A Benjamin Franklin Reader (40 page)

During his final year in France, Franklin learned that his dear landlady and companion from London, Margaret Stevenson, had died. To her daughter Polly, who had remained his affectionate friend, Franklin expressed his grief and also the hope that she would join him in Paris before he returned to America. Polly did so, and she also would later join him in America where she would be with him until he died.

T
O
P
OLLY
S
TEVENSON
H
EWSON
, J
ANUARY
27, 1783

The departure of my dearest friend, which I learn from your last letter, greatly affects me. To meet with her once more in this life, was one of the principal motives of my proposing to visit England again before my return to America. The last year carried off my friends Dr. Pringle and Dr. Fothergill, and Lord Kames, and Lord le Despencer; this has begun to take away the rest, and strikes the hardest. Thus the ties I had to that country, and indeed to the world in general, are loosened one by one, and I shall soon have no attachment left to make me unwilling to follow.

I intended writing when I sent the 11 books, but I lost the time in looking for the 12th. I wrote with that; and I hope it came to hand. I therein asked your counsel about my coming to England. On reflection, I think I can from my knowledge of your prudence foresee what it will be; viz. Not to come too soon, lest it should seem braving and insulting some who ought to be respected. I shall therefore omit that journey till I am near going to America; and then just step over to take leave of my friends, and spend a few days with you. I purpose bringing Ben with me, and perhaps may leave him under your care.

At length we are in peace, God be praised; and long, very long may it continue. All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. When will mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their differences by arbitration? Were they to do it even by the cast of a dye, it would be better than by fighting and destroying each other.

Spring is coming on, when traveling will be delightful. Can you not, when your children are all at school, make a little party, and take a trip hither? I have now a large house, delightfully situated, in which I could accommodate you and two or three friends; and I am but half an hours drive from Paris.

In looking forward twenty five years seems a long period; but in looking back, how short! Could you imagine that ’tis now full a quarter of a century since we were first acquainted! It was in 1757. During the greatest part of the time I lived in the same house with my dear deceased friend your mother; of course you and I saw and conversed with each other much and often. It is to all our honors, that in all that time we never had among us the smallest misunderstanding. Our friendship has been all clear sunshine, without any the least cloud in its hemisphere. Let me conclude by saying to you what I have had too frequent occasions to say to my other remaining old friends,
the fewer we become, the more let us love one another.
Adieu, and believe me ever, Yours most affectionately,

B. Franklin

Franklin’s affection for the middle class, and its virtues of hard work and frugality, meant that his social theories tended to be a blend of conservatism (as we have seen, he was dubious of generous welfare laws that led to dependency among the poor) and populism (he was opposed to the privileges of inheritance and to wealth idly gained through ownership of large estates). From Paris he expanded on these ideas by questioning the morality of excess personal wealth, most notably in letters to his friends Robert Morris in America and Benjamin Vaughan in London. Franklin’s antipathy to excess wealth also led him to defend high taxes, especially on luxuries.

To some of his contemporaries, both rich and poor, Franklin’s social philosophy seemed an odd mix. In fact, however, it formed a very coherent leather-apron outlook. Franklin’s blend of beliefs would become part of the outlook of much of America’s middle class: its faith in the virtues of hard work and frugality, its benevolent belief in voluntary associations to help others, its conservative opposition to handouts that led to laziness and dependency, and its slightly ambivalent resentment of unnecessary luxury, hereditary privileges, and an idle landowning leisure class.

T
O
R
OBERT
M
ORRIS
, D
ECEMBER
25, 1783

Sir,

…The remissness of our people in paying taxes is highly blamable, the unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see in some resolutions of town meetings, a remonstrance against giving Congress a power to take as they call it,
the people’s money
out of their pockets though only to pay the interest and principal of debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the point. Money justly due from the people is their creditor’s money, and no longer the money of the people, who, if they withhold it, should be compelled to pay by some law.

