Part 3 (2/2)
The _Pet.i.tion to the King_ for a royal governor maintained that, torn by ”armed Mobs,” the government was ”weak, unable to support its own Authority, and maintain the common internal Peace of the Province.”[i-300]
While pet.i.tioning for a crown colony, he found himself in 1765 faced with a larger than provincial interest--Lord Grenville's Stamp Act forced him into the role of one seeking definition of colonial status.
Such was his position in his examination (1766) before the House of Commons relative to the repeal of the Stamp Act. Almost brusquely he told his catechizers that even a moderated stamp act could not be enforced ”unless compelled by force of arms.”[i-301] With a preface a.s.serting that colonials before 1763 were proud to be called Old-England men, he summarized: ”The authority of parliament was allowed to be valid in all laws, except such as should lay internal taxes. It was never disputed in laying duties to regulate commerce.”[i-302] Parliament, in the colonial view, had no right to lay internal taxes because ”we are not represented there.” Mr. Merriam observes that in advancing this legal and const.i.tutional issue, the colonists ”had in short an antiquated theory as to the position and power of Parliament, and a premature theory of Parliamentary representation.”[i-303]
Franklin referred to the Pennsylvania colonial charter to prove that all that was asked for was the ”privileges and liberties of Englishmen.”
When the examiners asked whether the colonists appealing to the Magna Charta and const.i.tutional rights of Englishmen could not with equal force ”object to the parliament's right of external taxation,” Franklin with cautious ambiguity declared: ”They never have hitherto.”[i-304]
Franklin's skill in upholding tenuous, almost ”metaphysical,”
const.i.tutional grievances (grievances, however, which were not upheld by const.i.tutional legalists in England) captivated Edmund Burke's imagination: Franklin appeared to him like a schoolmaster catechizing a pack of unruly schoolboys. Conservative in his omission of any appeal to ”natural rights,” he was radical in his legalistic distinctions between parliamentary rights to levy certain kinds of taxes. His position in 1766 and for several years following was one of seeking legal definitions of the colonial status. Considering the popular excesses in the colonies, Franklin's view was anything but illiberally radical.
Trying to counteract ”the general Rage against America, artfully work'd up by the Grenville Faction,”[i-305] fearful that the unthinking rabble in the colonies might demonstrate too l.u.s.tily against duties and the redcoats,[i-306] Franklin saw, as a result of the const.i.tutional dilemma, the true extent of the fracture:
But after all, I doubt People in Government here will never be satisfied without some Revenue from America, nor America ever satisfy'd with their imposing it; so that Disputes will from this Circ.u.mstance besides others, be perpetually arising, till there is a consolidating union of the whole.[i-307]
His chief demand was for a less ambiguous relation between the mother and her offspring, for a unified, pacific commonwealth empire. Until he left for the colonies in 1775, he tirelessly sought through conversation, conference, and articles[i-308] sent to the British press (in addition he ”reprinted everything from America” that he ”thought might help our Common Cause”) to reiterate patiently the colonies'
”Charter liberties,”[i-309] their abhorrence of Parliament-imposed internal taxes, and the quartering of red-coated battalions. Constantly hoping for a favorable Ministry (of a Lord Rockingham or a Shelburne), and bemoaning the physical infirmities of Pitt which rendered him politically impotent, Franklin felt almost romantically confident at first of a change that must come. All the while, like Merlin's gleam, visions of a world-encircling British empire haunted the Pennsylvania tradesman. A letter to Barbeu Dubourg discloses at once his belief in an imperial federation[i-310] and in the sovereignty of the colonial a.s.semblies: ”In fact, the British empire is not a single state; it comprehends many; and, though the Parliament of Great Britain has arrogated to itself the power of taxing the colonies, it has no more right to do so, than it has to tax Hanover. We have the same King, but not the same legislatures.”[i-311] Marginalia by Franklin's hand in an anti-colonial pamphlet written by Dean Tucker indicate how completely he (and here he represented colonial, not private, opinion) had failed to see the growth of parliamentary power: ”These Writers against the Colonies all bewilder themselves by supposing the Colonies _within the Realm_, which is not the case, nor ever was.”[i-312]
