanity, along with the other comforts of life.
And speaking of thanking God: I want to acknowledge, with all humility, that I owe the happiness of my past life to His kind providence, which led me to the methods I used and gave them their success. This belief makes me hope — though I must not presume — that the same goodness will continue to be shown to me, either in extending that happiness or in helping me bear some fatal reversal, which I may yet suffer as others have. What my future fortune looks like is known only to Him, who has the power to bless us even through our afflictions.
Some notes that one of my uncles once put into my hands — he had the same sort of curiosity about collecting family stories — supplied me with several details about our ancestors. From those notes I learned that the family had lived in the same village, Ecton, in Northamptonshire, for three hundred years, and he didn't know how much longer than that — perhaps from the time when "Franklin," which had been the name of a whole class of people, was taken as a surname, back when everyone across the kingdom was adopting surnames. They lived on a freehold of about thirty acres, supplementing it with the blacksmith's trade, which had stayed in the family down to his time, the eldest son always being raised to that business — a custom he and my father both followed with their own eldest sons. When I searched the parish registers at Ecton, I found a record of their births, marriages, and burials going back only to 1555, no registers having been kept there before that. From that register I discovered that I was the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations back. My grandfather Thomas, born in 1598, lived at Ecton until he grew too old to keep working, then went to live with his son John, a dyer at Banbury in Oxfordshire, with whom my father served his apprenticeship. My grandfather died there and is buried there; we saw his gravestone in 1758. His eldest son Thomas stayed in the house at Ecton and left it, with the land, to his only child, a daughter, who with her husband — a Fisher, of Wellingborough — sold it to Mr. Isted, now lord of the manor there. My grandfather had four sons who grew to adulthood: Thomas, John, Benjamin, and Josiah. I'll give you what account of them I can at this distance from my papers; if the papers haven't been lost while I've been away, you'll find many more details among them.
Thomas was trained as a smith under his father, but being clever, and encouraged in his studies (as all my father's brothers were) by an Esquire Palmer, then the leading gentleman of the parish, he qualified himself for the work of a scrivener — a legal copyist and clerk. He became a man of consequence in the county, a prime mover in nearly every public-spirited undertaking for the county, for the town of Northampton, and for his own village, where many stories were still told about him; and he was noticed and patronized by the Lord Halifax of that day. He died on January 6, 1702, old style — exactly four years, to the day, before I was born. The account of his life and character that we got from some old people at Ecton struck you, I remember, as something extraordinary, it was so similar to what you knew of mine. "Had he died on the same day," you said, "one might have supposed a transmigration."
John was trained as a dyer — of woolens, I believe. Benjamin was trained as a silk dyer, serving his apprenticeship in London. He was an ingenious man. I remember him well, because when I was a boy he came over to join my father in Boston and lived in the house with us for some years. He lived to a great age; his grandson, Samuel Franklin, lives in Boston now. He left behind two thick manuscript volumes of his own poetry — little occasional pieces addressed to his friends and relations, of which the following, sent to me, is a sample. He had invented a shorthand system of his own, which he taught me; but since I never practiced it, I have now forgotten it. I was named after this uncle, there being a particular affection between him and my father. He was very pious, a great attender of sermons by the best preachers, which he took down in his shorthand — he had many volumes of them. He was also quite the politician; too much so, perhaps, for a man of his station. Recently there fell into my hands, in London, a collection he had made of all the principal pamphlets on public affairs from 1641 to 1717. Many of the volumes are missing, as the numbering shows, but eight folio volumes still remain, and twenty-four in smaller sizes. A dealer in old books had come across them, and knowing me because I sometimes bought from him, he brought them to me. It seems my uncle must have left them behind when he went to America, about fifty years ago. His notes are in the margins throughout.
This obscure family of ours joined the Reformation early and stayed Protestant through the reign of Queen Mary, when their zeal against the Roman church sometimes put them in danger. They had gotten hold of an English Bible, and to hide it and keep it safe, they fastened it open with tapes under the seat of a joint-stool, inside the frame. When my great-great-grandfather read it to his family, he flipped the stool upside down on his knees and turned the pages under the tapes. One of the children stood at the door to give warning if he saw the apparitor coming — an officer of the church court. If he appeared, the stool was set back down on its feet, and the Bible lay hidden beneath it as before. I had this anecdote from my uncle Benjamin. The family remained in the Church of England until near the end of Charles the Second's reign, when some ministers who had been expelled for nonconformity began holding secret meetings in Northamptonshire. Benjamin and Josiah joined them, and stuck with them the rest of their lives; the rest of the family stayed with the Episcopal Church.
Josiah, my father, married young and took his wife and three children to New England around 1682. The dissenters' meetings had been outlawed and were frequently broken up, which persuaded some substantial men of his acquaintance to move to that country, and he was prevailed upon to go along, expecting that there they could practice their religion in freedom. By the same wife he had four more children born there, and by a second wife ten more — seventeen in all, of whom I can remember thirteen sitting at his table at one time, all of whom grew up, married, and made their way. I was the youngest son, and the youngest child but two, and was born in Boston, New England. My mother, the second wife, was Abiah Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England — honorably mentioned by Cotton Mather in his church history of the country, the Magnalia Christi Americana, as "a godly, learned Englishman," if I remember the words rightly. I have heard that he wrote various small occasional pieces, but only one was ever printed, and I saw it many years ago now. It was written in 1675, in the homespun verse of that time and place, and addressed to the men then running the government there. It argued for liberty of conscience, on behalf of the Baptists, the Quakers, and the other sects that had been persecuted, blaming the Indian wars and the country's other troubles on that persecution — so many judgments of God punishing so heinous an offense — and urging the repeal of those uncharitable laws. The whole thing struck me as written with a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom. I still remember the six concluding lines, though I've forgotten the first two of the stanza; the gist of them was that his criticisms came from goodwill, and that he therefore wanted to be known as the author:
"Because to be a libeller (says he) I hate it with my heart; From Sherburne town, where now I dwell My name I do put here; Without offense your real friend, It is Peter Folgier."
My older brothers were all apprenticed out to different trades. I was sent to grammar school at eight years old, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church. My early knack for reading — which must have come very early indeed, since I can't remember a time when I couldn't read — and the opinion of all his friends that I would surely make a good scholar, encouraged him in the plan. My uncle Benjamin approved too, and offered to give me all his shorthand volumes of sermons — as starting capital, I suppose — if I would learn his system. But I stayed at the grammar school not quite a year, even though in that time I had risen gradually from the middle of my class to the head of it, and had been moved up into the next class, so that I could pass with it into the third by year's end. My father, meanwhile, weighing the cost of a college education — which, with such a large family, he could not well afford — against the meager living so many educated men managed to earn afterward (reasons he gave to his friends within my hearing), changed his mind. He took me out of the grammar school and sent me to a school for writing and arithmetic, kept by a then-famous teacher, Mr. George Brownell, who was very successful in his profession, and successful by mild, encouraging methods. Under him I picked up a fair handwriting fairly quickly, but I failed at the arithmetic and made no progress in it at all. At ten years old I was brought home to help my father in his business, which was that of a tallow-chandler and soap-boiler — making candles and soap — a trade he had not been raised to, but had taken up on arriving in New England, once he found there was too little demand for his dyeing trade to support his family. So I was put to work cutting wick for the candles, filling the dipping mold and the molds for cast candles, minding the shop, running errands, and so on.
I disliked the trade, and had a strong pull toward the sea; but my father set himself firmly against it. Still, living near the water, I was in it and around it constantly. I learned early to swim well and to handle boats, and when I was out in a boat or canoe with other boys, I was usually the one allowed to steer, especially when things got difficult. On other occasions too I was generally the leader among the boys, and sometimes I led them into scrapes. I'll mention one instance, because it shows an early public spirit for projects — even if the spirit wasn't, at that point, honestly directed.
There was a salt marsh bordering part of the millpond, and at high water we used to stand on its edge to fish for minnows. With all our trampling we had turned it into a plain quagmire. My proposal was to build a wharf there fit to stand on, and I pointed out to my comrades a large heap of stones, intended for a new house near the marsh, that would suit our purpose very well. So in the evening, once the workmen had gone home, I gathered a number of my playmates, and working away diligently, like so many ants — sometimes two or three of us to one stone — we carried them all off and built our little wharf. The next morning the workmen were baffled to find the stones missing. They were discovered in our wharf; inquiries were made after the removers; we were found out and reported, and several of us got corrected by our fathers. And though I argued for the usefulness of the work, mine convinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest.
I think you may like to know something of his person and character. He had an excellent constitution, was of middle height but well built and very strong. He was clever with his hands, could draw nicely, knew a little music, and had a clear, pleasing voice — so that when he played psalm tunes on his violin and sang along, as he sometimes did in the evening after the day's work was done, it was a real pleasure to hear. He had a mechanical gift too, and on occasion was very handy with other tradesmen's tools. But his great strength lay in his sound understanding and solid judgment in practical matters, private and public alike. He never actually held public office — the large family he had to raise, and the tightness of his circumstances, kept him chained to his trade — but I well remember leading citizens coming often to consult him for his opinion on the affairs of the town, or of the church he belonged to, and showing considerable respect for his judgment and advice. Private people consulted him constantly about their affairs whenever some difficulty arose, and he was frequently chosen as arbitrator between quarreling parties. At his table he liked to have, as often as he could manage, some sensible friend or neighbor for conversation, and he always took care to start some clever or useful topic of discussion that might improve his children's minds. In this way he turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life; and little or no notice was ever taken of the food on the table — whether it was well or badly cooked, in season or out, well flavored or poorly, better or worse than some other dish of its kind. So I was brought up in such perfect inattention to these matters that I became entirely indifferent to what kind of food was set before me — and so unobservant of it that to this day, if you ask me a few hours after dinner, I can hardly tell you what I ate. This has been a convenience to me in traveling, where my companions have sometimes been quite miserable for want of proper gratification of their more delicate — because better trained — tastes and appetites.
My mother had an excellent constitution as well: she nursed all ten of her children herself. I never knew either my father or my mother to have any sickness except the one each died of — he at eighty-nine, she at eighty-five. They lie buried together in Boston, where some years ago I placed a marble stone over their grave with this inscription:
Josiah Franklin, and Abiah his wife, lie here interred. They lived lovingly together in wedlock fifty-five years. Without an estate, or any gainful employment, By constant labor and industry, with God's blessing, They maintained a large family comfortably, and brought up thirteen children and seven grandchildren reputably. From this instance, reader, Be encouraged to diligence in thy calling, And distrust not Providence. He was a pious and prudent man; She, a discreet and virtuous woman. Their youngest son, In filial regard to their memory, Places this stone. J. F. born 1655, died 1744, Ætat 89. A. F. born 1667, died 1752, ⸻ 85.
By my rambling digressions I can tell that I'm growing old. I used to write more methodically. But one doesn't dress for private company the way one dresses for a public ball. Perhaps it's only negligence.
To return: I went on working in my father's business for two years, that is, until I was twelve. My brother John, who had been raised to the trade, had by then left my father, married, and set up for himself in Rhode Island, and every sign pointed to my being destined to fill his place and become a tallow-chandler. But my dislike of the trade continued, and my father grew worried that if he didn't find me a more agreeable one, I would break loose and go to sea, as his son Josiah had done — to his great vexation. So he sometimes took me on walks with him to watch joiners, bricklayers, wood-turners, brass-workers, and the rest at their work, hoping to spot where my inclination lay and pin it to some trade on land. It has been a pleasure to me ever since to watch good workmen handle their tools; and it has been useful too — I learned enough to do small jobs around my own house when a workman couldn't readily be found, and to build little machines for my experiments while the idea for the experiment was still fresh and warm in my mind. My father at last settled on the cutler's trade, and since my uncle Benjamin's son Samuel, who had trained in that business in London, had recently set up in Boston, I was sent to stay with him for a while on trial. But his expectation of a fee for taking me displeased my father, and I was brought home again.
From the time I was a child I loved to read, and every bit of pocket money that came my way went straight into books. I started with Pilgrim's Progress, which delighted me, so my first collection was John Bunyan's works in cheap little separate volumes. Later I sold those to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections — small peddlers' books, cheap, forty or fifty of them in all. My father's little library was mostly books of religious argument, and I read most of them. I've often regretted since that, at a time when I was so hungry for knowledge, better books didn't fall into my hands — since by then it was settled that I wasn't going to be a clergyman. There was a Plutarch's Lives, though, which I read constantly, and I still count that time well spent. There was also a book of Defoe's called An Essay on Projects, and one by Dr. Mather called Essays to Do Good, and between them they may have given my thinking a turn that shaped some of the main events of my life.
This bookish streak finally convinced my father to make me a printer, even though he already had one son — James — in that trade. In 1717 my brother James came back from England with a press and a set of type to open his business in Boston. I liked printing much better than my father's trade, but I still had a hankering for the sea. To head off that danger, my father was impatient to bind me to my brother. I held out for a while, but eventually I gave in and signed the indentures when I was only twelve years old. I was to serve as an apprentice until I turned twenty-one, with journeyman's wages allowed only in the final year. In a short time I got very good at the work and became genuinely useful to my brother. And now I had access to better books. Getting to know the booksellers' apprentices meant I could sometimes borrow a small volume, which I was careful to return promptly and in good condition. Often I sat up in my room reading most of the night, when a book was borrowed in the evening and had to be back early the next morning before anyone missed it or wanted it.
After a while an ingenious tradesman named Mr. Matthew Adams, who had a nice collection of books and often stopped by our printing house, took notice of me, invited me to his library, and very kindly lent me whatever books I chose. Around then I took a fancy to poetry and wrote some little pieces. My brother, thinking there might be money in it, encouraged me and set me to composing topical ballads. One was called "The Lighthouse Tragedy," about the drowning of Captain Worthilake and his two daughters; the other was a sailor's song about the capture of Teach — Blackbeard — the pirate. They were wretched stuff, pure gutter-press ballad style, and when they were printed my brother sent me around town to sell them. The first one sold wonderfully, since the disaster was fresh and had made a great stir. This flattered my vanity. But my father threw cold water on the whole business by ridiculing my work and telling me that verse-makers were generally beggars. So I escaped being a poet — most likely a very bad one. But since writing prose has been of great use to me all my life, and was one of the main means of my advancement, let me tell you how, in my situation, I acquired what little skill I have at it.
There was another bookish boy in town, John Collins by name, and we were close friends. We sometimes argued, and we were very fond of arguing — each of us eager to prove the other wrong. That argumentative streak, by the way, can become a very bad habit. It makes people insufferable company, because you can't practice it without contradicting everyone, and beyond souring the conversation, it breeds resentment and sometimes real enmity with people whose friendship you may need. I had caught the habit from reading my father's books of religious controversy. Sensible people, I've noticed since, rarely fall into it — except lawyers, university men, and men of every sort who were educated at Edinburgh.
Somehow a question came up between Collins and me about whether it was proper to give girls an education, and whether they had the ability for study. He held that it was improper and that women were naturally unequal to it. I took the other side, perhaps partly for the sake of the argument. He was naturally the more eloquent, had words at the ready, and sometimes, it seemed to me, beat me more by fluency than by the strength of his reasons. We parted without settling the point, and since we weren't going to see each other for a while, I sat down and put my arguments in writing, made a clean copy, and sent it to him. He answered, I replied, and three or four letters a side had passed when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without wading into the debate itself, he took the occasion to talk to me about my writing. He observed that though I had my opponent beat in spelling and punctuation (which I owed to the printing house), I fell far short of him in elegance of expression, in organization, and in clarity — and he convinced me with several examples. I saw the justice of his criticism, paid more attention to style from then on, and resolved to improve.
Around this time I came across an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third; I had never seen any of them before. I bought it, read it over and over, and was delighted with it. I thought the writing was excellent and wanted, if possible, to imitate it. So here is what I did. I took some of the essays and made short notes of the point of each sentence. I set them aside for a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to reconstruct the essays — expanding each noted point back to full length, as completely as the original, in whatever suitable words came to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the real one, found some of my faults, and corrected them. But I discovered I lacked a stock of words, or a readiness in calling them up — something I'd have acquired by now, I thought, if I'd kept on writing verse. Verse constantly demands words of the same meaning but different lengths to fit the meter, or different sounds for the rhyme; that would have forced me to keep hunting for variety, and the hunting would have fixed the variety in my mind and made me master of it. So I took some of the tales and turned them into verse, and after a while, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. Sometimes I also jumbled my stacks of notes into confusion, and weeks later tried to sort them into the best order before writing out the full sentences and completing the essay. This was to teach me method in arranging my thoughts. Comparing my work with the original afterward, I found many faults and fixed them — but sometimes I had the pleasure of imagining that in certain small particulars I'd been lucky enough to improve on the original, which encouraged me to think I might in time become a tolerable English writer. And that I ambitiously wanted to be. My time for these exercises and for reading was at night after work, or in the morning before it started, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be alone in the printing house — dodging, as much as I could, the church attendance my father used to require of me when I lived under his roof. I still considered it a duty, truthfully; I just couldn't, it seemed to me, afford the time to practice it.
When I was about sixteen I happened on a book by one Tryon recommending a vegetable diet, and I decided to take it up. My brother, being still unmarried, didn't keep his own house; he and his apprentices boarded with another family. My refusal to eat meat was an inconvenience, and I was frequently scolded for my oddity. So I learned Tryon's methods of preparing some of his dishes — boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and a few others — and then made my brother a proposal: if he'd give me, each week, half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He agreed instantly, and I soon found I could save half of what he gave me. That became an extra fund for buying books. But there was another advantage in it. When my brother and the rest went off from the printing house to their meals, I stayed behind alone, and having quickly dispatched my light meal — often no more than a biscuit or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry shop, and a glass of water — I had the rest of the time until they came back for study. And I made all the better progress for that clearness of head and quickness of mind that usually come with temperance in eating and drinking.
It was around now that, having been embarrassed on some occasion by my ignorance of arithmetic — which I had twice failed to learn at school — I took up Cocker's book of Arithmetic and went through the whole thing on my own with great ease. I also read Seller's and Shermy's books on navigation and picked up the little geometry they contain, though I never went far in that science. And about this time I read Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and The Art of Thinking by the gentlemen of Port Royal.
While I was intent on improving my language, I came across an English grammar (Greenwood's, I think) which ended with two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter closing with a sample dispute in the Socratic method. Soon afterward I got hold of Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, which is full of examples of the same method. I was charmed by it and adopted it. I dropped my blunt contradiction and head-on argument and put on the role of the humble inquirer and doubter. And since my reading of Shaftesbury and Collins had by then made me a genuine doubter on many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method the safest for me and very embarrassing for those I used it on. So I took a real delight in it and practiced it constantly, and I grew very artful at drawing people — even people who knew more than I did — into concessions whose consequences they didn't foresee, tangling them in difficulties they couldn't escape, and winning victories that neither I nor my cause always deserved. I kept up this method for a few years, then gradually dropped it, keeping only the habit of expressing myself with modest diffidence. Whenever I advance anything that might possibly be disputed, I never use the words "certainly," "undoubtedly," or anything else that gives an opinion an air of positiveness. Instead I say, I conceive or I take a thing to be so-and-so; it appears to me, or I should think it so for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been a great advantage to me whenever I've had to press my opinions and persuade people into the projects I've been engaged in promoting from time to time. And since the chief ends of conversation are to inform or be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not weaken their power of doing good with a positive, overbearing manner — which almost never fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and defeats every purpose speech was given to us for, namely giving or receiving information or pleasure. If you want to inform, a positive, dogmatic manner of stating your views may provoke contradiction and shut down a fair hearing. If you want information and improvement from what others know, yet at the same time present yourself as firmly fixed in your current opinions, then modest, sensible people, who don't love a fight, will probably leave you undisturbed in possession of your error. And with such a manner you can rarely hope to charm your listeners or win over the people whose agreement you want. Pope says it well:
"Men should be taught as if you taught them not, And things unknown proposed as things forgot;"
going on to recommend that we
"To speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence."
And he might have paired with this line one he paired — less aptly, I think — with another:
"For want of modesty is want of sense."
If you ask, why less aptly? I have to quote the lines:
"Immodest words admit of no defense, For want of modesty is want of sense."
Now, isn't a lack of sense (when a man is unfortunate enough to lack it) some excuse for his lack of modesty? And wouldn't the lines stand more justly this way?
"Immodest words admit but this defense, That want of modesty is want of sense."
This, however, I submit to better judgments.
In 1720 or 1721 my brother began printing a newspaper. It was the second one to appear in America, and it was called the New England Courant. The only one before it was the Boston News-Letter. I remember some of his friends trying to talk him out of the venture as unlikely to succeed — one newspaper, in their judgment, being enough for America. As I write this (in 1771), there are no fewer than twenty-five. He went ahead anyway, and after I'd helped set the type and print off the sheets, my job was to carry the papers through the streets to the customers.
He had some clever men among his friends who amused themselves by writing little pieces for the paper, which raised its reputation and its sales, and these gentlemen often visited us. Hearing their conversations, and their accounts of how well their pieces were received, I itched to try my hand among them. But I was still a boy, and I suspected my brother would refuse to print anything in his paper that he knew was mine. So I contrived to disguise my handwriting, wrote an anonymous piece, and slipped it under the printing-house door at night. It was found in the morning and passed around to his writing friends when they called in as usual. They read it, discussed it within my hearing, and I had the exquisite pleasure of finding that it met with their approval — and that in their various guesses at the author, they named only men with some reputation among us for learning and cleverness. I suppose now that I was lucky in my judges, and that they were perhaps not quite as good as I thought them then.
Encouraged by this, I wrote several more pieces and delivered them to the press the same way, and they were equally approved. I kept my secret until my small stock of material for such performances was pretty well used up, and then I revealed it. After that my brother's acquaintances began to take a bit more notice of me — in a way that didn't entirely please him, since he thought, probably with reason, that it was making me too vain. This may have been one cause of the differences that started between us around this time. Though he was my brother, he considered himself my master and me his apprentice, and expected the same service from me as from anyone else, while I felt that some of his demands were degrading from a brother, from whom I expected more indulgence. Our disputes were often brought before our father, and I imagine I was either usually in the right or else the better pleader, because the judgment was usually in my favor. But my brother had a temper and had often beaten me, which I took extremely hard. Finding my apprenticeship tedious, I was constantly wishing for some way to shorten it — and at last a way presented itself, from an unexpected direction.
One of the pieces in our paper, on some political point I've now forgotten, gave offense to the Assembly. My brother was taken up, censured, and jailed for a month by the Speaker's warrant — because, I suppose, he wouldn't reveal his author. I was taken up and examined before the council too, but though I gave them no satisfaction, they settled for admonishing me and let me go — considering me, perhaps, as an apprentice bound to keep his master's secrets.
During my brother's confinement, which I resented a good deal despite our private differences, I ran the paper, and I made bold to give our rulers some jabs in it. My brother took this very kindly, while others began to see me in an unfavorable light — as a young genius with a turn for libel and satire. My brother's release came with an order of the House (a very odd one) that "James Franklin should no longer print the paper called the New England Courant."
His friends held a consultation in our printing house about what he should do. Some proposed dodging the order by changing the paper's name; but my brother saw inconveniences in that, and it was finally decided that the better way was to print the paper in the future under the name of Benjamin Franklin. And to escape the Assembly's censure — which might still fall on him for printing it through his apprentice — the contrivance was this: my old indenture would be returned to me with a full discharge written on the back, to be shown if anyone asked; but to secure my service to him anyway, I would sign new indentures for the rest of my term, which would be kept private. A very flimsy scheme it was. Still, it was carried out at once, and the paper ran under my name for several months.
At length a fresh quarrel arose between my brother and me, and I took it upon myself to assert my freedom, betting that he wouldn't dare produce the secret indentures. It wasn't fair of me to take that advantage, and so I count it one of the first errata of my life — errata, a printer's word for typos. But the unfairness of it weighed little with me against my resentment of the beatings his temper too often led him to give me — though he was otherwise not an ill-natured man. Perhaps I was too saucy and provoking.
When he found I meant to leave him, he made sure I couldn't get work at any other printing house in town, going around and speaking to every master, who accordingly refused to hire me. I then thought of going to New York, the nearest place with a printer. And I was rather inclined to leave Boston anyway when I considered that I'd already made myself a little obnoxious to the governing party; that, judging by the Assembly's arbitrary proceedings in my brother's case, I might soon land in trouble myself if I stayed; and further, that my careless arguments about religion had begun to make good people point at me with horror as an infidel or atheist. So I made up my mind. But my father was now siding with my brother, and I knew that if I tried to leave openly, steps would be taken to stop me. My friend Collins therefore undertook to manage a little scheme for me. He arranged my passage with the captain of a New York sloop, passing me off as a young acquaintance of his. I sold some of my books to raise a little money, was taken aboard privately, and with a fair wind, in three days I found myself in New York — nearly three hundred miles from home, a boy of just seventeen, without a single recommendation to anyone in the place, without knowing a soul there, and with very little money in my pocket.
By this point my old longing for the sea had worn itself out, or I might have indulged it now that I was free. But I had a trade, and I figured I was a pretty good workman, so instead I offered my services to the local printer, old Mr. William Bradford — the first printer Pennsylvania ever had, who'd left that colony over the quarrel with George Keith. He had no work for me; his business was small and he had all the help he needed. But he said, "My son in Philadelphia just lost his principal hand, Aquilla Rose — the man died. If you go down there, I believe he may take you on." Philadelphia was another hundred miles. I set out anyway, in a boat for Amboy, leaving my chest and things to come around after me by sea.
Crossing the bay, we hit a squall that tore our rotten sails to shreds, kept us from making the Kill, and drove us toward Long Island. Along the way a drunk Dutchman, another passenger, tumbled overboard. As he was going under I reached down through the water, grabbed him by his shaggy head, and hauled him up so we could pull him back in. The dunking sobered him a little, and he went to sleep — but first he fished a book out of his pocket and asked me to dry it for him. It turned out to be my old favorite author: Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in Dutch, finely printed on good paper with copper engravings — a handsomer outfit than I'd ever seen it wear in its own language. I've since learned it has been translated into most of the languages of Europe, and I'd guess it has been read more widely than any other book except perhaps the Bible. Honest John was the first writer I know of to mix narration with dialogue — a very engaging way to write, because at the most interesting moments the reader feels himself brought right into the company, present at the conversation. Defoe imitated it successfully in his Crusoe, his Moll Flanders, Religious Courtship, Family Instructor, and other pieces; and Richardson did the same in his Pamela and the rest.
When we drew near the island, we found ourselves at a spot where landing was impossible — heavy surf pounding a stony beach. So we dropped anchor and swung around toward the shore. Some people came down to the water's edge and shouted to us, and we shouted back, but the wind was so high and the surf so loud that we couldn't make out a word either way. There were canoes on the shore, and we made signs and hollered for them to come fetch us; but either they didn't understand or they thought it couldn't be done, because they walked away. With night coming on, there was nothing to do but wait for the wind to die down. In the meantime the boatman and I decided to sleep if we could, so we crowded into the little hatch with the Dutchman, who was still soaked. The spray beating over the bow leaked through onto us, so that we were soon nearly as wet as he was. We lay like that all night with very little rest; but the wind eased the next day, and we managed to reach Amboy before dark — after thirty hours on the water with no food and nothing to drink but a bottle of filthy rum, the water we sailed on being salt.
By evening I was running a fever, and I went to bed; but having read somewhere that drinking plenty of cold water was good for a fever, I followed the prescription, sweated most of the night, and woke up cured. In the morning I crossed the ferry and continued my journey on foot, with fifty miles to go to Burlington, where I was told I'd find boats to carry me the rest of the way to Philadelphia.
It rained hard all day. I was soaked through and, by noon, thoroughly worn out, so I stopped at a shabby inn and stayed the night — beginning, now, to wish I had never left home. I made such a miserable sight, too, that I could tell from the questions people asked me that I was suspected of being a runaway servant, and in some danger of being arrested on that suspicion. Still, I pushed on the next day and by evening reached an inn within eight or ten miles of Burlington, kept by one Dr. Brown. He struck up a conversation while I had some refreshment, and, finding I'd done a little reading, became very sociable and friendly. Our acquaintance lasted as long as he lived. He had been, I imagine, a traveling doctor, for there was no town in England, nor any country in Europe, he couldn't describe in close detail. He had some learning and was clever, but he was a thoroughgoing unbeliever, and some years later he wickedly set about rewriting the Bible as comic doggerel verse, the way Cotton had done with Virgil. This cast many of the facts in a very ridiculous light and might have damaged weak minds if the thing had ever been published — but it never was.
I stayed at his house that night and reached Burlington the next morning, only to have the mortification of learning that the regular boats had left shortly before I arrived, and no other was expected until Tuesday — this being Saturday. So I went back to an old woman in town from whom I'd bought some gingerbread to eat on the water, and asked her advice. She invited me to lodge at her house until a boat should turn up, and being tired of traveling on foot, I accepted. When she learned I was a printer, she wanted me to stay in that town and set up shop — having no idea what stock it takes to get started. She was very hospitable, served me a dinner of ox-cheek with real good will, and would accept nothing in return but a pot of ale; and I considered myself settled until Tuesday. But walking along the river that evening, I saw a boat come by that turned out to be heading for Philadelphia with several people aboard. They took me in, and since there was no wind, we rowed the whole way. Around midnight, not having seen the city yet, some of the company were sure we must have passed it and refused to row another stroke; the others had no idea where we were. So we pulled toward the shore, worked into a creek, and landed near an old fence, whose rails we used for a fire — the night being cold, in October — and there we stayed until daylight. Then one of the company recognized the place as Cooper's Creek, a little above Philadelphia, which we saw the moment we got clear of the creek. We arrived about eight or nine o'clock on Sunday morning and landed at the Market Street wharf.
