Franklin: A Sketch

by John Bigelow

[1] One clause of the Act provided that the Americans shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase, nor grant, nor recover debts; they shall neither marry nor make their wills unless they pay such and such sums in specie for the stamps which are to give validity to the proceedings. Franklin testified under oath before a committee of parliament that such a tax would drain the Government of all their specie in a single year.

The succeeding session of parliament, which began in December 1765, is specially memorable for Franklin's examination before a committee of the House on the effects of the Stamp Act; for the magnificent parliamentary debut of Edmund Burke, whose speeches for the repeal, said Dr Johnson, "filled the town with wonder;" and for the repeal of the offensive Act by a majority of 108. The first six weeks of this session were devoted to taking testimony at the bar of the house on American affairs, and especially upon the probable advantages and disadvantages of the Stamp Act. Franklin was the only one of the witnesses who lifted a voice that could be heard by posterity. Burke said the scene reminded him of a master examined by a parcel of schoolboys. George Whitfield, the great field preacher, wrote—"Our trusty friend, Dr Franklin, has gained immortal honour by his behaviour at the bar of the House. The answer was always found equal to the questioner. He stood unappalled, gave pleasure to his friends, and did honour to his country." The examination was first published in 1767, without the name of printer or of publisher, and the following remarks upon it appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for July of that year "From this examination of Dr Franklin the reader may form a clearer and more comprehensive idea of the state and disposition of America, of the expediency or inexpediency of the measure in question, and of the character and conduct of the minister who proposed it, than from all that has been written upon the subject in newspapers and pamphlets, under the titles of essays, letters, speeches, and considerations, from the first moment of its becoming the object of public attention till now. The questions in general were put with great subtlety and judgment, and they are answered with such deep and familiar knowledge of the subject, such precision and perspicuity, such temper and yet such spirit, as do the greatest honour to Dr Franklin, and justify the general opinion of his character and abilities."

The light thrown upon colonial affairs by Franklin's examination, more probably than all other causes combined, determined parliament to repeal the bill almost as soon as it was to have gone into operation, and immediately upon the conclusion of Franklin's examination. It was to Franklin a never-to-be-forgotten triumph. He celebrated it characteristically. "As the Stamp Act," he wrote to his wife, "is at length repealed, I am willing you should have a new gown, which you may suppose I did not send sooner as I knew you would not like to be finer than your neighbours unless in a gown of your own spinning. Had the trade between the two countries totally ceased, it was a comfort to me to recollect that I had once been clothed, from head to foot, in woollen and linen of my wife's manufacture, that I never was prouder of my dress in my life, and that she and her daughter might do it again if it was necessary. I told the parliament that it was my opinion, before the old clothes of the Americans were worn out, they might have new ones of their own making, I have sent you a fine piece of Pompadour satin, 14 yards, cost 11s. a yard; a silk négligée and petticoat of brocaded lute string, for my dear Sally [his daughter]; with two dozen gloves, four bottles of lavender water, and two little reels."

The news of the repeal filled the colonists with delight, and restored Franklin to their confidence and affection. From that time until the end of his days he was, on the whole, the most popular man in America. Unhappily the repeal of the Stamp Act was a concession to the commercial interests of the mother country not to the political dogmas of the colonists. The king's party was more irritated than instructed by its defeat, and instead of surrendering any of its pretensions to tax the colonies, almost immediately brought in a bill, which was passed, asserting the absolute supremacy of parliament over the colonies, and in the succeeding parliament another bill, which also passed, imposing duties on the paper, paints, glass, and tea imported by the colonies. This tax was resented by the colonies with no less bitterness and determination than they had resented the Stamp Act. It conveyed sterility into their recent triumph, and aroused a feeling akin to disloyalty. It made the minor differences among the colonists disappear, and crystallized public opinion with marvellous rapidity around the principle of "no taxation without representation,"—a principle which it was impossible to make acceptable to the king, whose old-fashioned notions of the royal prerogative had only been confirmed and strengthened by the irritating pertinacity of the colonists. Thus the issue was gradually made up between the mother country and its American dependencies. Each party felt that its first duty was to be firm, and that any concession would be disastrous as well as dishonourable. Such a state of feeling could terminate but in one way. It is now clear to all, as it was then clear to a few, that the passing of the tea and paper bill, made the difference between the crown and the colonists irreconcilable, and that nothing but the death of the king could prevent a war. The nine succeeding years were spent by the contending parties in struggling for position,—the colonies becoming more indifferent to the mother country, and the mother country less disposed to put up with the pretensions of her offspring. Franklin, when he went to London in 1764, confidently expected to return in the following year; but he was not destined to leave England till ten years later, and then with the depressing suspicion that the resources of diplomacy were exhausted. Meantime he remitted no effort to find some middle ground of conciliation. Equipped with the additional authority derived from commissions to act as the agent of the provinces of Massachusetts, of New Jersey, and of Georgia, and with a social influence never possessed probably by any other American representative at the English court, he would doubtless have prevented the final alienation of the colonies, if such a result, under the circumstances, had been possible. But it was not. The colonists were Englishmen for the most part, and they could not be brought to make concessions which would have dishonoured them; and Franklin was not the man to ask of them such concessions. He took the position that "the parliament had no right to make any law whatever binding the colonies; that the king, and not the king, Lords, and Commons collectively, was their sovereign; and that the king, with their respective parliaments, is their only legislator." In other words, he asked only what England has since granted to all her colonies, and what, but for the fatuous obstinacy of the king, who at this time was rather an object of commiseration than of criticism, she would undoubtedly have yielded. But under the pressure of the crown, negotiation and debate seemed rather to aggravate the differences than to remove them. The solemn petitions of the colonists to the throne were treated with neglect or derision, and their agents with contumely, and Franklin was openly insulted in the House of Lords, was deprived of his office of deputy-postmaster, and was scarcely safe from personal outrage. Satisfied that his usefulness in England was at an end, he placed his agencies in the hands of Arthur Lee, an American lawyer practising at the London bar, and on the 21st of March 1775, again set sail for Philadelphia. On reaching home his last hope of maintaining the integrity of the empire was dissipated by the news which awaited him of collisions which had occurred, some two weeks previous, between the people and the royal troops at Concord and at Lexington. He found the colonies in flagrant rebellion, and himself suddenly transformed from a peacemaker into a warmaker.

