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

            In addition to heralding the expansion of his public profile and incipient fame, the 1750s also witnessed Franklin’s return to Europe and to Britain in particular in the guise of diplomat and advocate for his adopted home colony of Pennsylvania. This period in his life eventually saw his role evolve into that of an itinerant emissary for the American cause. This would continue intermittently until just before his death in 1790, and constitutes the lion’s share of his contribution to the success of the American Revolution. Sent originally in 1757 by the Pennsylvania Assembly, Franklin’s task was to advocate in favor of abolishing the proprietary form of government under which the colony had been operating since its inception in the 1680s. This style of administration, whereby a single individual was the effective ruler of a colony, had functioned adequately under Pennsylvania founder William Penn. His sons Richard, John and Thomas proved to be less capable than their father, however, and there was a growing movement in the 1740s and 1750s among the colonial elite to have the proprietorship replaced by a royally-appointed governor. Franklin’s mission ultimately failed, due in part to his lack of connections in the halls of power in London, but he nonetheless took full advantage during his stay of the intellectual and social stimulations present in the imperial homeland. These included, among others, meeting with a host of influential contemporary thinkers, visiting the Universities of St. Andrews and Oxford and being awarded an honorary doctorate by both, and joining the Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce (now the Royal Society of Arts). After returning to Pennsylvania in the early 1760s, being elected speaker of the colonial Assembly in May, 1764, and losing said position in October of the same year, Franklin was dispatched a second time to London to try his hand once more at international diplomacy.

            Though ostensibly sent to again advocate for the replacement of the Penn family proprietorship over Pennsylvania, events quickly conspired to drastically alter the character of Franklin’s second mission to London. The passage of the Stamp Act (1765) and the accompanying outrage from among the population of colonial America thrust him into the limelight as a kind of spokesperson for the sentiments of his fellow colonists. This role was most vividly expressed in 1766 when Franklin was called to testify before a session of the House of Commons as to the extent of colonial resistance. That the Stamp Act was subsequently repealed was widely attributed in the American colonies to his intervention, and he was subsequently appointed by New Jersey, Georgia, and Massachusetts to represent their interests in London as well as Pennsylvania’s. From then until the early 1770s Franklin set about advocating for what he perceived to be the interests of his fellow colonists, penning numerous essays and editorials to that effect under his own name, a variety of pennames, and anonymously. He also very effectively built on some of the relationships he had established during his earlier stay in England, travelling widely and being hosted by such notables as theologian Joseph Priestly, physician Thomas Percival, Secretary of State for Colonies Lord Hillsborough, and philosopher David Hume. These travels also included a journey across parts of Germany in 1766, and a visit to Paris in 1767 during which news of his electrical experiments gained him access to a number of scientists, politicians, and even King Louis XV. The connections forged during this time in Franklin’s life would serve him well during the Revolutionary years, as would the reputation he began to build for himself as that of a “rustic American genius.”

            So there you have it. Franklin remained in Britain until 1775, and in 1773 he wrote a satiric editorial for publication in a London paper about how a great empire could effectively reduce itself to something much less. I do hope this has been an interesting journey through the life of one of the Founding Generation’s most interesting men. I know I enjoyed it, anyway, and isn’t that really what matters? Before I conclude, however, I’d like to briefly run down what I consider to be the major through-lines of Benjamin Franklin’s life and career, or at least those I feel bear upon the analysis to follow.

            One of the first things that occurred to me upon compiling this chronicle – I won’t speculate as to when it occurred to you – was the sheer length of the man’s life. When Thomas Jefferson sat down to pen his celebrated Declaration he was only thirty-three years old. John Adams, by comparison, was forty-one, Washington forty-four, and Alexander Hamilton a mere stripling of twenty-one. Benjamin Franklin, at that same period in 1776, was full seventy years of age. Born just after the turn of the 18^th century in 1706, he had, by the dawn of the American Revolution, already lived a long and full life. In that time Franklin had been many things, from printer, to scientist, to diplomat, and had taken a leading role in shaping the society of his adopted home in colonial Philadelphia. He had also witnessed a great deal of change overtake colonial American society, between wars with Native Americans and rival colonial powers, religious awakenings, increasing technological and social sophistication, and the growth of a distinctly American culture. I don’t suppose that I could say with any great degree of certainty exactly what the impact of Franklin’s longevity was on his outlook and actions during the era of the Revolution. I don’t know that living quite so long made him more vocal, more patient, or more daring; he seemed to possess an abundance of all three traits as early as his teenage years. I couldn’t say, either, that the changes he witnessed take place in the colonies over the course of his life imparted to him a sense of progress, or an appreciation of the inevitability of, or need for, social/cultural/political evolution. Perhaps both of these things are true, but I am sure that I couldn’t prove it.