All property indeed, except the savage’s temporary cabin, his bow, his matchcoat, and other little acquisitions absolutely necessary for his subsistence, seems to me to be the creature of public convention. Hence the public has the right of regulating descents & all other conveyances of property, and even of limiting the quantity & the uses of it. All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual & the propagation of the species, is his natural right which none can justly deprive him of: but all property of the public, who by their laws have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the welfare of the public shall demand such disposition. He that does not like civil society on these terms, let him retire & live among savages. He can have no right to the benefits of society who will not pay his club towards the support of it…

With sincere regard & attachment, I am ever, dear sir, your most &c

T
O
B
ENJAMIN
V
AUGHAN
, J
ULY
26, 1784

Dear friend,

…You ask what remedy I have for the growing luxury of my country, which gives so much
offence
to all
English travelers
without exception. I answer that I think it exaggerated, and that travelers are no good judges whether our luxury is growing or diminishing. Our people are hospitable, and have indeed too much pride in displaying upon their tables before strangers the plenty and variety that our country affords. They have the vanity too of sometimes borrowing one another’s plate to entertain more splendidly strangers being invited from house to house, and meeting every day with a feast, imagine what they see is the ordinary way of living of all the families where they dine; when perhaps each family lives a week after upon the remains of the dinner given. It is, I own, a folly in our people to give
such offence
to
English
travelers. The first part of the proverb is thereby verified, that
fools make feasts.
I wish in this case the other were as true,
and wise men eat them.
These travelers might one would think find some fault they could more decently reproach us with, than that of our excessive civility to them as strangers.

I have not indeed yet thought of a remedy for luxury. I am not sure that in a great state it is capable of a remedy. Nor that the evil is in itself always so great as it is represented. Suppose we include in the definition of luxury all unnecessary expense, and then let us consider whether laws to prevent such expense are possible to be executed in a great country; and whether if they could be executed, our people generally would be happier or even richer. Is not the hope of one day being able to purchase and enjoy luxuries a great spur to labor and industry? May not luxury therefore produce more than it consumes, if without such a spur people would be as they are naturally enough inclined to be, lazy and indolent?

To this purpose I remember a circumstance. The skipper of a shallop employed between Cape May and Philadelphia, had done us some small service for which he refused pay. My wife understanding that he had a daughter, sent her as a present a new-fashioned cap. Three years after, this skipper being at my house with an old farmer of Cape May his passenger, he mentioned the cap and how much his daughter had been pleased with it; but says he it proved a dear cap to our congregation. How so? When my daughter appeared in it at meeting, it was so much admired, that all the girls resolved to get such caps from Philadelphia; and my wife and I computed that the whole could not have cost less than a hundred pound. True says the farmer, but you do not tell all the story; I think the cap was nevertheless an advantage to us; for it was the first thing that put our girls upon knitting worsted mittens for sale at Philadelphia, that they might have wherewithal to buy caps and ribbons there; and you know that that industry has continued and is likely to continue and increase to a much greater value, and answers better purposes. Upon the whole I was more reconciled to this little piece of luxury; since not only the girls were made happier by having fine caps, but the Philadelphians by the supply of warm mittens.

In our commercial towns upon the seacoast, fortunes will occasionally be made. Some of those who grow rich, will be prudent, live within bounds, and preserve what they have gained for their posterity. Others fond of showing their wealth, will be extravagant and ruin themselves. Laws cannot prevent this, and perhaps it is not always an evil to the public. A shilling spent idly by a fool, may be picked up by a wiser person who knows better what to do with it. It is therefore not lost. A vain silly fellow builds a fine house, furnishes it richly, lives in it expensively, and in a few years ruins himself, but the masons, carpenters, smiths and other honest tradesmen have been by his employ assisted in maintaining and raising their families, the farmer has been paid for his labor and encouraged, and the estate is now in better hands.

