Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One, Part I: Context

            After the lengthy sagas that I've subjected you to over the past few months I think it appropriate, nay deserved, to try over the next few weeks for something a bit more compact. A brief dip in the pool, say, after having attempted to swim the English Channel. To that end I’ve decided to shine a light on one of the most well-known Founding Fathers about which I have had very little to say thus far. This is not because I find him less worthy of respect than his peers or his work less worthy of reflection. Rather, it’s only because the man is not really known for his political or philosophical rhetoric, my bread and butter I think we can all agree, that he has so long been absent from these pages. I’m speaking, as I’m sure you haven’t guessed because I’m being terribly and unnecessarily obtuse, of Benjamin Franklin.

            The thing about Benjamin Franklin – and isn’t that just a great way to begin a sentence – is that he wasn’t really much of a politician or a statesman in either the archaic or modern sense. Unlike most of his contemporaries among the Founding Generation he was not a lawyer by trade, was not very deeply involved with the politics of his home state, and seemed generally uninterested in seeking national political office. Though he did serve as the first Postmaster General of the United States and was elected the sixth President of Pennsylvania (before it adopted a constitution in which “Governor” was the title of the chief executive), his strengths and interests seemed to tilt more towards diplomacy, science, and what might be called the liberal arts. For this reason there would seem very little an interested person, such as myself, could point to in the way of political treatises or essays that really encapsulate even a portion of his personal ideology or philosophy. There are papers written on the topics of oceanography, thermodynamics, and electricity, of course, as well as satirical narratives purportedly from the pen of characters like Silence Dogood and Poor Richard. But solid, theory-rich political writings of the kind Madison, Jefferson and Hamilton churned out as if their lives depended on it, there would appear to be few.  That is, unless or until one recalls that Franklin was, among his many vocations, a printer and editorialist of some renown and thereafter delves into the reams of political commentary he turned out over the course of his long and prolific literary life.

            So you see, I can admit when I am wrong.

            And so I come to the present topic of discussion, an editorial entitled Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One that was published in a London newspaper called The Public Advertiser in September, 1773. Among Franklin’s most celebrated pro-American satirical essays, made all the more remarkable by it being printed in a British paper, Rules (as it shall hereafter be known) provides its readers with a series of steps by which a great and powerful empire could supposedly be reduced and eventually destroyed from the inside out. Intended as a rhetorical jab at British trade and tax policies that had, over the course of the 1760s and 1770s, turned many in the Thirteen Colonies against Parliament and the Crown, Franklin’s editorial voice is on full display throughout. Consequently, Rules provides ample evidence of its author’s wit and humour, his political savvy, and his willingness to confront a potentially hostile audience with what he believed needed to be said. Were this not enough to justify giving said editorial a thorough once-over, two specific aspects, relating to its context and general approach, further set it apart as worthy of our particular attention. The first has to do with when, relative to Franklin’s life and experiences, it was published, while the second concerns the basic philosophical assumption, utilized by Franklin to satiric effect, which underlies its rhetoric. Both of these elements will, of course, be discussed in greater detail in the fullness of time. For the moment, as you should no doubt have been expecting, we turn to the larger context.

            Another thing about Benjamin Franklin  - which isn’t as good, but comes pretty close – is that he, more than any other of his fellows among the hallowed pantheon of America’s Founding Fathers, could honestly be described as a “self-made man.” Far from the scion of a southern planter family or the offspring of a member of New England’s merchant elite, his origins were distinctly working class. In addition to nurturing a latent disdain for inherited privilege, this had a powerful effect on the trajectory of Franklin’s life and to a great extent shaped his social and political outlook. If nothing else, the fact of his modest upbringing and hard-won success speak to his ability to conceive of the British Empire and the Crown, America, and its potential independence in distinctly down-to-earth terms. As past weeks’ discussions have hopefully made clear, this was not always a skill his contemporaries possessed.     

