The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (13 page)

Although William Penn, the father of Thomas Penn, had founded Pennsylvania as a “holy experiment” for the Society of Friends, the present generation of Penns had abandoned their ancestor’s Quakerism for the Church of England, and they had come to regard their proprietary colony as more a source of income than a religious experiment. With such attitudes on the part of the proprietors, it was inevitable that the bulk of the population of Pennsylvania would come to believe that the Penns ought to do more to pay for the costs of supporting the colony. Above all, they ought to allow the assembly to tax the hundreds of thousands of acres of proprietary lands they had not yet granted or sold to settlers; after all, everyone else in Pennsylvania was paying taxes on their land. Franklin and the Quaker party were very much in the forefront of this opposition to the Penn family.

FRANKLIN’S VISION OF THE NEW WORLD

Before long Franklin began to see that there was more to America than the province of Pennsylvania. He had no sooner become a member of the assembly than he became eager to apply his immense intelligence and imagination to the issues and problems of the entire British Empire in North America.

In 1751, in his
Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, Etc,
Franklin set forth basic principles that explained the difference between life in Europe and life in America. In Europe land was scarce in relation to people and therefore was expensive. Hence, unable to afford their own land to farm, Europeans were compelled to work for others, either by becoming laborers for landowners in the countryside or, more often, by migrating to the cities to engage in manufacturing goods in factories. In both cases since labor, because of its plentifulness, was cheap, the workers’ wages were low. Because their wages were so low, the European workers tended to postpone marriage and thus to have fewer children than if they had owned their own land.

In America, he wrote, the situation was reversed. Land was cheap and labor, which was relatively scarce, was expensive. Since land was so plentiful, a laborer in America who understood farming could in a short time save enough money to buy land for a family farm. Such people were not afraid to marry early and raise many children, for these American married couples could look ahead and “see that more Land is to be had at rates equally easy.” In America twice as many people per hundred married every year than in Europe and had twice as many children. Consequently, said Franklin, the population of America “must at least be doubled every 20 years.” He went on, “But notwithstanding this Increase, so vast is the Territory of North-America that it will require many Ages to settle it fully, and till it is fully settled, Labour will never be cheap, where no Man continues long a Labourer for others, but gets a Plantation of his own, no Man continues long a Journeyman to a Trade, but among those new Settlers, and sets up for himself, Etc.”

Franklin could scarcely restrain his excitement as he contemplated the future of this prolific New World that would eventually outnumber the Old. At the rate the colonies were increasing, he said, the population of North America “will in another Century be more than the People of England, and the greatest Number of
Englishmen
will be on this Side the Water. What an Accession of Power to the
British
Empire by Sea as well as Land! What Increase of Trade and Navigation! What Numbers of Ships and Seamen!”
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With this vision of the people in North America eventually outnumbering those in Britain itself, Franklin was not anticipating the separation of the colonies from Great Britain. Quite the contrary: he was a true-blue Englishman; he had no thought that America should not be a part of England, at least as connected to England as Scotland was.
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He thought the colonists were as much British subjects as those in Britain itself. They spoke the same language, possessed the same manners, read the same books, and shared the same religion. The growth of British subjects in America could only benefit the entire empire.

The glorious English empire he envisioned was supposed to be a single community made up only of Englishmen, which is why he interrupted his pamphlet on population growth with an angry outcry against the massive immigration of Germans into Pennsylvania, a development he was not alone in protesting. “Why should the
Palatine Boors
be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours?” Indeed, if he had his way he would exclude all the Germans and black people from the New World. The country, he said, ought to belong to only the English and the Indians, “the lovely White and Red.” But then again, he said, “perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.”
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To Franklin the rise of the British Empire was the greatest phenomenon of the eighteenth century, and with his ever growing ambition he wanted very much to be part of it. In the same year, 1751, that he wrote his
Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind,
he solicited the aid of Peter Collinson and Chief Justice William Allen to lobby on his behalf for the position of postmaster general for North America. His provincial offices were fine, but he had his sights on something bigger than postmaster of a single city.

Finally, in 1753, the Crown did appoint Franklin and William Hunter, postmaster at Williamsburg, joint deputy postmasters general for all the colonies of North America. Franklin was supposedly responsible for the northern colonies and Hunter for the southern colonies, but since Hunter’s health was not good, most of the responsibility of the post office fell on Franklin. He applied all he had learned running the Philadelphia post office to the colonial post office. He introduced strict accounting and increased the speed and reliability of mail delivery, and he made the post office profitable. By 1757 he had completely reorganized postal delivery in North America, exercised the patronage expected of someone in his position to secure postal jobs up and down the continent for nearly all of his many relatives, and helped to make the scattered colonies more aware of one another.

THE ALBANY PLAN OF UNION

Franklin had been thinking about the union of the North American colonies for a long while. The American Philosophical Society, which he had proposed in 1743, had been designed to bring intellectuals from the various colonies together. In 1751 his partner James Parker sent him a pamphlet by a New York official, Archibald Kennedy, entitled
The Importance of Gaining and Preserving the Friendship of the Indians to the British Interest Considered,
and asked Franklin’s advice on reprinting it in Philadelphia. Franklin very much agreed with the argument of the pamphlet and offered some additional suggestions. If the British Empire were to become as great as Franklin imagined, then the French had to be driven back and the Indians had to become allies of the English. If nothing were done, the French could occupy the entire Ohio Valley, take over the Indian trade, and cut Britain off from access to the continent’s interior. In order to prevent these dire developments, said Franklin, the colonists had to create some sort of intercolonial union for Indian affairs and defense, some kind of structure that would transcend the governments of the several colonies. If the Iroquois could unite, why couldn’t the colonists? “It would be a very strange Thing,” he wrote, “if six Nations of ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner as that it has subsisted for Ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous; and who cannot be supposed to want an equal Understanding of their Interests.”
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For such an imperial union the colonists could not rely on the governors and members of the assemblies of each of the colonies to act; they were much too caught up in their local squabbles to think about the empire as a whole. Instead, Franklin presented a solution that he was to return to time and again in his career—a reliance on a few good men, or even a single man, to set matters straight. That was the way he had operated with such success in Philadelphia, but whether he could operate the same way in larger arenas was the challenge of his career.

