Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One, Part III: Wit

            Now that we all know far more about Benjamin Franklin than some of us likely ever desired to, let us turn at long last to the true object of this most recent inquiry. I refer, in case you might have forgotten or simply skipped past the title mere inches above this opening paragraph, to the verbosely named Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One. Before diving right into a textual analysis, which I know is what you keep coming to this obscure corner of cyberspace for every week, I entreat you to please contain yourselves for a moment while I dispense a few notes concerning the when, where, and how.

            Franklin’s Rules, as I believe I mentioned previously, was published in the Public Advertiser. This was a daily broadsheet printed by Henry Woodfall (and later his son, also Henry Woodfall) beginning in 1752 in London that folded in the 1790s and consisted in its heyday of a mix of adverts and general news content. It was not, much like James Franklin’s New England Courant or Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette, what we might now think of as a paper of record. It was popular, though, and in a city like London its potential audience would have been quite large (the city possessing over 700,000 inhabitants by the 1770s; Philadelphia, by comparison, encompassed less than 50,000). It is thus worth considering, these facts in hand, why Franklin chose this particular publication through which to communicate. Perhaps he simply felt comfortable writing for an audience like that which he had become accustomed to addressing in Pennsylvania; namely the kind of people who regularly patronized a popular, ad-filled, literarily unsophisticated newspaper. Or maybe he felt that a popular broadsheet in a city like London would inevitably reach a wider audience than would a specially-printed treatise or pamphlet. I don’t suppose I could say which one of these, if either, is the case, though I think both are plausible and well-worth considering as we move forward.

            Similarly worthy of your continued recollection is the date when Franklin’s Rules was first published. As recorded at the top of the particular copy I have procured the document first saw print on September 11^th, 1773. Putting aside the dreadful significance of that specific day, let’s look to the month and year and think back to the events that immediately preceded the American Revolution. The Seven Years War, aptly named because it lasted for nine years, had by then been over for just about a decade. The Stamp Act and Townshend Acts, all of which imposed unprecedented taxes on goods being imported into the American colonies, had been repealed amid protest, public demonstrations, the tarring and feathering of more than one hapless tax collector, and significant Parliamentary debate (to which Benjamin Franklin notably contributed his testimony). In March, 1770 a tense confrontation outside the headquarters of the Massachusetts government between a near-riotous crowd and a patrol of British Army regulars (stationed in the city since 1768) turned violent when the soldiers fired into the gathering. Eleven men were struck by musket fire, five of which ultimately died. The resulting trial came to be viewed by the colonial government with keen interest; amidst the ongoing conflict between colonies and Crown Massachusetts was eager to prove to Britain that soldiers serving under her authority could be assured of a fair trial in an American court. Future President of the United States and Boston solicitor John Adams was tasked with leading the defense, a responsibility he performed so ably as to secure a full acquittal for six of the eight accused (the remaining two were declared guilty of manslaughter and given reduced sentences). Though Crown authorities were generally pleased with this outcome, memories of the so-called Boston Massacre did little to heal the widening breach between Britain and the citizens of colonial America. 

            Three years thereafter, in March, 1773, the British Parliament passed a piece of legislation known as the Tea Act, whereby the East India Company was granted licence to ship its tea directly to North American ports. Though this may seem a relatively innocuous measure to modern eyes, its implications were significant. Because the provisions laid out in said act permitted the EIC to bypass the British and America merchants who customarily resold Indian tea, large numbers of colonial resellers were effectively cut out of the market. The illegal tea trade, which funnelled the commodity through the Dutch colonies of the West Indies, was undercut as well, granting the East India Company a virtual monopoly on the colonial American tea market. Because the taxes levied on tea as part of the 1767 Townshend Duties were still in place, this ensured that American consumers would be left little choice but to purchase the beverage from the EIC and thereby endorse the claimed British right to lay revenue duties on colonial trade.  I’ll grant that this likely all sounds rather obtuse, but the point is that American tempers had been aflame for the better part of the 1760s and 1770s and the passage and enforcement of the Tea Act did not exert anything like a cooling influence. It would thus be fair to say that when Benjamin Franklin sat down to pen his satirical Rules it was amidst a climate of distinct and perhaps even mounting tension. Americans had just been made to suffer fresh outrages; blood had been spilt, and the future of the relationship between Crown and colonies was distinctly uncertain.