The two years which followed were among the busiest of his life. The very morning of his arrival he was elected, by the assembly of Pennsylvania, a delegate to that continental congress then sitting in Philadelphia which consolidated the armies of the colonies, placed George Washington in command of them, issued the first continental currency, and assumed the responsibility of resisting the imperial government. In this congress he served on not less than ten committees. One of its first measures was to organize a continental postal system and to make Franklin postmaster-general. Thus he was avenged for his dismissal 18 months before from the office of deputy by being appointed to a place of higher rank and augmented authority. He planned all appeal for aid from the king of the French, and wrote the instructions of Silas Deane, a member of the congress, who was to convey it; he was sent as one of three commissioners to Canada, in one of the most inclement months of the year, on what proved an in effectual mission to persuade the Canadians to join the new colonial union; he was elected a delegate from Philadelphia to the conference which met on the 18th of June 1776, and which, in the name of the people of the colonies, formally renounced all allegiance to King George, and called for an election of delegates to a convention to form a constitutional government for the United Colonies. He was also one of the committee of five which drew up what is known as the "Declaration of Independence." When about to sign it, Hancock, one of his colleagues, is reported to have said, "We must be unanimous; there must be no pulling different ways; we must all hart; together." "Yes," replied Franklin, "we must hang together, or we will be pretty sure to hang separately." He was also chosen president of the convention called to frame a constitution for the State of Pennsylvania, which commenced its session on the 16th of July 1776. He was selected by congress to discuss terms of peace with Admiral Lord Howe, who had arrived in New York harbour on the 12th of July 1776, to take command of the British naval forces in American waters, and on the 26th of September, upon the receipt of encouraging news from France, he was chosen unanimously to be one of three to repair to the court of Louis XVI. and solicit his support. His colleagues were John Adams, destined to be Washington's successor in the presidency, and Arthur Lee, Franklin's successor in the agency in London.

Franklin, now in the seventieth year of his age, proceeded to collect all the money he could command, amounting to between £3000 or £4000, lent it to congress, and with two grandsons set sail in the sloop of war "Reprisal" on the 27th day of October, arriving at Nantes on the 7th of December, and at Paris towards the end of the same month. With his usual tact and forecast he found quarters in a house in Passy (then a suburb but now a part of the city of Paris) belonging to an active friend of the cause he represented—Le Ray de Chaumont—who held influential relations with the court, and through whom he was enabled to be in the fullest communication with the French Government without compromising it.

At the time of Franklin's arrival in Paris, he was already one of the most talked about men in the world. He was a member of every important learned society in Europe; he was a member, and one of the managers of the Royal Society, and one of eight foreign members of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. Three editions of his scientific works had already appeared in Paris, and a new edition, much enlarged, had recently appeared in London. To all these advantages he added a political purpose—the dismemberment of the British empire—which was entirely congenial to every citizen of France. "Franklin's reputation," wrote Mr Adams, who, unhappily, was never able to regard his colleague's fame with entire equanimity, "was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed than all of them.... If a collection could be made of all the gazettes of Europe for the latter half of the 18th century a greater number of panegyrical paragraphs upon le grand Franklin would appear, it is believed, than upon any other roan that ever lived."

"Franklin's appearance in the French salons; even before he began to negotiate," says the German historian Schlosser, "was an event of great importance to the whole of Europe.... His dress, the simplicity of his external appearance, the friendly meekness of the old man, and the apparent humility of the Quaker, procured for Freedom a mass of votaries among the court circles who used to be alarmed at its coarseness and unsophisticated truths." We may here add that such was the number of portraits, busts, and medallions of him in circulation before he left Paris that he would have been recognized from them by nearly every adult citizen in any part of the civilized world. Writing to his daughter in the third year of his residence in Paris, of a medallion to which she had alluded, he says—"A variety of others have been made since, of different sizes; some to be set in the lids of snuff-boxes and some so small as to be worn in rings, and the numbers sold are incredible. These, with the pictures, busts, and prints (of which copies are spread everywhere) have made your father's face as well known as the moon, so that he durst not do anything that would oblige him to run away, as his phiz would discover him wherever he should venture to show it."

The story of Franklin's mission to France, as recorded in his own correspondence, is singularly interesting and romantic. In these respects it is difficult to find its parallel in the literature of diplomacy. Its results may be summed up in a few words. He became at once, as already stated, an object of greater popular interest than any other man in France,—an interest which, during his eight years' sojourn there, seemed always on the increase. Streets in numerous cities, and several societies, were named after him; the French Academy paid him its highest honours, and he conferred more distinction upon any salon he frequented than it could reciprocate. He animated French society with a boundless enthusiasm for the cause of the rebel colonists, persuaded the Government that the interests of France required her to aid theta, obtained a treaty of alliance at a crisis in their fortunes in the winter of 1777, when such an alliance was decisive, and the great moral advantage of a royal frigate to convey the news of it to America. A few months later he signed the treaties which bound the two countries to mutual friendship and defence, and on the morning of the 30th March 1778 the three envoys were formally received by the king at Versailles, and through them the country they represented was first introduced into the family of independent nations.