            The eighth child of his British-born father’s second marriage (making him Josiah Franklin’s fourteenth child overall), Benjamin Franklin came into the world in 1706 in Boston, capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The son of a Puritan chandler (candle-maker), Franklin’s father encouraged him to join the clergy from a young age, though the family’s lack of resources cut his formal education short after only two years at Boston Latin School. Thereafter he supplemented his limited learning by reading extensively while working for his father, and at age twelve became apprenticed to his brother James. A printer by trade, James Franklin introduced his younger sibling to what would become perhaps his most durable vocation. Under his training young Benjamin, at age fifteen, helped found the New England Courant, one of the earliest newspapers in the colonies which ran from 1721 to 1726. It was as the typesetter of the Courant that Franklin first dabbled in satire, penning more than a dozen letters under the stereotypically Puritan pen name Silence Dogood. As a platform for ridiculing the morally censorious culture of mid-18^th century Boston, the fifteen Dogood letters proved very popular with the reading public and helped keep the Courant, and James Franklin’s printing business, afloat. Unfortunately because James had not been aware that Benjamin was the author behind Silence Dogood’s pen he was angered when he ultimately discovered the ruse. Thereafter Benjamin left his apprenticeship without his brother’s permission, an illegal act under Massachusetts law, and ran away to Philadelphia at the age of seventeen. The years that followed would prove to be among the most productive of Franklin’s young life.

            Though by the end of the 18^th century Philadelphia was among the largest and most cosmopolitan cities in the Thirteen Colonies, during the 1720s when Benjamin Franklin first arrived it was still a somewhat primitive backwater port whose growth had been stunted by economic depression. It was in fact due to the efforts of men like Franklin and his civically-minded colleagues that the city grew and flourished into a centre of culture and learning, and by the 1770s was the natural choice to host the First and Second Continental Congress. Upon his arrival in 1723, however, young Benjamin found the city somewhat less congenial than would his revolutionary compatriots. Though he managed to find work among some of the local printing shops, putting to good use the skills and experience he had acquired under his brother’s tutelage, he was unsatisfied with his immediate prospects. He was accordingly convinced by Pennsylvania’s colonial governor Sir William Keith to depart as an emissary to London in order to acquire the materials necessary to establish a newspaper of his own in Philadelphia. When Governor Keith’s proposal turned out to have had little basis in fact, however, Franklin was forced to find work among the printing shops and merchants of London before returning to Pennsylvania in 1726. Older and somewhat wiser, he subsequently turned his energies to more public-minded pursuits, and in 1727 helped establish a civic organization in Philadelphia known as the Junto. A discussion group as well as a charitable organization, the Junto’s members came from among the city’s middling classes (printers, cobblers, merchants, surveyors, clerks, etc…), discussed topics ranging from business, to politics, to natural philosophy, and helped establish the first public library in Pennsylvania (the still-extant Library Company of Pennsylvania).

            In addition to fostering the exchange of knowledge and forging relationships between members of the artisan community, Franklin also helped enrich Philadelphia’s public life by contributing his own voice to its growing literary and cultural traditions via his trade as a printer. To that end he re-founded the struggling Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729 alongside his partner Hugh Meredith, and thereafter acted as both editor and frequent (anonymous) contributor. Though by modern standards the Gazette did not offer much in the way of journalism, as was the norm in the 18^th century, it did provide the business community in Philadelphia with a reliable source of classified ads, retail notices, and ship listings. More importantly, however, it provided Franklin with an unrivalled platform from which to dispense his favored brand of satirical public and cultural commentary. Once again utilizing a series of pen names, he gave full vent over the years that followed (the Gazette remained in print until 1800) to his self-generated wisdom, his caustic wit, and his general sense of mischief as he sought to skewer the morals and manners of his adopted neighbors, and of colonial Americans in general. In addition the paper also contributed to his efforts to popularize and sell what he felt was “improving” literature; the publication carried reviews written by Franklin of books he had acquired, and his printing office also served as a retail book shop. Subsequently, the Pennsylvania Gazette became perhaps the most successful newspaper in the Thirteen Colonies, and Benjamin Franklin began to acquire the reputation as one of colonial America’s most enduring public personalities.