            The manner in which Benjamin Franklin chose to respond to this state of affairs is, but of course, where I enter the scene. A satirical essay, Rules is divided into twenty sections or steps whereby the process of dismantling an empire from within is described in significant detail. It is not a lengthy piece – my copy, at size twelve font, covers only five pages – but it is dense with information and positively dripping with self-serious irony to the point that it communicates a great deal about its author’s intentions, sense of humour, and political affiliation. Its many and various noteworthy elements will be covered in due course, but I’d like to begin by saying a few words about Franklin’s aforementioned taste for irreverence and his love of satire.

            Because that’s what Rules is at its very core: satire. The title alone is indicative of this; Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One. Not only does this seem to play to the 18^th-century predilection for wordy designations for treatises or pamphlets, often involving needless detail and an array of colons, semicolons, and subheadings, but the very idea it seeks to address would seem to betray a humorous intent. Why, the title begs, would anyone seek to unravel a great empire? To whom was the author of Rules presumably addressing themselves, so desperate to shrug off the burden of greatness? The title is meant to be a kind of absurdity, eye-catching as well as meaningful, that helps both set the tone for what follows while also communicating something very important about the topic at hand. This being, and which I’ll remark on in greater detail later, that the manner in which the British government attempted to oversee the Thirteen Colonies in the latter half of the 18^th-century seemed to many in America specifically designed to cause maximum offense, breed resistance, and ultimately result in the separation of the colonies from the motherland. This is an amusing idea – the British sought to divest themselves of their colonial responsibilities through a lengthy and inefficient campaign of alienation – and one which Franklin does not deviate from at any point. From start to finish, Rules is presented as though it were a series of sober policy recommendations, gleaned from experience and delivered dryly, almost matter-of-factly.

            This should not be taken to mean that the humour in Rules is more conceptual than anything; that it is the product of an amusing idea, but is not amusing in execution. Franklin was not Thomas Paine, a friend and colleague whose tone of freewheeling mockery seemed to reach off the page and grasp the reader by the throat. What Benjamin Franklin knew how to do, and which Rules accomplishes with casual ease, is cultivate a cool, dry wit that pokes, prods, exaggerates, and generally skewers the chosen target to the point that its faults are made painfully evident without having to result to out-and-out invective or vulgarity. To that end, and I’ll grant this may not seem particularly funny to 21^st-century sensibilities, Franklin introduced his series of twenty steps by declaring that, “An ancient Sage once valued himself upon this, that tho’ he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great City of a little one. The Science that I, a modern Simpleton, am about to communicate is the very reverse.” Perhaps not the strongest opener, but much improved, I think, by the punchline that followed. “I address myself,” Franklin wrote, “to all Ministers who have the Management of extensive Dominions, which from their very Greatness are become troublesome to govern, because the Multiplicity of their Affairs leaves no Time for fiddling.”

            The implication of these passages – the hilarious, hilarious implication – is that the minsters of the British government most directly responsible for administering colonial affairs were positively overwrought with responsibility, and would much have preferred to direct their energies toward simpler pursuits like playing the fiddle. The intention therein may well have been one of several. Perhaps Franklin wished to portray said ministers as lazy, unmotivated, and put-upon; their assigned responsibilities had become burdensome because they interrupted the idle pastimes about which they were truly concerned. Or, more stinging yet, he maybe hoped to project an image of British government functionaries as inept, incompetent, or horrendously unqualified to the task of overseeing events in the American colonies; fiddling was all they were fit for, and would gladly have destroyed a transoceanic empire to once more take up the bow and rosin. Neither is a flattering portrait, yet the manner in which Franklin expressed himself was very measured. It was with a dry, deadpan tone that he offered assistance to the beleaguered officers of Britain’s colonial office, their duties so severe, the “extensive Dominions” so “troublesome to govern.” In the guise of a self-styled “modern Simpleton” (perhaps because the advice he was prepared to dole out had not been difficult to discern), Franklin offered a solution that was proven by experience. In so doing he effectively held a mirror to the actions of British colonial officials in an attempt to expose them for the manifestly illogical policies he and his follow colonists believed them to be.

