He had no knowledge of technical law, either in practice or as a science. He was once elected a justice of the peace in Philadelphia, but soon resigned, because, as he said, he knew nothing of the rules of English common law. It was perhaps the only important domain of human knowledge in which he was not interested.
As a public man of long experience he had considerable knowledge of general laws and their practical effect. He was a law-maker rather than a law-interpreter. He understood colonial rights, and knew every phase of the controversy with Great Britain, and he had fixed opinions as to constitutional forms and principles. Some of his ideas on constitution-making were unsound; but it is astonishing what an important part he played during his long life in American constitutional development.
I have shown in another volume, called “The Evolution of the Constitution of the United States,” how the principles and forms of that instrument were developed out of two hundred years’ experience with more than forty colonial charters and Revolutionary constitutions and more than twenty plans of union. The plans of union were devised from time to time with the purpose of uniting the colonies under one general government. None of them was put into actual practice until the “Articles of Confederation” were adopted during the Revolution. But although unsuccessful in the sense that no union was formed under any of them, they contributed ideas and principles which finally produced the federalism of the national Constitution under which we now live.
Two of these plans of union were prepared by Franklin. No other American prepared more than one, and Franklin’s two were the most important of all. Not only was he the originator of the two most important plans, but he lived long enough to take part in framing the final result of all the plans, the national Constitution, and he was the author of one of the most valuable provisions in it.
The first plan of union which he drafted was the one adopted by the Albany Conference of 1754, that had been called to make a general treaty with the Indians which would obviate the confusion of separate treaties made by the different colonies. Such a general treaty, by controlling the Indians, would, it was hoped, assist in resisting the designs of the French in Canada. It was obvious, also, that if the colonies were united under a general government they would be better able to withstand the French. Franklin had advocated this idea of union in his Gazette, and had published a wood-cut representing a wriggling snake separated into pieces, each of which had on it the initial letter of one of the colonies, and underneath was written, “Join or die.”
He was sent to the conference as one of the delegates from Pennsylvania, and his plan of union, which was adopted, was a distinct improvement on all others that had preceded it, and contained the germs of principles which are now a fundamental part of our political system. In 1775, while a member of the Continental Congress, he drafted another plan, which, though not adopted, added new suggestions and developments. But as both of these plans are fully discussed in “The Evolution of the Constitution,”[29] it is unnecessary to say more about them here.
He was a member of the convention which in 1776 framed a new constitution for Pennsylvania, and in this instrument he secured the adoption of two of his favorite ideas. He believed that a Legislature should consist of only one House, and that the executive authority, instead of being vested in a single person, should be exercised by a committee. The executive department of Pennsylvania became, therefore, a Supreme Executive Council of twelve members elected by the different counties. In order to make up for the lack of a double House, there was a sort of makeshift provision providing that every bill must pass two sessions of the Assembly before it became a law. There was also a curious body called the Council of Censors, two from each city and county, who were to see that the constitution was not violated and that all departments of government did their duty. It was a crude and awkward attempt to prevent unconstitutional legislation, and proved an utter failure. The whole constitution was a most bungling contrivance which wrought great harm to the State and was replaced by a more suitable one in 1790.
But Franklin heartily approved of it, and in 1790 protested most earnestly against a change. He argued at length against a single executive and in favor of a single house Legislature in the teeth of innumerable facts proving the utter impracticability of both. No other important public men of the time believed in them, and they had been rejected in the national Constitution. He was, however, as humorous and clever in this argument as if he had been in the right. A double-branch Legislature would, he said, be too weak in each branch to support a good measure or obstruct a bad one.
“Has not the famous political fable of the snake with two heads and one body some useful instruction contained in it? She was going to a brook to drink, and in her way was to pass through a hedge, a twig of which opposed her direct course; one head chose to go on the right side of the twig, the other on the left; so that time was spent in the contest, and, before the decision was completed, the poor snake died with thirst.” (Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. x. p. 186.)
After Franklin had taken part in framing the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776 and had gone to Paris as ambassador to France, he had all the new Revolutionary constitutions of the American States translated into French and widely circulated. Much importance has been attached to this translation by some writers, Thomas Paine saying that these translated constitutions “were to liberty what grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech and practically construct them into syntax;” and both he and some of Franklin’s biographers ascribe to them a vast influence in shaping the course of the French Revolution. Franklin wrote to the Rev. Dr. Cooper, of Boston, that the French people read the translations with rapture, and added,—