            What I do feel comfortable stating, in general terms, is that Franklin had had, by the 1770s, more time than the great majority of his revolutionary colleagues to flex his creative and intellectual muscles, to transition through several different vocations, and to expand and broaden his person base of knowledge. Unlike, say, John Adams or even George Washington, Franklin’s reputation in America and abroad was also, by the 1770s, well established. As a result, I think it fair to say, he was by 1776 a very well-rounded individual who knew a great deal about a great many things and could very easily command attention. This made him, I have no doubt he and his cohorts agreed, a very useful advocate for the revolutionary cause. By nature a man of wisdom, equanimity, curiosity, and energy, his talents combined with his connections and repute to make him an extraordinarily effective diplomat, civic activist, and political and cultural commentator. A younger man, like Thomas Jefferson or James Madison whose public careers were only just getting started when the Revolution dawned, could not have exerted the same influence that the elder statesman Franklin had long since earned by 1776. This is, I think, key to understanding the role Benjamin Franklin enjoyed in late-18^th century colonial culture, the role he played in the American Revolution, and the way he and his literary audience understood and communicated with one another.    

            The second trend to take notice of across the length of Franklin’s public life is the abiding favor he seemed to hold for satire, or humour in general, as an effective means to deliver information, moral commentary, or social criticism. As aforementioned he began his career, or rather the first of his careers, working as a typesetter in his brother’s printing shop while secretly penning sardonic letters under an assumed name. He was seventeen when he gave birth to the morally upright and self-confessedly judgemental widow Silence Dogood, and though he would go on to dabble in science, politics, and civic advocacy he seemed to retain a lifelong appreciation for the satirical form. Indeed, if his Rules are any indication, Franklin continued to make use of sarcastic, irreverent, or mocking rhetoric well into his late sixties. The significance of this seeming fondness is twofold at least, on the one hand concerning message and on the other having to do with medium.

            It would first seem safe enough to conclude that Franklin’s frequent attempts to use humour and exaggeration as a means of offering commentary or criticism likely indicate a belief in the efficacy of what we’ll call “charm and disarm.” Whereas contemporaries like Jefferson or Hamilton put forward their written opinions in the form of pamphlets, polemics, and essays, all tending towards confrontation and debate, Franklin appeared far more likely to deliver his thoughts in the guise of a snide commentary or irreverent observation. He didn’t argue as much as he insinuated; didn’t declare as much as suggest. Thus I’d wager he understood that making a person laugh helped put them at their ease, made them more likely to give an accompanying opinion the benefit of the doubt, and rendered what he had to say that much more memorable. This was not a literary style that was common among the classically-educated elite of the American colonies. Those who formally studied rhetoric among the Founding Generation understood how to render their opinion in terms of fact and evidence, point and counterpoint. They had their tricks, their means of manipulating the attention or tapping into the emotions of their audience – I’m thinking of the Federalist Papers and of Jefferson’s Summary View – but in general their efforts were rendered in a very didactic, very academic, and very serious style of address. As Benjamin Franklin possessed very little in the way of formal education, however, it should come as no surprise that he tended not to approach his commentaries, editorials and essays in the classical rhetorical mode.

