Benjamin Franklin

An American Life

By Walter Isaacson

He boasts in his autobiography that “I had the management of the paper, and I made bold to give our rulers some rubs in it, which my brother took very kindly, while others began to consider me in an unfavorable light as a young genius that had a turn for libeling and satire.” In fact, other than a letter to the readers written from prison by James, nothing in Benjamin’s three issues directly challenged the civil authorities. The closest he came was having Mrs. Dogood quote in full an essay from an English newspaper that defended free speech. “Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom,” it declared, “and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.”

The “rubs” that Franklin remembered came a week after his brother’s return from prison. Writing as Silence Dogood, he unleashed a piercing attack on the civil authorities, perhaps the most biting of his entire career. The question that Mrs. Dogood posed was “Whether a Commonwealth suffers more by hypocritical pretenders to religion or by the openly profane?”

Unsurprisingly, Franklin’s Mrs. Dogood argues that “some late thoughts of this nature have inclined me to think that the hypocrite is the most dangerous person of the two, especially if he sustains a post in the government.” The piece attacked the link between the church and the state, which was the very foundation of the Puritan commonwealth. Governor Thomas Dudley, who moved from the ministry to the law, is cited (though not by name) as an example: “The most dangerous hypocrite in a Commonwealth is one who leaves the gospel for the sake of the law. A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law.”

(Isaacson 2003, pp.31-32)

In a witty newspaper piece called “On Conversation,” which he wrote shortly after forming the Junto, Franklin stressed the importance of deferring, or at least giving the appearance of deferring, to others. Otherwise, even the smartest comments would “occasion envy and disgust.” His secret for how to win friends and influence people read like an early Dale Carnegie course: “Would you win the hearts of others, you must not seem to vie with them, but to admire them. Give them every opportunity of displaying their own qualifications, and when you have indulged their vanity, they will praise you in turn and prefer you above others … Such is the vanity of mankind that minding what others say is a much surer way of pleasing them than talking well ourselves.”

Franklin went on to catalog the most common conversational sins “which cause dislike,” the greatest being “talking overmuch … which never fails to excite resentment.” The only thing amusing about such people, he joked, was watching two of them meet: “The vexation they both feel is visible in their looks and gestures; you shall see them gape and stare and interrupt one another at every turn, and watch with utmost impatience for a cough or pause, when they may crowd a word in edgeways.”

The other sins on his list were, in order: seeming uninterested, speaking too much about your own life, prying for personal secrets (“an unpardonable rudeness”), telling long and pointless stories (“old folks are most subject to this error, which is one chief reason their company is so often shunned”), contradicting or disputing someone directly, ridiculing or railing against things except in small witty doses (“it’s like salt, a little of which in some cases gives relish, but if thrown on by handfuls spoils all”), and spreading scandal (though he would later write lighthearted defenses of gossip).

The older he got, the more Franklin learned (with a few notable lapses) to follow his own advice. He used silence wisely, employed an indirect style of persuasion, and feigned modesty and naivete in disputes. “When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him.” Instead, he would agree in parts and suggest his differences only indirectly. “For these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatic expression escape me,” he recalled when writing his autobiography. This velvet-tongued and sweetly passive style of circumspect argument would make him seem sage to some, insinuating and manipulative to others, but inflammatory to almost nobody. The method would also become, often with a nod to Franklin, a staple in modern management guides and self-improvement books.

Though the youngest member of the Junto, Franklin was, by dint of his intellectual charisma and conversational charm, not only its founder but its driving force. The topics discussed ranged from the social to the scientific and metaphysical. Most of them were earnest, some were quirky, and all were intriguing. Did importing indentured servants make America more prosperous? What made a piece of writing good? Why did condensation form on a cold mug? What accounted for happiness? What is wisdom? Is there a difference between knowledge and prudence? If a sovereign power deprives a citizen of his rights, is it justifiable for him to resist?