I've gone into such detail about this journey, and will do the same for my first entrance into that city, so that you can compare, in your mind, such unlikely beginnings with the figure I've since made there. I was in my working clothes, my good ones coming around by sea. I was dirty from the trip; my pockets bulged with shirts and stockings; I didn't know a soul, or where to look for lodging. I was exhausted from walking, rowing, and lack of sleep; I was very hungry; and my entire fortune consisted of one Dutch dollar and about a shilling in copper. The copper I gave to the people of the boat for my passage. At first they refused it, since I had rowed; but I insisted they take it. A man is sometimes more generous when he has little money than when he has plenty — perhaps for fear of being thought to have but little.
Then I walked up the street, gawking at everything, until near the market house I met a boy carrying bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and asking where he'd gotten it, I went straight to the baker he pointed out, on Second Street, and asked for biscuit, meaning the kind we had in Boston. It seems they didn't make that in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a threepenny loaf, and was told they had no such thing. So — not considering, or knowing, the difference in money, or how much cheaper things were here, or what his breads were called — I told him to give me threepence worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at how much bread that bought, but I took it, and having no room in my pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm, eating the third. In this fashion I went up Market Street as far as Fourth Street, passing the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father — and she, standing in the doorway, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then I turned down Chestnut Street and part of Walnut Street, eating my roll the whole way, and, coming around, found myself back at the Market Street wharf, near the boat I'd arrived in. I went to it for a drink of river water, and being filled up by that one roll, I gave the other two to a woman and her child who had come down the river with us and were waiting to travel on.
Refreshed, I walked up the street again, which by now had many clean-dressed people in it, all walking the same direction. I fell in with them and was carried along into the great Quaker meetinghouse near the market. I sat down among them, and after looking around a while and hearing nothing said — being very drowsy from the labor and lost sleep of the night before — I fell fast asleep, and stayed that way until the meeting broke up, when someone was kind enough to wake me. This, then, was the first house I was ever in, or slept in, in Philadelphia.
Walking back down toward the river, studying people's faces as I went, I met a young Quaker man whose look I liked, and stopping him, I asked if he could tell me where a stranger might find lodging. We were just then near the sign of the Three Mariners. "Here," he said, "is one place that takes in strangers, but it is not a reputable house; if thee wilt walk with me, I'll show thee a better." He brought me to the Crooked Billet on Water Street. There I got a dinner, and while I ate it, several sly questions were put to me — it seemed my youth and my appearance raised the suspicion, again, that I might be some runaway.
After dinner my sleepiness came back, and being shown to a bed, I lay down without undressing and slept until six in the evening; was called to supper; went back to bed very early; and slept soundly until morning. Then I made myself as presentable as I could and went to Andrew Bradford the printer's. In the shop I found the old man his father, whom I'd seen in New York — traveling on horseback, he had beaten me to Philadelphia. He introduced me to his son, who received me politely and gave me breakfast, but told me he didn't currently need a hand, having just hired one. However, there was another printer in town, newly set up, one Keimer, who might perhaps employ me; and if not, I was welcome to lodge at his house, and he'd give me a little work now and then until fuller business turned up.
The old gentleman offered to walk me over to the new printer himself. When we found him: "Neighbor," says Bradford, "I've brought you a young man of your own trade; perhaps you may have use for one." Keimer asked me a few questions, put a composing stick in my hand to see how I worked, and said he'd employ me soon, though just then he had nothing for me to do. Then — taking old Bradford, whom he'd never seen before, for some townsman who wished him well — he launched into a full account of his current venture and his prospects. Bradford, careful not to reveal that he was the father of the other printer, drew him on with artful questions and little planted doubts — on Keimer's boasting that he expected soon to have the greater part of the business in his own hands — until Keimer had explained everything: his plans, what backing he counted on, and exactly how he meant to proceed. I stood by and heard it all, and saw at once that one of them was a crafty old fox and the other a complete novice. Bradford left me with Keimer, who was thunderstruck when I told him who the old man was.
Keimer's printing house, I found, consisted of one battered old press and one small, worn-out font of English type, which he was then using himself, composing an elegy on Aquilla Rose — the man I mentioned earlier, a clever young fellow of excellent character, much respected in town, clerk of the Assembly, and a pretty fair poet. Keimer wrote verses too, but very poorly. In fact you couldn't really say he wrote them, because his method was to compose them directly in the type, straight out of his head. So with no written copy, only one pair of typecases, and the elegy likely to use up all the letters, nobody could possibly help him. I set about putting his press — which he hadn't yet used, and understood nothing about — into working order; and promising to come back and print off his elegy as soon as he had it ready, I returned to Bradford's, who gave me a small job for the time being, and there I had my room and board. A few days later Keimer sent for me to print the elegy. By then he'd gotten another pair of cases and a pamphlet to reprint, and he set me to work on it.
Both of these printers, I found, were poorly qualified for their business. Bradford hadn't been trained to it at all, and was barely literate; and Keimer, though something of a scholar, was purely a compositor and knew nothing of presswork. He had been one of the French Prophets and could act out their ecstatic convulsions on demand. At this time he professed no particular religion, but a little of every one as the occasion served; he was very ignorant of the world, and had, as I later discovered, a good deal of the knave in his makeup. He didn't like my lodging at Bradford's while working for him. He had a house of his own, true, but no furniture in it, so he couldn't put me up; instead he got me a room at Mr. Read's — the man I mentioned before, who owned Keimer's house. By then my chest and clothes had arrived, and I made a rather more respectable figure in the eyes of Miss Read than I had the day she first happened to see me eating my roll in the street.
I now began to make some acquaintances among the young people of the town who loved reading, and I spent my evenings with them very pleasantly; and earning money by hard work and frugality, I lived quite agreeably, forgetting Boston as much as I could, and not wanting anyone there to know where I was — except my friend Collins, who was in on my secret and kept it when I wrote to him. At length an incident occurred that sent me back much sooner than I'd intended. I had a brother-in-law, Robert Holmes, master of a sloop that traded between Boston and the Delaware. While at Newcastle, forty miles below Philadelphia, he heard about me and wrote me a letter, telling me how worried my friends in Boston were at my abrupt departure, assuring me of their good will, and promising that everything would be arranged to my satisfaction if I would come home — which he urged on me very earnestly. I wrote back, thanked him for his advice, and laid out my reasons for leaving Boston so fully, and in such a light, that I convinced him I was not as much in the wrong as he had supposed.
Sir William Keith, the governor of the province, was at Newcastle just then, and Captain Holmes happened to be in his company when my letter arrived. Holmes mentioned me and showed him the letter. The governor read it, and seemed surprised when he was told my age. A young man of such promising parts, he said, ought to be encouraged. The printers in Philadelphia were wretched ones, and if I would set up shop there, he had no doubt I'd succeed; for his part, he would get me the public printing business and do me every other service in his power. My brother-in-law told me all this later, in Boston — at the time I knew nothing about it. Then one day, while Keimer and I were working together near the window, we saw the governor and another gentleman (who turned out to be Colonel French, of Newcastle), both finely dressed, come straight across the street to our house, and heard them at the door.
Keimer ran downstairs at once, assuming the visit was for him. But the governor asked for me, came up, and — with a graciousness and politeness I was entirely unused to — paid me a stack of compliments, said he wished to be acquainted with me, chided me in a kindly way for not introducing myself when I first came to town, and insisted on carrying me off to the tavern, where he was headed with Colonel French to taste, as he said, some excellent Madeira. I was more than a little surprised, and Keimer stared like a pig poisoned. I went, though, with the governor and Colonel French to a tavern at the corner of Third Street, and over the Madeira he proposed that I set up in business for myself. He laid out my chances of success, and both he and Colonel French assured me I would have their interest and influence in landing the public printing of both governments. When I doubted whether my father would back me in it, Sir William said he would give me a letter to him, laying out the advantages, and he had no doubt of winning him over. So it was settled that I would return to Boston on the first ship, carrying the governor's letter of recommendation to my father. In the meantime the plan was to be kept secret, and I went on working for Keimer as usual — the governor sending for me now and then to dine with him (a very great honor, I thought), and conversing with me in the most affable, familiar, and friendly manner imaginable.
Toward the end of April 1724, a little vessel offered passage to Boston. I took leave of Keimer as if I were only going to see my friends. The governor gave me a generous letter, saying many flattering things about me to my father, and strongly recommending the project of my setting up in Philadelphia as a thing that was bound to make my fortune. Going down the bay we struck a shoal and sprang a leak; we had blustering weather at sea and had to pump almost constantly, and I took my turn at it. Still, we arrived safe in Boston in about two weeks. I had been gone seven months, and my friends had heard nothing of me, for my brother-in-law Holmes had not yet returned and hadn't written about me. My unexpected appearance surprised the family; all of them, though, were very glad to see me and made me welcome — except my brother. I went to see him at his printing house. I was better dressed than I had ever been while in his service: a smart new suit from head to foot, a watch, and my pockets lined with nearly five pounds sterling in silver. He received me none too warmly, looked me over from head to toe, and turned back to his work.
The journeymen were full of questions: where had I been, what sort of country was it, how did I like it? I praised it highly, described the happy life I led there, and made it very plain that I meant to go back. When one of them asked what kind of money we had there, I produced a handful of silver and spread it out before them — a kind of sideshow they weren't used to, paper being the money of Boston. Then I found an occasion to let them see my watch; and finally (my brother still glum and sullen), I gave them a piece of eight to buy a round of drinks, and took my leave. This visit of mine offended him deeply. When my mother spoke to him some time later about a reconciliation — she wished to see us on good terms, so that we might live for the future as brothers — he said I had insulted him so thoroughly in front of his men that he could never forget or forgive it. In that, however, he was mistaken.
My father received the governor's letter with some apparent surprise, but said little about it to me for several days. When Captain Holmes returned, he showed it to him, and asked whether he knew Keith, and what kind of man he was — adding his own opinion that the man must have precious little judgment to think of setting up in business a boy who was still three years short of manhood. Holmes said what he could in favor of the project, but my father was firm that the whole thing was improper, and at last gave it a flat no. Then he wrote a civil letter to Sir William, thanking him for the patronage he had so kindly offered me, but declining to help set me up for the present: I was, in his opinion, too young to be trusted with the management of a business so important, and so expensive to prepare for.
My friend and companion Collins, who was a clerk in the post office, was so pleased with my account of my new home that he resolved to go there too. While I waited for my father's decision, Collins set out ahead of me by land for Rhode Island, leaving his books — a fine little collection of mathematics and natural philosophy — to come along with mine and me to New York, where he proposed to wait for me.
My father, though he didn't approve of Sir William's proposal, was still pleased that I had managed to earn such a glowing character from a person of such standing in the place where I'd been living, and that I had been industrious and careful enough to outfit myself so handsomely in so short a time. So, seeing no prospect of patching things up between my brother and me, he consented to my returning to Philadelphia. He advised me to behave respectfully to the people there, to work at earning their general esteem, and to steer clear of lampooning and libeling — habits he thought I leaned toward far too much. He told me that by steady industry and prudent frugality I could save enough by the time I was twenty-one to set myself up, and that if I came close to the amount, he would help me out with the rest. That was all I could get from him, apart from some small gifts as tokens of his and my mother's love, when I sailed again for New York — this time with their approval and their blessing.
The sloop put in at Newport, Rhode Island, where I visited my brother John, who had married and settled there some years before. He received me very affectionately, for he had always loved me. A friend of his, one Vernon, had some money owed to him in Pennsylvania — about thirty-five pounds in local currency — and asked me to collect it for him and keep it until I had his directions for what to remit it in. He gave me a written order for it accordingly. This business would later cause me a good deal of uneasiness.
At Newport we took on a number of passengers for New York, among them two young women traveling together, and a grave, sensible, motherly Quaker woman with her attendants. I had shown a ready willingness to do her some little services, which I suppose earned me a degree of goodwill; so when she saw a daily growing familiarity between me and the two young women — which they seemed to encourage — she took me aside and said, "Young man, I am concerned for thee, as thou hast no friend with thee, and seems not to know much of the world, or of the snares youth is exposed to. Depend upon it: those are very bad women. I can see it in all their actions, and if thee art not upon thy guard, they will draw thee into some danger. They are strangers to thee, and I advise thee, in a friendly concern for thy welfare, to have no acquaintance with them." Since at first I didn't seem to think as badly of them as she did, she mentioned some things she had observed and heard that had escaped my notice — but that now convinced me she was right. I thanked her for her kind advice and promised to follow it. When we arrived at New York, the women told me where they lived and invited me to come see them; but I avoided it, and it was well I did. The next day the captain missed a silver spoon and some other things that had been taken from his cabin, and knowing these two for a pair of prostitutes, he got a warrant to search their lodgings, found the stolen goods, and had the thieves punished. So although we had escaped a sunken rock, which we scraped in passing, I considered this escape the more important of the two.
At New York I found my friend Collins, who had arrived some time before me. We had been close since childhood and had read the same books together; but he had enjoyed more time for reading and study, and he had a wonderful genius for mathematics, in which he left me far behind. While I lived in Boston, most of my spare hours of conversation were spent with him, and he had continued a sober and industrious lad — well respected for his learning by several of the clergy and other gentlemen, and seemingly on his way to making a good figure in life. But during my absence he had acquired a habit of getting drunk on brandy, and I found — both from his own account and from what I heard from others — that he had been drunk every day since arriving in New York, and behaving very oddly. He had gambled, too, and lost his money, so that I was obliged to pay off his lodgings and cover his expenses to Philadelphia and after we got there — which proved extremely inconvenient for me.
The governor of New York at that time was Burnet — son of Bishop Burnet — and hearing from the captain that one of his young passengers had a great many books with him, he asked the captain to bring me by. I waited on him accordingly, and would have taken Collins along, except that he wasn't sober. The governor treated me with great civility, showed me his library, which was a very large one, and we had a good deal of conversation about books and authors. This was now the second governor who had done me the honor of taking notice of me — and to a poor boy like me, it was very pleasing.
We went on to Philadelphia. On the way I collected Vernon's money, without which we could hardly have finished the journey. Collins wanted a position in some countinghouse; but whether they detected his drinking by his breath or by his behavior, he had no success in any application, though he carried some recommendations, and he went on lodging and boarding at the same house with me — at my expense. Knowing I had Vernon's money, he was constantly borrowing from me, always promising repayment as soon as he found work. At last he had gotten so much of it that I was distressed to think what I would do if I were called on to remit it.
His drinking continued, and we sometimes quarreled about it, for when he was a little drunk he was very touchy. Once, in a boat on the Delaware with some other young men, he refused to take his turn rowing. "I will be rowed home," he said. "We won't row you," I said. "You must, or stay all night on the water," he said, "just as you please." The others said, "Let's just row — what does it matter?" But my mind was already soured by his conduct in general, and I kept refusing. So he swore he would make me row or throw me overboard, and came stepping along the thwarts toward me. When he got close and took a swing at me, I clapped my hand under his crotch and, rising, pitched him headfirst into the river. I knew he was a good swimmer, so I wasn't much worried about him; but before he could come around and lay hold of the boat, a few strokes had pulled her out of his reach. Every time he drew near, we asked whether he would row, and gave a few more strokes to slide her away from him. He was ready to die with vexation, and stubbornly refused to promise to row; but seeing him at last beginning to tire, we lifted him in and brought him home dripping wet in the evening. We hardly exchanged a civil word afterward. Eventually a West India captain, who had a commission to find a tutor for the sons of a gentleman in Barbados, happened to meet him and agreed to carry him there. He left me then, promising to remit me the first money he got his hands on, toward paying off the debt — but I never heard from him again.
Breaking into Vernon's money was one of the first great errata of my life; and the whole affair showed that my father had not been far off in judging me too young to manage business of any importance. But Sir William, on reading my father's letter, said he was being too prudent. People differed, he said; discretion didn't always come with years, and youth wasn't always without it. "And since he will not set you up," he said, "I will do it myself. Give me an inventory of the things you'd need from England, and I will send for them. You shall repay me when you are able; I am resolved to have a good printer here, and I am sure you must succeed." This was said with such an appearance of warmth that I didn't doubt for a moment he meant it. I had so far kept the whole scheme of my setting up a secret in Philadelphia, and I kept it still. Had it been known that I was depending on the governor, some friend who knew him better would probably have advised me not to count on him — for, as I heard afterward, it was his known character to be generous with promises he never meant to keep. But he was offering all this unasked; how could I imagine his generous offers were insincere? I believed him one of the best men in the world.
I presented him with an inventory for a small print shop, which by my reckoning came to about one hundred pounds sterling. He liked it, but asked whether it might not be some advantage for me to be in England myself, on the spot, to choose the type and see that everything was of good quality. "And then," he said, "while you're there, you can make acquaintances and establish connections in the bookselling and stationery line." I agreed that this might be advantageous. "Then," said he, "get yourself ready to go with the Annis" — the annual ship, and the only one at that time making regular passage between London and Philadelphia. But it would be some months before the Annis sailed, so I went on working with Keimer, fretting over the money Collins had gotten out of me, and in daily dread of Vernon calling for his — which, however, didn't happen for some years afterward.
I believe I've forgotten to mention that on my first voyage from Boston, becalmed off Block Island, our crew set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Until then I had stuck to my resolution not to eat animal food, and on this occasion I held, with my teacher Tryon, that taking any fish was a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had done us, or ever could do us, any injury that might justify the slaughter. All of this seemed very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and when the cod came hot out of the frying pan, it smelled admirably good. I wavered for a while between principle and inclination, until I remembered that when the fish were opened, I had seen smaller fish taken out of their stomachs. Then, thought I, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we can't eat you." So I dined on cod very heartily, and continued to eat what other people ate, returning only now and then to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
Keimer and I got along well enough on the surface, and agreed tolerably — he suspected nothing of my plans to set up on my own. He still carried a good deal of his old religious enthusiasm and loved an argument, so we had plenty of them. I used to work him over with my Socratic method: I'd snare him again and again with questions that seemed miles away from anything we were discussing, then lead him step by step into difficulties and contradictions, until at last he grew ridiculously cautious and would hardly answer the most ordinary question without first asking, "What do you intend to infer from that?" Still, all this gave him such a high opinion of my talents in the confuting line that he seriously proposed I join him in a project he had of founding a new religious sect. He would preach the doctrines; I would confound all opponents. But when he sat down to explain the doctrines to me, I found several puzzles I objected to — unless I could have my way a little too, and slip in some doctrines of my own.
Keimer wore his beard at full length, because somewhere in the Mosaic law it says, "Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard." He also kept Saturday as his Sabbath, and these two points were essentials with him. I disliked both, but agreed to accept them on condition that he adopt a doctrine of mine: no animal food. "I doubt," he said, "my constitution won't bear it." I assured him it would, and that he'd be the better for it. He was normally a tremendous glutton, and I promised myself some entertainment in half starving him. He agreed to try it if I'd keep him company, and we held to it for three months. A woman in the neighborhood cooked our meals and brought them to us regularly; she had from me a list of forty dishes to prepare for us at different times, with neither fish, flesh, nor fowl in any of them. The whim suited me all the better just then for its cheapness — it cost us no more than eighteenpence sterling a week apiece. I have since kept several Lents very strictly, dropping the ordinary diet for that one and switching back again abruptly, without the least inconvenience — so I put little stock in the advice that such changes must be made by easy stages. I went on pleasantly, but poor Keimer suffered grievously. He tired of the project, longed for the flesh-pots of Egypt, and ordered a roast pig. He invited me and two women friends to dine on it with him — but the pig came to the table a little too soon, and he couldn't resist the temptation. He ate the whole thing before we arrived.
During this time I had been doing some courting of Miss Read. I had great respect and affection for her, and some reason to believe she felt the same for me. But I was about to take a long voyage, and we were both very young — only a little past eighteen — so her mother thought it most prudent to keep things from going too far for the present. A marriage, if there was to be one, would be more convenient after my return, when I expected to be set up in my business. Perhaps, too, she thought my expectations weren't as well founded as I imagined them to be.
My chief friends at this time were Charles Osborne, Joseph Watson, and James Ralph — all lovers of reading. The first two were clerks to Charles Brockden, an eminent scrivener and conveyancer in town; the third was clerk to a merchant. Watson was a pious, sensible young man of great integrity; the other two were rather looser in their religious principles — particularly Ralph, who, like Collins, had been unsettled by me, and both of them made me pay for it. Osborne was sensible, candid, and frank, sincere and affectionate with his friends, but in literary matters too fond of criticizing. Ralph was clever, polished in his manners, and extremely eloquent; I don't think I ever knew a prettier talker. Both were great admirers of poetry and had begun trying their hands at little pieces. The four of us took many pleasant Sunday walks together in the woods near the Schuylkill, where we read to one another and talked over what we read.
Ralph was inclined to make poetry his pursuit. He had no doubt he could become eminent at it, and even make his fortune by it, arguing that the best poets, when they first began to write, must have made as many faults as he did. Osborne tried to talk him out of it — assured him he had no genius for poetry, and advised him to think of nothing beyond the business he'd been trained for: in the merchant's line, even with no capital of his own, his diligence and punctuality might recommend him to employment as an agent, and in time he could acquire enough to trade on his own account. My view was that amusing yourself with poetry now and then was fine, as far as it improved your command of language — but no farther.
Out of this came a proposal: at our next meeting, each of us would produce a piece of his own composing, so that we might improve by trading observations, criticisms, and corrections. Since language and expression were what we cared about, we ruled out any contest of invention by agreeing that the task would be a version of the eighteenth Psalm, which describes the descent of a Deity. As the meeting drew near, Ralph called on me first and told me his piece was ready. I told him I'd been busy and, having little inclination, had done nothing. He then showed me his piece for my opinion, and I approved it heartily — it seemed to me to have great merit. "Now," he said, "Osborne will never allow the least merit in anything of mine — he makes a thousand criticisms out of pure envy. He's not so jealous of you. So I'd like you to take this piece and present it as yours. I'll pretend I hadn't time, and produce nothing. Then we'll see what he says about it." It was agreed, and I copied it out immediately, so it would appear in my own handwriting.
We met. Watson's performance was read: some beauties in it, but many defects. Osborne's was read: much better. Ralph did it justice — pointed out some faults, but applauded the beauties. Ralph himself had nothing to produce. I hung back; seemed to want to be excused; hadn't had enough time to correct it, and so on. But no excuse would be accepted — produce I must. It was read, and read again. Watson and Osborne gave up the contest on the spot and joined in applauding it. Only Ralph made some criticisms and proposed some amendments — but I defended my text. Osborne sided against Ralph, told him he was no better a critic than he was a poet, and Ralph dropped the argument. As the two of them walked home together, Osborne praised what he took to be my production even more warmly — he'd restrained himself earlier, he said, in case I thought it flattery. "But who would have imagined," he said, "that Franklin was capable of such a performance — such painting, such force, such fire! He has even improved on the original. In ordinary conversation he seems to have no choice of words at all; he hesitates and blunders — and yet, good God, how he writes!" When we next met, Ralph revealed the trick we'd played on him, and Osborne got laughed at a little.
This episode fixed Ralph in his resolution to become a poet. I did everything I could to talk him out of it, but he kept scribbling verses until the poet Pope cured him. He became a pretty good prose writer, though. More of him later. As for the other two — since I may not have occasion to mention them again — I'll just note here that Watson died in my arms a few years later, much lamented; he was the best of our set. Osborne went to the West Indies, where he became an eminent lawyer and made money, but died young. He and I had made a serious agreement: whichever of us happened to die first would, if possible, pay a friendly visit to the other and report on how he found things in that separate state. But he never kept his promise.
The governor seemed to enjoy my company, and had me over to his house often, and my being set up in business was always spoken of as a settled thing. I was to carry letters of recommendation to a number of his friends, plus the all-important letter of credit that would supply the money for the press, the type, the paper, and everything else. He named times for me to call and collect these letters, and each time I called, they weren't quite ready — a new date was set. This went on until the ship, whose own departure had been postponed several times, was finally about to sail. Then, when I called to say goodbye and pick up the letters, his secretary, Dr. Bard, came out and told me the governor was extremely busy writing, but would be at Newcastle before the ship got there, and the letters would be delivered to me then.
Ralph, though married and with one child, had decided to make the voyage with me. Everyone assumed he meant to establish trade contacts and get goods to sell on commission; I found out later that, being on bad terms with his wife's relations, he intended to leave her on their hands and never come back at all. Having said my goodbyes and exchanged some promises with Miss Read, I left Philadelphia on the ship, which anchored at Newcastle. The governor was there — but when I went to his lodging, the secretary came out with the most courteous message in the world: the governor couldn't see me just now, being engaged in business of the utmost importance, but he would send the letters to me on board, and he wished me heartily a good voyage and a speedy return, and so on. I went back on board a little puzzled, but still not doubting him.
Mr. Andrew Hamilton, a famous Philadelphia lawyer, had booked passage on the same ship for himself and his son, and along with Mr. Denham, a Quaker merchant, and Messrs. Onion and Russel, owners of an ironworks in Maryland, had taken the great cabin — so Ralph and I had to make do with a berth in steerage, and since nobody on board knew us, we were treated as nobodies. But Mr. Hamilton and his son (this was James, later governor himself) turned back from Newcastle to Philadelphia, the father having been recalled by a very large fee to argue the case of a seized ship. And just before we sailed, Colonel French came on board and showed me great respect, which raised my stock considerably; the other gentlemen invited me, along with my friend Ralph, to move into the cabin, there now being room. So we did.
Knowing that Colonel French had brought the governor's dispatches on board, I asked the captain for the letters that were supposed to be in my care. He said they'd all been put into the mailbag together and he couldn't get at them just then, but before we landed in England I'd have a chance to pick them out. I was satisfied with that for the moment, and we went on with our voyage. We had good company in the cabin and lived uncommonly well, since we had the run of all Mr. Hamilton's provisions, and he had stocked up generously. On this passage Mr. Denham took a liking to me that lasted the rest of his life. Otherwise the voyage was not a pleasant one; we had a great deal of bad weather.
When we came into the Channel, the captain kept his word and let me go through the bag for the governor's letters. I found not one with my name on it as being in my care. I picked out six or seven that, judging by the handwriting, might be the promised ones — especially since one was addressed to Basket, the king's printer, and another to a stationer. We arrived in London on December 24, 1724. I called on the stationer, who was first on my route, and presented the letter as coming from Governor Keith. "I don't know any such person," he said; but on opening the letter: "Oh! This is from Riddlesden. I've lately found him to be a complete scoundrel, and I'll have nothing to do with him or any letters from him." And putting the letter back in my hand, he turned on his heel and left me to go serve a customer. I was stunned to find these weren't the governor's letters at all; and after thinking back and putting the pieces together, I began to doubt his sincerity. I found my friend Denham and laid the whole business before him. He filled me in on Keith's character: there wasn't the slightest chance he had written any letters for me; nobody who knew him relied on him for anything; and as for the governor giving me a letter of credit — Denham laughed out loud. The man had no credit to give. When I confessed some worry about what I should do now, he advised me to try to get work in my own trade. "Among the printers here," he said, "you'll improve yourself, and when you go back to America, you'll set up with that much more advantage."
We both happened to know, as the stationer did, that Riddlesden the attorney was a thorough crook. He had half ruined Miss Read's father by talking him into cosigning his debts. From this letter it appeared there was a secret scheme afoot against Hamilton's interests (he was assumed to be crossing over with us), and that Keith was in on it with Riddlesden. Denham, who was a friend of Hamilton's, thought he ought to know about it. So when Hamilton arrived in England, which was soon afterward, I called on him and gave him the letter — partly out of resentment toward Keith and Riddlesden, and partly out of goodwill toward him. He thanked me warmly, the information being genuinely valuable to him, and from that time on he was my friend, which proved greatly to my advantage on many later occasions.
But what are we to make of a governor playing such shabby tricks, and imposing so grossly on a poor ignorant boy? It was simply a habit he'd acquired. He wanted to please everybody; and having little to give, he gave expectations. He was otherwise a clever, sensible man, a pretty good writer, and a good governor for the people — though not for his constituents, the proprietaries, whose instructions he sometimes ignored. Several of our best laws were of his devising and passed under his administration.
Ralph and I were inseparable. We took lodgings together in Little Britain at three shillings and sixpence a week — as much as we could then afford. He looked up some relations, but they were poor and couldn't help him. Now he let me in on his real intention: he was staying in London and never going back to Philadelphia. He had brought no money with him — everything he could scrape together had gone to pay his passage. I had fifteen pistoles, so he borrowed from me now and then to live on while he looked for work. First he tried to get into the theater, believing himself cut out to be an actor; but Wilkes, the actor he applied to, candidly advised him not to think of it, since he couldn't possibly succeed. Then he proposed to Roberts, a publisher in Paternoster Row, that he write him a weekly paper along the lines of the Spectator, on certain terms Roberts didn't care for. Then he tried to find work as a copyist, transcribing for the stationers and lawyers around the Temple, but there were no openings.
I, meanwhile, got work immediately at Palmer's, then a famous printing house in Bartholomew Close, and I stayed there nearly a year. I worked hard enough, but spent a good share of my earnings with Ralph on plays and other amusements. Between us we went through all my pistoles, and after that we just scraped along hand to mouth. He seemed to forget his wife and child entirely, and I, by degrees, forgot my engagements with Miss Read — I never wrote her more than one letter, and that was only to say I wasn't likely to return anytime soon. This was another of the great errata of my life, one I'd wish to correct if I were living it over again. In fact, what with our spending, I was never able to save up my passage home.
At Palmer's I was set to composing the type for the second edition of Wollaston's Religion of Nature. Some of his arguments didn't strike me as well founded, and I wrote a little metaphysical piece commenting on them, titled "A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain." I dedicated it to my friend Ralph and printed a small run. It got Mr. Palmer to regard me as a young man of some ingenuity — though he lectured me seriously about the principles of the pamphlet, which struck him as abominable. Printing that pamphlet was another erratum.
While I lodged in Little Britain I got acquainted with one Wilcox, a bookseller whose shop was next door. He had an immense stock of secondhand books. Circulating libraries didn't exist yet, but we agreed that on certain reasonable terms — which I've now forgotten — I could take out, read, and return any of his books. I considered this a great advantage, and I made all the use of it I could.
