The True Benjamin Franklin

by Sydney George Fisher

“Of Benjamin let us celebrate the glory;
Let us sing the good he has done to mortals.
In America he will have altars;
And in Sanoy let us drink to his glory.”

At the second glass the countess sang a similar refrain, at the third glass the viscount sang, and so on for seven glasses, each verse more extraordinary than the others. Virtue herself had assumed the form of Benjamin; he was greater than William Tell; Philadelphia must be such a delightful place; the French would gladly dwell there, although there was neither ball nor play. But Sanoy was Philadelphia as long as dear Benjamin remained there. He was led to the garden to plant a tree, with more singing about the lightning that he had drawn from the sky, and the lightning, of course, would never strike that tree. Finally he was allowed to depart with another song of adulation addressed to him after he was seated in the carriage.

Now that more than a hundred years have passed it is gratifying to our national pride to reflect that a man who was so thoroughly American in his origin and education should have been worshipped in this way by an alien race as no other man, certainly no other American, was ever worshipped by foreigners. But the enjoyment of this stupendous reputation, overshadowing and dwarfing the Adamses, Jays, and all other public men who went to Europe, was marred by some unpleasant consequences. Jealousies were aroused not only among individuals, but to a certain extent among all the American people. It was too much. He had ceased to be one of them. It was rumored that he would never return to America, but would resign and settle down among those strangers who treated him as though he were a god.

It was also inevitable that a worse suspicion should arise. He was too subservient, it was said, to France. He yielded everything to her. He was turning her from an ally into a ruler. He could no longer see her designs; or, if he saw them, he approved of them. This suspicion gained such force that it was the controlling principle with Adams and Jay when they went to Paris to arrange the treaty of peace with England after the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in October, 1781. We have seen instances in our own time of our ministers to Great Britain becoming very unpopular at home because they were liked in England, and in Franklin’s case this feeling was vastly greater than anything we have known in recent years, because his popularity in France was prodigious, and he avowedly acted upon the principle that it was best to be complaisant to the French court.

During the winter which followed the surrender of Lord Cornwallis overtures of peace were made by England to Franklin, as representing America, and to Vergennes, as representing France, and they became more earnest in March after the Tory ministry, which had been conducting the war, was driven from power. In April the negotiations with Franklin were well under way, and he continued to conduct them until June, when he was taken sick and incapacitated for three months. After his recovery he took only a minor part in the proceedings, for Jay and Adams had meanwhile arrived.

Congress had appointed Adams, Jay, Franklin, Jefferson, and Laurens commissioners to arrange the treaty, and made Adams head of the commission. When the negotiations began, however, Franklin was the only commissioner at Paris, and necessarily took charge of all the business. Just before he was taken sick Jay arrived, and he and Jay conducted affairs until Adams joined them at the end of October. Laurens, who had been a prisoner in England, did not reach Paris until just before the preliminary treaty was signed, and Jefferson, being detained in America, took no part in the proceedings.

While Franklin was carrying on the negotiations alone, he insisted on most of the terms which were afterwards agreed upon: first of all, independence, and, in addition to that, the right to fish on the Newfoundland Banks and a settlement of boundaries; but he added a point not afterwards pressed by the others,—namely, that Canada should be ceded to the United States. In exchange for Canada he was prepared to allow some compensation to the Tories for their loss of property during the war. Adams and Jay, on taking up the negotiations, dropped Canada entirely and insisted stoutly to the end that there should be no compensation whatever to the Tories.

Franklin’s admirers have always contended that it would have been better if Jay and Adams had kept away altogether, for in that case Franklin would have secured all that they got for us and Canada besides. This, however, is mere supposition, one of those vague ideas of what might have been without any proof to support it. Franklin pressed the cession of Canada, it is true; but there is no evidence that it would have been granted. At that time the people of the United States appear not to have wanted the land of snow, and ever since then the general opinion has been that we have enough to manage already, and are better off without a country vexed with serious political controversies with its French population and the Roman Catholic school question.

On the whole, it would not have been well for Franklin to have continued to conduct the negotiations alone. The situation was difficult, and the united efforts and varied ability of at least three commissioners were required. Neither Franklin nor Jay knew much about the fisheries question, and they might have been forced to yield on this point. But Adams, from his long experience in conducting litigation for the Massachusetts fishing interests, was better prepared on this subject than any other American, and it was generally believed by the public men of that time that the important rights we secured on the Newfoundland Banks were due almost entirely to his skill. He was also more familiar with the boundary question between Maine and New Brunswick, and had brought with him documents from Massachusetts which were invaluable.

While Jay and Franklin were acting together before the arrival of Adams, a serious question arose about the commission of Oswald, the British negotiator who had come over to Paris. He was empowered to treat with the “Colonies or Plantations,” and nowhere in the document was the term United States of America used. Jay refused to treat with a man who held such a commission. Franklin and Vergennes vainly urged that it was a mere form, and that Great Britain had already in several ways acknowledged the independence of the United States. Oswald showed an article of his instructions which authorized him to grant complete independence to the thirteen colonies, and he offered to write a letter declaring that he treated with them as an independent power; but Jay was inflexible, and in this he seems to have been right.