By 1774 Franklin had discovered the futility of his imperialistic illusions: ministries, fearing the siren colonies, had blocked their ears with wax. The Pennsylvanian knew that ”Divine Providence first infatuates the power it designs to ruin.”[i-313] He who had wished for an empire as harmoniously companied as the orbited harmony of celestial bodies lamented while on his way to America in 1775 that ”so glorious a Fabric as the present British Empire [was] to be demolished by these Blunderers.”[i-314] Broken was ”that fine and n.o.ble China Vase, the British Empire.”[i-315] In 1774 he would have gained little cheer from William Livingston's opinion (uttered in 1768): ”I take it that clamour is at present our best policy.”[i-316]
His sense of defeat was aggravated by that ugly scene in the c.o.c.kpit in 1774 when Wedderburn bespattered the taciturn colonial agent with foul invective. It had been charged that Franklin, the postmaster, had purloined[i-317] letters of Governor Hutchinson and Lieutenant Governor Oliver of Ma.s.sachusetts and had sent them back to the colonies as proof of the colonists' contention that the royal governors were hostile to their colonial subjects. He whom (as Lord Chatham said) ”all Europe held in high Estimation for his Knowledge and Wisdom, and rank'd with our Boyles and Newtons,” was decked by Wedderburn ”with the choicest flowers of Billingsgate.” In the presence of Lord Shelburne, Lord North, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, and Priestley, Franklin, ”motionless and silent,” bore the harangue of the solicitor general for a full three hours.[i-318] Franklin's eloquent mock humility inspired Horace Walpole to write:
Sarcastic Sawney, swol'n with spite and prate, On silent Franklin poured his venal hate.
The calm philosopher, without reply, Withdrew, and gave his country liberty.
As propagandist for legislative freedom, Franklin, appealing for sanction to legalistic and const.i.tutional liberty more than to natural rights, was no more radical than Edmund Burke. If ever an extreme democrat, Franklin had yet by 1775 to become one. Temperamentally hostile to ”drunken electors,” the ”madness of mobs,” he held a patrician att.i.tude toward authority. Earlier, in 1768, he had written from London: ”All respect to law and government seems to be lost among the common people, who are moreover continually inflamed by seditious scribblers, to trample on authority and every thing that used to keep them in order.”[i-319] To Georgiana s.h.i.+pley he sent (_Epitaph_ on Squirrel Mungo's death) this Miltonic and unrepublican sentiment:
Learn hence, Ye who blindly seek more liberty, Whether subjects, sons, squirrels or daughters, That apparent restraint may be real protection Yielding peace and plenty With security.[i-320]
In 1771 he indicted Parliament in a letter to Joseph Galloway: ”Its Censures are no more regarded than Popes' Bulls. It is despis'd for its Venality, and abominated for its Injustice.” But he hastened to show that he had no illusions that men are natively pure, that only governments are wicked. With almost a Hamiltonian distrust of the public ranks he wrote: ”And yet it is not clear that the People deserve a better Parliament, since they are themselves full as corrupt and venal: witness the Sums they accept for their Votes at almost every Election.”[i-321]
Back in the colonies, Franklin remained just long enough to help form a const.i.tution for Pennsylvania,[i-322] and to aid Jefferson in writing the Declaration of Independence.[i-323] After the royal governors had dissolved the a.s.semblies and the Continental Congress urged the colonies to form their own const.i.tutions, Franklin a.s.sumed leaders.h.i.+p in his state and helped to compose a const.i.tution less conservative than those of most of the other colonies.[i-324] Created between July 15 and Sept.