My pamphlet somehow found its way into the hands of one Lyons, a surgeon and the author of a book called The Infallibility of Human Judgment, and it led to an acquaintance between us. He paid me a great deal of attention, called on me often to talk over those subjects, took me to the Horns, a pale-ale house in ⸻ Lane, Cheapside, and introduced me to Dr. Mandeville, author of the Fable of the Bees, who had a club there of which he was the life and soul — a most witty, entertaining companion. Lyons also introduced me to Dr. Pemberton at Batson's Coffeehouse, who promised to arrange, sometime or other, for me to see Sir Isaac Newton — something I wanted extremely. But it never happened.
I had brought over a few curiosities, the chief of which was a purse made of asbestos, which fire cleans instead of burning. Sir Hans Sloane heard about it, came to see me, and invited me to his house in Bloomsbury Square, where he showed me all his own curiosities and persuaded me to let him add mine to the collection — for which he paid me handsomely.
In our house there lodged a young woman, a milliner, who I think had a shop in the Cloisters. She had been genteelly raised, was sensible and lively, and was most pleasant company in conversation. Ralph read plays to her in the evenings; they grew intimate; she took other lodgings, and he followed her. They lived together for a while, but he was still out of work, and her income wasn't enough to support them along with her child, so he resolved to leave London and try for a country school. He thought himself well qualified for it, since he wrote an excellent hand and was a master of arithmetic and bookkeeping. But he considered the work beneath him, and — confident of grander fortunes to come, when he wouldn't want it known he had ever been so humbly employed — he changed his name, and did me the honor of assuming mine. For soon afterward I had a letter from him saying he was settled in a small village (in Berkshire, I think it was, where he taught reading and writing to ten or a dozen boys at sixpence a week each), commending Mrs. T⸺ to my care, and asking me to write to him addressed to Mr. Franklin, schoolmaster, at such-and-such a place.
He kept writing frequently, sending me long stretches of an epic poem he was composing and asking for my remarks and corrections. I gave them from time to time, but tried mostly to discourage him from going on. One of Young's Satires had just been published; I copied out a large part of it and sent it to him — it put in a strong light the folly of chasing the Muses with any hope of getting ahead by them. All in vain: sheets of the poem kept arriving by every post. Meanwhile Mrs. T⸺, having lost her friends and her business on his account, was often in difficulties, and would send for me and borrow what I could spare to get her out of them. I grew fond of her company, and being at that time under no religious restraint, and presuming on my importance to her, I attempted familiarities (another erratum), which she repulsed with proper indignation, and she told him how I'd behaved. This made a breach between us, and when he came back to London he informed me that he considered all his obligations to me canceled. So I learned I was never to expect repayment of anything I'd lent him or laid out for him. Not that it mattered much just then — he was flat broke anyway — and in losing his friendship I found myself relieved of a burden. I now began to think about getting a little money ahead, and expecting better work, I left Palmer's for Watts's, near Lincoln's Inn Fields, an even bigger printing house. There I stayed for the rest of my time in London.
On first joining this house I chose to work at the press, imagining I missed the physical exercise I'd been used to in America, where presswork is mixed in with composing. I drank only water; the other workmen, nearly fifty of them, were mighty guzzlers of beer. On occasion I carried a large form of type up and down the stairs in each hand, while the others carried one with both hands. They were amazed to see, from this and other instances, that the "Water-American," as they called me, was stronger than they were — and they drank strong beer! We had an alehouse boy who was always on hand in the house to keep the workmen supplied. My companion at the press drank a pint every day before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon around six o'clock, and another when his day's work was done. I thought it a detestable custom; but he supposed it was necessary to drink strong beer in order to be strong for labor. I tried to convince him that the bodily strength beer could give was only in proportion to the grain or barley flour dissolved in the water it was made from; that there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread; and that if he'd eat that with a pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer. He drank on regardless, and had four or five shillings to pay out of his wages every Saturday night for that muddling liquor — an expense I was free of. And that is how these poor devils keep themselves always down.
After some weeks Watts wanted me in the composing room, so I left the pressmen. The compositors then demanded a new bien venu from me — an initiation fee for drink money, five shillings. I thought it was extortion, since I'd already paid downstairs; the master thought so too, and forbade me to pay it. I held out for two or three weeks, was accordingly treated as an excommunicate, and had so many little pieces of private mischief done to me — my type cases scrambled, my pages transposed, my set matter broken up, and so on, and so on, whenever I stepped out of the room for a moment, all of it blamed on the chapel ghost, which they said always haunted those not properly admitted — that despite the master's protection I found myself obliged to give in and pay the money, convinced of the folly of being on bad terms with people you have to live with every day.
I was now on a fair footing with them, and soon acquired considerable influence. I proposed some sensible changes to their chapel laws — their shop rules — and carried them against all opposition. Following my example, a good number of them gave up their muddling breakfast of beer, bread, and cheese, finding that they could join me in getting, from a house nearby, a big porringer of hot water-gruel, sprinkled with pepper, crumbled with bread, and with a bit of butter in it — all for the price of a pint of beer, that is, three halfpence. It was a more comfortable as well as a cheaper breakfast, and it kept their heads clearer. The ones who went on soaking in beer all day were often out of credit at the alehouse for not paying, and would come courting me to stand them their beer — their "light," as they put it, "being out." I kept watch at the pay table on Saturday nights and collected whatever I'd guaranteed for them, sometimes having to cover nearly thirty shillings a week on their accounts. This, plus my reputation as a pretty good riggite — that is, a joking verbal satirist — kept up my standing in the society. My steady attendance (I never took a "St. Monday" off) recommended me to the master, and my unusual speed at composing got me put on all the rush work, which generally paid better. So things now went along very agreeably.
My lodging in Little Britain being too far from work, I found another in Duke Street, opposite the Roman Catholic chapel — two flights up at the back, over an Italian goods warehouse. A widow lady kept the house; she had a daughter, a maidservant, and a journeyman who tended the warehouse but lodged elsewhere. After sending to my previous lodging to inquire about my character, she agreed to take me in at the same rate, three shillings and sixpence a week — cheaper, she said, on account of the protection she expected from having a man in the house. She was an elderly widow, raised a Protestant — a clergyman's daughter — but converted to the Catholic religion by her husband, whose memory she deeply revered. She had moved in distinguished circles and knew a thousand anecdotes about notable people going back as far as the days of Charles the Second. She was lame in the knees with gout and so rarely stirred from her room, and sometimes wanted company; and hers was so entertaining to me that I made sure to spend an evening with her whenever she asked. Our supper was only half an anchovy apiece on a little strip of bread and butter, with half a pint of ale between us; but the entertainment was in her conversation. My keeping good hours and giving the household so little trouble made her reluctant to lose me; so when I mentioned a lodging I'd heard of nearer my work, at two shillings a week — which, intent as I now was on saving money, made a real difference — she told me not to think of it, for she'd knock two shillings off my rent going forward. So I stayed with her at one shilling and sixpence for as long as I remained in London.
In a garret of her house there lived a maiden lady of seventy, in the most secluded way imaginable. My landlady gave me this account of her: she was a Roman Catholic who had been sent abroad when young and lodged in a nunnery, intending to become a nun; but the country didn't agree with her, so she returned to England, where, there being no nunnery, she had vowed to live the life of a nun as nearly as circumstances allowed. Accordingly she had given her whole estate to charity, keeping only twelve pounds a year to live on — and even out of that she still gave a great deal away, living on nothing but water-gruel herself, and using no fire except to boil it. She had lived many years in that garret, allowed to stay rent-free by one Catholic tenant after another in the rooms below, since they counted it a blessing to have her there. A priest visited her every day to hear her confession. "I once asked her," said my landlady, "how she, living as she did, could possibly find so much employment for a confessor." "Oh," she replied, "it is impossible to avoid vain thoughts." I was permitted to visit her once. She was cheerful and polite, and conversed pleasantly. The room was clean, but its only furnishings were a mattress, a table with a crucifix and a book, a stool she gave me to sit on, and, over the fireplace, a picture of Saint Veronica displaying her handkerchief with the miraculous image of Christ's bleeding face on it, which she explained to me with great seriousness. She looked pale, but was never sick; and I set it down as one more instance of how small an income can support life and health.
At Watts's printing house I struck up an acquaintance with a clever young man named Wygate, who, having wealthy relations, had been better educated than most printers: he was a decent Latinist, spoke French, and loved to read. I taught him and a friend of his to swim in just two trips to the river, and they soon became good swimmers. They introduced me to some gentlemen from the country who were going by water to Chelsea to see the College and Don Saltero's curiosities. On the way back, at the company's request — Wygate having whetted their curiosity — I stripped and leaped into the river, and swam from near Chelsea all the way to Blackfriars, performing along the way plenty of feats, on the water and under it, that surprised and delighted people to whom they were novelties.
I had loved this exercise since childhood, had studied and practiced all of Thevenot's strokes and positions, and had added some of my own, aiming at the graceful and easy as well as the useful. All of these I took this occasion to show off to the company, and I was much flattered by their admiration. Wygate, who wanted to become a real master of it, grew more and more attached to me on that account, as well as from the similarity of our interests. He eventually proposed that the two of us travel all over Europe together, supporting ourselves everywhere by working at our trade. I was inclined to it for a while; but when I mentioned it to my good friend Mr. Denham, with whom I often spent an hour when I had free time, he talked me out of it, advising me to think only of returning to Pennsylvania, which he himself was now about to do.
I must record one trait of this good man's character. He had once been in business in Bristol, but failed owing money to a number of people, settled with them for partial payment, and went to America. There, by close application to business as a merchant, he made a handsome fortune in a few years. Returning to England on the same ship with me, he invited his old creditors to a dinner, at which he thanked them for the easy terms they had once granted him; and when they expected nothing beyond the meal itself, every man, as the first course was cleared, found under his plate a bank draft for the full amount of the unpaid balance — with interest.
He now told me he was about to return to Philadelphia and would be carrying over a great quantity of goods to open a store there. He proposed to take me along as his clerk — to keep his books (which he would teach me), copy his letters, and mind the store. He added that as soon as I'd learned the mercantile business, he would advance me by sending me with a cargo of flour and bread and so on to the West Indies, and would get me profitable commissions from others; and if I managed well, he would set me up handsomely. The offer pleased me, for I had grown tired of London, remembered with pleasure my happy months in Pennsylvania, and wanted to see it again. So I agreed at once, at fifty pounds a year, Pennsylvania money — less, it's true, than I was currently earning as a compositor, but with far better prospects.
I now took leave of printing, as I thought, forever, and was busy every day at my new trade, going around with Mr. Denham among the tradesmen to buy various goods, seeing them packed, running errands, calling on workmen to hurry things along, and so on; and when everything was aboard, I had a few days of leisure. On one of those days I was, to my surprise, sent for by a great man I knew only by name: Sir William Wyndham. I waited on him. He had heard, one way or another, of my swimming from Chelsea to Blackfriars, and of my teaching Wygate and another young man to swim in a matter of hours. He had two sons about to set out on their travels; he wanted them taught swimming first, and offered to reward me handsomely if I would do it. They hadn't yet come to town, and my own stay was uncertain, so I couldn't take it on. But the incident made me think that if I stayed in England and opened a swimming school, I might make good money — and it struck me so forcibly that if the offer had come sooner, I probably wouldn't have returned to America so soon. Many years later, you and I had business of far greater importance with one of these sons of Sir William Wyndham, by then Earl of Egremont — which I'll tell in its place.
So passed about eighteen months in London. Most of the time I worked hard at my trade and spent little on myself except for plays and books. My friend Ralph had kept me poor: he owed me about twenty-seven pounds, which I was now never likely to see — a great sum out of my small earnings! I loved him all the same, for he had many likable qualities. I had by no means improved my fortune; but I had picked up some very clever acquaintances whose conversation did me a great deal of good, and I had read considerably.
We sailed from Gravesend on July 23, 1726. For the incidents of the voyage I'll refer you to my journal, where you'll find them all set down in detail. Probably the most important thing in that journal is the plan I drew up at sea for regulating my future conduct in life. It's the more remarkable for having been formed when I was so young — and yet I stuck to it pretty faithfully all the way into old age.
We landed in Philadelphia on October 11, where I found a number of things changed. Keith was no longer governor; he'd been replaced by Major Gordon. I met him walking the streets as an ordinary citizen. He seemed a little ashamed to see me, but passed by without a word. I'd have been just as ashamed at seeing Miss Read, except that her friends — despairing of my return, with good reason, after they got my letter — had persuaded her to marry another man, one Rogers, a potter, which was done while I was away. She was never happy with him, though, and soon left him, refusing to live with him or use his name, since word had it by then that he had another wife. He was a worthless fellow, though an excellent workman — which was what had tempted her friends. He ran into debt, ran off in 1727 or 1728, went to the West Indies, and died there. As for Keimer, he had a better house now, a shop well stocked with stationery, plenty of new type, and a number of workmen — though none of them any good — and he seemed to be doing a great deal of business.
Mr. Denham took a store on Water Street, where we opened our goods. I attended to the business diligently, studied bookkeeping, and in a little while became expert at selling. We lodged and boarded together; he advised me like a father, having a sincere regard for me. I respected and loved him, and we might have gone on together very happily; but at the beginning of February, 1726/7, when I had just turned twenty-one, we both fell ill. My sickness was pleurisy, and it very nearly carried me off. I suffered a good deal, gave myself up for lost, and was actually rather disappointed when I found myself recovering — regretting, in some degree, that now I'd have to do all that disagreeable dying business over again someday. I forget what his illness was; it held him a long time and finally carried him off. He left me a small legacy in a nuncupative will — one spoken aloud, not written — as a token of his kindness to me, and left me, once more, to the wide world; for the store passed into the hands of his executors, and my employment under him was over.
My brother-in-law Holmes, who was now in Philadelphia, advised me to go back to my own trade; and Keimer tempted me with the offer of a large yearly salary to come and manage his printing house, so he could give more attention to his stationery shop. I'd heard a bad account of him in London from his wife and her friends, and wasn't eager to have anything more to do with him. I tried to find work as a merchant's clerk; but nothing turned up quickly, so I closed with Keimer again. In his shop I found this crew: Hugh Meredith, a Welsh Pennsylvanian, thirty years old, raised to farm work — honest, sensible, full of solid practical observation, something of a reader, but given to drink. Stephen Potts, a young countryman just come of age, raised to the same work, with uncommon natural gifts and great wit and humor, but a little lazy. Keimer had signed these two at extremely low weekly wages, to be raised a shilling every three months as they earned it by improving at the trade — and it was the expectation of those high wages, someday, that he'd used to reel them in. Meredith was to work the press, Potts to do bookbinding, and Keimer, by their agreement, was to teach them both — though he knew neither one nor the other. Then there was John, a wild Irishman brought up to no trade at all, whose service Keimer had bought for four years from a ship's captain; he too was to be made a pressman. George Webb, an Oxford scholar, whose time he had likewise bought for four years, intended for a typesetter — more about him shortly. And David Harry, a country boy he'd taken on as an apprentice.
I soon saw what Keimer was up to in hiring me at wages so much higher than he was used to paying: he wanted these raw, cheap hands trained up through me, and once I'd taught them — they all being bound to him by contract — he'd be able to do without me. I carried on cheerfully all the same, put his printing house in order (it had been in total confusion), and gradually got his men to mind their work and do it better.
It was an odd thing to find an Oxford scholar in the position of a bought servant. Webb was no more than eighteen, and gave me this account of himself: he was born in Gloucester and educated at the grammar school there, where he'd stood out among the students for a certain flair in acting when they put on plays; he belonged to the Witty Club there and had written some pieces in prose and verse that were printed in the Gloucester newspapers. From there he was sent to Oxford, where he stayed about a year, but was never satisfied — what he wanted above everything was to see London and become an actor. At last, when his quarterly allowance of fifteen guineas arrived, instead of paying his debts he walked out of town, hid his academic gown in a furze bush, and hiked to London. There, with no friend to advise him, he fell into bad company, soon ran through his guineas, found no way of getting introduced among the actors, grew desperate, pawned his clothes, and went hungry. Walking the street, starving and with no idea what to do with himself, he was handed a crimp's bill — a recruiting flyer offering immediate food and encouragement to anyone who would sign on to serve in America. He went straight in, signed the indenture papers, was put aboard ship, and came over — without ever writing a line to let his friends know what had become of him. He was lively, witty, good-natured, and pleasant company, but idle, thoughtless, and reckless to the last degree.
John the Irishman soon ran away. With the rest I began to get along very agreeably, for they all respected me the more once they found that Keimer was incapable of teaching them anything, while from me they learned something every day. We never worked Saturdays — that being Keimer's Sabbath — so I had two days a week for reading. My acquaintance among the clever, inquiring people of the town kept growing. Keimer himself treated me with great civility and apparent regard, and nothing troubled me now except my debt to Vernon, which I was still unable to pay, being as yet a poor manager of money. He, however, kindly never demanded it.
Our printing house often ran short of sorts — individual pieces of type — and there was no typefounder in America. I had seen type cast at James's foundry in London, though without paying much attention to how it was done; but I now contrived a mold, used the letters we had as punches, struck the matrices in lead, and in this way supplied all our shortages tolerably well. I also did occasional engraving; I made the ink; I was warehouseman and everything else — in short, a complete factotum.
But however useful I was, I found my services counting for less every day as the other hands improved at the trade; and when Keimer paid my second quarter's wages, he let me know he found them too heavy and thought I ought to take a cut. He grew less civil by degrees, played the master more, found fault constantly, picked at everything, and seemed to be building toward an explosion. I carried on anyway with a good deal of patience, figuring his tangled finances were partly to blame. At length a trifle snapped the connection. A great commotion broke out near the courthouse, and I stuck my head out the window to see what was going on. Keimer, who was down in the street, looked up, saw me, and shouted at me in a loud, angry voice to mind my business — adding some insulting words that stung all the more for being public, since every neighbor looking out at the same commotion witnessed how I was being treated. He came straight up into the printing house and kept the quarrel going; hot words passed on both sides; he gave me the quarter's notice we had agreed on, saying he wished he weren't obliged to give me so much warning. I told him his wish was unnecessary, because I'd leave him that instant — and so, taking my hat, I walked out the door, asking Meredith, whom I saw below, to look after a few things I'd left and bring them to my lodgings.
Meredith came by that evening, and we talked my situation over. He had developed a great regard for me and hated the idea of my leaving the shop while he was still stuck in it. He talked me out of returning to New England, which I'd begun to consider. He reminded me that Keimer was in debt for everything he owned; that his creditors were getting nervous; that he ran his shop miserably, often selling at no profit for ready cash and often extending credit without keeping accounts; that he must therefore fail — which would leave an opening I could profit from. I objected that I had no money. He then told me that his father had a high opinion of me and, from certain conversations they'd had, he was sure would advance money to set us up, if I would go into partnership with him. "My time with Keimer is up in the spring," he said. "By then we can have our press and type in from London. I know I'm no workman; if you agree, your skill in the business can be set against the stock I furnish, and we'll split the profits equally."
The proposal suited me, and I consented. His father was in town and approved it — all the more because he saw I had great influence with his son, had already prevailed on him to give up hard liquor for long stretches, and might, the father hoped, break him of that wretched habit entirely once we were so closely tied together. I gave the father an inventory of what we'd need, and he carried it to a merchant; the order was sent for, the secret was to be kept until it arrived, and in the meantime I was to find work, if I could, at the other printing house in town. But there was no opening there, so I sat idle for a few days — until Keimer, who had the prospect of a job printing paper money in New Jersey that would require engravings and a variety of type only I could supply, and who was afraid Bradford might hire me and snatch the job away, sent me a very civil message: that old friends shouldn't part over a few words spoken in a flash of temper, and that he wished me to come back. Meredith urged me to accept, since it would give him more chances to improve under my daily instruction; so I returned, and we went on more smoothly than we had for some time. He got the New Jersey job. For it I contrived a copperplate press — the first ever seen in the country — and I cut several ornaments and checks for the bills. We went together to Burlington, where I carried out the whole job to everyone's satisfaction; and he received so large a payment for the work that it kept his head above water a good while longer.
At Burlington I made the acquaintance of many of the leading people of the province. Several of them had been appointed by the Assembly as a committee to attend at the press and make sure no more bills were printed than the law allowed. So they took turns being constantly with us, and whoever's turn it was generally brought a friend or two along for company. My mind had been far better furnished by reading than Keimer's, and I suppose that's why my conversation seemed the more valued. They had me to their houses, introduced me to their friends, and showed me great civility, while he — though the master — was somewhat neglected. In truth he was an odd fish: ignorant of ordinary life, fond of rudely contradicting accepted opinions, slovenly to the point of outright dirtiness, fanatical on certain points of religion, and a bit of a rascal besides.
We stayed there nearly three months, and by that time I could count among my new friends Judge Allen; Samuel Bustill, the secretary of the province; Isaac Pearson; Joseph Cooper; several of the Smiths, members of the Assembly; and Isaac Decow, the surveyor-general. This last was a shrewd, sharp old man who told me he'd started out for himself, when young, wheeling clay for brickmakers; learned to write only after he came of age; carried the chain for surveyors, who taught him surveying; and had now, by his own industry, acquired a good estate. "I foresee," he said, "that you'll soon work this man out of his business and make a fortune at it in Philadelphia." He had, at that point, not the least hint of my intention to set up there or anywhere else. These friends were afterward of great use to me, as I occasionally was to some of them, and they all kept up their regard for me as long as they lived.
Before I come to my public start in business, it may be worth telling you the state of my mind at that time regarding principles and morals, so you can see how far they influenced the later events of my life. My parents had given me religious impressions early, and brought me up piously through childhood in the Dissenting way. But I was barely fifteen when, after doubting one point and then another as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands — said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's Lectures. They worked on me an effect precisely opposite to the one intended: the arguments of the Deists, quoted in order to be refuted, struck me as much stronger than the refutations. In short, I soon became a thorough Deist. My arguments corrupted some others — particularly Collins and Ralph; but each of them afterward wronged me badly without the least remorse, and when I recalled Keith's conduct toward me (another freethinker), and my own conduct toward Vernon and Miss Read, which at times troubled me greatly, I began to suspect that this doctrine, though it might be true, was not very useful. My London pamphlet — which had taken for its motto these lines of Dryden:
"Whatever is, is right. Though purblind man Sees but a part o' the chain, the nearest link: His eyes not carrying to the equal beam, That poises all above;"
and which had concluded, from the attributes of God — his infinite wisdom, goodness, and power — that nothing could possibly be wrong in the world, and that vice and virtue were empty distinctions, no such things existing — now looked to me a much less clever performance than I'd once thought it. I began to doubt whether some error hadn't slipped unnoticed into my argument and infected everything that followed, as commonly happens in metaphysical reasoning.
I grew convinced that truth, sincerity, and integrity in dealings between one person and another were of the utmost importance to a happy life, and I wrote out resolutions — they still survive in my journal book — to practice them as long as I lived. Revelation, as such, carried no weight with me; but I came to hold the opinion that although certain actions might not be bad simply because Revelation forbade them, or good simply because it commanded them, yet probably those actions were forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded because they were good for us, in their own natures, all things considered. And this conviction — along with the kind hand of Providence, or some guardian angel, or a run of lucky circumstances, or all of them together — carried me through that dangerous season of youth, and through the hazardous situations I sometimes found myself in among strangers, far from my father's eye and advice, without any willful gross immorality or injustice of the sort my lack of religion might have led you to expect. I say willful, because the instances I've already mentioned had something of necessity in them, arising from my youth, my inexperience, and the knavery of others. So I had a tolerably good character to begin the world with; I valued it properly, and was determined to keep it.
We hadn't been back in Philadelphia long before the new type arrived from London. We settled up with Keimer and left him, with his consent, before he heard anything of our plan. We found a house to rent near the market and took it. To lighten the rent — which was then only twenty-four pounds a year, though I've since known the same house to rent for seventy — we took in Thomas Godfrey, a glazier, and his family, who were to pay a considerable share of it, and we boarded with them. We had barely unpacked our type and set up our press when George House, an acquaintance of mine, brought in a countryman he'd met in the street asking for a printer. All our cash by then had gone into the endless particulars we'd had to buy, and this countryman's five shillings, our very first earnings, coming so exactly when needed, gave me more pleasure than any crown I've earned since; and the gratitude I felt toward House has made me, ever after, readier than I might otherwise have been to help young beginners.
There are croakers in every country — people forever prophesying its ruin. There was one such then living in Philadelphia, a person of note, an elderly man with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopped one day at my door and asked whether I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing house. When I said I was, he told me he was sorry for me: it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost, for Philadelphia was a sinking place, its people already half bankrupt or close to it; all appearances to the contrary — new buildings, rising rents — were, to his certain knowledge, deceptive, being in fact among the very things that would soon ruin us all. And he gave me such a catalog of misfortunes, existing or shortly to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I went into the business, I probably never would have gone into it. This man went on living in that decaying place, and declaiming in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there because everything was headed for destruction — and in the end I had the pleasure of seeing him pay five times as much for one as it would have cost him when he first began his croaking.
I should have mentioned before this that in the autumn of the previous year I had gathered most of my clever acquaintances into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the Junto; we met on Friday evenings. The rules I drew up required every member, in turn, to produce one or more questions on any point of morals, politics, or natural philosophy, to be discussed by the company; and once every three months to write and read an essay of his own, on any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be run by a president and conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without any appetite for dispute or desire for victory; and to keep tempers cool, all expressions of cocksureness in opinion, and all direct contradiction, were after a while made contraband, and banned under small cash fines.
The first members were: Joseph Breintnal, a copier of deeds for the scriveners — a good-natured, friendly, middle-aged man, a great lover of poetry, who read all of it he could get his hands on and wrote some that was tolerable; very clever at all sorts of little handicrafts, and sensible company.
Thomas Godfrey, a self-taught mathematician, great in his own line, and afterward the inventor of what is now called Hadley's Quadrant. But he knew little outside his line and wasn't pleasant company; like most great mathematicians I've met, he demanded universal precision in everything said, and was forever contradicting or quibbling over trifles, to the ruin of all conversation. He soon left us.
Nicholas Scull, a surveyor, afterward surveyor-general, who loved books and sometimes made a few verses.
William Parsons, bred a shoemaker, but who, loving to read, had picked up a considerable share of mathematics — which he first studied with an eye to astrology, and afterward laughed at himself for it. He also became surveyor-general.
William Maugridge, a joiner, a most exquisite craftsman, and a solid, sensible man.
Hugh Meredith, Stephen Potts, and George Webb I've described already.
Robert Grace, a young gentleman of some fortune — generous, lively, and witty; a lover of puns and of his friends.
And William Coleman, then a merchant's clerk, about my own age, who had the coolest, clearest head, the best heart, and the most exact morals of almost any man I ever met. He afterward became a merchant of great note and one of our provincial judges. Our friendship continued unbroken to his death, more than forty years; and the club lasted almost as long, and was the best school of philosophy, morality, and politics that then existed in the province. For our questions, which were read out a week before their discussion, set us reading with real attention on the various subjects, so that we could speak more to the point; and here, too, we picked up better habits of conversation, since everything in our rules was designed to keep us from disgusting one another. Hence the long life of the club — of which I'll have frequent occasion to say more later.
But my reason for describing it here is to show something of the pull I now had, since every one of these men exerted himself to steer business our way. Breintnal in particular got us, from the Quakers, the printing of forty sheets of their history, the rest being assigned to Keimer; and on this we worked exceedingly hard, for the price was low. It was a folio, pro patria size, set in pica with notes in the smaller long-primer type. I composed a sheet of it a day, and Meredith worked it off at press. It was often eleven at night, and sometimes later, before I'd finished distributing my type for the next day's work, because the little jobs our other friends sent in now and then set us back. But I was so determined to keep up my sheet a day of the folio that one night, when I'd imposed my forms and thought my day's work done, one of them was accidentally broken and two pages knocked into pi — a jumbled heap of type — and I immediately distributed it and set it all over again before I went to bed. This industry, visible to our neighbors, began to give us standing and credit. In particular, I was told that when the new printing office was mentioned at the merchants' Every-Night Club, the general opinion was that it must fail, there being two printers in town already, Keimer and Bradford; but Dr. Baird (whom you and I saw many years later at his birthplace, St. Andrews in Scotland) gave a contrary opinion: "The industry of that Franklin," he said, "is superior to anything of the kind I ever saw. I see him still at work when I go home from club, and he's at work again before his neighbors are out of bed." This struck the rest, and soon afterward one of them offered to supply us with stationery to sell; but we didn't yet choose to go into shopkeeping.
I dwell on this industry the more particularly, and the more freely — even though it sounds like singing my own praises — so that those of my descendants who read this may know the use of that virtue, when they see its effects working in my favor all through this account.
George Webb, who had found a lady friend willing to lend him the money to buy his remaining time from Keimer, now came to offer himself to us as a journeyman. We couldn't employ him then; but I foolishly let him in on a secret — that I soon intended to start a newspaper, and might have work for him at that point. My hopes of success, I told him, rested on this: the only newspaper then in town, printed by Bradford, was a paltry thing, wretchedly managed and not the least bit entertaining, yet it made him money; so I reckoned a good paper could hardly fail to do well. I asked Webb to keep it quiet; but he told Keimer, who immediately — to get ahead of me — published proposals for starting a paper himself, with Webb to be employed on it. This I resented; and since I couldn't yet launch our own paper, I set out to undercut them by writing several entertaining pieces for Bradford's paper, under the name of the "Busy-Body," which Breintnal kept up for some months after me. By this means the public's attention was fixed on Bradford's paper, and Keimer's proposals — which we burlesqued and ridiculed — were ignored. He started his paper anyway, and after dragging it along for three quarters of a year with at most ninety subscribers, he offered it to me for a trifle. I had been ready for some time to run a paper, so I took it over at once; and within a few years it proved extremely profitable to me.