(Isaacson 2003, pp.56-58)

“It is unreasonable to imagine that printers approve of everything they print. It is likewise unreasonable what some assert, That printers ought not to print anything but what they approve; since … an end would thereby be put to free writing, and the world would afterwards have nothing to read but what happened to be the opinions of printers.”

The opinions people have, Franklin wrote, are “almost as various as their faces.” The job of printers is to allow people to express these differing opinions. “There would be very little printed,” he noted, if publishers produced only things that offended nobody. At stake was the virtue of free expression, and Franklin summed up the Enlightenment position in a sentence that is now framed on newsroom walls: “Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and that when Truth and Error have fair play; the former is always an overmatch for the latter.”

“It is unreasonable to imagine that printers approve of everything they print,” he went on to argue. “It is likewise unreasonable what some assert, That printers ought not to print anything but what they approve; since … an end would thereby be put to free writing, and the world would afterwards have nothing to read but what happened to be the opinions of printers.”

With a wry touch, he reminded his readers that publishers are in business both to make money and inform the public. “Hence they cheerfully service all contending writers that pay them well,” even if they don’t agree with the writers’ opinions. “If all people of different opinions in the this province would engage to give me as much for not printing things they don’t like as I could get by printing them, I should probably live a very easy life; and if all printers everywhere were so dealt by, there would be very little printed.”

It was not in Franklin’s nature, however, to be dogmatic or extreme about any principle; he generally gravitated toward a sensible balance. The rights of printers, he realized, were balanced by their duty to be responsible. Thus, even though printers should be free to publish offensive opinions, they should generally exercise discretion. “I myself have constantly refused to print anything that might countenance vice or promote immorality, though … I might have got much money. I have also always refused to print such things as might do real injury to any person.”

(Isaacson 2003, pp.66-67)

“uninteresting and unedifying since not a single moral principle was inculcated or enforced, their aim seeming to be rather to make us good Presbyterians than good citizens”

One day, Andrews prevailed on him to sample his Sunday sermons, which Franklin did for five weeks. Unfortunately, he found them “uninteresting and unedifying since not a single moral principle was inculcated or enforced, their aim seeming to be rather to make us good Presbyterians than good citizens.” On his final visit, the reading from the Scripture (Philippians 4:8) related to virtue. It was a topic dear to Franklin’s heart, and he hoped that Andrews would expound on the concept in his sermon. Instead, the minister focused only on dogma and doctrine, without offering any practical thoughts about virtue. Franklin was “disgusted,” and he reverted to spending his Sundays reading and writing on his own.

Franklin began to clarify his religious beliefs through a series of essays and letters. In them, he adopted a creed that would last the rest of his life: a virtuous, morally fortified, and pragmatic version of deism. Unlike most pure deists, he concluded that it was useful (and thus probably correct) to believe that a faith in God should inform our daily actions; but like other deists, his faith was devoid of sectarian dogma, burning spirituality, deep soul-searching, or a personal relationship to Christ.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.84-85)

As was typical, Franklin sought a pragmatic resolution in his Junto talk, which he called “On the Providence of God in the Government of the World.” He began by apologizing to “my intimate pot companions” for being rather “unqualified” to speak on spiritual matters. His study of nature, he said, convinced him that God created the universe and was infinitely wise, good, and powerful. He then explored four possibilities: (1) God predetermined and predestined everything that happens, eliminating all possibility of free will; (2) He left things to proceed according to natural laws and the free will of His creatures, and never interferes; (3) He predestined some things and left some things to free will, but still never interferes; (4) “He sometimes interferes by His particular providence and sets aside the effects which would otherwise have been produced by any of the above causes.”

Franklin ended up settling on the fourth option, but not because he could prove it; instead, it resulted from a process of elimination and a sense of which belief would be most useful for people to hold. Any of the first three options would mean that God is not infinitely powerful or good or wise. “We are then necessarily driven into the fourth supposition,” he wrote. He admitted that many find it contradictory to believe both that God is infinitely powerful and that men have free will (it was the conundrum that stymied him in the London dissertation he wrote and then renounced). But if God is indeed all powerful, Franklin reasoned, he surely is able to find a way to give the creatures he made in his image some of his free will.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.86-87)

“I think opinions should be judged by their influences and effects; and if a man holds none that tend to make him less virtuous or more vicious, it may be concluded that he holds none that are dangerous, which I hope is the case with me.”

