There are so many incidents connected with Benjamin Franklin—incidents associated alike with our country’s history, its literature, art, and science—that we are not at all surprised at the many editions and variety of style of works written expressly to connect his name with them. We annex a pleasing little sketch of some of the early scenes of his life, from notes furnished by Thomas J. Wharton, Esq., to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, in 1830:—
“The year 1719 deserves particular remembrance in the annals of Pennsylvania, as that in which the first newspaper was printed in the State. These potent engines exercise so vast an influence for good or evil over men’s minds and actions in the present age, that a particular history of their rise and progress would be no idle or unprofitable task, though out of place here. The first number of the ‘American Weekly Mercury,’ as it was called, appeared on the 22d of December, 1719, on a half-sheet of the quarto size, and purported to be printed ‘by Andrew Bradford at the Second Street,’ and to be sold by him and by John Copson in Market Street. The price was ten shillings per annum; and this was quite as much as it deserved. Extracts from foreign journals generally about six months old, and two or three badly-printed advertisements, formed the substance of the journal. The office of the editor was a sinecure,—at least his pen seems to have been seldom employed, and little information can be derived from the journal concerning the existing condition of Philadelphia. Occasionally a bill of mortality tells us that one adult and one child died during a certain week, and even that is beyond the usual number; for some weeks appear to have passed without a single death. From the following advertisement, which appears in No. 17, something of the customs and state of things at the period may be gathered:—‘These are to give notice that Matthew Cowley, a skinner by trade, is removed from Chestnut Street to dwell in Walnut Street, near the Bridge, where all persons may have their buck and doeskins dressed, &c.’ ‘He also can furnish you with bindings, &c.’ What new ideas of Walnut Street does not this hint about a bridge give us! and how plenty must deer have been in those times, when all persons are invited to have their skins dressed by Matthew Cowley! And then what a familiar and village-sort of acquaintance with everybody does not the transition at the end, from the third to the second person plural, imply! ‘He also can furnish you with bindings, &c.’
“Nine years after the appearance of the American Mercury, the Philadelphia press was delivered of a second newspaper, to which the modest title was given of ‘The Universal Instructor of all Arts and Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette.’ In his inimitable autobiography Franklin has immortalized Keimer, the eccentric publisher of this journal, whose vanity and selfishness, whose wild notions upon religion and morals, and whose turn for poetry and gluttony are so happily and graphically delineated. Franklin, from whom Keimer had stolen the idea of a second newspaper, attacked it in a series of papers published in Bradford’s journal and called The Busy-Body.[34] The ‘Universal Instructor’ soon fell into decay, and then into Franklin’s hands, by whom it was very skilfully managed, both for his own profit and for the interest and edification of the public. An editorial notice in one of Franklin’s papers proves, in rather a ludicrous way, how badly Philadelphia was supplied at the time (1736) with printing-presses. What was called the outer form was printed reversely or upside down to the inner form, and the following apology is offered:—‘The printer hopes the irregular publication of this paper will be excused a few times by his town readers, in consideration of his being at Burlington with the press, laboring for the public good to make money more plentiful.’
“It is not generally known that this venerable journal survived till within a year or two of the present time, under the name of ‘The Pennsylvania Gazette.’ The third newspaper published in Pennsylvania was ‘The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser,’ the first number of which appeared on the 2d of December, 1742; and several other journals shortly afterwards arose, with various success. In 1760 five newspapers were published in the State, all weekly,—three of them printed in the city, one in Germantown, and one in Lancaster. In 1810 the number had increased to sixty-six, of which thirteen were published in Philadelphia; and in 1824 an official return to the postmaster-general stated the number at one hundred and ten, of which eighteen were published in Philadelphia, eleven of them daily: a prodigious increase, which argues that the appetite for this food has increased in full proportion with the population. It is perhaps worth adding that the first daily newspaper that appeared on the continent of America was published in Philadelphia.
“There are few persons on record to whose individual genius and exertions a community has owed so much as to Dr. Franklin. If William Penn was the political founder of the province, Franklin may perhaps be denominated the architect of its literature, the gifted author of many of its best institutions, and the father of some of the finest features of our character. It is seldom, however, that Providence has vouchsafed such a length of years to such an intellect, and still more seldom that such events occur as those which developed the powers and capacities of Franklin’s mind. The name of this illustrious man is closely connected with the literary history of Pennsylvania; but his life and actions are too well known to require that any elaborate notice of them should be given here. Referring, therefore, to his own invaluable memoirs for the events of his personal and political history, I shall content myself with a short sketch of the principal features of his literary career. The year 1723 was that in which Franklin first set his foot in Philadelphia. As he landed on Market Street wharf, and walked up that street, an obscure and almost penniless boy, devouring a roll of bread, and ignorant where he could find a lodging for the night, little could he or any one who then saw him anticipate that later advent, when, sixty years afterwards, he landed upon the same wharf, amid the acclamations of thousands of spectators, on his return from an embassy in which he had dictated to his former king the terms of peace for the confederated republics, of one of which he was placed at the head, and not merely distinguished as a politician, but covered with literary honors and distinctions from every country in Christendom by which genius and public virtue were held in estimation. And yet the change was scarcely greater for Franklin than for Philadelphia. The petty provincial village, with its scattered houses dotted over the bank of the Delaware, had become a magnificent metropolis, distinguished for the wisdom and liberality of its institutions, and as the seat of a general and republican government, which at the former period could scarcely have entered into his dreams.
“At the time of Franklin’s arrival in Philadelphia there were two printing-offices in operation. Keimer, the proprietor of one of them, had but one press and a few worn-out types, with which, when Franklin visited him, he was composing an elegy, literally of his own composition, for it had never gone through the usual process in this manufacture, of pen and ink, but flowed at once from his brain to the press. The subject of these typographical stanzas was Aquila Rose, an apprentice in the office, whose surname naturally suggested to the mind of Keimer some touching figures. If we may judge from some specimens of his poetry which Thomas has preserved in his History of Printing, the province lost little by Keimer’s emigration to Bermuda, which took place shortly afterwards.”
Perhaps, if we except his scientific and political labors,—labors which won him a name while living and honored when dead,—there was no other department wherein business and tact were so united to effect a great national reform as in that of the post-office.
And yet historians pass over that portion of his life with a mere dash of the pen, and seem to consider it a dry episode in his otherwise eventful career. Had they gone into the history of this connection, the business of the postal department would have loomed up before them a splendid subject to descant upon. It would have shown them how out of chaos came forth, under Franklin’s control, a form perfect in shape and gigantic in its proportions. It would tower a giant above the many lesser subjects he wrote pages upon, and give to the world a leaf in our book on political economy which is now—at least as far as this department is concerned—a blank page.
Benjamin Franklin, at the head of the postal department under the colonial government, was the great pioneer in the cause of letters: he mapped the length and breadth of their extent; brought distant places together by the speed of horses, as he did in after-years by electric power the lightning from the surcharged clouds to our very feet.
And when at the head of the department, under the States united forming a Union that has made us a nation among nations, to be honored, respected, and feared, he carried out his plans, based upon a principle that has governed the operations of the postal department to this day.