            The deadpan delivery, dry wit, and sense of irony with which Franklin opened Rules, with the intent of “sending-up” the flaws in contemporary British colonial policy, reappeared frequently in subsequent sections. In section (or step) one, for example, Franklin offered to his readers in a thoughtful, attentive tone a useful simile through which to better understand how a great empire might be lessened. “In the first Place, Gentlemen,” he wrote, “you are to consider, that a great Empire, like a great Cake, is most easily diminished at the Edges.” In addition to comparing something vast and weighty, like a great expanse of territory and the administrative machinery required to govern it, with something trifling and mundane, like an artful arrangement of Genoise and buttercream (amusing in itself), this passage seems also to serve the purpose of patronizing the ministers to whom it is theoretically addressed. These were, ostensibly, great statesmen Franklin was speaking to, tasked with the administration of a vast and far-flung set of territories and blessed with greater knowledge and experience of the same than most men could ever aspire to. Yet Franklin offered to help them better understand the magnitude of their responsibilities – in itself rather presumptuous – by presenting them a turn of phrase perhaps best suited to the intellectual capacity of a young and ignorant child. Thus Franklin was able to allude to his and his fellow countrymen’s low estimation of the talents of the ministers responsible for British colonial policy in a way that was biting, yet subtle. Indeed, I think this is an apt summation of Franklin’s overall comedic sensibility; acerbic, dry, and ironic.

            Irony in particular seemed to be a favored rhetorical device of Franklin’s. Aside from the overall tone of the piece itself, that purports to be helpful while in fact exhibiting merciless mockery, there are certain very specific examples that one can point to of the good doctor saying one thing while plainly meaning another. Step seven, which recommended to British colonial administrators that they reward corrupt and abusive Royal Governors with lavish pensions, further advised that certain among the latter could also have been granted peerages in recognition of their service. “You man make them Baronets too,” Franklin wrote, “If that respectable Order should not think fir to resent it.” As a political thinker strongly sympathetic to republicanism Franklin was almost certainly not in favor of expanding the rolls of the British nobility. Nor did he think that august body a truly “respectable Order.” Indeed, perhaps he intended to hint at the opposite by recommending inept colonial governors be made barons; their corrupt dealings and frequent abuses of authority would make them well suited to join the ranks of the landed gentry. The meaning Franklin wished to convey rested just below the surface and therein laid its strength. A person who read Rules and took it seriously was made to look a fool, to their chagrin and the amusement of the citizens of colonial America for whom Franklin was speaking. A person who read the same and understood the author’s true intention would also have known that the mockery therein was at someone else’s expense; in particular someone(s) whose social standing was accompanied with a great deal of self-conscious dignity, and who was therefore a ripe target ridicule. In this way Franklin’s Rules flowed out of the longstanding literary tradition of popular satire to mock public discourse, and in particular prominent figures in a given society, as a kind of safety valve for the pressure of widespread social frustration.

            Step eight evinces a similar brand of mockery, at once self-serious and ridiculous, as it seeks to make light of and point very seriously to the discrepancy between the stated intentions and the actions of British America’s colonial administrators. After making lightly veiled reference to the manner in which the colonies leapt to the task of providing money and manpower to the British effort during the Seven Years War, Franklin asserted therein that the ministers he was supposedly addressing should not be swaying into thinking well of said colonies’ generosity and moderating their tax policies accordingly. “Reflect,” he cautioned, “That a Penny taken from them by your Power is more honorable to you than a Pound presented by their Benevolence.” Again, it should be obvious that Franklin did not write this because he agreed with it. Rather, he was projecting what he thought the men responsible for structuring and implementing the taxation of the American colonies in the 1760s and 1770s must have believed; that money taken by force was better than money freely given. The implications a statement such as this help point, as aforementioned, to the evident contradictions between the words and deeds of the contemporary British government.

