Part 3 (1/2)

Free from the bitter Rage of Party Zeal, All those we love who seek the publick Weal.[i-249]

His _Plain Truth_ (November, 1747), directed against the proprietary governor as well as against the Quaker a.s.sembly, showed Franklin a party man only if one dedicated to ”the publick weal” was a party man. With all respect for the Quaker conscience which checks military activity, Franklin could not, however, condone its virtually prohibiting others from defending the province's border. And the proprietaries had shown an inveterate unwillingness to arm Pennsylvania--a reluctance which did not, however, prevent them from collecting taxes and quitrents. On other questions the governor and his chiefs had to contend with the opposition of the a.s.sembly. Without opposition, the proprietary government could serenely kennel itself in its medieval privilege of remaining dumb to an urgent need: one remembers that eighteenth-century proprietary colonies were ”essentially feudal princ.i.p.alities, upon the grantees of which were bestowed all the inferior regalities and subordinate powers of legislation which formerly belonged to the counts palatine, while provision was also made for the maintenance of sovereignty in the king [the king paid little attention to Pennsylvania], and for the realization of the objects of the grant.”[i-250] While the government remained inert, Pennsylvania would be a p.a.w.n in the steeled hands of the French and their rum-subsidized Indian mercenaries. Appealing to Scripture and common sense, Franklin pleaded for ”Order, Discipline, and a few Cannon.”[i-251] Not untruthfully he warned that ”we are like the separate Filaments of Flax before the Thread is form'd, without Strength, because without Connection, but UNION would make us strong, and even formidable.”[i-252] Since war existed, there was no need to consider him a militarist because he challenged, ”The Way to secure Peace is to be prepared for War.”[i-253] In the midst of _Plain Truth_ Franklin uttered what only _before_ the time of Locke could be interpreted in terms of feudal _comitatus_: he entreated his readers to consider, ”if not as Friends, at least as Legislators, that _Protection_ is as truly due from the Government to the People, as _Obedience_ from the People to the Government.”[i-254] Suggestive of the contract theory, this is revolutionary only in a very elementary way. With the French writhing under the Treaty of Paris, with appeals to natural rights and the right of revolution, this once harmless principle took on Gargantuan significance. But Thomas Penn antic.i.p.ated wisely enough the ultimate implication of Franklin's paper; Penn intuitively saw the march of time: ”Mr. Franklin's doctrine that obedience to governors is no more due them than protection to the people, is not fit to be in the heads of the unthinking mult.i.tude. He is a dangerous man and I should be glad if he inhabited any other country, as I believe him of a very uneasy spirit.

However, as he is a sort of tribune of the people, he must be treated with regard.”[i-255] It is difficult to see how Franklin's pa.s.sion for order and provincial union,[i-256] obviously necessary, could have been considered so illiberally subversive of the government. By 1747 Franklin had read in _Telemachus_ that kings exist for the people, not the people for the kings; he must have read Locke's justification of the ”Glorious Revolution” and have become aware of the impetus it gave to the British authority of consent in its subsequent const.i.tutional history.

After his first political pamphlet, he widened his horizon from provincial to colonial affairs. Two years before the London Board of Trade demanded that colonial governors hold a conference with the Iroquois, Franklin seems to have devised plans for uniting the several colonies. He was aware of the narrow particularism shown by the provinces; he knew also that since ”Governors are often on ill Terms with their a.s.semblies,” no concerted military efforts could be achieved without a military federation.[i-257] One remembers that as soon as he could think politically he was an imperialist, a lesser William Pitt, and in his _Increase of Mankind_ (1751) could gloat over an envisioned thickly populated America--”What an Accession of Power to the _British_ Empire by Sea as well as Land!”[i-258] When the Board of Trade, after British efforts to bring the colonies together had failed, demanded that something be done, Franklin was appointed one of the commissioners to meet at Albany in 1754. Like Franklin, Governor Glen had admitted that the colonies were ”a Rope of Sand ... loose and inconnected.”[i-259]