28, 1776, essentially by one who had just worked on and signed the Declaration of Independence, it is not strange that the dominant ideology of this const.i.tution--that of natural rights, the compact theory, and consent of the governed--should be like that of the Declaration. The new const.i.tution has been called the ”most democratic const.i.tution yet seen in America.”[i-325] The unicameral legislature, the a.s.sembly of representatives, the plan of judicial review of laws every seven years, and other features have been looked upon as demonstrating the dangerous ultra-democratic tendencies of Franklin. The revolutionary Benjamin Rush, who had helped Paine with _Common Sense_, was dismayed because, in his view, Pennsylvania ”has subst.i.tuted mob government for one of the happiest governments in the world.... A single legislature is big with tyranny. I had rather live under the government of one man than of seventy-two.”[i-326] One wonders to what extent Franklin was responsible for the unicameral legislature when we know that it ”was the natural outcome of Penn's ideas of government as embodied in his various charters.”[i-327] The plural executive, the right of freemen to form their militia and elect their own officers, the extension of male suffrage, and other innovations in this const.i.tution were of a radical nature in as far as the populace were given greater liberties and responsibilities than ever before in the colonies. It seems almost incredible that the patrician-minded Franklin, with his Puritan heritage, should have thus almost hurriedly cast himself at the feet of the people. Certain extenuating factors may be mentioned in an attempt not to gloss over but to understand the violent ant.i.thesis between Franklin the imperialist and Franklin the revolutionist. To what extent did his antipathy for proprietary governors, as well as the general colonial experience with governors, suggest a joint executive of a council and governor?[i-328] Since his experience as a Whig propagandist had been to exalt colonial legislatures, to what extent did he see in the unicameral form a plan which would give freest movement to the legislative activity? Prior to 1776 there is little that would suggest that Franklin had any confidence in men, _unchecked_.[i-329] Yet it is difficult to show that, in the first flush of indignation against England and revolutionary enthusiasm, Franklin did not favor for a time distinctly radical tendencies.
In 1776 he left, as he wrote to Jan Ingenhousz, ”to procure those aids from European powers, for enabling us to defend our freedom and independence.”[i-330] He who had ”been a Servant to many publicks, thro'
a long life” went to Pa.s.sy, where from the Hotel de Valentinois of M.
Roy de Chaumont he was to direct financial efforts calculated, with Was.h.i.+ngton's generals.h.i.+p, and the a.s.siduous loyalty of a minority group, to win the Revolution. Welcomed as the apotheosis of ”les Insurgens,”[i-331] he was virtually deified; as Turgot expressed it, _Eripuit caelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis_. The universality of his vogue in France was primarily due to his deistic naturalism, his wily pleading and activities in behalf of colonial independence, the receptivity of the Gallic mind for any marten-capped child of the New World, and to his scientific thought and experimentation which had fortified Reason in purging the unknown of its terror, helping thus to make the _philosophe_ at home in his reasonable world. Three weeks after Franklin arrived in France, one Frenchman said that ”it is the mode today for everybody to have an engraving of M. Franklin over the mantelpiece.”[i-332] France overnight became Franklinist when the savant came to dwell at Pa.s.sy. Even before the victory of Yorktown he became _la mode_. It was to be his success to convert France's unrecognized alliance with the colonies to an open and undisguised alliance, perhaps even to war with England.[i-333] But even for one who enjoyed, as John Adams wrote, a reputation ”more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire,”[i-334] it was to be a difficult task to manipulate a Beaumarchais, a Vergennes, and others, in spite of the well-known and inveterate economic and political grievances which the French held for the English. The virtues he stressed in the _Morals of Chess_ he was able to translate into a diplomatic mien, uniting ”perfect silence” with a ”generous civility.” As a result, his record as minister to France is marked by complete success; but for this ”it is by no means certain that American independence would have been achieved until many years later.”[i-335]