            Franklin, it would seem fair to say, along with a significant portion of his fellow colonists, were willing to believe that British authorities really did derive some twisted satisfaction from extorting money from the American colonies. They need have looked no further for evidence to support this position than the history of the decade previous to 1773. British authorities, and in particular those directly responsible for setting and implementing taxes on colonial commerce, would doubtless have disagreed with this assessment, however. From their perspective they were attempting to shrink the debts that had been accrued during the recent war with France, to the benefit of the whole of the empire and its citizens. This apparent discrepancy between benevolent intent and malevolent effect was what Franklin sought to expose, theoretically with the intention of holding the government to account and creating positive change. Barring that, however, satirizing establishment hypocrisy at least gave voice to the frustrations of those who had been most directly affected, eased tensions (if only slightly), and helped foster a stronger sense of social solidarity.

            Looking back for a moment, I realize that most of what I’ve been doing for the last few paragraphs is try to explain why certain elements of Benjamin Franklin’s Rules are funny. Not, I think, the best way to ensure that my audience (at this point having grown to perhaps ten people on a good week) is left rolling on the floor. I apologize if it seems like I’m belabouring the point, but I feel it’s very important to understand exactly how it is Franklin approached social and political commentary, and in turn what sort of role he played in the public life of pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary America. Discussing this topic with a friend, it struck me that a fitting modern counterpart for Franklin, in terms of satire if nothing else, would be Jon Stewart of the Daily Show fame. When Stewart presents his take on current events he does so in a very sardonic, mocking tone. He’s being funny; his knows he’s being funny, and so does his audience. But there is also an understanding that events the Daily Show seeks to make light of are very important. Jon Stewart would not, for instance, present a humorous segment on drought conditions and water regulation in California because he or his audience think the resultant economic and social strife is amusing. Rather, he and his staff of very talented writers use humour to both hold the attention of their audience and also make clearer how ridiculous certain elements of our contemporary social and political status quo are. We all laugh, we all learn something, and we all feel a little better about the state of our world.

            While I don’t think it’s necessarily the most accurate comparison, I’m still willing to say that in terms of their use of humour and their social clout Benjamin Franklin was the 18^th-century equivalent(ish) of Jon Stewart. Franklin, like Stewart, sought to shine a light on things he felt were unjust, irresponsible or ridiculous by mocking, poking fun at or satirizing them in print. Perhaps he hoped to cause change; stung by his dry wit and biting observations those on the receiving end of his barbs would make good on their errors lest they suffer another merciless tongue-lashing. I don’t know how likely this might have been, or how likely Franklin might have thought it was, but I don’t suppose he would have objected to such an outcome. More likely, however, he simply sought to educate the public on an issue or series of issues that he felt had gone unremarked, while at the same time easing existing frustrations and offering the aggrieved a stronger sense of social cohesion. This may not seem all that important, considering that other of Franklin colleagues were in the same era declaring independence from vast empires and helping forge new forms of government. While I’ll grant that satirizing British tax policies was indeed less important than much of what Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton or Madison did over the course of the Revolution in the grand, earth-shattering historical sense, it was, and is, perhaps more important in the small, ephemeral, human sense.    

            As I mentioned a moment ago, when he wrote Rules Franklin was tapping into a long-existent strain of humour rooted in the history of literature and political discourse. This may sound somewhat grandiose, but as I pointed out earlier it’s actually something we, at the dawn of the 21^st century, understand very well. Benjamin Franklin was an 18^th-century media personality. A satirist, printer, and cultural and political commentator, he helped bind his fellow colonists together through a shared sense of humour, of outrage, and of social and political consciousness. His appeal was broad, his voice cultivated, charming. He helped people laugh at their social betters, and at their own predicaments, while also cultivating and directing their frustrations in what he believed was a constructive direction. We feel, I am sure, very much what Franklin’s 18^th-century readers felt when we watch the Daily Show, the now-departed Colbert Report, or Last Week Tonight; we laugh, we learn something, and we feel a little better about the state of our world. Grasping this, I hope that my readers feel the Revolutionary era and Ben Franklin in particular becoming a little more real, and a little more human.