I notice I keep saying "I," though our partnership still continued. The reason may be that, in fact, the whole management of the business fell on me. Meredith was no typesetter, a poor pressman, and seldom sober. My friends lamented my being tied to him, but I had to make the best of it.
Our first issues made an appearance quite different from anything seen before in the province — better type, better printing; and some spirited remarks of mine on the dispute then running between Governor Burnet and the Massachusetts Assembly struck the principal people, got the paper and its manager talked about everywhere, and within a few weeks brought them all in as our subscribers.
Many others followed their example, and our subscription list kept growing. This was one of the first good effects of my having learned, a little, to scribble. Another was that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of someone who could also handle a pen, thought it worthwhile to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes and laws and other public business. He had printed an address from the House to the governor in a coarse, blundering manner; we reprinted it elegantly and correctly, and sent a copy to every member. They felt the difference; it strengthened the hands of our friends in the House, and they voted us their printers for the year following.
Among my friends in the House I mustn't forget Mr. Hamilton, mentioned earlier, who had now returned from England and held a seat there. He took up my cause strongly in that instance, as he did in many others afterward, continuing his patronage until his death.
Mr. Vernon, about this time, reminded me of the debt I owed him, though he didn't press me. I wrote him a frank letter of acknowledgment, begged his patience a little longer, which he granted, and as soon as I was able I paid him the principal with interest, and many thanks besides — so that erratum was, in some degree, corrected.
But now another difficulty fell on me that I'd had not the least reason to expect. Mr. Meredith's father, who was to have paid for our printing house according to the expectations I'd been given, was able to advance only a hundred pounds currency, which had been paid; and a hundred more was still owed to the merchant, who grew impatient and sued us all. We posted bail, but we could see that if the money couldn't be raised in time, the suit would soon come to judgment and execution, and our hopeful prospects would be ruined along with us, since the press and type would have to be sold for payment — probably at half price.
In this distress, two true friends — whose kindness I have never forgotten, and never shall while I can remember anything — came to me separately, each without the other's knowledge and without any appeal from me, and each offered to advance me all the money necessary to take the whole business into my own hands, if that could be managed. They didn't like my continuing the partnership with Meredith, who, they said, was often seen drunk in the streets and playing cheap gambling games in alehouses, much to our discredit. These two friends were William Coleman and Robert Grace. I told them I couldn't propose a separation while any prospect remained of the Merediths keeping their part of our agreement, because I felt myself under great obligation to them for what they had done, and would do if they could; but if they finally failed to perform, and the partnership had to be dissolved, then I'd consider myself free to accept my friends' help.
So the matter rested for a while — until one day I said to my partner, "Perhaps your father is unhappy with the part you've taken in this affair of ours, and is unwilling to advance for the two of us what he would for you alone. If that's the case, tell me, and I'll turn the whole business over to you and go my way." "No," he said, "my father has really been disappointed, and really can't do it; and I'm unwilling to distress him further. I can see this is a business I'm not fit for. I was bred a farmer, and it was folly in me to come to town and apprentice myself, at thirty years old, to learn a new trade. Many of our Welsh people are moving to North Carolina, where land is cheap. I'm inclined to go with them and take up my old employment. You can find friends to help you. If you'll take the company's debts on yourself, return to my father the hundred pounds he advanced, pay my few personal debts, and give me thirty pounds and a new saddle, I'll give up the partnership and leave the whole business in your hands." I agreed to the proposal; it was drawn up in writing, signed, and sealed on the spot. I gave him what he asked, and he went off soon after to Carolina — from which, the next year, he sent me two long letters containing the best account yet given of that country, its climate, soil, farming, and so on, for in those matters he was very sound. I printed them in the papers, and the public was well pleased with them.
As soon as he was gone, I went back to my two friends; and because I wouldn't show an unkind preference for either, I took half of what each had offered — and half of what I needed from one, half from the other — paid off the company's debts, and carried on the business in my own name, advertising that the partnership was dissolved. I believe this was in or about the year 1729.
About this time there was a public outcry for more paper money. Only fifteen thousand pounds of it existed in the whole province, and even that was soon to be retired. The wealthy residents opposed printing any more — they were against paper currency on principle, afraid it would lose its value the way it had in New England, to the harm of everyone who was owed money. We had debated the question in our Junto, where I came down on the side of an addition, convinced that the first small issue struck in 1723 had done real good by increasing the trade, employment, and population of the province. I could see the proof: all the old houses were now occupied and many new ones were going up. Whereas I well remembered that when I first walked the streets of Philadelphia eating my roll, most of the houses on Walnut Street between Second and Front had signs on their doors reading "To be let," and plenty more stood empty on Chestnut Street and elsewhere — which made me think at the time that the people of the city were abandoning it one after another.
Our debates filled my head so completely with the subject that I wrote and printed an anonymous pamphlet on it, entitled "The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency." Ordinary people generally received it well; the rich men disliked it, since it swelled and strengthened the clamor for more money. But as they happened to have no writers among them capable of answering it, their opposition slackened, and the measure carried the House by a majority. My friends there, who considered that I had been of some service, saw fit to reward me with the job of printing the money — very profitable work and a great help to me. This was one more advantage gained by being able to write.
Time and experience made the usefulness of this currency so obvious that it was never much disputed afterward. It soon grew to fifty-five thousand pounds, by 1739 to eighty thousand, and during the war it rose to upward of three hundred and fifty thousand — trade, building, and population increasing all the while. Though I now think there are limits beyond which the quantity can do harm.
Soon afterward, through my friend Hamilton, I obtained the printing of the Newcastle paper money as well — another profitable job, as I thought then; small things look great to those in small circumstances, and to me these really were great advantages, because they were great encouragements. He also secured me the printing of that government's laws and votes, which stayed in my hands as long as I remained in the business.
I now opened a little stationer's shop. I stocked it with blanks — printed legal forms — of every sort, the most accurate that had ever appeared among us, with help in that from my friend Breintnal. I also carried paper, parchment, chapmen's books (the cheap little volumes peddlers sold), and so on. A compositor named Whitemash, whom I had known in London — an excellent workman — now came to me and worked with me steadily and diligently, and I took on an apprentice, the son of Aquilla Rose.
I was still in debt for the printing house. To secure my credit and reputation as a tradesman, I took care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, but to avoid all appearances to the contrary. I dressed plainly. I was seen at no places of idle amusement. I never went out fishing or shooting; a book, I admit, did sometimes lure me from my work, but that was seldom, done in private, and caused no scandal. And to show that I was not above my business, I sometimes wheeled the paper I bought at the stores home through the streets on a wheelbarrow. Being thus regarded as an industrious, thriving young man who paid promptly for what he bought, I found the merchants who imported stationery soliciting my custom, others offering to supply me with books, and things went on swimmingly. Meanwhile Keimer's credit and business declined by the day, until at last he was forced to sell his printing house to satisfy his creditors. He went off to Barbados and lived there for some years in very poor circumstances.
His apprentice, David Harry — whom I had trained while I worked with him — bought his equipment and set up in his place in Philadelphia. At first I feared a powerful rival in Harry, since his friends were very capable and well connected, so I proposed a partnership to him — which he, luckily for me, rejected with scorn. He was very proud, dressed like a gentleman, lived expensively, spent much of his time out amusing himself, ran into debt, and neglected his business; whereupon all business left him. Finding nothing to do, he followed Keimer to Barbados, taking the printing house with him. There the apprentice employed his former master as a journeyman. They quarreled constantly; Harry fell steadily behind, and at last was forced to sell his types and return to his farm work in Pennsylvania. The man who bought them hired Keimer to run them, but within a few years Keimer died.
That left me no competitor in Philadelphia but the old one, Bradford — who was rich and comfortable, did a little printing now and then with whatever stray hands he could get, and was not very anxious about the business. Still, since he kept the post office, people assumed he had better opportunities for obtaining news; his paper was thought a better carrier of advertisements than mine, and so it got many more — profitable for him and a disadvantage to me. The truth is I did receive and send papers by post, but only by bribing the riders, who carried them privately, Bradford having been unkind enough to forbid it. That bred some resentment in me, and I thought so poorly of him for it that when I later came into his situation, I took care never to imitate it.
Up to this point I had continued to board with Godfrey, who lived with his wife and children in part of my house and had one side of the shop for his glazier's business — though he did little of it, being forever absorbed in his mathematics. Mrs. Godfrey set up a match for me with a relation's daughter and took every opportunity to bring us together, until a serious courtship on my part followed — the girl herself being thoroughly deserving. The old folks encouraged me with constant invitations to supper and a habit of leaving the two of us alone, until at length it was time to talk terms. Mrs. Godfrey managed our little negotiation. I let her know that I expected as much money with their daughter as would pay off what I still owed on the printing house — not above a hundred pounds, I believe, at the time. She brought back word that they had no such sum to spare. I said they could mortgage their house at the loan office. The answer, after some days, was that they did not approve the match: on inquiring of Bradford, they had been told that the printing business was not a profitable one; that the types would soon wear out and more be needed; that S. Keimer and D. Harry had failed one after the other and I would probably soon follow them; and accordingly I was forbidden the house and the daughter shut away.
Whether this was a genuine change of heart or only a tactic — on the theory that we were too far gone in affection to back out, and so would steal a marriage, leaving them free to give or withhold whatever they pleased — I don't know. But I suspected the tactic, resented it, and went there no more. Mrs. Godfrey afterward brought me more favorable reports of their disposition and would have drawn me on again, but I declared absolutely that I would have nothing more to do with that family. The Godfreys took offense; we fell out, and they moved away, leaving me the whole house — and I resolved to take no more lodgers.
But this affair had turned my thoughts toward marriage, and I looked around me and made overtures of acquaintance in other places. I soon found, though, that the printing business being generally considered a poor one, I could expect no money with a wife unless she was the sort I would not otherwise find agreeable. Meanwhile a friendly correspondence had continued between me and Mrs. Read's family, as neighbors and old acquaintances; they had all thought well of me from the time I first lodged in their house. I was often invited over and consulted in their affairs, where I was sometimes of use. I pitied poor Miss Read's unfortunate situation — she was generally dejected, rarely cheerful, and avoided company. I considered my giddiness and inconstancy in London to be in great measure the cause of her unhappiness, though her mother was good enough to think the fault more her own than mine, since she had prevented our marrying before I went there and had urged the other match in my absence. Our mutual affection revived — but there were now serious objections to a union. Her marriage was in fact regarded as invalid, a previous wife of her husband's being said to be living in England; but the distance made this hard to prove, and though there was a report of his death, that was not certain either. And even if it were true, he had left many debts, which his successor might be called on to pay. Yet we ventured over all these difficulties, and I took her to wife on September 1st, 1730. None of the troubles we had feared came to pass. She proved a good and faithful helpmate, and was a great help to me tending the shop; we thrived together, and have always tried to make each other happy. Thus I corrected that great erratum as well as I could.
About this time our club was meeting not at a tavern but in a little room of Mr. Grace's, set apart for the purpose. I made a proposal: since our books were so often cited in our discussions of the queries, it would be convenient to have them all together where we met, ready to consult when needed; and by clubbing our books into a common library, each of us — for as long as we chose to keep them together — would have the use of every other member's books, which would be nearly as good as owning the whole collection. Everyone liked the idea and agreed to it, and we filled one end of the room with such books as we could spare. There weren't as many as we expected; and though they proved very useful, some inconveniences arose from want of proper care of them, and after about a year the collection was broken up and each man took his books home again.
And now I set on foot my first project of a public nature: a subscription library. I drew up the proposals, had them put into proper form by our great scrivener, Brockden, and with the help of my friends in the Junto secured fifty subscribers at forty shillings each to begin with, plus ten shillings a year for fifty years — the term our company was to run. We afterward obtained a charter, and the company grew to a hundred members. This was the mother of all the North American subscription libraries, now so numerous. It has become a considerable thing in itself, and is continually growing. These libraries have improved the general conversation of Americans, made ordinary tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps contributed in some degree to the stand so widely made throughout the colonies in defense of their privileges.
Memo: Everything to this point was written with the purpose stated at the beginning, and so contains various little family anecdotes of no importance to anyone else. What follows was written many years later, in compliance with the advice of friends who had written urging me to continue, and is accordingly intended for the public. The affairs of the Revolution caused the interruption.
[Continuation of the account of my life, begun at Passy, near Paris, 1784.]
It has been some time since I received the letters above, but I have been too busy until now to think of complying with their request. It might also be much better done if I were at home among my papers, which would aid my memory and help me pin down dates; but my return is uncertain, and having just now a little leisure, I will try to recollect and write what I can. If I live to get home, it can be corrected and improved there.
Having no copy here of what is already written, I don't know whether I have given an account of the means I used to establish the Philadelphia public library — which from a small beginning has now become so considerable — though I remember having gotten down to about the time of that transaction (1730). So I will begin here with an account of it, which can be struck out if it turns out to have been given already.
At the time I settled in Pennsylvania, there was not a good bookseller's shop in any of the colonies south of Boston. In New York and Philadelphia the printers were stationers, true, but they sold only paper and the like, almanacs, ballads, and a few common schoolbooks. Those who loved reading had to send to England for their books; the members of the Junto each had a few. We had left the alehouse where we first met and hired a room to hold our club in. I proposed that we all bring our books to that room, where they would not only be ready to consult in our conferences but become a common benefit, each of us free to borrow whichever he wished to read at home. This was done, and for some time it contented us.
Finding the advantage of this little collection, I proposed to make the benefit of books more widely available by starting a public subscription library. I sketched the plan and rules that would be necessary, and got a skillful conveyancer, Mr. Charles Brockden, to put the whole into formal articles of agreement to be signed, by which each subscriber committed to pay a certain sum down for the first purchase of books, and an annual contribution for adding to them. So few were the readers in Philadelphia at that time, and most of us so poor, that with all my industry I could not find more than fifty people — mostly young tradesmen — willing to pay down forty shillings each for the purpose, and ten shillings a year after that. On this little fund we began. The books were imported; the library was opened one day a week for lending to the subscribers, on their signed notes promising to pay double the value of any book not duly returned. The institution soon proved its usefulness, was imitated by other towns and in other provinces, and the libraries were enlarged by donations. Reading became fashionable; and our people, having no public amusements to divert them from study, grew better acquainted with books, and within a few years strangers were observing that we were better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.
When we were about to sign the articles — which were to bind us, our heirs, and so on for fifty years — Mr. Brockden, the scrivener, said to us, "You are young men, but it is scarcely probable that any of you will live to see the expiration of the term fixed in this instrument." A number of us, however, are still living; though the document itself was rendered void after a few years by a charter that incorporated the company and gave it perpetuity.
The objections and reluctance I met with in canvassing for subscriptions soon taught me how unwise it is to present yourself as the proposer of any useful project that might be supposed to raise your reputation even slightly above your neighbors', when you need their help to accomplish it. I therefore kept myself as much out of sight as I could, and presented it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had asked me to go around and propose it to those they thought lovers of reading. In this way my business went more smoothly, and I practiced the method ever after on such occasions; and from my frequent successes, I can heartily recommend it. The small present sacrifice of your vanity will be amply repaid later. If it remains uncertain for a while whom the merit belongs to, someone vainer than yourself will be encouraged to claim it — and then even envy will be disposed to do you justice, by plucking those assumed feathers and restoring them to their rightful owner.
This library gave me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set aside an hour or two each day, and so repaired in some degree the loss of the learned education my father had once intended for me. Reading was the only amusement I allowed myself. I spent no time in taverns, at games, or at frolics of any kind; and my industry in my business continued as tireless as it was necessary. I was in debt for my printing house, I had a young family coming on to be educated, and I had to compete for business with two printers who had been established in the place before me. My circumstances, however, grew easier by the day. My old habits of frugality continued; and my father, among the lessons he gave me as a boy, had often repeated a proverb of Solomon — "Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men" — so from then on I considered industry a means of obtaining wealth and distinction, which encouraged me. Not that I ever thought I would literally stand before kings — which, however, has since happened: I have stood before five of them, and even had the honor of sitting down to dinner with one, the King of Denmark.
We have an English proverb that says, "He that would thrive, must ask his wife." It was lucky for me that I had one as disposed to industry and frugality as I was. She helped me cheerfully in my business — folding and stitching pamphlets, tending shop, buying up old linen rags for the papermakers, and so on. We kept no idle servants; our table was plain and simple, our furniture the cheapest to be had. For instance, my breakfast was for a long time bread and milk (no tea), eaten out of a twopenny earthenware bowl with a pewter spoon. But mark how luxury will enter a family and make its progress in spite of principle: called to breakfast one morning, I found it in a china bowl, with a spoon of silver! They had been bought for me without my knowledge by my wife, at the enormous cost of three-and-twenty shillings — for which she had no other excuse or apology to make but that she thought her husband deserved a silver spoon and a china bowl as well as any of his neighbors. This was the first appearance of silver and china in our house; in the course of years, as our wealth increased, it gradually grew to several hundred pounds in value.
I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and though some of that persuasion's doctrines — the eternal decrees of God, election, reprobation, and so on — appeared to me unintelligible, and others doubtful, and I early stopped attending the sect's public assemblies (Sunday being my study day), I was never without some religious principles. I never doubted, for instance, the existence of God; that he made the world and governed it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter. These I regarded as the essentials of every religion; and finding them in all the religions we had in our country, I respected them all — though with different degrees of respect, according as I found them more or less mixed with other articles which, having no tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, served mainly to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another. This respect for all of them, along with a belief that even the worst had some good effects, led me to avoid any talk that might weaken another man's good opinion of his own religion; and as our province filled with people and new places of worship were continually wanted — and generally built by voluntary contribution — my mite for that purpose, whatever the sect, was never refused.
Though I seldom attended any public worship, I still believed in its propriety, and in its usefulness when rightly conducted, and I regularly paid my annual subscription toward the support of the only Presbyterian minister or congregation we had in Philadelphia. He used to visit me sometimes as a friend and admonish me to attend his services, and now and then I let myself be persuaded — once for five Sundays running. Had he been, in my opinion, a good preacher, perhaps I might have continued, despite my need of Sunday's leisure for my course of study; but his sermons were chiefly either polemical arguments or explanations of the particular doctrines of our sect, and to me they were all very dry, uninteresting, and unedifying — not a single moral principle was taught or enforced, their aim seeming to be to make us Presbyterians rather than good citizens.
At length he took for his text that verse from the fourth chapter of Philippians: "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, or of good report, if there be any virtue, or any praise, think on these things." In a sermon on such a text, I figured, we could not miss getting some morality. But he confined himself to five points only, as the apostle's meaning: 1. Keeping holy the Sabbath day. 2. Being diligent in reading the holy Scriptures. 3. Duly attending public worship. 4. Partaking of the Sacrament. 5. Paying due respect to God's ministers. These might all be good things; but as they were not the kind of good things I expected from that text, I despaired of ever finding any from any other, was disgusted, and attended his preaching no more. Some years before (in 1728) I had composed a little liturgy, or form of prayer, for my own private use, entitled Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion. I returned to the use of it, and went no more to the public assemblies. My conduct may have been blamable; but I leave it as it stands, without attempting further to excuse it — my present purpose being to relate facts, not to make apologies for them.
It was around this time that I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wanted to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer everything that natural inclination, habit, or company might lead me into. Since I knew — or thought I knew — what was right and what was wrong, I didn't see why I couldn't simply always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had taken on a much harder job than I'd imagined. While my attention was busy guarding against one fault, another would catch me by surprise. Habit took advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded at last that merely being convinced, in the abstract, that complete virtue is in our interest isn't enough to keep us from slipping; the old bad habits have to be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can count on any steady, uniform rightness of conduct. So I worked out the following method.
In the various lists of the moral virtues I had run across in my reading, I found the catalog longer or shorter depending on how many ideas each writer packed under a single name. Temperance, for example, was confined by some to eating and drinking, while others stretched it to mean moderating every other pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or mental, all the way to our greed and ambition. For the sake of clarity, I decided to use more names with fewer ideas attached to each, rather than a few names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues everything that seemed to me at the time necessary or desirable, attaching to each a short precept that expressed the full extent I gave to its meaning.
These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. Industry. Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation. Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. Chastity. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
My intention being to acquire the habit of all these virtues, I judged it best not to scatter my attention by attempting the whole list at once, but to fix on one virtue at a time; and when I had mastered that one, to move on to the next, and so on until I had gone through all thirteen. And since acquiring some of them first might make acquiring certain others easier, I arranged them with that in mind, in the order they stand above. Temperance came first, because it produces the cool, clear head that is so necessary when constant vigilance has to be kept up and a guard maintained against the relentless pull of old habits and the force of endless temptations. Once that was acquired and settled, Silence would be easier. And since I wanted to gain knowledge at the same time I improved in virtue, and considering that in conversation knowledge comes in through the ears rather than out through the tongue — and wishing, besides, to break a habit I was falling into of prattling, punning, and joking, which only made me welcome in trifling company — I gave Silence the second place. This and the next, Order, I expected would give me more time for attending to my project and my studies. Resolution, once it became habitual, would keep me firm in my efforts to obtain all the virtues that followed; Frugality and Industry, by freeing me from my remaining debt and producing prosperity and independence, would make it easier to practice Sincerity and Justice, and so on, and so on. And figuring that, following the advice of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, a daily examination would be necessary, I devised the following method for conducting that examination.
I made a little book, in which I gave a page to each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink into seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day. I crossed these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the virtues; and on that line, in its proper column, I could mark with a little black spot every fault I found, upon examination, to have been committed against that virtue on that day.
Form of the pages.
Temperance Eat not to dullness Drink not to elevation S. | M. | T. | W. | T. | F. | S. T. S. | • | • | • | • O. | • • | • | • | • | • | • R. | • | • F. | • | • I. | • S. J. M. C. T. C. H.
I decided to give a week's strict attention to each of the virtues in turn. So in the first week my great concern was to avoid even the smallest offense against Temperance, leaving the other virtues to their ordinary luck, only marking every evening the faults of the day. If in that first week I could keep my first line — the one marked T — clear of spots, I figured the habit of that virtue was so far strengthened, and its opposite so far weakened, that I could risk extending my attention to include the next, and for the following week keep both lines clear. Proceeding this way to the last, I could complete a full course in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a year. And like a man with a garden to weed, who doesn't try to pull up all the bad weeds at once — which would exceed his reach and his strength — but works on one bed at a time, and having finished the first, moves on to the second, I would have, I hoped, the encouraging pleasure of seeing my progress in virtue on my pages, clearing my lines of their spots one after another, until in the end, after a number of courses, I should have the happiness of looking at a clean book after thirteen weeks' daily examination.
My little book had for its motto these lines from Addison's Cato:
"Here will I hold. If there's a power above us (And that there is, all nature cries aloud Through all her works), He must delight in virtue; And that which he delights in must be happy."
Another from Cicero, in his Latin:
"O vitae Philosophia dux! O virtutum indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum! Unus dies, bene et ex praeceptis tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est anteponendus."
Another from the Proverbs of Solomon, speaking of wisdom or virtue:
"Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." Proverbs 3:16, 17.
And since I conceived of God as the fountain of wisdom, I thought it right and necessary to ask his help in obtaining it. To this end I composed the following little prayer, which I placed at the front of my tables of examination, for daily use:
"O powerful Goodness! bountiful Father! merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my resolutions to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to thy other children as the only return in my power for thy continual favours to me."
I also sometimes used a little prayer I took from Thomson's Poems:
"Father of light and life, thou Good Supreme! O teach me what is good; teach me Thyself! Save me from folly, vanity, and vice, From every low pursuit; and fill my soul With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure; Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!"
Since the precept of Order required that every part of my business should have its allotted time, one page in my little book contained the following scheme for the twenty-four hours of a natural day.
The Morning. Question. What good shall I do this day? | 5 | Rise, wash, and address Powerful Goodness! Plan the day's business and take the resolution of the day; pursue the current study, and breakfast. 6 7 8 | Work. 9 10 11 Noon. | 12 | Read, or look over my accounts, and dine. 1 2 | Work. 3 4 5 Evening. Question. What good have I done today? | 6 | Put things in their places. Supper. Music or diversion, or conversation. Examination of the day. 7 8 9 Night. | 10 | Sleep. 11 12 1 2 3 4
I set about executing this plan of self-examination, and kept it up, with occasional lapses, for some time. I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of watching them diminish. To spare myself the trouble of renewing my little book now and then — for scraping out the old marks on the paper to make room for new ones in a new course left it full of holes — I transferred my tables and precepts to the ivory leaves of a memorandum book, on which the lines were drawn in red ink, which made a durable stain, and on those lines I marked my faults with a black-lead pencil, marks I could easily wipe away with a wet sponge. After a while I went through only one course in a year, and later only one in several years, until at last I dropped them entirely, being taken up with voyages and business abroad and a multiplicity of affairs that interfered; but I always carried my little book with me.
My scheme of Order gave me the most trouble. I found that, while it might be workable for a man whose business left him in command of his own time — a journeyman printer, for instance — it could not be exactly observed by a master, who has to mix with the world and often receive people of business at whatever hours suit them. Order with regard to places for things, papers, and so on, I also found extremely difficult to acquire. I had not been trained to it early; and having an exceedingly good memory, I didn't feel the inconvenience of being unmethodical as sharply as I might have. This article, therefore, cost me so much painful attention, and my faults in it vexed me so much, and I made so little progress in mending them, and relapsed so often, that I was nearly ready to give up the attempt and content myself with a faulty character in that respect — like the man who, in buying an ax from a smith, my neighbor, wanted the whole of its surface as bright as the edge. The smith agreed to grind it bright for him if he would turn the wheel. He turned, while the smith pressed the broad face of the ax hard and heavily against the stone, which made the turning very fatiguing. Every now and then the man came away from the wheel to see how the work was going, and at last said he would take his ax as it was, without further grinding. "No," said the smith, "turn on, turn on; we shall have it bright by and by; as yet, it is only speckled." "Yes," says the man, "but I think I like a speckled ax best." And I believe this may have been the case with many who, lacking some such method as mine, have found how hard it is to acquire good habits and break bad ones in other points of vice and virtue, have given up the struggle, and concluded that "a speckled ax was best." For something that pretended to be reason kept suggesting to me, every now and then, that such extreme fussiness as I demanded of myself might be a kind of foppery in morals which, if it were known, would make me ridiculous; that a perfect character might come with the inconvenience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow himself a few faults, to keep his friends in countenance.
In truth, I found myself incorrigible with respect to Order; and now that I am grown old, and my memory bad, I feel the want of it very keenly. But on the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, and fell far short of it, still I was, by the attempt, a better and a happier man than I would otherwise have been if I had never made it — just as those who aim at perfect handwriting by imitating the engraved copybooks, though they never reach the wished-for excellence of the copies, find their hand improved by the effort, and tolerably fair and legible.
It may be worth my descendants' knowing that to this little artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor owed the constant happiness of his life, down to his seventy-ninth year, in which this is written. What reverses may attend the remainder is in the hand of Providence; but if they come, the reflection on past happiness enjoyed ought to help him bear them with more resignation. To Temperance he ascribes his long-continued health, and what is still left to him of a good constitution; to Industry and Frugality, the early easing of his circumstances and the acquisition of his fortune, along with all the knowledge that enabled him to be a useful citizen and earned him some degree of reputation among the learned; to Sincerity and Justice, the confidence of his country and the honorable offices it conferred upon him; and to the joint influence of the whole mass of the virtues, even in the imperfect state in which he managed to acquire them, all that evenness of temper and cheerfulness in conversation which makes his company still sought after, and agreeable even to his younger acquaintances. I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit.
It will be noticed that, though my scheme was not wholly without religion, there was in it no mark of any of the distinguishing tenets of any particular sect. I had purposely avoided them; for, being fully persuaded of the usefulness and excellence of my method, and that it might serve people of all religions, and intending at some point to publish it, I would not have anything in it that might prejudice anyone, of any sect, against it. I intended to write a little commentary on each virtue, showing the advantages of possessing it and the harms attending its opposite vice; and I would have called my book The Art of Virtue, because it would have shown the means and manner of obtaining virtue — which would have distinguished it from mere exhortation to be good, the kind that doesn't instruct or point out the means, and is like the apostle's man of verbal charity, who, without showing the naked and hungry how or where they might get clothes or food, merely exhorted them to be fed and clothed. — James 2:15, 16.
But as it happened, my intention of writing and publishing this commentary was never fulfilled. I did, from time to time, jot down short hints of the sentiments and reasonings to be used in it, some of which I still have by me; but the close attention required by private business in the earlier part of my life, and by public business since, has kept me postponing it. For it was connected in my mind with a great and extensive project that required the whole man to execute, and an unforeseen succession of employments prevented my attending to it; so it has remained unfinished to this day.
In this piece it was my design to explain and drive home this doctrine: that vicious actions are not harmful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are harmful — the nature of man alone considered; and that it is therefore in everyone's interest to be virtuous who wishes to be happy even in this world. And from this circumstance — there being always in the world a number of rich merchants, nobility, states, and princes who need honest instruments for the management of their affairs, and such being so rare — I would have tried to convince young people that no qualities are so likely to make a poor man's fortune as probity and integrity.
My list of virtues contained at first only twelve; but a Quaker friend kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride showed itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing and rather insolent — of which he convinced me by mentioning several instances. I determined to try to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly along with the rest, and I added Humility to my list, giving the word an extensive meaning.
I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it. I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction of other people's opinions, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself, in keeping with the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that implied a fixed opinion, such as "certainly," "undoubtedly," and the like; and I adopted instead "I conceive," "I apprehend," or "I imagine" a thing to be so; or it "so appears to me at present." When someone asserted something I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly and of immediately exposing some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but that in the present case there appeared or seemed to me to be some difference, and so on. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner: the conversations I engaged in went more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions got them a readier reception and less contradiction; I was less mortified when I turned out to be in the wrong; and I more easily prevailed on others to give up their mistakes and join me when I happened to be in the right.