            The 1730s saw the scope of Franklin’s interests and activities expand at the same time his personal life began to take on the complex and at-times morally ambiguous character for which he has since become known. The year 1730 in itself proved to be quite eventful; therein Franklin entered into a common-law marriage with Deborah Read, whom he had first met and proposed to in 1723 when he was seventeen. That year he also publicly acknowledged a child named William as his illegitimate son. The unofficial nature of his union with Read was born out of necessity. During Franklin’s absence in London between 1723 and 1726, Deborah married a man named William Rogers who subsequently absconded with her dowry and fled to Barbados in order to escape his looming debts. Contemporary bigamy laws denied Deborah the freedom to remarry, though her relationship with Franklin proved to be more durable than most formal unions, lasting until her death in 1774. William Franklin (1730-1813), meanwhile, was subsequently raised in his father’s household and for all intents and purposes treated as the child of Deborah Read and the sibling of her and her husband’s other children Francis (1732-1736) and Sarah (1744-1808). Over the course of his upbringing he often assisted in Benjamin’s various scientific experiments, accompanied him during his frequent stays in Europe, and received, by colonial American standards, a very thorough education between the elder Franklin’s tutelage, attending school in Philadelphia, and studying law in 1760s London. William later became the royally-appointed governor of New Jersey in 1763, an office he held until deposed by the colony’s revolutionary government in 1776.

            Aside from these personal goings-on, the 1730s witnessed the rise of Franklin’s increasing interest in science. Over the decades that followed he undertook a series of well-documented studies and experiments into, among other things, demography, oceanography, physics, electricity, meteorology, refrigeration and certain aspects of human cognition. Nurtured from a young age by his self-directed reading, his intense curiosity also led Franklin to a secondary career as a successful inventor. Among his creations, none of which he ever patented, are counted the lightning rod, a type of musical instrument called a glass armonica, bifocal glasses, and a form of heat-efficient fireplace known as the Franklin Stove. During this period of creative profligacy in Franklin’s life he also began to dabble in literature. Beginning in 1733 he wrote and published a series of yearly pamphlets in the form of a simultaneously practical and entertaining Almanac under the pseudonym Poor Richard. Containing a calendar for the coming year, weather forecasts, poems, sayings, astrological data, and the occasional mathematical exercise, Poor Richard’s Almanac became an annual best-seller in the American colonies, regularly running through ten thousand copies every year until they ceased publication in 1758. In spite of his attempt to remain anonymous, as had become his custom, Franklin’s authorship of Poor Richard became widely known during his lifetime and greatly enhanced his mounting fame.

            On the professional front, because satire, science and innovation were really just pastimes, Franklin’s role in Pennsylvania society evolved over the course of the 1740s, 50s, and 60s from public intellectual and civic advocate to philanthropist, man of letters, and eventually credentialed diplomat. Between 1736 and 1751 he helped establish the Union Fire Company, one of the first volunteer fire brigades in colonial America, began printing paper currency (for which he was an ardent advocate) for the government of New Jersey, founded the Academy and College of Pennsylvania (later united with the University of the State of Pennsylvania to form Penn State) and the American Philosophical Society (a national scientific discussion group), and aided in the establishment of the Pennsylvania Hospital, the first of its kind in America. He was elected as a councilman for the City of Philadelphia in 1748, became a Justice of the Peace in 1749, and joined the colonial assembly in 1751. Three years later, in 1754, Franklin headed the Pennsylvania deputation to the Albany Congress, organized with the intent of forging closer defensive ties between the various colonies at the outset of the Seven Years War (1754-1763). At said meeting of colonial notables he proposed a plan of union for the colonies that, while not adopted, became an influence on similar developments like the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. 1754 also witnessed one of Franklin’s most lasting contributions to American political and popular culture. Published in his Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, the image of a segmented snake over the label “Join, or Die” was intended to encourage a display of unity among the colonies in the face of invasion by the forces of France and their Native American allies. The stark imagery lodged itself firmly in the colonial American consciousness, resurfaced as a plea for unity again during the American Revolution, and has since become one of the most vibrant and recognizable images from the founding era of the United States.