Franklin's plan, adopted by the commissioners, called for a Governor-General ”appointed by the king” and a Grand Council made up of members chosen by the a.s.sembly of each of the colonies, the Governor ”to have a negation on all acts of the Grand Council, and carry into execution whatever is agreed on by him and that Council.”[i-260] Surely not a very auspicious beginning for one who later was to favor the legislative over the executive functions of state. The plan included the powers of making Indian treaties of peace and war, of regulating Indian trade and Indian purchases, of stimulating the settling of new lands, of making laws to govern new areas, of raising soldiers, of laying general duties, et cetera.[i-261] But Franklin did not minimize the lack of cohesion of the colonies. We recollect that ”in 1755, at a time when their very existence was threatened by the French, Ma.s.sachusetts and New York engaged in a bitter boundary controversy leading to riot and bloodshed.”[i-262] The colonies refused to ratify the plan--”their weak Noddles are perfectly distracted,”[i-263] wrote Franklin. He was probably right when he observed in 1789 that had the plan been adopted ”the subsequent Separation of the Colonies from the Mother Country might not so soon have happened.”[i-264] The sending of British regulars to America and the resulting efforts at taxation were not least among the sparks which set off the Revolution.

Franklin's _Three Letters to Governor s.h.i.+rley_ (1754), while expressing no credulous views of the wisdom of the people, maintained in one breath that the colonists were loyal to the Const.i.tution and Crown as ever colonists were and in another that ”it is supposed an undoubted right of Englishmen, not to be taxed but by their own consent given through their representatives.”[i-265] (s.h.i.+rley had apparently written that the Council in the Albany Plan should be appointed by England, and not by the colonial a.s.semblies.) Franklin held for the colonists' right to English civil liberty and the right to enjoy the Const.i.tution. Here again we find a factor later magnified into one of the major causes of the Revolution.

In addition to being lethargic in the defense of the Pennsylvania borders, the proprietor refused ”to be taxed except for a trifling Part of his Estate, the Quitrents, located unimprov'd Lands, Money at Interest, etc., etc., being exempted by Instructions to the Governor.”[i-266] Thereupon Franklin turned from colonial affairs (which had indeed proved obstinate) to pressing local matters, when in 1757 he was appointed agent to go to London to demand that the proprietor submit his estates to be taxed. In the _Report of the Committee of Aggrievances of the a.s.sembly of Pennsylvania_[i-267] (Feb.

22, 1757) it was charged that the proprietor had violated the royal charter and the colonists' civil rights as Englishmen, and had abrogated their natural rights, rights ”inherent in every man, antecedent to all laws.”[i-268] Later it was but a short step from provincial matters to colonial rights of revolution. In this _Report_ we see Franklin a.s.sociated for the first time expressly with the throne-and-altar-defying concept of natural rights.

Although we have yet to review the evidence which shows that Franklin at one stage in his political career was an arch-imperialist, we need to digress to observe an intellectual factor which, if only fragmentarily expressed in his political thought during his activities in behalf of Pennsylvania liberties, was to become a momentous sanction when during the war he became a diplomat of revolution. From the Stoics, from Cicero, Grotius, Puffendorf, Burlamaqui, and as Rev. Jonathan Mayhew[i-269] observes, from Plato and Demosthenes, from Sidney, Milton, Hoadley, and Locke; in addition, from Gordon and Trenchard (see _Cato's Letters_ and _The Independent Whig_), Blackstone, c.o.ke--from these and many others, the colonists derived a pattern of thought known as natural rights, dependent on natural law.[i-270] There is no better summary of natural rights than the Declaration of Independence; and of it John Adams remarked: ”There is not an idea in it but what has been hackneyed in Congress for two years before.”[i-271] Carl Becker pointedly observes: ”Where Jefferson got his ideas is hardly so much a question as where he could have got away from them.”[i-272] A characteristic summary of natural law may be found in Blackstone's _Commentaries_:[i-273]

This law of nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by G.o.d himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.[i-274]

Discoverable only by reason, natural laws are immutable and universal, apprehensible by all men. As Hamilton wrote,

The origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact between the rulers and the ruled, and must be liable to such limitations as are necessary for the security of the _absolute rights_ of the latter; for what original t.i.tle can any man, or set of men, have to govern others, except their own consent? To usurp dominion over a people in their own despite, or to grasp at a more extensive power than they are willing to intrust, is to violate that law of nature which gives every man a right to his personal liberty, and can therefore confer no obligation to obedience.[i-275]

In a pre-social state, real or hypothetical, men possess certain natural rights, the crown of them, according to Locke,[i-276] being ”the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call by the general name, property.” In entering the social state men through free consent are willing to sacrifice fragments of their natural rights in order to gain civil rights. This process would seem tyrannical were one to forget that the surrender is sanctioned by the principle of consent. Men in sacrificing their rights expect from society (i.e., the governors) civil rights and, in addition, protection of their unsurrendered natural rights. A voluntary compact is achieved between the governor and the governed. If laws are fabricated which contravene these, the governed have retained for themselves the right of forcible resistance. A natural inference from these premises is that sovereignty rests with the people. In the colonies this secular social compact was b.u.t.tressed by the principle of covenants and natural rights within the churches. Sermons became ”textbooks of politics.”[i-277] Miss Baldwin has ably ill.u.s.trated how before 1763 the clergy in Franklin's native New England had popularized the ”doctrines of natural right, the social contract, and the right of resistance” as well as ”the fundamental principle of American const.i.tutional law, that government, like its citizens, is bounded by law and when it transcends its authority it acts illegally.”[i-278]

In an oration commemorating the Boston ma.s.sacre Dr. Benjamin Church stated the principle of the compact: ”A sense of their wants and weakness in a state of nature, doubtless inclined them to such reciprocal aids and support, as eventually established society.”[i-279]

Defining liberty as ”the happiness of living under laws of our own making by our personal consent or that of our representatives,”[i-280]

he warned that any breach of trust in the governor ”effectually absolves subjects from every bond of covenant and peace.”[i-281]

Then, too, Newtonian science b.u.t.tressed the principle of natural rights.

Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated mathematically that the universe was governed by a f.a.got of immutable, universal, and harmonious physical laws. These were capable of being apprehended through reason. Now even as reason discovered the matchless physical harmony, so could reason, men argued, ferret out unvarying, universal principles of social-political rights. These principles const.i.tuted natural rights, natural to the extent that all men had the power, if not the capacity, to discover and learn them through use of their native reason. Newton demonstrated the validity of physical law: Locke sanctioned the supremacy of reason. Since Franklin was himself motivated by Newtonian rationalism and was a student of Locke, there is reason to believe that he was vibrantly aware of the extent to which the scientific-rationalistic ideology lent sanction to man's timeless quest for the cert.i.tude of ”natural rights,” antecedent to all laws.

Franklin's mission to London in 1757 as Pennsylvania agent may be understood through an examination of _An Historical Review of the Const.i.tution and Government of Pennsylvania_ (London, 1759).[i-282] If not written by him, at least ”the ideas are his.” Convinced that the proprietors ”seem to have no regard to the Publick Welfare, so the private Point may be gained--'Tis like Firing a House to have Opportunity of stealing a Trencher,”[i-283] Franklin knew that a brilliant attack had to be made were he to intimidate the proprietary government into a.s.suming its charter responsibilities and granting the colonists what they considered to be inviolable rights. By 1758 his ”Patience with the Proprietors is almost tho' not quite spent.”[i-284] A few months later, impatient with unresponsive officials, he wrote to Joseph Galloway: ”G.o.d knows when we shall see it finish'd, and our Const.i.tution settled firmly on the Foundation of Equity and English Liberty: But I am not discouraged; and only wish my Const.i.tuents may have the Patience that I have, and that I find will be absolutely necessary.”[i-285] In 1759 Franklin still found the proprietors ”obscure, uncertain and evasive,” and was acutely virulent in despising Rev. William Smith, who was in London attacking him and the Quaker a.s.sembly's demands.[i-286] In the same letter to Galloway he uttered a thought which he sought to develop during his second trip to London as a.s.sembly agent in 1764: ”For my part, I must own, I am tired of Proprietary Government, and heartily wish for that of the Crown.”