And this manner, which I at first put on with some violence to my natural inclination, became at length so easy and so habitual to me that perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me. And to this habit (after my character for integrity) I think it chiefly owing that I had so much weight with my fellow citizens early on, when I proposed new institutions or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was a poor speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language — and yet I generally carried my points.
In reality, there is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as you please, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.
[Thus far written at Passy, 1784.]
["I am now about to write at home, August, 1788, but cannot have the help expected from my papers, many of them being lost in the war. I have, however, found the following."]
Having mentioned a great and extensive project which I had conceived, it seems proper to give some account here of that project and its object. Its first rise in my mind appears in the following little paper, accidentally preserved:
"That the great affairs of the world, the wars, revolutions, etc., are carried on and effected by parties. "That the view of these parties is their present general interest, or what they take to be such. "That the different views of these different parties occasion all confusion. "That while a party is carrying on a general design, each man has his particular private interest in view. "That as soon as a party has gained its general point, each member becomes intent upon his particular interest; which, thwarting others, breaks that party into divisions, and occasions more confusion. "That few in public affairs act from a mere view of the good of their country, whatever they may pretend; and, though their actings bring real good to their country, yet men primarily considered that their own and their country's interest was united, and did not act from a principle of benevolence. "That fewer still, in public affairs, act with a view to the good of mankind. "There seems to me at present to be great occasion for raising a United Party for Virtue, by forming the virtuous and good men of all nations into a regular body, to be governed by suitable good and wise rules, which good and wise men may probably be more unanimous in their obedience to, than common people are to common laws. "I at present think that whoever attempts this aright, and is well qualified, cannot fail of pleasing God, and of meeting with success. "B. F."
Turning this project over in my mind, as something to be undertaken later, when my circumstances would give me the necessary leisure, I put down from time to time, on scraps of paper, such thoughts as occurred to me about it. Most of these are lost; but I find one that claims to be the substance of an intended creed, containing, as I thought, the essentials of every known religion, and free of anything that might shock the followers of any of them. It is expressed in these words:
"That there is one God, who made all things. "That he governs the world by his providence. "That he ought to be worshiped by adoration, prayer, and thanksgiving. "But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man. "That the soul is immortal. "And that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter."
My ideas at the time were these: that the sect should be started and spread at first among young single men only; that each candidate for initiation should not only declare his assent to this creed, but should have put himself through the thirteen weeks' examination and practice of the virtues, on the model described above; that the existence of such a society should be kept secret until it had grown considerable, to prevent applications from unsuitable people; but that the members should each search among their acquaintance for open-minded, well-disposed young men, to whom the scheme should be gradually communicated with prudent caution; that the members should pledge to give their advice, assistance, and support to one another in promoting each other's interests, business, and advancement in life; and that, for distinction, we should be called "The Society of the Free and Easy" — free, as being, by the general practice and habit of the virtues, free from the dominion of vice; and particularly, by the practice of industry and frugality, free from debt, which exposes a man to confinement and a species of slavery to his creditors.
This is as much as I can now recall of the project, except that I communicated it in part to two young men, who took it up with some enthusiasm; but my then narrow circumstances, and the necessity of sticking close to my business, made me postpone pursuing it further at the time; and my many occupations since, public and private, kept me postponing it, until it has now been left undone so long that I no longer have strength or energy enough for such an enterprise. Yet I am still of the opinion that it was a practicable scheme, and might have been very useful, by forming a great number of good citizens; and I was never discouraged by the apparent size of the undertaking, for I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan and then, cutting off all amusements and other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that plan his sole study and business.
In 1732 I published my almanac for the first time, under the name "Richard Saunders." I kept it going for about twenty-five years, and people commonly called it Poor Richard's Almanac. I worked to make it both entertaining and useful, and it succeeded well enough that the demand grew and I made a considerable profit from it, selling nearly ten thousand copies a year. And since it was read everywhere — hardly a neighborhood in the province was without one — I came to see it as the perfect vehicle for carrying instruction to ordinary people, who bought scarcely any other books. So I filled all the little spaces between the notable days in the calendar with proverbs, chiefly ones that preached industry and frugality as the way to wealth, and wealth as a support to virtue — since it's harder for a man in want to always act honestly. As one of those very proverbs puts it, it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.
These proverbs, which held the wisdom of many ages and nations, I eventually gathered up and wove into one connected speech, set at the front of the almanac for 1757 as the harangue of a wise old man to the crowd at an auction. Bringing all those scattered bits of counsel into a single focus made them strike with far more force. The piece was approved everywhere. It was copied into every newspaper on the continent; reprinted in Britain as a broadside to be pasted up on house walls; translated twice into French; and bought in great numbers by clergy and gentry to hand out free to their poor parishioners and tenants. In Pennsylvania, since it discouraged useless spending on foreign luxuries, some people thought it deserved a share of the credit for the growing plenty of money we saw for several years after it appeared.
I treated my newspaper, too, as another channel for instruction, and with that in view I often reprinted extracts from the Spectator and other moral writers, and sometimes published little pieces of my own that had first been composed for reading in our Junto. Among these were a Socratic dialogue arguing that a vicious man, whatever his talents and abilities, could never properly be called a man of sense; and a discourse on self-denial, showing that virtue isn't secure until its practice has become a habit, free from the tug of contrary inclinations. You can find these in the papers from around the beginning of 1735.
In running my newspaper I carefully shut out all libel and personal abuse, which in recent years has become such a disgrace to our country. Whenever someone pressed me to print something of that kind — pleading, as they generally did, the liberty of the press, and claiming a newspaper was like a stagecoach, where anyone willing to pay had a right to a seat — my answer was this: I would print the piece separately if they wished, and the author could have as many copies as he liked to distribute himself, but I would not take it upon myself to spread his slander. I had contracted with my subscribers to furnish them with what might be useful or entertaining, and I couldn't fill their papers with private quarrels that were none of their concern without doing them an obvious injustice. Nowadays many of our printers have no scruples about gratifying somebody's malice with false accusations against the finest characters among us, stoking animosity to the point of actual duels; and they are careless enough, on top of that, to print scurrilous jabs at the governments of neighboring states, and even at the conduct of our best national allies, which can carry the most dangerous consequences. I mention all this as a caution to young printers, and as encouragement not to pollute their presses and disgrace their profession with such shameful practices, but to refuse, steadily — since they can see from my example that this course of conduct will not, on the whole, hurt their business.
In 1733 I sent one of my journeymen to Charleston, South Carolina, where a printer was needed. I set him up with a press and type on a partnership agreement: I was to receive one-third of the profits and pay one-third of the expenses. He was a man of learning, and honest, but hopeless at accounts; and though he sometimes sent me remittances, I could never get a proper statement from him, or any satisfactory picture of our partnership, as long as he lived. After his death the business was carried on by his widow, who had been born and raised in Holland, where — as I've been told — bookkeeping is part of a girl's education. She not only sent me as clear a statement as she could reconstruct of the past transactions, but went on accounting with the greatest regularity and exactness every quarter afterward, and she managed the business so successfully that she raised a family of children respectably and, when the term of the partnership expired, was able to buy the printing house from me and set her son up in it.
I mention this affair chiefly to recommend that branch of education for our young women, as likely to be of more use to them and their children, in case of widowhood, than either music or dancing — it protects them from losses at the hands of crafty men, and lets them carry on, perhaps, a profitable business with its established connections until a son is grown up and fit to take it over, to the lasting advantage and enrichment of the family.
Around the year 1734 there arrived among us from Ireland a young Presbyterian preacher named Hemphill, who delivered — with a good voice, and apparently off the cuff — the most excellent sermons, which drew considerable crowds of every persuasion, all joined in admiring them. I became one of his regular hearers myself, for his sermons pleased me: they had little of the dogmatic about them, but pressed hard on the practice of virtue — or what in religious language is called good works. The members of our congregation who considered themselves orthodox Presbyterians, however, disapproved of his doctrine, and most of the older clergy joined them, hauling him before the synod on a charge of heterodoxy in order to silence him. I became his zealous partisan and did all I could to raise a party in his favor, and for a while we fought for him with some hope of success. There was a great deal of scribbling back and forth over the affair; and finding that, elegant preacher though he was, he was a poor writer, I lent him my pen and wrote two or three pamphlets for him, and one piece in the Gazette of April 1735. Those pamphlets, as is usually the case with controversial writing, were eagerly read at the time and soon out of fashion, and I doubt a single copy of them exists today.
During the contest an unlucky discovery hurt his cause badly. One of our adversaries, hearing him preach a much-admired sermon, thought he had read that sermon somewhere before — or at least part of it. On searching, he found the passage quoted at length in one of the British Reviews, from a discourse of Dr. Foster's. This detection disgusted many of our party, who promptly abandoned his cause, and it hastened our defeat in the synod. I stuck by him all the same, since I'd rather he gave us good sermons composed by others than bad ones of his own manufacture — though the latter, it must be said, was the practice of our regular ministers. He later admitted to me that none of the sermons he preached were his own, adding that his memory was such that he could retain and repeat any sermon after a single reading. After our defeat he left us to look for better fortune elsewhere, and I quit the congregation, never joining it again — though I kept up my subscription for the support of its ministers for many years.
In 1733 I had begun to study languages. I soon made myself enough of a master of French to read books in it with ease, and then took up Italian. An acquaintance who was also learning it kept tempting me to play chess with him. Finding this ate up too much of the time I had to spare for study, I finally refused to play anymore except on one condition: the winner of each game had the right to impose a task — a portion of grammar to be learned by heart, translations to be done, and so on — which the loser was bound on his honor to perform before our next meeting. Since we played about equally, we beat each other into that language. Afterward, with a little effort, I picked up enough Spanish to read their books as well.
I've already mentioned that I had only one year of instruction in a Latin school, and that when I was very young; after that I neglected the language entirely. But once I had a working acquaintance with French, Italian, and Spanish, I was surprised to find, looking over a Latin Testament, that I understood far more of that language than I had imagined — which encouraged me to take up the study of it again, and I met with more success this time, since those earlier languages had smoothed my way considerably.
From all this I've come to think there is some inconsistency in our usual way of teaching languages. We're told it's proper to begin with Latin, and that having got that, the modern languages derived from it will come more easily; and yet nobody proposes we begin with Greek in order to make the Latin easier. It's true that if you can clamber to the top of a staircase without using the steps, you'll manage them easily enough on the way down; but surely, if you begin at the bottom step, you'll climb to the top with far less trouble. So I would offer this for the consideration of those who superintend the education of our youth. Many who begin with Latin quit after spending years on it without any great proficiency, and what they have learned turns out nearly useless, so their time is simply lost. Wouldn't it have been better to begin with French, proceed to Italian, and so on? Even if, after the same investment of time, they quit the study of languages and never arrive at Latin, they would at least have acquired a tongue or two that, being in modern use, might actually serve them in everyday life.
After ten years' absence from Boston, and being now comfortable in my circumstances, I made a journey there to visit my relations — something I couldn't well have afforded any sooner. On the way home I stopped at Newport to see my brother, who was settled there with his printing house. Our old differences were forgotten, and our meeting was warm and affectionate. His health was failing fast, and he asked me, in case of his death — which he sensed was not far off — to take his son home with me, then just ten years old, and bring him up in the printing business. This I did, sending the boy to school for a few years before taking him into the shop. His mother carried on the business until he was grown, at which point I helped him with a set of new types, his father's being nearly worn out. And so I made my brother ample amends for the service I had deprived him of by leaving him so early.
In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four, to smallpox, caught in the common way. I bitterly regretted then, and regret still, that I had not given it to him by inoculation. I mention this for the sake of parents who skip that operation on the theory that they could never forgive themselves if a child died under it. My example shows the regret can be just the same either way — and therefore the safer course should be chosen.
Our club, the Junto, proved so useful, and gave its members such satisfaction, that several wanted to bring in their friends — which couldn't well be done without going beyond the number we had settled on as convenient, namely twelve. From the beginning we had made it a rule to keep the club a secret, and the rule was pretty well observed; the point was to avoid applications from unsuitable people whom we might find it awkward to refuse. I was among those against adding to our number. Instead, I proposed in writing that every member, separately, should try to form a subordinate club with the same rules about queries and so forth, without telling them of the connection to the Junto. The advantages I laid out were these: the improvement of that many more young citizens by the use of our methods; a better acquaintance with the general sentiments of the inhabitants on any occasion, since the Junto member could propose whatever queries we wished asked, and was to report back to the Junto what passed in his own club; the promotion of our particular business interests through wider recommendation; and the increase of our influence in public affairs, and of our power of doing good, by spreading the Junto's sentiments through the several clubs.
The project was approved, and every member undertook to form his club, but not all of them succeeded. Only five or six were completed, which went by various names — the "Vine," the "Union," the "Band," and so on. They were useful to their own members, gave us a good deal of amusement, information, and instruction, and answered, to a considerable degree, our aims of influencing public opinion on particular occasions — of which I'll give some instances in due course, as they happened.
My first promotion came in 1736, when I was chosen clerk of the General Assembly. That year the choice was made without opposition; but the following year, when I was proposed again (the choice, like that of the members themselves, being annual), a new member made a long speech against me in order to favor some other candidate. I was chosen anyway, which pleased me all the more, since besides the pay for the clerk's work itself, the place gave me a better opportunity of keeping up an interest among the members — which secured me the business of printing the votes, laws, paper money, and other occasional public jobs that were, on the whole, very profitable.
So I did not much like the opposition of this new member, a gentleman of fortune and education, with talents likely to give him, in time, great influence in the House — which indeed later happened. I didn't try to win his favor by paying him any servile respect, though. After a while I took another approach altogether. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very rare and curious book, I wrote him a note expressing my desire to read it and asking him to do me the favor of lending it for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I returned it in about a week with another note, warmly expressing my sense of the favor. The next time we met in the House, he spoke to me — which he had never done before — and with great civility; and from then on he showed a readiness to serve me on every occasion, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death. This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged." And it shows how much more profitable it is to prudently remove hostility than to resent it, return it, and keep the feud going.
In 1737, Colonel Spotswood, formerly governor of Virginia and by then postmaster-general, grew dissatisfied with his deputy at Philadelphia over some negligence in rendering his accounts, and their inexactness, and took the commission from him and offered it to me. I accepted readily and found it a great advantage; for though the salary was small, the position eased the flow of correspondence, which improved my newspaper, increased the demand for it and the advertisements placed in it, and so came to bring me a considerable income. My old competitor's newspaper declined in proportion, and I was content not to retaliate for his refusal, back when he was postmaster, to let the post riders carry my papers. So he suffered greatly from his carelessness in accounting; and I mention it as a lesson to young men employed in managing affairs for others: always render your accounts, and make your remittances, with great clearness and punctuality. A reputation for doing so is the most powerful of all recommendations to new employment and more business.
I now began to turn my thoughts a little toward public affairs — starting, though, with small matters. The city watch was one of the first things I decided needed fixing. It was run by the constables of the various wards, each taking his turn; the constable would summon a number of householders to walk the rounds with him for the night. Anyone who preferred never to attend paid him six shillings a year to be excused. That money was supposedly for hiring substitutes, but it was really far more than substitutes cost, which made the constableship a profitable little office; and the constable, for a bit of drink, would often gather such ragamuffins around him as a watch that respectable householders wanted nothing to do with them. The rounds were often skipped, too, and most of the night spent tippling. So I wrote a paper to be read in the Junto, laying out these irregularities, and pressing hardest on the unfairness of that six-shilling tax, which took no account of anyone's circumstances: a poor widow keeping house, whose whole property under the watch's protection might not be worth fifty pounds, paid exactly as much as the wealthiest merchant with thousands of pounds' worth of goods in his stores.
On the whole, I proposed a more effective watch: hire proper men to serve at the business full time; and a fairer way to pay for it: levy a tax proportioned to property. The Junto approved the idea, and it was passed along to the other clubs — presented in each as if it had arisen there. The plan wasn't carried out right away, but by preparing people's minds for the change, it paved the way for the law we obtained a few years later, once the members of our clubs had grown into more influence.
Around this time I wrote a paper — first read in the Junto, afterward published — on the various accidents and careless habits by which houses were set on fire, with cautions against them and ways of avoiding them. It was much talked of as a useful piece, and it gave rise to a project that soon followed: forming a company for putting out fires more readily, and for helping one another remove and secure goods when they were in danger. Associates for the scheme turned up at once — thirty of them. Our articles of agreement required every member to keep, always in good order and fit for use, a certain number of leather buckets, along with strong bags and baskets for packing and hauling goods, all of which were to be brought to every fire; and we agreed to meet once a month and spend a social evening together, trading whatever ideas occurred to us on the subject of fires that might be useful when one actually broke out.
The usefulness of this institution soon showed itself, and when more men wanted in than we thought convenient for one company, we advised them to form another — which they did. And so it went, one new company after another, until they came to include most of the property owners in town. Now, as I write this, more than fifty years after its founding, that first company — the Union Fire Company — still survives and flourishes, though of the original members all are dead but myself and one man a year older than I am. The small fines members have paid for missing the monthly meetings have gone toward buying fire engines, ladders, fire hooks, and other useful equipment for each company; so I question whether there is a city in the world better provided with the means of stopping a fire at its beginning. In fact, since these institutions were established, the city has never lost more than one or two houses at a time to fire, and the flames have often been put out before the house they started in was half consumed.
In 1739 the Reverend Mr. Whitefield arrived among us from Ireland, where he had made a name for himself as a traveling preacher. At first he was permitted to preach in some of our churches; but the clergy took a dislike to him, soon refused him their pulpits, and he was obliged to preach in the fields. The crowds that came to his sermons, from every sect and denomination, were enormous; and I — being one of the number — found it a matter of curiosity to observe the extraordinary power of his oratory over his hearers, and how much they admired and respected him even while he was busy assuring them they were naturally half beasts and half devils. It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our townspeople. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that you couldn't walk through town of an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families on every street.
Since assembling in the open air, at the mercy of the weather, proved inconvenient, the building of a house to meet in was no sooner proposed — and people appointed to receive contributions — than enough money came in to buy the ground and put up the building, one hundred feet long and seventy wide, about the size of Westminster Hall; and the work was carried on with such spirit that it was finished in far less time than anyone could have expected. Both house and ground were placed in the hands of trustees, expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might want to say something to the people of Philadelphia. The design in building it was to accommodate not any particular sect but the inhabitants in general — so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Islam to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.
When Mr. Whitefield left us, he went preaching all the way through the colonies to Georgia. The settlement of that province had only just begun — but instead of being made with hardy, industrious farmers accustomed to labor, the only people fit for such an enterprise, it was made with families of bankrupt shopkeepers and other insolvent debtors, many of idle habits, taken out of the jails and set down in the woods. Unqualified for clearing land, and unable to endure the hardships of a new settlement, they perished in numbers, leaving many helpless children unprovided for. The sight of their miserable situation inspired Mr. Whitefield's benevolent heart with the idea of building an Orphan House there, where the children could be supported and educated. Returning northward, he preached up this charity and made large collections — for his eloquence had a wonderful power over the hearts and purses of his hearers, of which I myself was an instance.
I didn't disapprove of the plan itself; but Georgia then had neither materials nor workmen, and the proposal was to send both from Philadelphia at great expense. I thought it would have been better to build the house here and bring the children to it. I advised this; but he was set on his original project, rejected my counsel, and I therefore refused to contribute. Soon afterward I happened to attend one of his sermons, and as it went along I perceived he meant to finish with a collection. I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the coppers. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and I determined to give the silver; and he finished so admirably that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all. At the same sermon was another member of our club who shared my opinion about the building in Georgia, and who, suspecting a collection might be intended, had taken the precaution of emptying his pockets before he left home. Toward the end of the sermon, however, he felt a strong desire to give, and turned to a neighbor standing near him to borrow some money for the purpose. He had applied, unfortunately, to perhaps the only man in the whole company with the firmness not to be moved by the preacher. The answer came: "At any other time, Friend Hopkinson, I would lend to thee freely; but not now, for thee seems to be out of thy right senses."
Some of Mr. Whitefield's enemies liked to suggest that he would put these collections toward his own private profit; but I, who knew him intimately — I was the one who printed his sermons and journals — never had the least suspicion of his integrity, and I remain to this day firmly of the opinion that he was in all his conduct a perfectly honest man. And it seems to me my testimony in his favor ought to carry the more weight because we had no religious connection at all. He did, indeed, sometimes pray for my conversion, but he never had the satisfaction of believing his prayers were heard. Ours was a merely civil friendship, sincere on both sides, and it lasted to his death.
The following instance will show something of the terms we stood on. On one of his arrivals from England at Boston, he wrote to me that he would soon be coming to Philadelphia, but didn't know where he could lodge, since he understood his old friend and host, Mr. Benezet, had moved to Germantown. My answer was: "You know my house; if you can make shift with its scanty accommodations, you will be most heartily welcome." He replied that if I made that kind offer for Christ's sake, I should not miss my reward. And I wrote back: "Don't let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ's sake, but for your sake." One of our common acquaintances remarked, jokingly, that since it was the custom of the saints, whenever they received a favor, to shift the burden of the obligation off their own shoulders and lodge it in heaven, I had contrived to fix it on Earth.
The last time I saw Mr. Whitefield was in London, when he consulted me about his Orphan House and his plan of converting it into a college.
He had a loud, clear voice, and articulated his words and sentences so perfectly that he could be heard and understood at a great distance — especially since his audiences, however numerous, kept the most exact silence. He preached one evening from the top of the courthouse steps, which stand in the middle of Market Street where Second Street crosses it at right angles. Both streets were filled with his hearers to a considerable distance. Being among the hindmost in Market Street, I had the curiosity to learn how far his voice would carry, and so I walked backward down the street toward the river. I could hear him distinctly until I came near Front Street, where some noise in that street drowned him out. I then imagined a semicircle, with my distance as the radius, filled with listeners at two square feet apiece, and computed that he might well be heard by more than thirty thousand people. This reconciled me to the newspaper accounts of his having preached to twenty-five thousand in the fields, and to the ancient histories of generals haranguing whole armies — which I had sometimes doubted.
By hearing him often, I came to distinguish easily between sermons newly composed and those he had preached often in the course of his travels. His delivery of the latter was so improved by repetition that every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of his voice was so perfectly turned and so well placed that, without caring at all about the subject, you couldn't help being pleased with the discourse — a pleasure of much the same kind as you get from an excellent piece of music. This is an advantage traveling preachers have over settled ones: the settled ones can't polish a sermon with so many rehearsals.
His writing and printing, though, gave his enemies a standing advantage. Unguarded expressions, and even mistaken opinions, delivered in preaching, might afterward have been explained or qualified by supposing other remarks that accompanied them, or they might have been denied outright; but litera scripta manet — the written word remains. His critics attacked his writings violently, and with so much appearance of reason that they diminished the number of his followers and prevented its increase; so that I am of the opinion that if he had never written anything, he would have left behind him a much more numerous and important sect, and his reputation might in that case have gone on growing even after his death — for with nothing of his in writing on which to found a censure and give him a lower character, his disciples would have been at liberty to invent for him as great a variety of excellences as their enthusiastic admiration might wish him to have possessed.
My business, meanwhile, was continually growing, and my circumstances daily easier, my newspaper having become very profitable — for a time it was almost the only one in this and the neighboring provinces. I found out, too, the truth of the observation that "after getting the first hundred pound, it is more easy to get the second" — money itself being of a prolific nature.
The partnership at Carolina having succeeded, I was encouraged to enter into others, and to advance several of my workmen who had behaved well by setting them up with printing houses in different colonies, on the same terms as the one in Carolina. Most of them did well, and at the end of our six-year term were able to buy the types from me and carry on working for themselves — by which means several families were raised. Partnerships often end in quarrels; but mine, I'm happy to say, were all carried on and wound up amicably. I credit that in good part to one precaution: we settled very explicitly in our articles everything each partner was to do or could expect, so there was nothing left to dispute. I would recommend that precaution to anyone entering a partnership; for whatever esteem partners may have for each other, and whatever confidence, at the time of the contract, little jealousies and resentments can creep in — notions of inequality in the care and burden of the business, and so on — and these often end in broken friendships and broken connections, perhaps with lawsuits and other disagreeable consequences.
On the whole, I had every reason to be pleased with how I'd established myself in Pennsylvania. Two things bothered me, though: the province made no provision for defense and none for a complete education of its young people — no militia and no college. So in 1743 I drew up a proposal for founding an academy. The Reverend Mr. Peters was out of work at the time, and thinking him the right man to run such an institution, I shared the project with him; but he had more profitable prospects in the service of the proprietaries — which panned out for him — and he declined the undertaking. Not knowing anyone else just then who was suited to such a trust, I let the scheme lie dormant for a while. I had better luck the next year, 1744, in proposing and establishing a Philosophical Society. The paper I wrote for that purpose will be found among my writings, when they're collected.
As for defense: Spain had been at war with Great Britain for several years, and when France finally joined her, we were in real danger. Our governor, Thomas, had labored long and hard to persuade our Quaker Assembly to pass a militia law and make other provisions for the security of the province, and had gotten nowhere. So I decided to see what might be done by a voluntary association of the people. To get it moving, I first wrote and published a pamphlet called "Plain Truth," in which I laid out our defenseless situation in the strongest light, argued the necessity of union and discipline for our defense, and promised to propose, within a few days, an association that everyone could sign for that purpose. The pamphlet had a sudden and surprising effect. People demanded the association paper at once; I settled the draft of it with a few friends and called a meeting of the citizens in the large building I've mentioned before. The house was pretty full. I had printed up a stack of copies and set out pens and ink all over the room. I gave them a short speech on the subject, read the paper, explained it, and then handed out the copies — which were eagerly signed, without a single objection.
When the company broke up and the papers were collected, we found more than twelve hundred signatures; and once other copies had circulated through the countryside, the signers eventually numbered upward of ten thousand. All of them equipped themselves with arms as soon as they could, formed themselves into companies and regiments, elected their own officers, and met every week to be drilled in the manual exercise and the other parts of military discipline. The women, raising money by subscriptions among themselves, provided silk colors for the companies — flags painted with various devices and mottoes, which I supplied.
The officers of the companies making up the Philadelphia regiment met and chose me for their colonel; but thinking myself unfit for it, I declined the post and recommended Mr. Lawrence, a fine figure of a man with real influence, who was duly appointed. I then proposed a lottery to cover the cost of building a battery below the town and furnishing it with cannon. It filled quickly, and the battery soon went up, its merlons — the solid stretches of parapet — framed of logs and filled with earth. We bought some old cannon from Boston, but these weren't enough, so we wrote to England for more, at the same time asking our proprietaries for some assistance — without much expectation of getting it.
Meanwhile Colonel Lawrence, William Allen, Abram Taylor, Esq., and I were sent to New York by the associators, commissioned to borrow some cannon from Governor Clinton. At first he refused us flatly; but at dinner with his council, where a great deal of Madeira was drunk, as the custom of that place then was, he softened by degrees and said he would lend us six. A few more glasses later he advanced to ten; and at length he very good-naturedly conceded eighteen. They were fine cannon — eighteen-pounders, carriages and all — which we soon transported and mounted on our battery, where the associators kept a nightly guard as long as the war lasted; and among the rest, I regularly took my turn of duty there as a common soldier.
My activity in these operations pleased the governor and council; they took me into their confidence, and I was consulted on every measure where their support might be useful to the association. Calling in the aid of religion, I proposed that they proclaim a fast day, to promote reformation and implore the blessing of Heaven on our undertaking. They embraced the idea; but since it was the first fast ever thought of in the province, the secretary had no precedent to draw the proclamation from. Here my New England upbringing proved an advantage — a fast is proclaimed there every year — and I drafted it in the accustomed style. It was translated into German, printed in both languages, and spread through the province. This gave the clergy of the different sects an opportunity to urge their congregations to join the association, and it probably would have become general among everyone but the Quakers if peace hadn't soon intervened.
Some of my friends thought that my activity in these affairs would offend that sect, and cost me my standing in the provincial Assembly, where Quakers held a great majority. A young gentleman who had friends of his own in the House, and who wanted to succeed me as its clerk, informed me that it had been decided to remove me at the next election; and out of goodwill, he advised me to resign — more consistent with my honor, he said, than being turned out. My answer was that I had read or heard of some public man who made it a rule never to ask for an office, and never to refuse one when it was offered to him. "I approve of his rule," I said, "and will practice it with a small addition: I shall never ask, never refuse, nor ever resign an office. If they want my office of clerk to give to somebody else, they'll have to take it from me. I won't hand it over and give up my right of someday making reprisals on my adversaries." I heard no more of it; I was chosen again unanimously, as usual, at the next election. Possibly they disliked my recent closeness with the members of the council, who had sided with the governors in all the disputes about military preparations that had long harassed the House, and they might have been pleased if I'd left them voluntarily; but they weren't willing to throw me out merely on account of my zeal for the association, and they couldn't very well give any other reason.
In fact I had some cause to believe that the defense of the country wasn't actually disagreeable to any of them — provided they weren't required to assist in it. And I found that a much greater number of them than I could have imagined, though against offensive war, were clearly for the defensive kind. Many pamphlets pro and con were published on the subject, some by good Quakers arguing in favor of defense, and I believe these convinced most of their younger people.
A piece of business in our fire company gave me some insight into their prevailing sentiments. It had been proposed that we support the battery scheme by spending our present stock — then about sixty pounds — on lottery tickets. By our rules, no money could be spent until the next meeting after the proposal. The company had thirty members: twenty-two Quakers, and only eight of other persuasions. We eight attended the meeting punctually; and though we thought some of the Quakers would join us, we were by no means sure of a majority. Only one Quaker, Mr. James Morris, appeared to oppose the measure. He expressed much sorrow that it had ever been proposed, saying that Friends were all against it, and that it would create such discord as might break up the company. We told him we saw no reason for that: we were the minority, and if Friends were against the measure and outvoted us, we must and would submit, as the usage of all societies requires. When the hour for business arrived, it was moved to put the vote. He allowed that by the rules we could; but since he could assure us that a number of members intended to be present for the purpose of opposing it, it would only be fair to allow a little time for them to appear.