In some cases indeed certain modes of luxury may be a public evil in the same manner as it is a private one. If there be a nation for instance, that exports its beef and linen to pay for its importations of claret and porter, while a great part of its people live upon potatoes and wear no shirts, wherein does it differ from the sot who lets his family starve and sells his clothes to buy drink? Our American commerce is I confess a little in this way. We sell our victuals to your islands for rum and sugar; the substantial necessaries of life for superfluities. But we have plenty and live well nevertheless; though by being soberer we might be richer. By the by, here is just issued an arret of council, taking off all the duties upon the exportation of brandies, which it is said will render them cheaper in America than your rum, in which case there is no doubt but they will be preferred, and we shall be better able to bear your restrictions on our commerce. There are views here by augmenting their settlements of being able to supply the growing people of North America with the sugar that may be wanted there. On the whole I guess England will get as little by the commercial war she has begun with us as she did by the military. But to return to
luxury.

The vast quantity of forest lands we yet have to clear and put in order for cultivation, will for a long time keep the body of our nation laborious and frugal. Forming an opinion of our people and their manners by what is seen among the inhabitants of the seaports, is judging from an improper sample. The people of the trading towns may be rich and luxurious, while the country possesses all the virtues that tend to private happiness and public prosperity. Those towns are not much regarded by the country. They are hardly considered as an essential part of the states. And the experience of the last war has shown, that their being in possession of the enemy, did not necessarily draw on the subjection of the country, which bravely continued to maintain its freedom and independence not withstanding.

It has been computed by some political arithmetician, that if every man and woman would work four hours each day on something useful, that labor would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life, want and misery would be banished out of the world, and the rest of the 24 hours might be leisure and pleasure.

What occasions then so much want and misery? It is the employment of men and women in works that produce neither the necessaries nor conveniences of life, who, with those who do nothing, consume the necessaries raised by the laborious.

To explain this: the first elements of wealth are obtained by labor from the earth and waters. I have land and raise corn. With this if I feed a family that does nothing, my corn will be consumed and at the end of the year I shall be no richer than I was at the beginning. But if while I feed them I employ them, some in spinning others in hewing timber and sawing boards, others in making bricks &c for building; the value of my corn will be arrested, and remain with me, and at the end of the year we may all be better clothed and better lodged. And if instead of employing a man I feed, in making bricks, I employ him in fiddling for me, the corn he eats is gone, and no part of his manufacture remains to augment the wealth and the conveniences of the family. I shall therefore be the poorer for this fiddling man, unless the rest of my family work more or eat less to make up for the deficiency he occasions.

Look round the world and see the millions employed in doing nothing, or in something that amounts to nothing when the necessaries and conveniences of life are in question. What is the bulk of commerce, for which we fight and destroy each other but the toil of millions for superfluities to the great hazard and loss of many lives by the constant dangers of the sea. How much labor spent in building and fitting great ships to go to China and Arabia for tea and for coffee, to the West Indies for sugar, to America for tobacco! These things cannot be called the necessaries of life, for our ancestors lived very comfortably without them.

A question may be asked, could all these people now employed in raising, making or carrying superfluities, be subsisted by raising necessaries? I think they might. The world is large, and a great part of it still uncultivated. Many hundred millions of acres in Asia, Africa and America, are still forest, and a great deal even in Europe. On 100 acres of this forest a man might become a substantial farmer; and 100,000 men employed in clearing each his 100 acres, (instead of being as they are French hairdressers) would hardly brighten a spot big enough to be visible from the moon, unless with Herschel’s telescope, so vast are the regions still in [the] world unimproved.

’Tis however some comfort to reflect that upon the whole the quantity of industry and prudence among mankind exceeds the quantity of idleness and folly. Hence the increase of good buildings, farms cultivated, and populous cities filled with wealth all over Europe, which a few ages since were only to be found on the coasts of the Mediterranean. And this notwithstanding the mad wars continually raging, by which are often destroyed in one year the works of many years’ peace. So that we may hope the luxury of a few merchants on the sea coast, will not be the ruin of America.

One reflection more, and I will end this long rambling letter. Almost all the parts of our bodies require some expense. The feet demand shoes, the legs stockings, the rest of the body clothing, and the belly a good deal of victuals.
Our
eyes, though exceedingly useful, ask when reasonable, only the cheap assistance of
spectacles,
which could not much impair our finances. But
the eyes of other people
are the eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine houses nor fine furniture. Adieu, my Dear Friend. I am Yours ever,

B. Franklin