“I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. And the Scripture assures me that at the last day we shall not be examined by what we thought, but what we did … that we did good to our fellow creatures.”

Franklin’s freethinking unnerved his family. When his parents wrote of their concern over his “erroneous opinions,” Franklin replied with a letter that spelled out a religious philosophy, based on tolerance and utility, that would last his life. It would be vain, he wrote, for any person to insist that “all the doctrines he holds are true and all he rejects are false.” The same could be said of the opinions of different religions as well. They should be evaluated, the young pragmatist said, by their utility: “I think opinions should be judged by their influences and effects; and if a man holds none that tend to make him less virtuous or more vicious, it may be concluded that he holds none that are dangerous, which I hope is the case with me.” He had little use for the doctrinal distinctions his mother worried about. “I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. And the Scripture assures me that at the last day we shall not be examined by what we thought, but what we did … that we did good to our fellow creatures. See Matth 26.” His parents, a bit more versed in the Scripture, probably caught that he meant Matthew 25. They did, nonetheless, eventually stop worrying about his heresies.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.88)

First he made a list of twelve virtues he thought desirable, and to each he appended a short definition:

Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; (i.e., waste nothing).

Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

Moderation: Avoid extreme; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

Chasity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.89-90)

On the pages of a little notebook, he made a chart with seven red columns for the days of the week and thirteen rows labeled with his virtues. Infractions were marked with a black spot the first week he focused on temperance, trying to keep that line clear while not worrying about the other lines. With that virtue strengthened, he could turn his attention to the next one, silence, hoping that the temperance line would stay clear as well. In the course of the year, he would complete the thirteen-week cycle four times.

“I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined,” he dryly noted. In fact, his notebook became filled with holes as he erased the marks in order to reuse the pages. So he transferred his charts to ivory tablets that could be more easily wiped clean.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.91)

Tocqueville came to the conclusion that there was an inherent struggle in America between two opposing impulses: the spirit of rugged individualism versus the conflicting spirit of community and association building. Franklin would have disagreed. A fundamental aspect of Franklin’s life, and of the American society he helped to create, was that individualism and communitarianism, so seemingly contradictory, were interwoven. The frontier attracted barn-raising pioneers who were ruggedly individualistic as well as fiercely supportive of their community. Franklin was the epitome of this admixture of self-reliance and civic involvement, and what he exemplified became part of the American character.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.103)

Franklin also sought to improve the town’s ineffective police forces. At the time, the ragtag groups of watchmen were managed by constables who either enlisted neighbors or dunned them a fee to avoid service. This resulted in roaming gangs that made a little money and, Franklin noted, spent most of the night getting drunk. Once again, Franklin suggested a solution in a paper he wrote for his Junto. It proposed that full-time watchmen be funded by a property tax levied according to the value of each home, and it included one of the first arguments in America for progressive taxation. It was unfair, he wrote, that “a poor widow housekeeper, all of whose property to be guarded by the watch did not perhaps exceed the value of fifty pounds, paid as much as the wealthiest merchant, who had thousands of pounds worth of goods in his stores.”

(Isaacson 2003, pp.105)

Of particular note was his populist insistence that there be no class distinctions. The militia would be organized by geographic area instead of social strata. “This,” he said, “is intended to prevent people’s sorting themselves into companies according to their ranks in life, their quality or station. It is designed to mix the great and the small together … There should be no distinction from circumstance, but all be on the level.” In another radically democratic approach, Franklin proposed that each of the new militia companies elect its own officers rather than have them appointed by the governor or Crown.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.124-125)

In “observations on the Increase of Mankind,” he attacked slavery on economic grounds. Comparing the costs and benefits of owning a slave, he concluded that it made no sense. “The introduction of slaves,” he wrote, was one of the things that “diminish a nation.” But he mainly focused on the ill effects to the owners rather than the immorality done to the slaves. “The whites who have slaves, not laboring, are enfeebled,” he said. “Slaves also pejorate the families that use them; white children become proud, disgusted with labor.”