While we were disputing the point, a waiter came to tell me that two gentlemen downstairs wished to speak with me. I went down and found two of our Quaker members. They told me there were eight of them gathered at a tavern close by; that they were determined to come and vote with us if there should be occasion, which they hoped there wouldn't be; and that they'd rather we didn't call for their assistance unless we couldn't do without it, since voting for such a measure might embroil them with their elders and friends. Being thus secure of a majority, I went back up, and after a little show of hesitation agreed to a delay of another hour. This Mr. Morris allowed to be extremely fair. Not one of his opposing friends appeared, which surprised him greatly; and when the hour was up, we carried the resolution eight to one. And since eight of the twenty-two Quakers had been ready to vote with us, while thirteen, by their absence, showed they had no inclination to oppose the measure, I afterward reckoned the proportion of Quakers sincerely against defense at only one in twenty-one — for all these were regular members of that society, in good reputation among them, and had due notice of what was to be proposed at that meeting.
The honorable and learned Mr. Logan, who had always been of that sect, was one who wrote an address to them declaring his approval of defensive war, and supporting his opinion with many strong arguments. He put sixty pounds into my hands to be spent on lottery tickets for the battery, with directions to apply whatever prizes it drew entirely to that service. And he told me the following anecdote about his old master, William Penn, on the subject of defense. Logan had come over from England as a young man with that proprietary, as his secretary. It was wartime, and their ship was chased by an armed vessel supposed to be an enemy. The captain prepared to defend the ship, but told William Penn and his company of Quakers that he didn't expect their assistance, and they were free to retire to the cabin — which they did, all except James Logan, who chose to stay on deck and was assigned to a gun. The supposed enemy proved a friend, so there was no fighting; but when the secretary went down to deliver the news, William Penn rebuked him severely for staying on deck and presuming to help defend the vessel, contrary to the principles of Friends — especially since the captain hadn't required it. This reproof, delivered in front of the whole company, stung the secretary, who answered, "I being thy servant, why did thee not order me to come down? But thee was willing enough that I should stay and help to fight the ship when thee thought there was danger."
My many years in the Assembly, whose majority was always Quaker, gave me frequent opportunities to see the embarrassment their principle against war caused them whenever the crown ordered them to grant aids for military purposes. They were unwilling to offend the government, on the one hand, by a direct refusal; and unwilling, on the other, to offend their friends, the body of the Quakers, by complying against their principles — hence a variety of evasions to avoid complying, and ways of disguising the compliance when it became unavoidable. The common method, at last, was to grant money under the phrase of its being "for the king's use," and never to inquire how it was applied.
But if the demand didn't come directly from the crown, that phrase wouldn't quite serve, and some other had to be invented. Once, when gunpowder was wanted — for the garrison at Louisburg, I think — and the government of New England asked Pennsylvania for a grant of some, which Governor Thomas pressed hard on the House, they couldn't grant money to buy powder, because powder is an ingredient of war. Instead they voted an aid to New England of three thousand pounds, to be put into the governor's hands and appropriated for the purchase of bread, flour, wheat, "or other grain." Some of the council, wanting to embarrass the House still further, advised the governor not to accept provisions, since that wasn't what he had demanded; but he replied, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well their meaning; other grain is gunpowder" — which he bought accordingly, and they never objected to it.
It was in allusion to this that, when we in our fire company feared our lottery proposal would fail, I said to my friend Mr. Syng, one of our members, "If we lose, let's move to spend the money on a fire engine; the Quakers can have no objection to that. Then, if you nominate me and I nominate you as the committee for the purchase, we'll buy a great gun — which is certainly a fire engine." "I see," says he, "you've improved by being so long in the Assembly; your equivocal project would be just a match for their wheat or other grain."
These embarrassments the Quakers suffered from having established and published, as one of their principles, that no kind of war was lawful — a principle which, once published, they couldn't easily get rid of, however much they might change their minds — remind me of what I think the more prudent conduct of another sect among us, the Dunkers. I was acquainted with one of its founders, Michael Welfare, soon after the sect appeared. He complained to me that they were being grievously slandered by the zealots of other persuasions, and charged with abominable principles and practices they were utter strangers to. I told him this had always been the case with new sects, and that to put a stop to such abuse, I imagined it might be well to publish their articles of belief and the rules of their discipline. He said it had been proposed among them, but not agreed to, and for this reason: "When we were first drawn together as a society," he said, "it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors; and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths. From time to time He has been pleased to afford us further light, and our principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing. Now, we are not sure that we have arrived at the end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge; and we fear that if we should once print our confession of faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement — and our successors still more so, taking what we their elders and founders had done for something sacred, never to be departed from."
This modesty in a sect is perhaps a singular instance in the history of mankind, since every other sect supposes itself in possession of all truth, and that those who differ are just that far in the wrong. It's like a man traveling in foggy weather: those at some distance ahead of him on the road he sees wrapped in fog, and those behind him too, and the people in the fields on either side; but near him everything appears clear — though in truth he's as deep in the fog as any of them. To avoid this kind of embarrassment, the Quakers have in recent years been gradually withdrawing from public service in the Assembly and the magistracy, choosing rather to give up their power than their principle.
In order of time, I should have mentioned earlier that in 1742 I invented an open stove for warming rooms better while saving fuel, since the fresh air it admitted was warmed as it entered. I made a present of the model to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my early friends, who owned an iron furnace and found the casting of the plates for these stoves a profitable business, as they were growing in demand. To promote that demand, I wrote and published a pamphlet titled "An Account of the New-Invented Pennsylvania Fireplaces; Wherein Their Construction and Manner of Operation Is Particularly Explained; Their Advantages Above Every Other Method of Warming Rooms Demonstrated; and All Objections That Have Been Raised Against the Use of Them Answered and Obviated," etc. The pamphlet had a good effect. Governor Thomas was so pleased with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole right of selling them for a term of years; but I declined it, on a principle that has always weighed with me on such occasions: that as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours — and this we should do freely and generously.
An ironmonger in London, however, lifted a good deal of my pamphlet, worked it up into his own, made some small changes in the machine — which actually hurt its operation — and got a patent for it there, making, as I was told, a little fortune by it. Nor is this the only instance of patents taken out on my inventions by others, though not always with the same success. I never contested them, having no desire to profit by patents myself, and hating disputes. The use of these fireplaces in a great many houses, both in this colony and the neighboring ones, has been, and is, a great saving of wood to the inhabitants.
With the peace concluded and the militia association business at an end, I turned my thoughts back to the project of establishing an academy. My first step was to bring a number of active friends into the design — the Junto supplied a good share of them. The next was to write and publish a pamphlet called "Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania." I distributed it free among the town's principal citizens, and as soon as I could suppose their minds a little prepared by reading it, I set a subscription on foot for opening and supporting an academy. It was to be paid in yearly installments over five years; by dividing it that way, I judged the total would come in larger — and I believe it did, amounting, if I remember right, to no less than five thousand pounds.
In the introduction to these proposals I presented their publication not as my own act but as that of "some public-spirited gentlemen" — avoiding, as much as I could and according to my usual rule, presenting myself to the public as the author of any scheme for their benefit.
The subscribers, to carry the project into immediate execution, chose twenty-four trustees from among their number, and appointed Mr. Francis, then attorney general, and me to draw up a constitution for governing the academy. That being done and signed, a house was rented, teachers were hired, and the schools opened — in, I think, the same year, 1749.
The students multiplied fast, the house was soon found too small, and we were looking for a properly situated piece of ground to build on when Providence threw into our way a large house already built, which with a few alterations might serve our purpose well. This was the building I mentioned before, erected by Mr. Whitefield's hearers, and we obtained it in the following manner.
You should know that since the contributions to that building had come from people of many different sects, care had been taken, in naming the trustees who would hold the building and ground, that no single sect should predominate — lest in time that predominance become a means of appropriating the whole to that sect's use, contrary to the original intention. So one trustee of each sect was appointed: one Church of England man, one Presbyterian, one Baptist, one Moravian, and so on; and when one died, the vacancy was to be filled by election from among the contributors. The Moravian happened not to please his colleagues, and on his death they resolved to have no other of that sect. The difficulty then was how to avoid ending up with two of some other sect through the new choice.
Several people were named, and rejected for exactly that reason. At length someone mentioned me, with the observation that I was merely an honest man, and of no sect at all — which prevailed with them to choose me. The enthusiasm that existed when the house was built had long since cooled, and its trustees had not been able to raise fresh contributions to pay the ground rent and clear the other debts the building had run up, which embarrassed them greatly. Now that I was a member of both boards of trustees — the building's and the academy's — I was well placed to negotiate with both, and I finally brought them to an agreement: the building's trustees would cede it to the academy's, and the academy would pay off the debt, keep a large hall in the building forever open for occasional preachers (honoring the original intention), and maintain a free school for the instruction of poor children. The papers were drawn accordingly, and when the debts were paid, the academy's trustees took possession of the premises. By dividing the great, lofty hall into stories, with different rooms above and below for the several schools, and by purchasing some additional ground, the whole was soon made fit for our purpose, and the students moved into the building. The care and trouble of settling terms with the workmen, buying materials, and superintending the work fell on me, and I went through it the more cheerfully because it no longer interfered with my private business. The year before, I had taken a very able, industrious, and honest partner, Mr. David Hall, whose character I knew well — he had worked for me four years. He took the whole care of the printing office off my hands and paid me my share of the profits punctually. The partnership lasted eighteen years, successfully for us both.
After a while the academy's trustees were incorporated by a charter from the governor. Their funds grew through contributions in Britain and grants of land from the proprietaries, to which the Assembly has since made considerable additions — and thus was established the present University of Philadelphia. I have remained one of its trustees from the beginning, nearly forty years now, and have had the very great pleasure of seeing numbers of the young people educated there distinguished by their improved abilities, serviceable in public office, and ornaments to their country.
When I disengaged from private business, as I mentioned above, I flattered myself that with the sufficient though moderate fortune I had acquired, I had secured leisure for the rest of my life for scientific studies and amusements. I bought all of Dr. Spence's apparatus — he had come over from England to lecture here — and went at my electrical experiments with great eagerness. But the public, now considering me a man of leisure, laid hold of me for their own purposes. Every branch of our civil government, and almost all at once, imposed some duty on me: the governor put me into the commission of the peace; the city corporation chose me for the common council, and soon after made me an alderman; and the citizens at large elected me a burgess to represent them in the Assembly. This last post was the most agreeable to me. I was thoroughly tired by then of sitting in the House to hear debates in which, as clerk, I could take no part — debates often so unentertaining that I amused myself making magic squares or circles, anything to fend off the weariness — and I conceived that becoming a member would enlarge my power of doing good. I won't pretend, though, that my ambition wasn't flattered by all these promotions. It certainly was. Considering my low beginnings, they were great things to me — and the more pleasing for being so many spontaneous testimonies of the public's good opinion, entirely unsolicited by me.
The office of justice of the peace I tried a little, attending a few courts and sitting on the bench to hear cases; but finding that doing the job with credit required more knowledge of the common law than I possessed, I gradually withdrew from it, excusing myself by my obligation to attend to the higher duties of a legislator in the Assembly. My election to that trust was repeated every year for ten years, without my ever asking any voter for his vote, or signifying, directly or indirectly, any desire to be chosen. On my taking my seat in the House, my son was appointed their clerk.
The following year, a treaty was to be held with the Indians at Carlisle, and the governor sent a message to the House proposing that they nominate some of their members to be joined with some members of his council as commissioners for the purpose. The House named the speaker, Mr. Norris, and me; and being commissioned, we went to Carlisle and met the Indians accordingly.
Since those people are extremely apt to get drunk — and when drunk are very quarrelsome and disorderly — we strictly forbade the selling of any liquor to them. When they complained of this restriction, we told them that if they would stay sober during the treaty, we would give them plenty of rum when the business was over. They promised this, and they kept their promise — because they could get no liquor — and the treaty was conducted in very good order and concluded to mutual satisfaction. Then they claimed the rum, and received it. This was in the afternoon. They were nearly a hundred — men, women, and children — lodged in temporary cabins built in the form of a square just outside the town. In the evening, hearing a great noise among them, we commissioners walked out to see what was the matter. We found they had built a great bonfire in the middle of the square, and they were all drunk, men and women, quarreling and fighting. Their dark-colored bodies, half naked, seen only by the gloomy light of the bonfire, running after and beating one another with firebrands, accompanied by their horrid yelling, formed a scene as near our ideas of hell as could well be imagined. There was no appeasing the tumult, and we retired to our lodging. At midnight a number of them came thundering at our door, demanding more rum, of which we took no notice.
The next day, sensible that they had misbehaved in giving us that disturbance, they sent three of their old counselors to make their apology. The orator acknowledged the fault, but laid it upon the rum — and then endeavored to excuse the rum itself by saying, "The Great Spirit, who made all things, made everything for some use, and whatever use he designed anything for, to that use it should always be put. Now, when he made rum, he said, 'Let this be for the Indians to get drunk with,' and it must be so." And indeed, if it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means. It has already annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the seacoast.
In 1751, Dr. Thomas Bond, a particular friend of mine, conceived the idea of establishing a hospital in Philadelphia for the reception and cure of poor sick people, whether inhabitants of the province or strangers — a very beneficent design that has been ascribed to me, but was originally his. He was zealous and active in trying to procure subscriptions for it; but the proposal being a novelty in America, and at first not well understood, he met with small success.
At length he came to me with the compliment that he had found there was no such thing as carrying a public-spirited project through without my being concerned in it. "For," said he, "I am often asked by those I propose subscribing to, 'Have you consulted Franklin upon this business? And what does he think of it?' And when I tell them that I have not — supposing it rather out of your line — they do not subscribe, but say they will consider it." I inquired into the nature and probable usefulness of his scheme, and receiving from him a very satisfactory explanation, I not only subscribed to it myself but engaged heartily in the business of procuring subscriptions from others. First, however, before any soliciting, I endeavored to prepare people's minds by writing on the subject in the newspapers — my usual custom in such cases, but a step he had omitted.
The subscriptions afterward came more freely and generously; but as they began to flag, I saw they would be insufficient without some assistance from the Assembly, and therefore proposed to petition for it, which was done. The country members did not at first relish the project. They objected that it could only be serviceable to the city, and therefore the citizens alone should bear the expense of it; and they doubted whether the citizens themselves generally approved of it. My claim to the contrary — that the project met with such approval as to leave no doubt of our being able to raise two thousand pounds by voluntary donations — they considered a most extravagant supposition, and utterly impossible.
On this I formed my plan. I asked leave to bring in a bill for incorporating the contributors according to the prayer of their petition, and for granting them a blank sum of money — leave that was obtained chiefly on the consideration that the House could throw the bill out if they didn't like it. I then drew the bill so as to make the important clause a conditional one, namely: "And be it enacted, by the authority aforesaid, that when the said contributors shall have met and chosen their managers and treasurer, and shall have raised by their contributions a capital stock of ⸻ value (the yearly interest of which is to be applied to the accommodating of the sick poor in the said hospital, free of charge for diet, attendance, advice, and medicines), and shall make the same appear to the satisfaction of the speaker of the Assembly for the time being, that then it shall and may be lawful for the said speaker, and he is hereby required, to sign an order on the provincial treasurer for the payment of two thousand pounds, in two yearly payments, to the treasurer of the said hospital, to be applied to the founding, building, and finishing of the same."
This condition carried the bill through; for the members who had opposed the grant, and who now conceived they might have the credit of being charitable without the expense, agreed to its passage. And then, in soliciting subscriptions among the people, we urged the conditional promise of the law as an additional motive to give, since every man's donation would be doubled. Thus the clause worked both ways. The subscriptions soon exceeded the required sum; we claimed and received the public gift, which enabled us to carry the design into execution. A convenient and handsome building was soon erected; the institution has by constant experience been found useful, and flourishes to this day; and I do not remember any of my political maneuvers whose success gave me at the time more pleasure — or in which, after thinking it over, I more easily excused myself for having made some use of cunning.
It was about this time that another projector, the Rev. Gilbert Tennent, came to me with a request that I help him procure a subscription for building a new meetinghouse. It was to be for the use of a congregation he had gathered among the Presbyterians who were originally disciples of Mr. Whitefield. Unwilling to make myself disagreeable to my fellow citizens by soliciting their contributions too frequently, I absolutely refused. He then asked me to furnish him with a list of the names of people I knew by experience to be generous and public-spirited. I thought it would be unbecoming in me, after their kind compliance with my own solicitations, to mark them out to be worried by other beggars, so I refused that too. He then asked if I would at least give him my advice. "That I will readily do," I said. "In the first place, I advise you to apply to all those you know will give something; next, to those you are uncertain whether they will give anything or not, and show them the list of those who have given; and lastly, do not neglect those you are sure will give nothing — for in some of them you may be mistaken." He laughed, thanked me, and said he would take my advice. He did, for he asked everybody — and he obtained a much larger sum than he expected, with which he erected the capacious and very elegant meetinghouse that stands on Arch Street.
Our city, though laid out with a beautiful regularity — the streets wide, straight, and crossing each other at right angles — had the disgrace of letting those streets remain unpaved for years. In wet weather the wheels of heavy carriages plowed them into a quagmire, so that it was difficult to cross them; in dry weather the dust was offensive. I lived near what was called the Jersey Market, and saw with pain the inhabitants wading through mud while buying their provisions. At length a strip of ground down the middle of that market was paved with brick, so that once you were in the market you had firm footing — but you were often over your shoes in dirt getting there. By talking and writing on the subject, I was at length instrumental in getting the street between the market and the brick foot-pavement along the houses paved with stone. For some time this gave dry-shod access to the market; but the rest of the street being unpaved, whenever a carriage came out of the mud onto this pavement it shook off its dirt and left it there, and the pavement was soon covered with mire that nobody removed — the city as yet having no scavengers to clean its streets.
After some inquiry, I found a poor, industrious man who was willing to keep the pavement clean by sweeping it twice a week and carrying off the dirt from before all the neighbors' doors, for the sum of sixpence per month from each house. I then wrote and printed a paper setting out the advantages the neighborhood could have for this small expense: houses easier to keep clean, with so much less dirt carried in on people's feet; more custom for the shops, since buyers could get to them more easily; no dust blown in upon the goods in windy weather; and so on. I sent one of these papers to each house, and in a day or two went around to see who would sign an agreement to pay the sixpences. It was signed unanimously, and for a time well executed. All the inhabitants of the city were delighted with the cleanliness of the pavement surrounding the market, it being a convenience to everyone; and this raised a general desire to have all the streets paved, and made the people more willing to submit to a tax for that purpose.
After some time I drew a bill for paving the city and brought it into the Assembly. This was just before I went to England in 1757, and it did not pass until I was gone — and then with an alteration in the mode of assessment that I thought was not for the better, but with an additional provision for lighting the streets as well as paving them, which was a great improvement. It was a private person, the late Mr. John Clifton, who first impressed the people with the idea of lighting the whole city, by giving them a sample of the usefulness of lamps — he placed one at his own door. The honor of this public benefit has also been ascribed to me, but it belongs truly to that gentleman. I only followed his example, and can claim some merit only respecting the form of our lamps, which differed from the globe lamps we were at first supplied with from London. Those we found inconvenient in several respects. They admitted no air below, so the smoke did not readily go out above but circulated inside the globe, settled on its inner surface, and soon obstructed the very light the lamps were meant to give — besides costing the daily trouble of wiping them clean; and an accidental knock on one of them would demolish it and render it totally useless. I therefore suggested composing them of four flat panes, with a long funnel above to draw up the smoke, and crevices below to admit air and help the smoke rise. By this means they stayed clean and did not grow dark in a few hours, as the London lamps do, but continued bright till morning; and an accidental blow would generally break only a single pane, easily repaired.
I have sometimes wondered that the Londoners — seeing what the holes in the bottoms of the globe lamps used at Vauxhall do toward keeping them clean — never learned to put such holes in their street lamps. But those holes were made for another purpose: to carry flame quickly to the wick by a little flax hanging down through them. The other use, of letting in air, seems never to have been thought of; and so, after the lamps have been lit a few hours, the streets of London are very poorly illuminated.
The mention of these improvements puts me in mind of one I proposed, when in London, to Dr. Fothergill, who was among the best men I have known and a great promoter of useful projects. I had observed that the streets there, when dry, were never swept and the light dust carried away; it was suffered to accumulate until wet weather reduced it to mud, and then — after lying some days so deep on the pavement that there was no crossing except along paths kept clean by poor people with brooms — it was with great labor raked together and thrown up into carts open at the top, whose sides let some of the slush shake out and fall at every jolt on the pavement, sometimes to the annoyance of foot-passengers. The reason given for not sweeping the dusty streets was that the dust would fly into the windows of shops and houses.
An accidental occurrence had taught me how much sweeping could be done in a little time. One morning I found a poor woman at my door in Craven Street, sweeping my pavement with a birch broom. She looked very pale and feeble, as if just come out of a fit of sickness. I asked who employed her to sweep there. "Nobody," she said, "but I am very poor and in distress, and I sweeps before gentle-folkses doors, and hopes they will give me something." I told her to sweep the whole street clean and I would give her a shilling. This was at nine o'clock; at twelve she came for the shilling. From the slowness I had seen at first in her working, I could scarcely believe the work was done so soon, and I sent my servant to examine it. He reported that the whole street was swept perfectly clean, and all the dust placed in the gutter, which ran down the middle; and the next rain washed it quite away, so that the pavement and even the gutter were perfectly clean.
I judged then that if that feeble woman could sweep such a street in three hours, a strong, active man might have done it in half the time. And let me remark here on the convenience of having but one gutter in such a narrow street, running down its middle, instead of two, one on each side near the footway. Where all the rain that falls on a street runs from the sides and meets in the middle, it forms there a current strong enough to wash away all the mud it meets with; but when divided into two channels, it is often too weak to cleanse either, and only makes the mud it finds more fluid, so that the wheels of carriages and the feet of horses throw and dash it up onto the foot-pavement — which is thereby made foul and slippery — and sometimes splash it on the people walking there. My proposal, communicated to the good doctor, was as follows:
"For the more effectual cleaning and keeping clean the streets of London and Westminster, it is proposed that the several watchmen be contracted with to have the dust swept up in dry seasons, and the mud raked up at other times, each in the several streets and lanes of his round; that they be furnished with brooms and other proper instruments for these purposes, to be kept at their respective stands, ready to furnish the poor people they may employ in the service.
"That in the dry summer months the dust be all swept up into heaps at proper distances, before the shops and windows of houses are usually opened, when the scavengers, with close-covered carts, shall also carry it all away.
"That the mud, when raked up, be not left in heaps to be spread abroad again by the wheels of carriages and trampling of horses, but that the scavengers be provided with bodies of carts, not placed high upon wheels, but low upon sliders, with lattice bottoms, which, being covered with straw, will retain the mud thrown into them and permit the water to drain from it, whereby it will become much lighter, water making the greatest part of its weight; these bodies of carts to be placed at convenient distances, and the mud brought to them in wheelbarrows; they remaining where placed till the mud is drained, and then horses brought to draw them away."
I have since had my doubts about the practicability of the latter part of this proposal, on account of the narrowness of some streets and the difficulty of placing the draining-sleds so as not to encumber the passage too much; but I am still of the opinion that the former part — requiring the dust to be swept up and carried away before the shops open — is very practicable in the summer, when the days are long. For, walking through the Strand and Fleet Street one morning at seven o'clock, I observed there was not one shop open, though it had been daylight and the sun up above three hours — the inhabitants of London choosing voluntarily to live much by candlelight and sleep by sunshine, and yet often complaining, a little absurdly, of the duty on candles and the high price of tallow.
Some may think these trifling matters not worth minding or relating. But when they consider that though dust blown into the eyes of a single person, or into a single shop on a windy day, is of small importance, yet the great number of such instances in a populous city, and their frequent repetition, give the thing weight and consequence — perhaps they will not judge too severely those who give some attention to affairs of this seemingly low nature. Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. Thus, if you teach a poor young man to shave himself and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than by giving him a thousand guineas. The money may be soon spent, with only the regret remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers — and their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breath, and dull razors — and shaves when it is most convenient to him, enjoying daily the pleasure of a job done with a good instrument. In this spirit I have hazarded the few preceding pages, hoping they may afford hints that some time or other may be useful to a city I love — having lived many years in it very happily — and perhaps to some of our towns in America.
Having been employed for some time by the postmaster-general of America as his comptroller, regulating several offices and bringing the officers to account, I was, upon his death in 1753, appointed jointly with Mr. William Hunter to succeed him, by a commission from the postmaster-general in England. The American office had never yet paid anything to that of Britain. We were to have six hundred pounds a year between us — if we could make that sum out of the profits of the office. To do this, a variety of improvements were necessary, some of them inevitably expensive at first, so that in the first four years the office ran more than nine hundred pounds into debt to us. But it soon after began to repay us; and before I was displaced by a freak of the ministers, of which I shall speak hereafter, we had brought it to yield three times as much clear revenue to the crown as the post office of Ireland. Since that imprudent transaction, they have received from it — not one farthing!
The business of the post office occasioned my taking a journey that year to New England, where the College of Cambridge, of their own motion, presented me with the degree of Master of Arts. Yale College, in Connecticut, had paid me a similar compliment before. Thus, without studying in any college, I came to partake of their honors. They were conferred in consideration of my improvements and discoveries in the electrical branch of natural philosophy.
In 1754, with war against France again looking likely, the Lords of Trade ordered a congress of commissioners from the different colonies to assemble at Albany and confer with the chiefs of the Six Nations about the means of defending both their country and ours. When Governor Hamilton received this order he laid it before the House, asking them to furnish suitable presents for the Indians on the occasion, and naming the speaker, Mr. Norris, and myself to join Mr. Thomas Penn and Secretary Peters as commissioners for Pennsylvania. The House approved the nominations and provided the goods for the present — though they never much liked holding treaty talks outside the province — and we met the other commissioners at Albany about the middle of June.
On the way there, I worked out and drew up a plan for the union of all the colonies under one government, so far as might be necessary for defense and other important general purposes. Passing through New York, I showed my project to Mr. James Alexander and Mr. Kennedy, two gentlemen deeply versed in public affairs, and, fortified by their approval, I ventured to lay it before the Congress. It turned out that several of the commissioners had drawn up plans of the same kind. A preliminary question was put first — should a union be established at all? — and it passed unanimously. A committee was then appointed, one member from each colony, to consider the various plans and report. Mine happened to be preferred, and with a few amendments it was reported out accordingly.
Under this plan, the general government was to be administered by a president-general, appointed and supported by the crown, and a grand council chosen by the representatives of the people in the several colonial assemblies. The debates on it went on in Congress daily, hand in hand with the Indian business. Many objections and difficulties were raised, but in the end every one was overcome, the plan was unanimously agreed to, and copies were ordered sent to the Board of Trade and to the assemblies of the several provinces.
Its fate was a strange one. The assemblies would not adopt it, all thinking it had too much prerogative — too much crown power — in it; and in England it was judged to be too democratic. So the Board of Trade did not approve it, or recommend it for the king's approval. Instead another scheme was formed, supposed to answer the same purpose better: the governors of the provinces, with some members of their respective councils, would meet and order the raising of troops, the building of forts, and so on, drawing on the treasury of Great Britain for the expense — which was afterward to be repaid by an act of Parliament laying a tax on America. My plan, with my reasons in support of it, can be found among my political papers that have been printed.
Being in Boston the following winter, I had many conversations with Governor Shirley about both plans. Part of what passed between us on the occasion may also be seen among those papers. The objections to my plan were so different — indeed so contrary — on the two sides that I suspect it was really the true middle course; and I am still of the opinion that it would have been a happy thing for both sides of the water if it had been adopted. The colonies, so united, would have been strong enough to defend themselves. There would then have been no need of troops from England — and so the later pretext for taxing America, and the bloody contest it brought on, would have been avoided. But such mistakes are nothing new; history is full of the errors of states and princes.
"Look round the habitable world, how few Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!"
Those who govern, having a great deal of business on their hands, generally don't care to take the trouble of considering and carrying out new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom; they are forced by the occasion.
The Governor of Pennsylvania, in sending the plan down to the Assembly, expressed his approval of it, "as appearing to him to be drawn up with great clearness and strength of judgment, and therefore recommended it as well worthy of their closest and most serious attention." The House, however, through the management of a certain member, took it up while I happened to be absent — which I thought not very fair — and rejected it without giving it any consideration at all, to my no small mortification.
On my trip to Boston that year, I met our new governor, Mr. Morris, at New York — just arrived from England, and a man I had known well for years. He carried a commission to replace Mr. Hamilton, who, worn out by the disputes his proprietary instructions kept dragging him into, had resigned. Mr. Morris asked me whether I thought he had to expect an equally uncomfortable administration. "No," I said. "On the contrary, you may have a very comfortable one — if you'll just take care not to get into any dispute with the Assembly." "My dear friend," he said pleasantly, "how can you advise me to avoid disputes? You know I love disputing; it's one of my greatest pleasures. Still, to show you how much I value your counsel, I promise you I'll avoid them — if I possibly can." He had some reason to love disputing: he was eloquent, a sharp and slippery arguer, and therefore generally successful in argumentative conversation. He had been raised to it from boyhood — his father, as I've heard, used to set his children disputing with one another for his own entertainment while they sat at the table after dinner. But I don't think the practice was wise, because in the course of my observation, these disputing, contradicting, and confuting people generally do badly in their affairs. They get victory sometimes, but they never get goodwill, which would be of more use to them. We parted, he heading for Philadelphia and I for Boston.
