VI | Franklin's Political Theories
Plague of the Pennsylvania proprietaries, propagandist of the American Revolution, moderator of the Constitutional Convention, Franklin was all through his life a politician and statesman in an age characterized above all by political speculations and changes in the destiny of states. Colonial patriot, "arch rebel of King George III," "idol of the court of Versailles," Franklin was a cyclopedia of political strategy and principles. Only through a genetic survey of Franklin the political theorist can one hope to understand his mind as he changed from imperialist, to revolutionist, to the patriarch of the Constitutional Convention who, like a balance wheel, moderated the extreme party factions.
In the early 1720's, Franklin had breathed a Boston air saturated with discontent between the royal governor and the governed. By 1730 he was printer to the Pennsylvania Assembly and in 1736 was appointed clerk to that body. Yet one learns little of his political biases until 1747, when he published Plain Truth. In 1729 he genially asserted that he was "no Party-man,"[i-248] and in 1746 temperately stated,
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 assembly, 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 assembly. 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 principalities, 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 pawn 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 anticipated 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 multitude. 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 passion 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 constitutional 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 Assemblies," 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 Assembly 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, Massachusetts 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 Shirley (1754), while expressing no credulous views of the wisdom of the people, maintained in one breath that the colonists were loyal to the Constitution 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] (Shirley had apparently written that the Council in the Albany Plan should be appointed by England, and not by the colonial assemblies.) Franklin held for the colonists' right to English civil liberty and the right to enjoy the Constitution. 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 Assembly 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 associated 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, Coke—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 God 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 title 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 buttressed by the principle of covenants and natural rights within the churches. Sermons became "textbooks of politics."[i-277] Miss Baldwin has ably illustrated 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 constitutional 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 massacre 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 buttressed the principle of natural rights. Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated mathematically that the universe was governed by a fagot 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 constituted 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 certitude 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 Constitution 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 assuming 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: "God knows when we shall see it finish'd, and our Constitution settled firmly on the Foundation of Equity and English Liberty: But I am not discouraged; and only wish my Constituents 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 Assembly'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 Assembly 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 Assembly'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 Assembly 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, constitutional, 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 Shelley's
Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower.
His political activities assert 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 passion 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 sturdy 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 constitutional 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 Massacres in Lancaster County[i-299] is a bloody tribute to the lack of authority and police power of the current regime. The Petition 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 petitioning 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 asserting 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 constitutional 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 constitutional 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," constitutional grievances (grievances, however, which were not upheld by constitutional 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 lustily against duties and the redcoats,[i-306] Franklin saw, as a result of the constitutional 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 Circumstance 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 assemblies: "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 noble 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 Cockpit 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 Massachusetts 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 constitutional 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 attitude 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 Shipley 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 constitution for Pennsylvania,[i-322] and to aid Jefferson in writing the Declaration of Independence.[i-323] After the royal governors had dissolved the assemblies and the Continental Congress urged the colonies to form their own constitutions, Franklin assumed leadership in his state and helped to compose a constitution 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 constitution—that of natural rights, the compact theory, and consent of the governed—should be like that of the Declaration. The new constitution has been called the "most democratic constitution yet seen in America."[i-325] The unicameral legislature, the assembly 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 substituted 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 constitution 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 antithesis 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 Passy, where from the Hôtel de Valentinois of M. Roy de Chaumont he was to direct financial efforts calculated, with Washington's generalship, and the assiduous 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 Passy. 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, associating in the Lodge of the Nine Sisters with Bailly, Bonneville, Warville, Condorcet, Danton, Desmoulins, D'Auberteuil, Pétion, Saint-Étienne, Sieyès, 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 Constitutionalism in Europe,"[i-337] but we know that in 1783 he printed the colonial constitutions 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 constitutional law.[i-339] Then, too, Franklin had signed the Declaration of Independence—a document which the French hailed as the "restoration of humanity's title 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 constitution."[i-342] Along with Helvétius, 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 passions, 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 Constitution, then, due to the serenity with which he helped to moderate the plans of extremists on both sides, at least its godfather. If, as Mr. James M. Beck asserts, the success of the Constitution 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, asserting 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, passed 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]
This is anything but the corollary of a defender of state rights. Franklin was convinced that the permanence of the national view alone could prevent federal anarchy. Addressing himself to the problem of delegated authority Madison observed: "This prerogative of the General Govt. is the great pervading principle that must controul the centrifugal tendency of the States; which, without it, will continually fly out of their proper orbits and destroy the order & harmony of the political system."[i-354] One is tempted to see here Newton's principle of gravity translated into terms of political nationalism; one wonders whether it is probable that (like Madison's) Franklin's emphasis on the harmony of the whole could have been partly conditioned by the cohesiveness and harmony of universal physical laws incarnate in Newtonian physics, of which he was a master.