Plagued by Frenchmen desiring places in the colonial army, feted by the _philosophes_, sorely vexed by the need for settling countless maritime affairs, embracing and embraced by the venerable Voltaire, corresponding with Hartley concerning exchange of prisoners, shaping alliances and treaties, conducting scientific experiments, investigating Mesmer, intrigued by balloon ascensions, made the darling of several salons, a.s.sociating in the Lodge of the Nine Sisters with Bailly, Bonneville, Warville, Condorcet, Danton, Desmoulins, D'Auberteuil, Petion, Saint-etienne, Sieyes, and others, all men who helped to give shape (or shapelessness) to the French Revolution,[i-336] Franklin found little time to search for that philosophic repose which he had long coveted. It may be extravagant to say that Franklin was the ”Creator of Const.i.tutionalism in Europe,”[i-337] but we know that in 1783 he printed the colonial const.i.tutions for continental distribution.[i-338] It has been suggested that Franklin was an important formative factor in Condorcet's faith in universal suffrage, a unicameral legislature, and the liberties guaranteed by const.i.tutional law.[i-339] Then, too, Franklin had signed the Declaration of Independence--a doc.u.ment which the French hailed as the ”restoration of humanity's t.i.tle deeds.”[i-340] The Duc de la Rochefoucauld eulogized the unicameral legislature of Pennsylvania, identifying ”this grand idea” and its ”maximum of simplicity” as Franklin's creation.[i-341] Fauchet eulogized him as ”one of the foremost builders of our sacred const.i.tution.”[i-342]
Along with Helvetius, Mably, Rousseau, and Voltaire, Franklin was considered as one who laid the foundations for the French revolution.[i-343] Franklin's taciturnity, his ”art of listening,” his diplomatic reserve, do not suggest a volatile iconoclast doing anything consciously to bring about a republican France. This did not prevent him from becoming a symbol of liberty by his mere presence in the land, stimulating patriots to examine the foundations of the tyrannical authority which they saw or imagined enslaving them. Holding no brief for natural equality, Franklin suggested that ”quiet and regular Subordination” is ”so necessary to Success.”[i-344] Realist that he was, he became almost obsessed with the innate depravity of men until he was doubtful whether ”the Species were really worth producing or preserving.”[i-345] One would not be considered excessively republican who inveighed against the ”collected pa.s.sions, prejudices, and private interests” of collective legislative bodies.[i-346] He wrote to Caleb Whitefoord: ”It is unlucky ... that the Wise and Good should be as mortal as Common People and that they often die before others are found fit to supply their Places.”[i-347] The great proportion of mankind, weak and selfish, need ”the Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice.”[i-348] No less extreme than J. Q. Adams's retort to Paine's _Rights of Man_, that it is anarchic to trust government ”to the custody of a lawless and desperate rabble,” was Franklin's distrust of the unthinking majority.[i-349]
Having helped to free the colonies, Franklin fittingly became, if not one of the fathers of the Const.i.tution, then, due to the serenity with which he helped to moderate the plans of extremists on both sides, at least its G.o.dfather. If, as Mr. James M. Beck a.s.serts, the success of the Const.i.tution has been the result of its approximation of the golden mean, between monarchy and anarchy, the section and the nation, the small and the large state, then its success may be attributed not a little to Franklin's genius.[i-350] After small and large states had waged a fruitless struggle over congressional representation, Franklin spoke:
The diversity of opinion turns on two points. If a proportional representation takes place, the small States contend that their liberties will be in danger. If an equality of votes is to be put in its place, the large States say their money will be in danger. When a broad table is to be made, and the edges <of planks=”” do=”” not=”” fit=””> the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint.[i-351]
The former imperialist could not logically become a state rights advocate. Engrossed essentially in ”promoting and securing the common Good,”[i-352] he derided the advantage the greater state would have, a.s.serting that he ”was originally of Opinion it would be better if every Member of Congress, or our national Council, were to consider himself rather as a Representative of the whole, than as an Agent for the Interests of a particular State.” When Mr. Randolph considered,
To negative all laws, pa.s.sed by the several States, contravening, in the opinion of the national legislature, the articles of union: (the following words were added to this clause on motion of Mr. Franklin, ”or any Treaties subsisting under the authority of the union.”)[i-353]
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