On my way back, I met at New York with the printed votes of the Assembly, from which it appeared that, despite his promise to me, he and the House were already locked in high contention — and it was a continual battle between them for as long as he held the government. I had my share of it. As soon as I got back to my seat in the Assembly, I was put on every committee for answering his speeches and messages, and the committees always asked me to make the drafts. Our answers, like his messages, were often tart, and sometimes indecently abusive; and since he knew I wrote for the Assembly, you might have imagined that when we met, we could hardly keep from cutting each other's throats. But he was so good-natured a man that the contest never caused any personal quarrel between him and me, and we often dined together.
One afternoon, at the very height of this public feud, we met in the street. "Franklin," he said, "you must come home with me and spend the evening; I'm having some company you'll like" — and taking me by the arm, he led me to his house. In the merry conversation over our wine after supper, he told us, jokingly, that he much admired the idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him a government, requested it be a government of blacks, because then, if he couldn't agree with his people, he could sell them. One of his friends, sitting next to me, said, "Franklin, why do you keep siding with these damned Quakers? Hadn't you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price." "The governor," I said, "has not yet blacked them enough." He had indeed labored hard to blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wiped off his coloring as fast as he laid it on, and slapped it back, thick, on his own face — so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, like Mr. Hamilton before him, grew tired of the contest and quit the government.
These public quarrels were all, at bottom, the fault of the proprietaries, our hereditary governors. Whenever any expense had to be incurred for the defense of their own province, they instructed their deputies, with unbelievable meanness, to pass no act levying the necessary taxes unless the same act expressly excused their vast estates — and they had even taken bonds from these deputies to obey such instructions. For three years the Assemblies held out against this injustice, though they were forced to bend at last. Eventually Captain Denny, Governor Morris's successor, ventured to disobey those instructions; how that came about, I'll show later.
But I'm getting ahead of my story. There are still some transactions to mention that happened during Governor Morris's administration.
War with France having in effect begun, the government of Massachusetts Bay planned an attack on Crown Point, and sent Mr. Quincy to Pennsylvania — and Mr. Pownall, afterward Governor Pownall, to New York — to ask for assistance. Since I was in the Assembly, knew its temper, and was Mr. Quincy's fellow New Englander, he came to me for my influence and help. I dictated his address to the House, which was well received. They voted an aid of ten thousand pounds, to be spent on provisions. But the governor refused his assent to their bill (which bundled this with other sums granted for the use of the Crown) unless a clause were inserted exempting the proprietary estate from bearing any part of the tax that would be necessary; and the Assembly, though very eager to make their grant to New England effective, were at a loss how to accomplish it. Mr. Quincy labored hard with the governor to obtain his assent, but he was obstinate.
I then suggested a way of doing the business without the governor: orders drawn on the trustees of the Loan Office, which the Assembly had the legal right to draw. There was, it's true, little or no money in the office at the time, so I proposed that the orders be made payable in a year and carry interest at five percent. With these orders, I figured, the provisions could easily be purchased. The Assembly adopted the proposal with very little hesitation. The orders were printed immediately, and I was one of the committee appointed to sign and issue them. The fund for paying them was the interest on all the paper currency then out on loan in the province, together with the revenue from the excise — which, being known to be more than sufficient, gave them instant credit. They were not only accepted in payment for the provisions; many moneyed people who had cash lying idle invested it in these orders, finding them a good deal, since they earned interest while on hand and could be used as money on any occasion. So they were all eagerly bought up, and in a few weeks not one of them was to be seen. Thus this important affair was completed by my means. Mr. Quincy thanked the Assembly in a handsome memorial, went home highly pleased with the success of his mission, and ever after bore me the most cordial and affectionate friendship.
The British government didn't care to permit the union of the colonies proposed at Albany, or to trust that union with their own defense — the colonies might grow too military and start to feel their own strength, and there was already a good deal of suspicion and jealousy of us in those days. So instead they sent over General Braddock with two regiments of regular English troops to do the job. He landed at Alexandria, in Virginia, and marched from there to Frederictown, in Maryland, where he halted to wait for wagons. Our Assembly had gotten word that he'd conceived violent prejudices against them, as if they were opposed to the war effort, and they wanted me to go call on him — not officially on their behalf, but in my character as postmaster-general, under the cover of arranging with him how to carry dispatches between him and the governors of the several provinces with the most speed and certainty, since he'd need to be in constant correspondence with them, and the Assembly proposed to pay the cost. My son came with me on the journey.
We found the general at Frederictown, waiting impatiently for the return of the men he'd sent through the back country of Maryland and Virginia to collect wagons. I stayed with him several days, dined with him daily, and had every opportunity to clear away his prejudices by telling him what the Assembly had actually done before his arrival, and what it stood ready to do, to help his operations along. Just as I was about to leave, the wagon returns came in — and they amounted to only twenty-five, not all of those in working condition. The general and all his officers were stunned. They declared the expedition was finished, impossible, and cursed the ministers for ignorantly landing them in a country that had no means of hauling their stores and baggage, when no fewer than a hundred and fifty wagons would be needed.
I happened to remark that it was a pity they hadn't landed in Pennsylvania instead, since in that country almost every farmer had his own wagon. The general seized eagerly on my words: “Then you, sir, who are a man of interest there, can probably procure them for us; and I beg you will undertake it.” I asked what terms would be offered to the owners of the wagons, and was told to put on paper whatever terms seemed necessary to me. I did; they were agreed to, and a commission and instructions were drawn up on the spot. What those terms were will appear in the advertisement I published as soon as I reached Lancaster. Given the great and sudden effect it produced, it's a piece of some curiosity, so I'll insert it here in full:
“Whereas one hundred and fifty wagons, with four horses to each wagon, and fifteen hundred saddle or pack horses, are wanted for the service of His Majesty's forces now about to assemble at Will's Creek, and His Excellency General Braddock has been pleased to empower me to contract for the hire of the same, I hereby give notice that I shall attend for that purpose at Lancaster from this day until next Wednesday evening, and at York from next Thursday morning until Friday evening, where I shall be ready to agree for wagons and teams, or single horses, on the following terms, namely: 1. That there shall be paid for each wagon, with four good horses and a driver, fifteen shillings per day; and for each able horse with a packsaddle, or other saddle and gear, two shillings per day; and for each able horse without a saddle, eighteen pence per day. 2. That the pay begins from the time they join the forces at Will's Creek, which must be on or before the 20th of May next, and that a reasonable allowance will be paid over and above for the time needed to travel to Will's Creek and home again after their discharge. 3. Each wagon and team, and every saddle or pack horse, is to be valued by impartial persons chosen between me and the owner; and in case any wagon, team, or other horse is lost in the service, the price according to that valuation is to be allowed and paid. 4. Seven days' pay is to be advanced and paid in hand by me to the owner of each wagon and team, or horse, at the time of contracting, if required, and the remainder to be paid by General Braddock, or by the paymaster of the army, at the time of their discharge, or from time to time as it shall be demanded. 5. No drivers of wagons, or persons taking care of the hired horses, are on any account to be called on to do the duty of soldiers, or be employed in anything other than driving or taking care of their wagons and horses. 6. All oats, Indian corn, or other forage that the wagons or horses bring to camp beyond what the horses themselves need is to be taken for the use of the army, and a reasonable price paid for it. “Note: My son, William Franklin, is empowered to enter into like contracts with any person in Cumberland County. “B. Franklin.” “Friends and Countrymen, “Happening to be at the camp at Frederic a few days ago, I found the general and his officers extremely exasperated that they had not been supplied with horses and wagons, which had been expected from this province as the one best able to furnish them; but through the disputes between our governor and Assembly, no money had been provided, nor any steps taken for the purpose. “It was proposed to send an armed force into these counties at once, to seize as many of the best wagons and horses as might be wanted, and to compel into the service as many persons as would be needed to drive and care for them. “I feared that the march of British soldiers through these counties on such an errand — especially considering the temper they are in, and their resentment against us — would bring many great hardships on the inhabitants, and so I was the more willing to take the trouble of first trying what might be done by fair and equitable means. The people of these back counties have lately complained to the Assembly that there is not enough currency in circulation; you now have an opportunity to receive and divide among yourselves a very considerable sum. For if the service of this expedition continues, as it more than probably will, for a hundred and twenty days, the hire of these wagons and horses will come to upward of thirty thousand pounds, which will be paid you in the silver and gold of the king's money. “The service will be light and easy, for the army will scarcely march more than twelve miles a day; and the wagons and baggage horses, since they carry the things absolutely necessary to the welfare of the army, must march with the army and no faster, and are, for the army's own sake, always placed where they will be most secure, whether on the march or in camp. “If you are really, as I believe you are, good and loyal subjects to His Majesty, you may now do a most acceptable service and make it easy for yourselves; for three or four of those who cannot separately spare a wagon and four horses and a driver from the business of their farms may do it together — one furnishing the wagon, another one or two horses, and another the driver — and divide the pay proportionately among you. But if you will not do this service to your king and country voluntarily, when such good pay and reasonable terms are offered you, your loyalty will be strongly suspected. The king's business must be done; so many brave troops, come so far for your defense, must not stand idle because of your reluctance to do what may reasonably be expected of you; wagons and horses must be had; violent measures will probably be used, and you will be left to seek your compensation where you can find it, and your case, perhaps, little pitied or regarded. “I have no particular interest in this affair; apart from the satisfaction of trying to do good, I shall have nothing for my pains but my labor. If this method of obtaining the wagons and horses is not likely to succeed, I am obliged to send word to the general within fourteen days; and I suppose Sir John St. Clair, the hussar, with a body of soldiers, will immediately enter the province for the purpose — which I shall be sorry to hear, because I am very sincerely and truly your friend and well-wisher, “B. Franklin.”
I received from the general about eight hundred pounds to be paid out as advance money to the wagon owners and the rest; but that sum proved insufficient, and I advanced upward of two hundred pounds more of my own. In two weeks the hundred and fifty wagons, with two hundred and fifty-nine pack horses, were on their march to the camp. The advertisement had promised payment according to the valuation if any wagon or horse were lost. The owners, however, saying they didn't know General Braddock or how far his promise could be depended on, insisted on my personal bond for the performance — which I accordingly gave them.
While I was at the camp, having supper one evening with the officers of Colonel Dunbar's regiment, he told me of his concern for the junior officers, who, he said, were generally men of little money and could ill afford, in this expensive country, to lay in the supplies they'd need for so long a march through a wilderness where nothing could be bought. I felt for them, and resolved to try to get them some relief. I said nothing to him of my intention, though; instead I wrote the next morning to the committee of the Assembly that had the handling of some public money, warmly recommending the case of these officers and proposing that a present of necessities and refreshments be sent to them. My son, who had some experience of camp life and its wants, drew up a list for me, which I enclosed in my letter. The committee approved, and moved so quickly that the stores — conducted by my son — arrived at the camp as soon as the wagons did. They consisted of twenty parcels, each containing
6 lbs. loaf sugar. | 1 Gloucester cheese. 6 lbs. good Muscovado sugar. | 1 keg containing 20 lbs. good butter. 1 lb. good green tea. | 2 doz. old Madeira wine. 1 lb. good bohea tea. | 2 gallons Jamaica spirits. 6 lbs. good ground coffee. | 1 bottle flour of mustard. 6 lbs. chocolate. | 2 well-cured hams. 1–2 cwt. best white biscuit. | 1–2 dozen dried tongues. 1–2 lb. pepper. | 6 lbs. rice. 1 quart best white wine | 6 lbs. raisins. 1 quart best white wine vinegar.
These twenty parcels, well packed, were loaded onto as many horses, each parcel with its horse being intended as a present for one officer. They were very thankfully received, and the kindness acknowledged in the most grateful terms by letters to me from the colonels of both regiments. The general, too, was highly pleased with my conduct in procuring him the wagons and the rest, and readily paid my account of expenses, thanking me repeatedly and asking my further assistance in sending provisions after him. I undertook that as well, and was busy at it until we heard of his defeat — advancing for the service, out of my own pocket, upward of a thousand pounds sterling, of which I sent him an account. It reached his hands, luckily for me, a few days before the battle, and he immediately sent back an order on the paymaster for the round sum of a thousand pounds, leaving the remainder to the next account. I count that payment as good luck, since I was never able to obtain the remainder — of which more later.
This general was, I think, a brave man, and might probably have made a figure as a good officer in some European war. But he had too much self-confidence, too high an opinion of the worth of regular troops, and too low a one of both Americans and Indians. George Croghan, our Indian interpreter, joined him on his march with a hundred of those people, who could have been of great use to his army as guides and scouts if he had treated them kindly; but he slighted and neglected them, and by degrees they left him.
In conversation with him one day, he was giving me some account of his intended progress. “After taking Fort Duquesne,” he said, “I am to proceed to Niagara; and, having taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow time; and I suppose it will, for Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four days; and then I see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara.” I had been turning over in my mind the long line his army would have to make on its march, along a very narrow road that would have to be cut for them through the woods and brush, and I had also read of an earlier defeat of fifteen hundred French troops who invaded the Iroquois country; so I had conceived some doubts and some fears for how the campaign would turn out. But all I ventured to say was, “To be sure, sir, if you arrive well before Duquesne with these fine troops, so well provided with artillery, that place — not yet completely fortified, and, as we hear, with no very strong garrison — can probably make only a short resistance. The only danger I see of obstruction to your march is from ambushes of Indians, who by constant practice are expert at laying and springing them; and the slender line your army must make, near four miles long, may expose it to be attacked by surprise on its flanks, and to be cut like a thread into several pieces, which, being so far apart, cannot come up in time to support each other.”
He smiled at my ignorance, and replied, “These savages may, indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the king's regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.” I was conscious that there was something improper in my disputing with a military man about matters of his own profession, and I said no more. As it happened, the enemy did not take the advantage of his army that I had feared its long line of march would give them, but let it advance without interruption until it was within nine miles of the place. Then — when the troops were more bunched together (they had just crossed a river, where the front had halted until everyone was over) and in a more open stretch of woods than any they had passed — the enemy attacked the advance guard with heavy fire from behind trees and bushes. That was the first news the general had that any enemy was near him. The guard fell into disorder; the general hurried the troops up to their assistance, which was done in great confusion, through wagons, baggage, and cattle; and presently the fire came on their flank. The officers, being on horseback, were the more easily distinguished, picked out as targets, and fell very fast; and the soldiers were crowded together in a huddle, having or hearing no orders, standing to be shot at until two-thirds of them were killed; and then, seized with panic, the whole force fled headlong.
The wagon drivers each took a horse out of his team and bolted; their example was immediately followed by others; and so all the wagons, provisions, artillery, and stores were left to the enemy. The general, being wounded, was brought off with difficulty; his secretary, Mr. Shirley, was killed by his side; and out of eighty-six officers, sixty-three were killed or wounded, and seven hundred and fourteen men killed out of eleven hundred. Those eleven hundred had been picked men from the whole army; the rest had been left behind with Colonel Dunbar, who was to follow with the heavier stores, provisions, and baggage. The fugitives, who were not pursued, arrived at Dunbar's camp, and the panic they brought with them instantly seized him and all his people. Though he now had above a thousand men, and the enemy who had beaten Braddock numbered at most four hundred Indians and French together, instead of pressing forward and trying to recover some of the lost honor, he ordered all the stores, ammunition, and the rest destroyed — so that he might have more horses to assist his flight toward the settlements, and less baggage to move. He was met there with requests from the governors of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania that he post his troops on the frontier, to give some protection to the inhabitants; but he continued his hasty march through the whole country, not thinking himself safe until he arrived at Philadelphia, where the inhabitants could protect him. This whole transaction gave us Americans the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regulars had not been well founded.
In their first march, too, from their landing until they got beyond the settlements, they had plundered and stripped the inhabitants, totally ruining some poor families, besides insulting, abusing, and locking up people who protested. That alone was enough to sour us on such defenders, if we had really wanted any. How different was the conduct of our French friends in 1781, who, during a march through the most settled part of our country, from Rhode Island to Virginia — near seven hundred miles — occasioned not the smallest complaint for the loss of a pig, a chicken, or even an apple.
Captain Orme, one of the general's aides-de-camp, who was grievously wounded and brought off with him, and stayed with him until his death a few days later, told me that the general was totally silent all the first day, and at night said only, “Who would have thought it?” — that he was silent again the following day, saying at last only, “We shall better know how to deal with them another time,” and died a few minutes after.
The secretary's papers, with all the general's orders, instructions, and correspondence, fell into the enemy's hands, and from them they selected a number of items, translated them into French, and printed them, to prove the hostile intentions of the British court before war had been declared. Among these I saw some letters from the general to the ministry speaking highly of the great service I had rendered the army, and recommending me to their notice. David Hume, too, who some years later was secretary to Lord Hertford when he was minister in France, and afterward to General Conway when he was secretary of state, told me he had seen among the papers in that office letters from Braddock recommending me highly. But the expedition having been unfortunate, my service, it seems, was not thought of much value — for those recommendations were never of any use to me.
As for rewards from Braddock himself, I asked only one: that he would give orders to his officers not to enlist any more of our bought servants — indentured men whose time their masters had purchased — and to discharge those already enlisted. This he readily granted, and several were returned to their masters on my application. Dunbar, when the command fell to him, was not so generous. While he was at Philadelphia on his retreat — or rather his flight — I applied to him for the discharge of the servants of three poor Lancaster County farmers whom he had enlisted, reminding him of the late general's orders on that point. He promised me that if the masters would come to him at Trenton, where he would be in a few days on his march to New York, he would deliver their men to them there. They went to the expense and trouble of traveling to Trenton, and there he refused to keep his promise, to their great loss and disappointment.
As soon as the loss of the wagons and horses became generally known, all the owners came down on me for the valuations I had given my bond to pay. Their demands gave me a great deal of trouble. I told them the money was ready in the paymaster's hands, but that orders for paying it out had to be obtained first from General Shirley; I assured them I had applied to that general by letter, but that he was at a distance, an answer could not come soon, and they must have patience. None of it was enough to satisfy them, and some began to sue me. General Shirley at length rescued me from this terrible situation by appointing commissioners to examine the claims and ordering payment. The claims came to near twenty thousand pounds — which to pay would have ruined me.
Before we had news of the defeat, the two Doctors Bond came to me with a subscription paper for raising money to pay for a grand firework display, which was to be exhibited at a celebration when word arrived that we had taken Fort Duquesne. I looked grave, and said I thought it would be time enough to prepare for the rejoicing when we knew we had occasion to rejoice. They seemed surprised that I didn't sign on at once. “Why the d⸺l!” says one of them, “you surely don't suppose that the fort will not be taken?” “I don't know that it will not be taken, but I know that the events of war are subject to great uncertainty.” I gave them my reasons for doubting; the subscription was dropped, and the projectors were thereby spared the mortification they would have suffered if the fireworks had been prepared. Dr. Bond, on some other occasion afterward, said that he did not like Franklin's forebodings.
Governor Morris, who before Braddock's defeat had continually pestered the Assembly with message after message, trying to beat them into passing acts to raise money for the defense of the province without taxing, among other property, the proprietary estates — and who had rejected all their bills for lacking such an exempting clause — now redoubled his attacks with better hope of success, the danger and the need being greater. The Assembly, however, stood firm, believing they had justice on their side, and that it would be surrendering an essential right if they let the governor amend their money bills. In one of the last of these, a bill granting fifty thousand pounds, his proposed amendment was of a single word. The bill said “that all estates, real and personal, were to be taxed, those of the proprietaries not excepted.” His amendment: for not, read only — a small but very material alteration. However, when news of this disaster reached England, our friends there, whom we had taken care to supply with all the Assembly's answers to the governor's messages, raised a clamor against the proprietaries for their meanness and injustice in giving their governor such instructions, some going so far as to say that by obstructing the defense of their province they forfeited their right to it. The proprietaries were intimidated by this, and sent orders to their receiver-general to add five thousand pounds of their own money to whatever sum the Assembly might grant for that purpose.
This, being reported to the House, was accepted in place of their share of a general tax, and a new bill was drawn with an exempting clause, which passed accordingly. By this act I was appointed one of the commissioners for disposing of the money — sixty thousand pounds. I had been active in shaping the bill and getting it passed, and had at the same time drawn up a bill for establishing and disciplining a voluntary militia, which I carried through the House without much difficulty, since care was taken in it to leave the Quakers at their liberty. To promote the association needed to form the militia, I wrote a dialogue stating and answering every objection I could think of to such a militia; it was printed, and had, I thought, great effect.
While the various companies in the city and the countryside were forming up and learning their drills, the governor talked me into taking charge of our northwestern frontier, which the enemy was raiding, and providing for the defense of the inhabitants by raising troops and building a line of forts. I took on this military business even though I didn't think myself especially qualified for it. He gave me a commission with full powers, plus a stack of blank commissions for officers, to hand out to whomever I thought fit. I had little trouble raising men, and soon had five hundred and sixty under my command. My son, who had served as an officer in the previous war in the army raised against Canada, was my aide-de-camp, and a great help to me. The Indians had burned Gnadenhut, a village settled by the Moravians, and massacred the inhabitants; but the site was thought a good spot for one of the forts.
To march there, I assembled the companies at Bethlehem, the Moravians' chief settlement. I was surprised to find it in such a good state of defense; the destruction of Gnadenhut had made them fear for their own safety. The principal buildings were protected by a stockade; they had bought a quantity of arms and ammunition from New York, and had even stacked piles of small paving stones between the windows of their tall stone houses, for the women to drop on the heads of any Indians who tried to force their way in. The armed brethren kept watch, too, and relieved one another as methodically as in any garrison town. In conversation with their bishop, Spangenberg, I mentioned my surprise at all this; knowing they had obtained an act of Parliament exempting them from military duties in the colonies, I had assumed they were conscientiously opposed to bearing arms. He answered that it was not actually one of their established principles, but that at the time they obtained the act, it was believed to be a principle with many of their people. On this occasion, though, they found to their surprise that only a few held it. It seems they had either deceived themselves or deceived Parliament; but common sense, with a little help from present danger, will sometimes prove too strong for whimsical opinions.
It was the beginning of January when we set out on this business of building forts. I sent one detachment toward the Minisink, with instructions to build a fort for the security of that upper part of the country, and another detachment to the lower part with similar orders; and I decided to go myself with the rest of my force to Gnadenhut, where a fort seemed most immediately needed. The Moravians got me five wagons for our tools, stores, baggage, and so on.
Just before we left Bethlehem, eleven farmers who had been driven off their farms by the Indians came to me asking for firearms, so they could go back and retrieve their cattle. I gave each of them a gun with suitable ammunition. We hadn't marched many miles before it began to rain, and it kept raining all day. There were no houses on the road to shelter us, until near nightfall we reached the house of a German, where — in the house and in his barn — we all huddled together, as wet as water could make us. It was lucky we weren't attacked on that march, for our weapons were of the most ordinary sort, and our men couldn't keep their gun locks dry. The Indians have clever tricks for managing that, which we did not. That same day they met the eleven poor farmers I just mentioned, and killed ten of them. The one who escaped reported that his gun and his companions' guns would not fire, the priming being soaked by the rain.
The next day was fair, so we continued our march and arrived at the ruins of Gnadenhut. There was a sawmill nearby with several piles of boards left around it, and with these we quickly built ourselves huts — all the more necessary in that bitter season, since we had no tents. Our first task was to give a proper burial to the dead we found there, who had been only half buried by the country people.
The next morning our fort was planned and staked out. The perimeter measured four hundred and fifty-five feet, which would require that many palisades, to be made from trees averaging a foot in diameter each. Our axes — we had seventy — were immediately set to work cutting down trees, and since our men were skilled with them, the work went fast. Seeing the trees fall so quickly, I got curious and checked my watch when two men started cutting into a pine: in six minutes they had it on the ground, and I measured it at fourteen inches in diameter. Each pine yielded three palisades eighteen feet long, sharpened at one end. While these were being prepared, our other men dug a trench all the way around, three feet deep, in which the palisades were to be planted. And by taking the bodies off our wagons and separating the front and rear wheels — you just pull the pin that joins the two halves of the shaft — we had ten carriages, with two horses each, to haul the palisades from the woods to the site. When the palisades were set up, our carpenters built a platform of boards all around the inside, about six feet high, for the men to stand on when firing through the loopholes. We had one swivel gun, which we mounted on one of the angles and fired the moment it was fixed, to let any Indians within hearing know we had such pieces. And so our fort — if such a magnificent name can be given to so miserable a stockade — was finished in a week, even though it rained so hard every other day that the men couldn't work.
This gave me a chance to observe that men are happiest when they're kept busy. On the days they worked, they were good-natured and cheerful, and with the satisfaction of having done a good day's work, they spent the evening merrily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their pork, their bread, and everything else, and in a continual bad temper. It put me in mind of a sea captain whose rule was to keep his men constantly at work; when his mate once told him that they had done everything and there was nothing left to set them to, "Oh," says he, "make them scour the anchor."
This kind of fort, however contemptible, is defense enough against Indians, who have no cannon. Finding ourselves securely posted now, with a place to fall back to when needed, we ventured out in parties to sweep the surrounding country. We met no Indians, but we found the spots on the neighboring hills where they had lain watching our progress. There was a real art in how they arranged those spots, worth describing. Since it was winter, they needed a fire; but an ordinary fire on the surface of the ground would have given away their position at a distance by its light. So they had dug holes in the ground about three feet across and somewhat deeper. We saw where they had used their hatchets to chip charcoal off the sides of burnt logs lying in the woods; with these coals they made small fires in the bottoms of the holes, and we could see in the weeds and grass the prints of their bodies where they had lain all around, with their legs hanging down into the holes to keep their feet warm — which, with them, is an essential point. A fire managed this way could not betray them by its light, flame, sparks, or even smoke. It appeared their numbers were not large, and it seems they saw we were too many to be attacked with any prospect of success.
We had for our chaplain a zealous Presbyterian minister, Mr. Beatty, who complained to me that the men generally didn't attend his prayers and exhortations. When they enlisted, they had been promised, besides pay and provisions, a gill of rum a day, which was punctually served out to them, half in the morning and half in the evening — and I noticed they were perfectly punctual about showing up to receive it. So I said to Mr. Beatty, "It's perhaps beneath the dignity of your profession to act as steward of the rum; but if you were to deal it out, and only just after prayers, you would have them all around you." He liked the idea, took on the office, and with the help of a few hands to measure out the liquor, carried it off to everyone's satisfaction — and never were prayers more generally or more punctually attended. I thought this method rather better than the punishments some military laws impose for missing divine service.
I had barely finished this business and gotten my fort well stocked with provisions when I received a letter from the governor telling me he had called the Assembly and wanted me there, if things on the frontier were settled enough that my staying was no longer necessary. My friends in the Assembly also pressed me by letter to attend the meeting if I possibly could; and since my three intended forts were now complete, and the inhabitants were content to stay on their farms under their protection, I resolved to return — the more willingly because a New England officer, Colonel Clapham, experienced in Indian warfare, was visiting our post and agreed to take the command. I gave him a commission, paraded the garrison, had it read out before them, and introduced him as an officer whose skill in military affairs made him far fitter to command them than I was; and after giving them a little parting exhortation, I took my leave. I was escorted as far as Bethlehem, where I rested a few days to recover from the fatigue I'd been through. The first night, lying in a good bed, I could hardly sleep — it was so different from my hard lodging on the floor of our hut at Gnadenhut, wrapped in only a blanket or two.
While at Bethlehem I looked a little into the Moravians' way of life. Some of them had accompanied me, and all were very kind to me. I found that they worked for a common stock, ate at common tables, and slept in common dormitories, great numbers together. In the dormitories I noticed openings at regular intervals along the wall just under the ceiling, which I thought sensibly placed for ventilation. I attended their church, where I was treated to good music — the organ accompanied by violins, oboes, flutes, clarinets, and so on. I learned that their sermons were not usually preached to mixed congregations of men, women, and children, as is our common practice; instead they assembled sometimes the married men, at other times their wives, then the young men, the young women, and the little children, each group by itself. The sermon I heard was to the children, who came in and were seated in rows on benches, the boys led by a young man, their tutor, and the girls by a young woman. The talk seemed well suited to their understanding and was delivered in a pleasant, familiar manner — coaxing them, as it were, to be good. They behaved very properly, but looked pale and unhealthy, which made me suspect they were kept indoors too much, or not allowed enough exercise.
I asked about the Moravian marriages — whether the report was true that they were decided by lot. I was told that lots were used only in particular cases; that generally, when a young man felt inclined to marry, he informed the elders of his class, who consulted the elder ladies who governed the young women. Since these elders of both sexes knew the temperaments and dispositions of their respective charges well, they could best judge which matches were suitable, and their judgments were generally accepted. But if, say, two or three young women turned out to be equally suitable for the young man, then they resorted to the lot. I objected that if the matches aren't made by the mutual choice of the parties, some of them may turn out very unhappy. "And so they may," answered my informant, "if you let the parties choose for themselves" — which, indeed, I could not deny.
Back in Philadelphia, I found the association going along swimmingly. The inhabitants who weren't Quakers had pretty generally joined it, formed themselves into companies, and chosen their captains, lieutenants, and ensigns according to the new law. Dr. B. visited me and gave me an account of the pains he had taken to spread a general good opinion of the law, crediting much of its success to those efforts. I had had the vanity to credit it all to my Dialogue; but not knowing for certain that he wasn't right, I let him enjoy his opinion — which I take to be generally the best policy in such cases. The officers, meeting together, chose me colonel of the regiment, and this time I accepted. I forget how many companies we had, but we paraded about twelve hundred well-turned-out men, with a company of artillery who had been furnished with six brass field pieces, and who had become so expert with them that they could fire twelve rounds a minute. The first time I reviewed my regiment, they accompanied me home and insisted on saluting me with several rounds fired in front of my door — which shook down and broke several glasses of my electrical apparatus. And my new honor proved not much less brittle; for all our commissions were soon broken by a repeal of the law in England.