Franklin was "apprehensive...—perhaps too apprehensive,—that the Government of these States may in future times end in a Monarchy."[i-355] He suggested that moderate rather than kingly salaries paid the chief executive would tend to allay this danger. Between Randolph, who belabored a single executive as the "foetus of monarchy," and Wilson, who harbored it as the "best safeguard against tyranny," stood Franklin, who saw it as subversive of democratic sovereignty but not necessarily fatal. He declared himself emphatically against the motion that the executive have a complete negative.[i-356] Extolling popular sovereignty, he warned that "In free Governments the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors & sovereigns."[i-357] He refused to consider a plan which sought to establish a franchise only for freeholders: "It is of great consequence that we shd. not depress the virtue & public spirit of our common people; of which they displayed a great deal during the war, and which contributed principally to the favorable issue of it."[i-358] Pinckney had made a motion that rulers should have unencumbered estates:
Doctr Franklin expressed his dislike of every thing that tended to debase the spirit of the common people. If honesty was often the companion of wealth, and if poverty was exposed to peculiar temptation, it was not less true that the possession of property increased the desire of more property—[i-359].... This Constitution will be much read and attended to in Europe, and if it should betray a great partiality to the rich—will not only hurt us in the esteem of the most liberal and enlightened men there, but discourage the common people from removing to this Country.[i-360]
Pinckney's motion was rejected. Franklin within the Convention did not seem to fear Gerry's threat—"the evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy."[i-361]
Franklin suggested the adoption of a unicameral legislature, but does not seem to have made any struggle for it. His article of 1789 in defense of the Pennsylvania (unicameral) legislature, however, shows that he clung to the principle as firmly as he had in 1776.[i-362] He questioned: "The Wisdom of a few Members in one single Legislative Body, may it not frequently stifle bad Motions in their Infancy, and so prevent their being adopted?" In addition the bicameral house is cumbersome and provocative of delay.
Little is known of Franklin's attitude toward the violent controversy attendant upon efforts toward ratification. In his Ancient Jews and Anti-Federalists[i-363] he warned the traducers of the new Constitution against voiding an instrument which in his opinion was as sound as the frailty of human reason would allow it to be. In fact, said he, it "astonishes me,... to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does."[i-364] He may be said to have been anti-federalistic to the extent that he feared a strong executive, guarded jealously the legislative sphere, worried little about checks and balances, sought to accelerate popular sovereignty; he was federalistic to the extent that he opposed state localism with national sovereignty, was not blind to the depravity of human nature and hence felt the need for a vigorous coercive government. To M. Le Veillard he confessed an almost Hamiltonian distrust of the multitude: The Constitution "has... met with great opposition in some States, for we are at present a nation of politicians. And, though there is a general dread of giving too much power to our governors, I think we are more in danger from too little obedience in the governed."[i-365] He made the same complaint a year later: "We have been guarding against an evil that old States are most liable to, excess of power in the rulers, but our present danger seems to be defect of obedience in the subjects."[i-366] It is difficult to reconcile his inveterate distrust of men with his activity in behalf of an almost universal franchise, reluctance to sanction the principle of checks and balances, and belief in a unicameral legislature; it is difficult to reconcile the Plutarchan fervor with which he advocated the wisdom of following great leaders with his fear of a vigorous executive. It is not improbable that those ideas which are generally anti-federalistic in Franklin's political view are in part the result of his hatred of proprietary abuses which he witnessed as a provincial statesman during his middle age.