Now, if you were to pick out half a Dozen Men of good Understanding and Address, and furnish them with a reasonable Scheme and proper Instructions, and send them in the Nature of Ambassadors to the other Colonies, where they might apply particularly to all the leading Men, and by proper Management get them to engage in promoting the Scheme; where, by being present, they would have the Opportunity of pressing the Affair both in publick and private, obviating Difficulties as they arise, answering Objections as soon as they are made, before they spread and gather Strength in the Minds of the People, &c., &c. I imagine such a Union might thereby be made and established: For reasonable sensible Men, can always make a reasonable Scheme appear such to other reasonable Men, if they take Pains, and have Time and Opportunity for it.

At this point he thought a voluntary union entered into by the colonies themselves was preferable to one imposed by Parliament. After all, the colonists in the seventeenth century had formed confederations without the approval of Parliament. Why couldn’t they do the same now? Besides, it would be easier to make future changes in the union if people believed they had consented to it from the beginning.
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In detailing his plan for Indian affairs and colonial defense, Franklin proposed an intercolonial council made up of representatives from all the colonies, with a governor appointed by the Crown. Money for the union might be raised by an excise tax on liquor. To avoid jealousy among the colonies, the council might rotate its meeting place from colony to colony. If the colonists were to defend themselves during the war with the French and the Indians that seemed destined to come, Franklin was convinced, they had to put together some kind of union.

Other Englishmen were also worried about the French and Indians in North America. Even before fighting broke out on the Ohio frontier between English and French forces, the British Board of Trade in London had called for an unprecedented meeting of commissioners from the several colonies to negotiate a treaty with the Six Nations of the Iroquois. In June 1754 commissioners from each of the colonies were to meet in Albany with the Indians and consider issues of intercolonial defense and security. Franklin was one of the four commissioners selected to represent Pennsylvania, along with Richard Peters, secretary of the province, Isaac Norris, the speaker of the assembly, and John Penn, a grandson of the colony’s founder—a high-powered group that gives us some indication of Franklin’s remarkable political rise. Although Pennsylvania instructed its delegates merely to hold an interview with the Iroquois and renew friendship with them, Franklin had grander ideas. He went to Albany well prepared with a plan for union.
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Although Franklin had been moving in the highest circles of Pennsylvania’s political society for several years, he now saw new political worlds opening up. On his way to Albany, he stopped in New York and showed his proposal to James Alexander and Archibald Kennedy, “two Gentlemen of great Knowledge in public Affairs,” whose approval fortified his confidence to present his proposal to the upcoming congress.
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In Albany he met and impressed some of the most influential officials of the other colonies, including William Smith Sr., Yale graduate and member of the New York council, and Thomas Hutchinson, Harvard graduate and member of the Massachusetts council. In the few years since the public had “laid hold” of him, he had come a long way.

A squabble among the colonies over precedence at the conference did not bode well for their cooperation. Virginia, perhaps the most important colony of all, did not even send a delegation. But finally the representatives who attended agreed that some sort of colonial union was needed, and they appointed a committee made up of a commissioner from each colony to draw one up. Franklin was the Pennsylvania representative. Although a few other commissioners came with proposals for union, none had thought out or detailed his plan as fully as Franklin. His 1754 proposal was essentially the same as his earlier one, with one big difference. Whereas in 1751 he had believed that the union ought to be organized by the colonies themselves, he now thought the plan ought to be sent to England and unilaterally established by Parliament. His experience with the Pennsylvania Assembly’s reluctance to resist French encroachments in the Ohio Valley and his frustration with the parochialism of some other colonies had convinced him that only imposition by act of Parliament could bring about the kind of union he wanted.
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On the committee, Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, in collaboration with Franklin, took the lead in presenting a case for some sort of colonial union—no easy task, since most of the delegates, like those from Pennsylvania, had been instructed simply to negotiate with the Indians, not construct a union. But the Albany Congress unanimously accepted the committee’s report and delegated Franklin, as the strongest proponent of the idea, to draw up a detailed plan of union. In doing so Franklin had to make some concessions to the views of his fellow commissioners. “When one has so many different People with different Opinions to deal with in a new Affair,” he explained to Cadwallader Colden, “one is oblig’d sometimes to give up some smaller Points in order to obtain greater.”
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But the plan that the Albany Congress adopted in July 1754 came pretty close to his original proposal.

The union was to be headed by a president general appointed and paid by the Crown. This president general was to be aided by a grand council composed of representatives from each of the colonies and selected by the respective colonial legislatures in proportion to their monetary contributions to the general treasury. Until that could be determined, the grand council would comprise seven delegates each from Massachusetts and Virginia, six from Pennsylvania, and so on, down to two each from New Hampshire and Rhode Island. The president general with the advice of the grand council would be responsible for making war and peace with the Indians, raising soldiers and building forts, regulating the Indian trade, purchasing land from the Indians, granting that land to colonists, making laws, and levying taxes “as to them shall appear most equal and just.”
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It was an extraordinary proposal—totally out of touch with the political realities of the day, which was often the case when one relied on a few reasonable men for solutions to complicated political problems.