The tract was, in fact, quite prejudiced in places. He decried German immigration, and he urged that America be settled mainly by whites of English descent. “The number of purely white people in the world is proportionally very small,” he wrote. “Why increase the sons of Africa by planting them in America, where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawneys, of increasing the lovely white and red? But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my country, for such kind of partiality is natural to mankind.”

As the final sentence indicates, he was beginning to reexamine his “partiality” to his own race. In the first edition of “Observations,” he remarked on “almost every slave being by nature a thief.” When he reprinted it eighteen years later, he changed it to say that they became thieves “from the nature of slavery.” He also omitted the entire section about the desirability of keeping America mainly white.

(Isaacson 2003, pp. 152)

To the Paxton Boys, all Indians were alike and there was no need to treat them as individuals. “Whoever proclaimed war,” their spokesman declared, “with part of a nation, and not with the whole?” Franklin, on the other hand, used his pamphlet to denounce prejudice and make the case for individual tolerance that was at the core of his political creed. “If an Indian injures me, does it follow that I may revenge that injury on all Indians?” he asked. “The only crime of these poor wretches seems to have been that they had a reddish brown skin and black hair.” It was immoral, he argued, to punish an individual as revenge for what others of his race, tribe, or group may have done. “Should any man with a freckled face and red hair kill a wife or child of mine [by this reasoning] it would be right for me to revenge it by killing all the freckled red-haired men, women and children I could afterwards anywhere meet.”

To reinforce his point, he provided historical examples of how various other people – Jews, Muslims, Moors, blacks, and Indians – had all shown a greater morality and tolerance in similar situations. I was necessary, Franklin concluded, for the entire province to stand up to the Paxton Boys as they prepared to march on Philadelphia and to bring them to justice. Ignoring the slight inconsistency in his argument, he warned of the collective guilt all whites would otherwise share: “The guilt will lie on the whole land till justice is done on the murderers.”

(Isaacson 2003, pp.211-212)

Modern election campaigns are often criticized for being negative, and today’s press is slammed for being scurrilous. But the most brutal of modern attack ads pale in comparison to the barrage of pamphlets in the 1764 Assembly election. Pennsylvania survived them, as did Franklin, and American democracy learned that it could thrive in an atmosphere of unrestrained, even intemperate, free expression. As the election of 1764 showed, American democracy was built on a foundation of unbridled free speech. In the centuries since then, the nations that have thrived have been those, like America, that are most comfortable with the cacophony, and even occasional messiness, that comes from robust discourse.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.216-217)

Not only did he warn against welfare dependency, but he offered his own version of the trickle-down theory of economics. The more money made by the rich and by all of society, the more money that would make its way down to the poor. “The rich do not work for one another … Everything that they or their families use and consume is the produce of the laboring poor: clothing and furniture and dwellings. “Our laboring poor receive annually the whole of the clear revenues of the nation.” He also debunked the idea of imposing a higher minimum wage: “A law might be made to raise their wages; but if our manufactures are too dear, the might not vend abroad.”

His economic conservatism was balanced, however, by his fundamental moral belief that actions should be judged by how much they benefit the common good. Policies that encouraged hard work were good, but not because they led to great accumulations of private wealth; they were good because they increased the total well-being of a community and the dignity of every aspiring individual. People who acquired more wealth than they needed had a duty to help others and to create civic institutions that promoted the success of others. “His ideal was of a prosperous middle class whose members lived simple lives of democratic equality,” writes James Campbell. “Those who met with greater economic success in life were responsible to help those in genuine need; but those who from lack of virtue failed to pull their own weight could expect no help from society.”

