Almost all the Parts of our Bodies require some Expence. The Feet demand Shoes; the Legs, Stockings; the rest of the Body, Clothing; and the Belly, a good deal of Victuals. Our Eyes, tho' exceedingly useful, ask, when reasonable, only the cheap Assistance of Spectacles, which could not much impair our Finances. But the Eyes of other People are the Eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither fine Clothes, fine Houses, nor fine Furniture.
Another letter to Vaughan is really an essay on the Criminal Laws and the practice of privateering. And a wise, humane and sprightly essay it is, fully worthy of a man, who was entirely too far in advance of his age to approve the savage English laws, which hanged a thief for stealing a horse, and had no better answer to make to the culprit, when he pleaded that it was hard to hang a man for only stealing a horse, than the reply of Judge Burnet: "Man, thou art not to be hanged only for stealing, but that horses may not be stolen." Not unworthy either was this essay of a man whose benevolence was too clear-sighted and generous to be cheated by the pretence that the practice of privateering has its root in anything better than the rapacity of the highwayman. A highwayman, he said, was as much a robber, when he plundered in a gang, as when single; and a nation, that made an unjust war, was only a great gang. How could England, which had commissioned no less than seven hundred gangs of privateering robbers, he asked, have the face to condemn the crime of robbery in individuals, and hang up twenty criminals in a morning. It naturally put one in mind of a Newgate anecdote. "One of the Prisoners complain'd, that in the Night somebody had taken his Buckles out of his Shoes; 'What, the Devil!' says another, 'have we then Thieves among us? It must not be suffered, let us search out the Rogue, and pump him to death."
Vaughan was a prolix correspondent, and in reading his letters we cannot but be reminded at times of the question put to him by Franklin, when inveighing against the artifices adopted by booksellers for the purpose of padding books. After remarking that they were puffed up to such an extent that the selling of paper seemed the object, and printing on it, only the pretence, he said, "You have a law, I think, against butchers blowing of veal to make it look fatter; why not one against booksellers' blowing of books to make them look bigger."
Vaughan was among the friends who did not fail to hasten to Southampton when Franklin touched there on his return from France to America.
In what affectionate esteem Franklin held his two English friends, Dr. John Hawkesworth, the author and writer of oratorios, and John Stanley, the blind musician and organist of the Society of the Inner Temple, we have already seen. Stanley composed the music for Dr. Hawkesworth's oratorios Zimri and The Fall of Egypt, and like music and words the two friends themselves were blended in the mind of Franklin. Writing in the latter years of his life to another English friend of his, Thomas Jordan, the brewer, who had recently sent him a cask of porter, he had this to say about them, in connection with the two satellites of Georgium Sidus, which Herschel had just discovered.
Let us hope, my friend, that, when free from these bodily embarrassments, we may roam together through some of the systems he has explored, conducted by some of our old companions already acquainted with them. Hawkesworth will enliven our progress with his cheerful, sensible converse, and Stanley accompany the music of the spheres.
Several times, in his letter, Franklin refers to Hawkesworth as the "good Doctor Hawkesworth," and it was from him that he learned to call Strahan "Straney."
Another English friend of Franklin was John Sargent, a London merchant, a director of the Bank of England, and a member of Parliament. The friendship was shared by Mrs. Sargent, "whom I love very much," Franklin said in one of his letters to her husband. After his return from his second mission to England, he wrote to Sargent, asking him to receive the balance due him by Messrs. Browns and Collinson, and keep it for him or his children. "It may possibly," he declared, "soon be all I shall have left: as my American Property consists chiefly of Houses in our Seaport Towns, which your Ministry have begun to burn, and I suppose are wicked enough to burn them all." In connection with Sargent, it may also be mentioned that he was one of the applicants with Franklin for the Ohio grant, and that it was at his country seat at Halstead, in Kent, that Lord Stanhope called for the purpose of taking Franklin to Hayes, the country seat of Chatham, where Chatham and Franklin met for the first time.
Another English friend of Franklin was John Canton, who was, however, rather a scientific than a social comrade, though a fellow-tourist of his on one of his summer excursions; and still another was Dr. Alexander Small, for whom he cherished a feeling of real personal affection. In one letter to Small, he tells him that he had found relief from the gout by exposing his naked foot, when he was in bed, and thereby promoting the process of transpiration. He gave the fact, he said, to Small, in exchange for his receipt for tartar emetic, because the commerce of philosophy as well as other commerce was best promoted by taking care to make returns. In another letter to Small, there is a growl for the American Loyalists.
As to the Refugees [he observed], whom you think we were so impolitic in rejecting, I do not find that they are miss'd here, or that anybody regrets their Absence. And certainly they must be happier where they are, under the Government they admire; and be better receiv'd among a People, whose Cause they espous'd and fought for, than among those who cannot so soon have forgotten the Destruction of their Habitations, and the spilt Blood of their dearest Friends and near Relations.