            This brings us to the second significance of Franklin’s apparent love of satire, having to do with the form in which he so often delivered it. Whereas John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and, say, John Dickinson were members of the colonial elite who wrote for an elite audience, Benjamin Franklin was of distinctly middling origins and tended to write his satiric missives and irreverent editorials for a somewhat more popular readership. The New-England Courant, in which the Silence Dogood letters were first published, was a daily broadsheet whose stock-in-trade was shipping information, local news, and letters to the editor. Franklin’s own Pennsylvania Gazette trafficked in similar fare, and appealed mainly to the middle-class, artisan and mercantile community to which its editor belonged. These publications were not what we might call papers of record; nor were they much favored by the colonial political class with whom we normally associate the American Revolution. Rather, they were intended to be both a useful tool and an entertaining distraction for the middling classes who had little knowledge of classical rhetoric but a finely-honed appreciation for well-delivered wit and wisdom. That Franklin seemed to be continually drawn to this rather humble platform, in spite of his frequent associations with the elite of both the colonies and their British motherland, is quite telling. If nothing else it would seem to indicate the manner of discourse he believed most effective, and to whom he supposed his thoughts were best addressed.

            Franklin’s preference for the popular platform of the daily newspaper may also have had something to do with the last element of his biography I feel it worthwhile to point out, that being his status as a self-made man. Putting aside the almost mythic regard with which modern American culture seems to hold the self-made, bootstrap hoisting ethos, which is another beast altogether, Franklin’s middling origins were, and continue to be, key to understanding how he perceived of himself and in turn how others perceived him. In a society like that which existed in 18^th-century colonial America social mobility was practically non-existent. Though the colonies were more egalitarian than their mother country, in terms of income, lifestyle, and social standing, even multicultural, multilingual, freedom-of-conscience-loving Pennsylvania was British at its very core. Certain base assumptions, I mean, carried over. There were distinct social classes in the colonies as in Britain, defined by wealth, ethnic origin, and faith. Though families could and did improve their lot over generations via investment, education, and a bit of luck, it was terribly uncommon for an individual to accomplish the same over the course of a single lifetime. Benjamin Franklin was just such an uncommon individual, however, and his life and career often present a highly compelling mix of common and elite associations.

            For example, Franklin was the son of a Boston candle maker, and as an adult had personal exchanges with Louis XV and Louis XVI of France. He was rejected as a suitor by his common-law wife’s mother in the 1720s because he was financially insubstantial, and was awarded honorary doctorates by St. Andrews and Oxford universities in the 1760s. In 1723 at age seventeen he arrived in Philadelphia with little money in his pocket and rather shaky prospects, and in 1785 was elected President of Pennsylvania. Granted, a great deal happened between these respective sets of events. In addition to his own hard work, energy and ingenuity, Franklin was the beneficiary of his fair share of favors and lucky breaks. Nevertheless, having started with so little and ended up with so much, in the process becoming perhaps the most well-known man in America and the most well-known American in Britain, could not but have an effect on his outlook. I will grant once again that I am engaging in speculation, but I suspect that his social, political, and economic rise made him very conscious of wealth disparities and the need to promote public access to resources. That during his life he helped found a public library, a hospital, and a volunteer fire brigade, among other public organizations, and also created a number of devices intended to ease the lives of his fellow men that he chose not to patent, would seem to speak to his sense of philanthropy, compassion, and generosity. That he also, in spite of the august company he became accustomed to keeping in later life, continued to publish editorials and satirical letters in popular daily broadsheets, appears to indicate an attachment to the popular press and a degree of regard for its audience. Even in his preferred manner of address I perceive, rightly or wrongly, a degree of class-conscious pretension. After being awarded his aforementioned honorary degrees he insisted on being referred to as “Doctor Franklin.” I really do wonder if this wasn’t the Boston chandler’s son quietly relishing the social distinction he’d managed to attain and attempting to prompt those he met to show respect for the same.

            Perhaps I’m reading too much into things. It wouldn’t be the first time. In any case, I do think the core elements I’ve tried to point out in Benjamin Franklin’s biography are worth remembering. He was significantly older than almost all of the Founding Fathers, he was fonder of satire and less given to aggressive rhetoric then they were, and he was of generally much more modest origins. In whatever sense, however they manifested, these facts are significant, and I do believe understanding them is essential to understating the nature and importance of Benjamin Franklin’s contributions to the founding of the United States.