Turning to _An Historical Review_ to learn the political principles sanctioning the a.s.sembly's grievances against its feudal lords, one finds that the colonists conceived it ”our duty to defend the rights and privileges we enjoy under the royal charter.”[i-287] Secondly, they reminded the lords that the laws agreed upon in England (prior to the settling of Pennsylvania) were ”of the nature of an original compact between the proprietary and the freemen, and as such were reciprocally received and executed.”[i-288] Thirdly, they demanded the right to exercise the ”birthright of every British subject,” ”to have a property of [their] own, in [their] estate, person, and reputation; subject only to laws enacted by [their] own concurrence, either in person or by [their] representatives.”[i-289] Fourthly, they resisted the proprietors on basis of their possession of natural rights, ”antecedent to all laws.”[i-290] The editor of the protest charged that ”It is the cause of every man who deserves to be free, everywhere.”[i-291] It is ironic that this grievance should have enjoyed the sanction of one who, like Lord Chatham, was an empire builder, one who proudly wrote, ”I am a Briton,”

and even during the time he sought to retrieve the Pennsylvania colonists' lost natural rights, entertained the ideas of a British imperialist. Franklin little saw that the internal Pennsylvania struggle was to be contagious, that the provincial revolt was motivated partially at least by political theories which were to be given expression _par excellence_ when a discontented minority created the Declaration of Independence. In 1760 Franklin had the satisfaction of witnessing the victory of the a.s.sembly over the Proprietors, although he was not unaware that the right to tax feudal lands was less than that right he had already envisioned--the right to become a royal colony.[i-292]

But Franklin's pleas for charter, const.i.tutional, and natural rights may be misleading if one considers his position as suggestive of doctrinaire republicanism, of Paine's ”Government is the badge of our lost innocence,” or of Sh.e.l.ley's

Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower.

His political activities a.s.sert the rights of the governed against the governor; his writings often indirectly suggest the intemperance of the governed, and the need for something more lasting than mere outer freedom. Like Coleridge, who wrote:

[Man] may not hope from outward forms to win The pa.s.sion and the life, whose fountains are within,

white-locked Father Abraham harangued:

The Taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the Government were the only Ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our _Idleness_, three times as much by our _Pride_, and four times as much by our _Folly_; and from these Taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an Abatement.[i-293]

With solid good sense Franklin acknowledged that ”happiness in this life rather depends on internals than externals.”[i-294]

His purpose for being in London accomplished, Franklin wrote _The Interest of Great Britain Considered with Regard to Her Colonies, and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe_ (1760). Since ”there is evidence that the pamphlet created much contemporary interest,”[i-295]

Franklin undoubtedly had some influence in causing the retention of Canada, a retention which ”made the American Revolution inevitable.”[i-296] If the release from French terrorism caused the colonists to become myopic toward advantages lent them as a British colony, it is appropriate in view of Franklin's later advocacy of independence and ironic in view of his then imperialistic principles, that he should have written _The Interest of Great Britain_. Here Franklin, later to be a propagandist of revolution, cast himself in the role of architect of a vast empire. For economic reasons, and for colonial safety, he urged the retention, ridiculing the charge that the colonies were lying in wait to declare their independence from England, if the French were cast out from Canada.

Back in Pennsylvania in 1764 he declared the provincial government ”running fast into anarchy and confusion.”[i-297] In his _Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs_ (1764) he set up a st.u.r.dy antagonism between ”Proprietary Interest and Power, and Popular Liberty.” Unlike the ”lunatic fringe” of liberals who see ”Popular Liberty compatible only with a tendency toward anarchy” Franklin urged that the Pennsylvania government lacked ”Authority enough to keep the common Peace.”[i-298] The const.i.tutional nature of proprietary government had lost dignity and hence ”suffers in the Opinion of the People, and with it the Respect necessary to keep up the Authority of Government.” Almost Burkean in his apology for change, he suggested that the popular party demand ”rather and only a Change of Governor, that is, instead of self-interested Proprietaries, a gracious King!” His _Narrative of the Late Ma.s.sacres in Lancaster County_[i-299] is a b.l.o.o.d.y tribute to the lack of authority and police power of the current regime.