During this short colonelship of mine, as I was about to set out on a journey to Virginia, the officers of my regiment took it into their heads that it would be proper to escort me out of town as far as the Lower Ferry. Just as I was getting on horseback, they arrived at my door — thirty or forty of them, mounted, and all in their uniforms. I hadn't been told of the plan beforehand, or I would have prevented it, being naturally averse to putting on state on any occasion; and I was a good deal embarrassed by their appearance, since I couldn't avoid having them along. What made it worse was that as soon as we began to move, they drew their swords and rode with them bared the whole way. Somebody wrote an account of this to the proprietor, and it gave him great offense. No such honor had been paid to him when he was in the province, nor to any of his governors; and he said it was proper only for princes of the blood royal — which may be true for all I know, since I was then, and still am, ignorant of the etiquette in such cases.
This silly affair, however, greatly increased his bitterness against me, which was already considerable, on account of my conduct in the Assembly over the exemption of his estate from taxation. I had always opposed that exemption warmly, and not without some sharp reflections on the meanness and injustice of his contending for it. He accused me to the ministry of being the great obstacle to the King's service — of using my influence in the House to block the proper form of the money bills — and he pointed to this parade with my officers as proof that I intended to seize the government of the province from him by force. He also applied to Sir Everard Fawkener, the postmaster general, to strip me of my office; but it produced nothing more than a gentle admonition from Sir Everard.
For all the constant wrangling between the governor and the House, in which I, as a member, had so large a share, there remained a civil relationship between that gentleman and myself, and we never had any personal quarrel. I have sometimes thought since that his showing little or no resentment toward me, for the answers everyone knew I drew up to his messages, may have come from professional habit: having been trained as a lawyer, he perhaps considered us both simply advocates for opposing clients in a lawsuit — he for the proprietaries, and I for the Assembly. So he would sometimes call on me in a friendly way to consult on difficult points, and sometimes — though not often — take my advice.
We acted together to supply Braddock's army with provisions; and when the shocking news of his defeat arrived, the governor sent for me in haste, to consult on measures for keeping the back counties from being abandoned. I forget now what advice I gave, but I think it was that Dunbar should be written to and persuaded, if possible, to post his troops on the frontier for the settlers' protection, until reinforcements from the colonies enabled him to proceed with the expedition. And after my return from the frontier, the governor wanted me to lead just such an expedition with provincial troops, to take Fort Duquesne — Dunbar and his men being otherwise engaged — and he proposed to commission me as general. I did not have as high an opinion of my military abilities as he professed to have, and I believe his professions must have outrun his real sentiments; but he probably reckoned that my popularity would make it easier to raise the men, and my influence in the Assembly easier to get the money to pay them — and that, perhaps, without taxing the proprietary estate. Finding me not as eager to take it on as he had expected, he dropped the project; and soon afterward he left the government, being replaced by Captain Denny.
Before I go on with my part in public affairs under this new governor's administration, it may be worth pausing to tell how my reputation as a natural philosopher got its start and how it grew.
In 1746, while visiting Boston, I met a Dr. Spence, lately arrived from Scotland, who showed me some experiments with electricity. He wasn't very skilled, and the demonstrations were clumsily done; but the subject was completely new to me, and they surprised and delighted me anyway. Soon after I got back to Philadelphia, our library company received a present from Mr. Peter Collinson, a Fellow of the Royal Society of London: a glass tube, along with an account of how to use it for experiments of that kind. I jumped at the chance to repeat what I'd seen in Boston, and with a great deal of practice I got very quick at performing those, plus the ones we had accounts of from England, plus a number of new ones of my own. I say a great deal of practice, because for a while my house was constantly full of people coming to see these new wonders.
To spread that burden a little among my friends, I had a number of similar tubes blown at our glassworks, and they equipped themselves, so that in time we had several performers. The chief of these was Mr. Kinnersley, an ingenious neighbor who happened to be out of work. I encouraged him to show the experiments for money, and drew up two lectures for him, arranging the experiments in such an order, and with such explanations, that each one helped the audience understand the next. He procured an elegant apparatus for the purpose, in which all the little machines I had roughly built for myself were finely remade by professional instrument-makers. His lectures were well attended and gave great satisfaction; after some time he toured the colonies, performing in every capital town, and picked up some money by it. In the West Indies, though, the experiments could hardly be made at all — the air there is simply too damp.
Since we were obliged to Mr. Collinson for his gift of the tube and the rest, I thought it only right that he should hear of our success in using it, and I wrote him several letters describing our experiments. He had them read at the Royal Society, where at first they weren't judged worth enough notice to be printed in the society's Transactions. One paper I had written for Mr. Kinnersley, on the sameness of lightning and electricity, I sent to Dr. Mitchel, an acquaintance of mine and a member of that society; he wrote back that it had been read — and laughed at by the connoisseurs. But when the papers were shown to Dr. Fothergill, he thought them far too valuable to be smothered and advised printing them. Mr. Collinson then gave them to Cave for publication in his Gentleman's Magazine; Cave chose instead to print them separately as a pamphlet, with Dr. Fothergill writing the preface. Cave, it seems, judged rightly for his own profit: with the additions that arrived afterward, the papers swelled to a quarto volume that has gone through five editions — and cost him nothing in copy-money.
Still, it was some time before those papers drew much notice in England. Then a copy happened to fall into the hands of the Count de Buffon, a philosopher of great and deserved reputation in France — indeed, all over Europe — who persuaded M. Dalibard to translate them into French, and they were printed at Paris. The publication offended the Abbé Nollet, tutor in natural philosophy to the royal family and an able experimenter, who had worked out and published his own theory of electricity, which then had the general vogue. At first he couldn't believe such a work had come from America at all; he said it must have been fabricated by his enemies in Paris to discredit his system. Afterward, once he'd been assured that there really was such a person as Franklin in Philadelphia — which he had doubted — he wrote and published a volume of letters, addressed chiefly to me, defending his theory and denying the truth of my experiments and of the conclusions drawn from them.
I once intended to answer the abbé, and actually began the answer. But then I considered. My writings contained descriptions of experiments that anyone could repeat and verify — and if they couldn't be verified, they couldn't be defended anyway. My observations were offered as conjectures, not laid down as dogma, so I was under no obligation to defend them. And a dispute between two people writing in different languages could stretch on endlessly through mistranslations and the misunderstandings that follow — much of one of the abbé's letters was in fact built on an error in the translation. So I concluded to let my papers shift for themselves, believing it was better to spend what time I could spare from public business in making new experiments than in disputing about those already made. I therefore never answered M. Nollet, and the outcome gave me no cause to regret my silence: my friend M. le Roy, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, took up my cause and refuted him; my book was translated into Italian, German, and Latin; and the doctrine it contained was by degrees adopted by the philosophers of Europe in preference to the abbé's, so that he lived to see himself the last of his sect — except for a Monsieur B⸺ of Paris, his own pupil and immediate disciple.
What gave my book its more sudden and general celebrity was the success of one of the experiments it proposed, made by Messrs. Dalibard and De Lor at Marly: drawing lightning down from the clouds. That seized the public's attention everywhere. M. de Lor, who kept an apparatus for experimental philosophy and lectured in that branch of science, undertook to repeat what he called the "Philadelphia Experiments," and after they were performed before the king and court, all the curious of Paris flocked to see them. I won't swell this narrative with an account of that capital experiment, nor of the infinite pleasure I took in the success of a similar one I made soon after with a kite at Philadelphia — both can be found in the histories of electricity.
Dr. Wright, an English physician then in Paris, wrote to a friend of his in the Royal Society about the high esteem my experiments enjoyed among the learned abroad, and their wonder that my writings had drawn so little notice in England. At that, the society took up again the letters that had been read to them; the celebrated Dr. Watson drew up a summary account of them, and of everything I'd since sent to England on the subject, and accompanied it with some praise of the writer. That summary was then printed in their Transactions. And once some members of the society in London — particularly the very ingenious Mr. Canton — had verified the experiment of drawing lightning from the clouds with a pointed rod, and reported their success, they soon made me more than amends for the slight they had shown me before. Without my ever applying for the honor, they elected me a member, and voted that I be excused the customary payments — which would have come to twenty-five guineas — and they have sent me their Transactions free of charge ever since. They also presented me with the gold medal of Sir Godfrey Copley for the year 1753, its delivery accompanied by a very handsome speech from the president, Lord Macclesfield, in which I was highly honored.
Our new governor, Captain Denny, brought over with him the Royal Society medal I mentioned earlier, and presented it to me at a dinner the city gave in his honor. He handed it over with very polite expressions of his esteem, saying he had long been acquainted with my character. After dinner, when the company settled in to drink — as was the custom of the time — he took me aside into another room and confided that his friends in England had advised him to cultivate my friendship, as someone who could give him the best advice and do the most to make his administration go smoothly. He therefore wanted, above all things, a good understanding with me, and begged me to be assured that he stood ready, on every occasion, to do me any service in his power. He also had a great deal to say about the proprietor's good feelings toward the province, and how much it would benefit us all — and me in particular — if the long-running opposition to his measures were dropped and harmony restored between him and the people. Nobody, it was thought, could be more useful in bringing that about than myself, and I could count on adequate acknowledgments and rewards, et cetera, et cetera. The drinkers, noticing we hadn't come back to the table, sent us in a decanter of Madeira, which the governor made liberal use of, and in proportion as he drank he grew more lavish with his solicitations and promises.
My answer ran along these lines: that my circumstances, thank God, were such that proprietary favors were unnecessary to me, and that as a member of the Assembly I couldn't possibly accept any. That I had, however, no personal enmity toward the proprietary, and whenever the public measures he proposed genuinely appeared to be for the good of the people, no one would take them up and push them forward more zealously than I would — my past opposition having rested entirely on the fact that the measures urged on us were plainly designed to serve the proprietary interest at great cost to the people's. That I was much obliged to the governor for his professions of regard, and he could rely on me to do everything in my power to make his administration as easy as possible — hoping, at the same time, that he hadn't brought with him the same unfortunate instructions that had hampered his predecessor.
On that point he didn't explain himself just then. But when he later came to do business with the Assembly, the instructions appeared again, the disputes were renewed, and I was as active as ever in the opposition — the penman, first, of the request to see the instructions, and then of the remarks upon them, which can be found in the votes of the time and in the Historical Review I afterward published. Yet between the two of us personally, no ill will ever arose. We were often together; he was a man of letters, had seen much of the world, and was entertaining and pleasant company. He gave me my first news that my old friend Jas. Ralph was still alive — that he was considered one of the best political writers in England, had been employed in the dispute between Prince Frederic and the king, and had secured a pension of three hundred a year. His reputation as a poet, admittedly, was small — Pope had damned his poetry in the Dunciad — but his prose was thought as good as any man's.
The Assembly, finding at last that the proprietary obstinately insisted on shackling his deputies with instructions inconsistent not only with the privileges of the people but with the service of the crown, resolved to petition the king against them — and appointed me their agent, to go over to England to present and support the petition. The House had sent up a bill to the governor granting sixty thousand pounds for the king's use (ten thousand pounds of it subject to the orders of the general then in command, Lord Loudoun), which the governor, in compliance with his instructions, absolutely refused to pass.
I had booked my passage with Captain Morris of the packet at New York, and my stores were already on board, when Lord Loudoun arrived in Philadelphia — expressly, as he told me, to work out an accommodation between the governor and the Assembly, so that His Majesty's service wouldn't be obstructed by their quarrels. Accordingly, he asked the governor and me to meet with him, so he could hear what each side had to say. We met and talked the business through. On the Assembly's behalf, I urged all the various arguments that can be found in the public papers of the time — they were of my writing, and are printed with the minutes of the Assembly. The governor pleaded his instructions, the bond he had given to observe them, and his ruin if he disobeyed — yet he seemed not unwilling to risk it if Lord Loudoun would advise it. This his lordship chose not to do, though at one point I thought I had nearly persuaded him. In the end he preferred to press the Assembly to comply, and he begged me to use my influence with them toward that end, declaring that he would spare none of the king's troops for the defense of our frontiers, and that if we didn't keep providing for that defense ourselves, they would be left exposed to the enemy.
I told the House what had passed, and presented them with a set of resolutions I had drawn up, declaring our rights — stating that we did not give up our claim to those rights, but only suspended exercising them on this occasion under force, against which we protested. At length they agreed to drop the bill and frame another that conformed to the proprietary instructions. This, of course, the governor passed, and I was then free to proceed on my voyage. But in the meantime the packet had sailed with my sea-stores — some loss to me — and my only recompense was his lordship's thanks for my service, all the credit for the accommodation falling to his share.
He set out for New York ahead of me; and since the timing of the packet-boats was at his disposal, and there were two of them then waiting there, one of which, he said, was to sail very soon, I asked to know the precise time, so that I wouldn't miss her through any delay of my own. His answer was: "I have given out that she is to sail on Saturday next; but I may let you know, entre nous, that if you are there by Monday morning, you will be in time, but do not delay longer." Some accidental hold-up at a ferry made it Monday noon before I arrived, and I was much afraid she might have sailed, the wind being fair — but I was soon put at ease by the news that she was still in the harbor and wouldn't move till the next day. You would imagine I was now on the very point of departing for Europe. I thought so too; but I was not yet well acquainted with his lordship's character, of which indecision was one of the strongest features. Let me give some instances. It was about the beginning of April that I came to New York, and I think it was near the end of June before we sailed. There were two packet-boats then, which had been in port a long while, held for the general's letters — which were always going to be ready tomorrow. Another packet arrived; she was detained too; and before we sailed, a fourth was expected. Ours was first in line to be dispatched, having been there longest. Passengers were booked on all of them, some desperately impatient to be gone; the merchants were anxious about their letters and the orders they had given for insurance (it being wartime) on fall goods. But their anxiety accomplished nothing. His lordship's letters were not ready — and yet whoever waited on him found him always at his desk, pen in hand, and concluded he must be writing prodigiously.
Going one morning myself to pay my respects, I found in his antechamber a certain Innis, a messenger from Philadelphia who had come express with a packet from Governor Denny for the general. He handed me some letters from my friends there, which led me to ask when he was returning and where he lodged, so I could send some letters back with him. He told me he was ordered to call tomorrow at nine for the general's answer to the governor, and would set off immediately after. I put my letters into his hands that same day. Two weeks later I met him in the same place. "So, you are soon returned, Innis?" "Returned! No, I am not gone yet." "How so?" "I have called here by order every morning these two weeks past for his lordship's letter, and it is not yet ready." "Is it possible, when he is so great a writer? For I see him constantly at his desk." "Yes," says Innis, "but he is like St. George on the signs, always on horseback, and never rides on." The messenger's observation was, it seems, well founded; for when I was in England I learned that Mr. Pitt gave as one of his reasons for removing this general and sending out Generals Amherst and Wolfe that the minister never heard from him, and could not know what he was doing.
With this daily expectation of sailing, and all three packets gone down to Sandy Hook to join the fleet there, the passengers thought it best to be on board, in case a sudden order sent the ships off and left them behind. There, if I remember right, we sat about six weeks, eating up our sea-stores and obliged to buy more. At length the fleet sailed, the general and his whole army aboard, bound for Louisburg with the intent to besiege and take that fortress, all the packet-boats in company ordered to attend the general's ship, ready to receive his dispatches whenever they should be ready. We were out five days before we got a letter with leave to part, and then our ship quit the fleet and steered for England. The other two packets he kept — carried them with him to Halifax, where he stayed some time drilling his men in sham attacks on sham forts, then changed his mind about besieging Louisburg and returned to New York with all his troops, the two packets, and all their passengers! During his absence the French and their native allies had taken Fort George, on the frontier of that province, and after the surrender the garrison had been massacred in great numbers.
Later, in London, I saw Captain Bonnell, who commanded one of those packets. He told me that after being detained a month, he informed his lordship that his ship's bottom had grown so foul it must seriously slow her sailing — a point of real consequence for a packet-boat — and requested time to heave her down and clean her. He was asked how long that would take. He answered: three days. The general replied, "If you can do it in one day, I give leave; otherwise not; for you must certainly sail the day after tomorrow." So he never got leave — though he was detained afterward, day after day, for a full three months.
I also saw in London one of Bonnell's passengers, who was so enraged at his lordship for deceiving him and holding him so long at New York, then carrying him to Halifax and back again, that he swore he would sue him for damages. Whether he did or not, I never heard; but as he described the injury to his affairs, it was very considerable.
On the whole, I wondered greatly how such a man came to be entrusted with something as important as the conduct of a great army; but having since seen more of the great world — the means of obtaining offices, and the motives for giving them — my wonder is diminished. General Shirley, on whom command of the army fell at Braddock's death, would in my opinion, had he been kept in place, have made a far better campaign than Loudoun's of 1757, which was frivolous, expensive, and disgraceful to our nation beyond conception. For though Shirley was not a trained soldier, he was sensible and shrewd in himself, attentive to good advice from others, capable of forming judicious plans, and quick and active in carrying them out. Loudoun, instead of defending the colonies with his great army, left them totally exposed while he paraded idly at Halifax — by which means Fort George was lost. Besides that, he threw all our commercial operations into disorder and crippled our trade with a long embargo on the export of provisions, on the pretense of keeping supplies from the enemy, but really to beat down the price in favor of the contractors — in whose profits, it was said (perhaps only from suspicion), he had a share. And when the embargo was at last lifted, he neglected to send notice of it to Charlestown, so the Carolina fleet was held nearly three months longer, and their bottoms were so eaten by the worm that a great part of them foundered on the passage home.
Shirley, I believe, was sincerely glad to be relieved of a burden as heavy as the command of an army must be to a man with no military background. I was at the dinner the city of New York gave Lord Loudoun on his taking up the command. Shirley, though superseded by it, was there too. There was a great company of officers, citizens, and strangers, and some chairs had been borrowed from the neighborhood — among them one very low one, which fell to Mr. Shirley's lot. Noticing it, as I sat beside him, I said, "They have given you, sir, too low a seat." "No matter," says he, "Mr. Franklin, I find a low seat the easiest."
While I was, as I've said, stuck in New York, I received all the accounts of the provisions and so forth that I had furnished to Braddock — some of which couldn't be got any sooner from the various people I had employed to help in the business. I presented them to Lord Loudoun and asked to be paid the balance. He had them properly examined by the appropriate officer, who, after comparing every article with its voucher, certified them correct; and his lordship promised to give me an order on the paymaster for the balance due. This, however, was put off from time to time, and though I called for it often by appointment, I never got it. At length, just before my departure, he told me that on better consideration he had decided not to mix his accounts with those of his predecessors. "And you," says he, "when in England, have only to exhibit your accounts at the treasury, and you will be paid immediately."
I mentioned — without effect — the great and unexpected expense I'd been put to by the long detention at New York, as a reason for wanting to be paid promptly; and when I observed that it wasn't right I should face any further trouble or delay in recovering money I had advanced, since I charged no commission for my service, "O, sir," says he, "you must not think of persuading us that you are no gainer; we understand better those affairs, and know that everyone concerned in supplying the army finds means, in the doing it, to fill his own pockets." I assured him that was not my case, and that I had not pocketed a farthing; but he plainly didn't believe me — and indeed, I have since learned that immense fortunes are often made in such employments. As for my balance, I am not paid it to this day, of which more hereafter.
Our packet captain had boasted a great deal, before we sailed, of the swiftness of his ship. Unfortunately, once we got to sea she proved the dullest of ninety-six sail, to his considerable mortification. After many guesses at the cause, when we were near another ship almost as slow as ours — which nevertheless was gaining on us — the captain ordered all hands to come aft and stand as near the ensign staff as possible. We were, passengers included, about forty people. While we stood there the ship picked up her pace, and soon left her neighbor far behind — which proved what our captain suspected: she was loaded too heavily at the head. The water casks, it turned out, had all been placed forward; he ordered them moved further aft, whereupon the ship recovered her character and proved the best sailer in the fleet.
The captain said she had once gone at the rate of thirteen knots — which is reckoned thirteen miles an hour. We had on board as a passenger Captain Kennedy of the Navy, who insisted this was impossible, that no ship ever sailed so fast, and that there must have been some error in the division of the log-line or some mistake in heaving the log. A wager followed between the two captains, to be settled when there was wind enough. Kennedy examined the log-line rigorously beforehand and, satisfied with it, determined to throw the log himself. Accordingly, some days later, when the wind blew very fair and fresh and the packet's captain, Lutwidge, said he believed she was then making thirteen knots, Kennedy made the trial — and owned his wager lost.
I tell this story for the sake of the observation that follows. It has been remarked, as a flaw in the art of shipbuilding, that you can never know until she's tried whether a new ship will be a good sailer or not — the model of a fine sailing ship has been copied exactly in a new one that proved, on the contrary, remarkably slow. I suspect this may be partly caused by the differing opinions of seamen about how a ship should be loaded, rigged, and sailed. Each man has his system; and the same vessel, loaded by the judgment and orders of one captain, will sail better or worse than when loaded by the orders of another. Besides, it hardly ever happens that a ship is built, fitted for sea, and sailed by the same person. One man builds the hull, another rigs her, a third loads and sails her. None of them has the benefit of knowing all the ideas and experience of the others, and so none can draw sound conclusions from the whole picture combined.
Even in the simple business of sailing at sea, I have often noticed different judgments among the officers commanding successive watches, though the wind was the same. One would have the sails trimmed sharper or flatter than another, so that they seemed to have no fixed rule to steer by. Yet I think a set of experiments might be undertaken: first, to determine the best form of hull for swift sailing; next, the best dimensions and placement for the masts; then the shape and quantity of the sails and their position according to the wind; and lastly, the arrangement of the loading. This is an age of experiments, and a set of them, accurately made and combined, would I think be of great use. I am persuaded, therefore, that before long some ingenious philosopher will take it up — and I wish him success.
We were chased several times on our passage, but outsailed everything, and in thirty days had soundings. We had taken a good observation, and the captain judged himself so near our port, Falmouth, that if we made a good run in the night we might be off the mouth of the harbor by morning — and by running in the dark we might slip past the enemy privateers who often cruised near the entrance of the channel. Accordingly we set every sail we possibly could, and with the wind fresh and fair, we ran straight before it and made great way. After his observation, the captain shaped his course, as he thought, to pass well wide of the Scilly Isles; but it seems there is sometimes a strong indraught setting up St. George's Channel, which deceives seamen — it caused the loss of Sir Cloudesley Shovel's squadron. This indraught was probably the cause of what happened to us.
We had a watchman posted in the bow, to whom they often called, "Look well out before there," and he as often answered, "Ay, ay" — but perhaps with his eyes shut, half asleep, for they say men sometimes answer such calls mechanically. He did not see a light just ahead of us, which was hidden from the helmsman and the rest of the watch by the studding-sails; but an accidental yaw of the ship revealed it, and set off a great alarm, for we were very close — the light looked to me as big as a cartwheel. It was midnight, and our captain fast asleep; but Captain Kennedy, leaping up on deck and seeing the danger, ordered the ship to wear round, all sails standing — an operation dangerous to the masts, but it carried us clear, and we escaped shipwreck; for we had been running straight onto the rocks the lighthouse was built on. This deliverance impressed on me strongly the usefulness of lighthouses, and made me resolve to encourage the building of more of them in America, if I lived to return there.
In the morning the soundings and other signs showed we were near our port, but a thick fog hid the land from sight. About nine o'clock the fog began to rise, lifting off the water like the curtain at a playhouse, and discovering underneath the town of Falmouth, the vessels in its harbor, and the fields around it. It was a most pleasing spectacle to people who had so long had nothing to look at but the uniform view of a vacant ocean — and it gave us all the more pleasure because we were now free of the anxieties the state of war had caused us.
I set out at once with my son for London, and we stopped only briefly on the way to see Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, and Lord Pembroke's house and gardens, with his very curious antiquities, at Wilton. We arrived in London the 27th of July, 1757.
As soon as I was settled in the lodging Mr. Charles had arranged for me, I went to visit Dr. Fothergill, to whom I had been strongly recommended and whose counsel on how to proceed I was advised to obtain. He was against an immediate complaint to the government; he thought the proprietaries should first be approached personally, since the interposition and persuasion of some private friends might possibly induce them to settle matters amicably. I then waited on my old friend and correspondent Mr. Peter Collinson, who told me that John Hanbury, the great Virginia merchant, had asked to be informed when I arrived, so that he might take me to Lord Granville's — then President of the Council, who wished to see me as soon as possible. I agreed to go with him the next morning. Accordingly Mr. Hanbury called for me and carried me in his carriage to that nobleman's house, where I was received with great civility; and after some questions about the present state of affairs in America, and some discussion of them, he said to me: "You Americans 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 laws; they are then considered, debated, and perhaps amended in Council, after which they are signed by the king. They are then, so far as they relate to you, the law of the land, for the king is the Legislator of the Colonies." I told his lordship this was new doctrine to me. I had always understood from our charters that our laws were to be made by our Assemblies — to be presented to the king, certainly, for his royal assent, but that once given, the king could not repeal or alter them. And as the Assemblies could not make permanent laws without his assent, so neither could he make a law for them without theirs. He assured me I was totally mistaken. I did not think so, however; and his lordship's conversation having somewhat alarmed me as to what the court's sentiments about us might be, I wrote it down as soon as I got back to my lodgings. I recalled that about twenty years earlier, a clause in a bill brought into Parliament by the ministry had proposed making the king's instructions law in the colonies — but the clause was thrown out by the Commons, for which we adored them as our friends and the friends of liberty; until, by their conduct toward us in 1765, it appeared they had refused that point of sovereignty to the king only so they could reserve it for themselves.
After some days, Dr. Fothergill having spoken to the proprietaries, they agreed to meet me at Mr. T. Penn's house in Spring Garden. The conversation began with mutual declarations of willingness to make reasonable accommodations — though I suppose each side had its own ideas of what "reasonable" should mean. We then took up our several points of complaint, which I enumerated. The proprietaries justified their conduct as well as they could, and I the Assembly's. We now appeared very far apart — so wide in our opinions as to discourage all hope of agreement. Still, it was agreed that I should give them the heads of our complaints in writing, and they promised to consider them. I did so soon after; but they put the paper into the hands of their solicitor, Ferdinand John Paris, who managed all their law business in their great suit with the neighboring proprietary of Maryland, Lord Baltimore — a suit that had lasted seventy years — and who wrote all their papers and messages in their dispute with the Assembly. He was a proud, angry man; and since I had occasionally, in the Assembly's answers, treated his papers with some severity — they being genuinely weak in argument and haughty in expression — he had conceived a mortal enmity toward me, which showed itself whenever we met. So I declined the proprietaries' proposal that he and I discuss the heads of complaint between the two of us, and refused to treat with anyone but them. They then, on his advice, put the paper into the hands of the Attorney and Solicitor-General for their opinion and counsel — where it lay unanswered a year wanting eight days. All that time I made frequent demands of an answer from the proprietaries, and got nothing beyond word that they had not yet received the opinion of the Attorney and Solicitor-General. What that opinion was when they did receive it, I never learned, for they never communicated it to me; instead they sent a long message to the Assembly, drawn up and signed by Paris, reciting my paper, complaining of its want of formality as a rudeness on my part, and giving a flimsy justification of their conduct — adding that they would be willing to settle matters if the Assembly would send over some person of candour to treat with them, the implication being that I was not such a person.
The want of formality, or rudeness, was probably my not having addressed the paper to them with their assumed titles of True and Absolute Proprietaries of the Province of Pennsylvania — which I omitted as unnecessary in a paper whose whole purpose was simply to fix in writing what I had already delivered in conversation viva voce.
But during this delay, the Assembly prevailed on Governor Denny to pass an act taxing the proprietary estate along with the estates of the people — which was the grand point in dispute — and so they never bothered answering the message.
When this act came over, however, the proprietaries, counselled by Paris, determined to keep it from receiving the royal assent. Accordingly they petitioned the king in Council, and a hearing was appointed, at which two lawyers were employed by them against the act and two by me in support of it. They alleged the act was designed to load the proprietary estate in order to spare the people's, and that if it were allowed to stand — with the proprietaries, who were in odium with the people, left to their mercy in the apportioning of taxes — they would inevitably be ruined. We replied that the act had no such intention and would have no such effect: the assessors were honest and discreet men, under oath to assess fairly and equitably, and whatever advantage any one of them might gain by lessening his own tax through raising the proprietaries' was far too trifling to induce him to perjure himself. That is the substance of what I remember being urged on both sides — except that we also insisted strongly on the mischievous consequences a repeal must bring. For the money — £100,000, printed and given to the king's use, spent in his service, and now spread among the people — would be struck dead in their hands by a repeal, to the ruin of many and the total discouragement of future grants; and the selfishness of the proprietors in courting such a general catastrophe, merely from a groundless fear of their estate being taxed too highly, we pressed in the strongest terms. At this, Lord Mansfield, one of the counsel, rose, beckoned to me, and took me into the clerk's chamber while the lawyers were still pleading, and asked me whether I was really of the opinion that no injury would be done the proprietary estate in the execution of the act. I said certainly. "Then," says he, "you can have little objection to enter into an engagement to assure that point." I answered, "None at all." He then called in Paris, and after some discussion his lordship's proposition was accepted on both sides; a paper to that purpose was drawn up by the Clerk of the Council, which I signed together with Mr. Charles — who was also an Agent of the Province for its ordinary affairs — and then Lord Mansfield returned to the Council Chamber, where the law was finally allowed to pass. Some changes were, however, recommended, and we engaged that they should be made by a subsequent law; but the Assembly did not think them necessary. For one year's tax had already been levied under the act before the order of Council arrived, so they appointed a committee to examine the assessors' proceedings — and on that committee they placed several particular friends of the proprietaries. After a full enquiry, the committee unanimously signed a report that they found the tax had been assessed with perfect equity.
The Assembly regarded my entering into the first part of that engagement as an essential service to the Province, since it secured the credit of the paper money then spread all over the country, and they gave me their formal thanks when I returned. But the proprietaries were enraged at Governor Denny for having passed the act, and turned him out, with threats of suing him for breach of the instructions he had given bond to observe. He, however, having done it at the instance of the General, and for His Majesty's service, and having some powerful interest at court, despised the threats, and they were never put in execution. …
[Unfinished]