To this philosophical mix Franklin added an increasingly fervent advocacy of the traditional English liberal values of individual rights and liberties. He had not yet, however, completed his evolution on the great moral question of slavery. As an agent for some of the colonies, including Georgia, he found himself awkwardly and unconvincingly defending America against British attacks that slavery made a mockery of the colonists’ demands for liberty.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.267-268)

Under Franklin’s proposal, the Congress would have only a single chamber, in which there would be proportional representation from each state based on population. It would have the power to levy taxes, make war manage the military, enter into foreign alliances, settle disputes between colonies, form new colonies, issue a unified currency, establish a postal system, regulate commerce, and enact laws “necessary to the general welfare.” Franklin also proposed that, instead of a single president, the Congress appoint a twelve-person “executive council” whose members would serve for staggered three-year terms.

Franklin included an escape provision: in the event that Britain accepted all of America’s demands and made financial reparation for all of the damage it had done, the union could be dissolved. Otherwise, “this confederation is to be perpetual.”

(Isaacson 2003, pp.299-300)

We are men, all subject to errors. Our opinions are not in our own power; they are formed and governed much by circumstances, that are often as inexplicable as they are irresistible.

Indeed nothing has ever hurt me so much and affected me with such keen sensations as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me, in a cause, wherein my good fame, fortune and life were all at stake. You conceived, you say, that your duty to your King and regard for your country required this. I ought not to blame you for differing in sentiment with me in public affairs. We are men, all subject to errors. Our opinions are not in our own power; they are formed and governed much by circumstances, that are often as inexplicable as they are irresistible. Your situation was such that few would have censured your remaining neuter, though there are natural duties which precede political ones [emphasis is Franklin’s].

Then he caught himself. “This is a disagreeable subject,” he wrote. “I drop it.” It would not be convenient, he added, to “have you come here at the present.” Instead, Temple would be sent to London to act as an intermediary. “You may confide to your son the family affairs you wish to confer upon with me.” Then, a bit condescendingly, he added, “I trust you will prudently avoid introducing him to company that it may be improper for him to be seen with.” Temple may have been William’s son, but Franklin made it clear who controlled him.”

(Isaacson 2003, pp.430)

The penchant was on display in its most charming manner in a long letter he wrote to his young friend Kitty Shipley, daughter of the bishop, on the art of procuring pleasant dreams. It contained all of his theories, some more sound than others, on nutrition, exercise, fresh air, and health. Exercise should precede meals, he advised, not follow them. There should be a constant supply of fresh air in the bedroom; Methuselah, he reminded, always slept outdoors. He propounded a thorough, though not scientifically valid, theory of how air in a stifled room gets saturated and thus prevents people’s pores from expelling “putrid particles.” After a full discourse on the science and pseudoscience, he provided three important ways to avoid unpleasant dreams:

By eating moderately, less perspirable matter is produced in a given time; hence the bed-clothes receive it longer before they are saturated, and we may therefore sleep longer before we are made uneasy by their refusing to receive any more.
By using thinner and more porous bed-clothes, which will suffer the perspirable matter more easily to pass through them, we are less incommoded, such being longer tolerable.
When you are awakened by this uneasiness, and find you cannot easily sleep again, get out of bed, beat up and turn your pillow, shake the bed-clothes well, with at least twenty shakes, then throw the bed open and leave it to cool; in the meanwhile, continuing undressed, walk about your chamber till your skin has had time to discharge its load, which it will do sooner as the air may be dried and colder. When you begin to feel the cool air unpleasant, then return to your bed, and you will soon fall asleep, and your sleep will be sweet and pleasant … If you happen to be too indollent to get out of bed, you may, instead of it, lift up your bedclothes with one are and leg, so as to draw in a good deal of fresh air, and by letting them fall force it our again. This, repeated twenty times, will so clearer them of the perspirable matter they have imbibed, as to permit your sleeping well for some time afterwards. But this latter method is not equal to the former. Those who do not love trouble, and can afford to have two beds, will find great luxury in rising, when they wake in a hot bed, and going into the cool one.

He concluded on a sweet note: “There is a case in which the most punctual observance of them will be totally fruitless. I need not mention this case to you, my dear friend, but my account of the art would be imperfect without it. The case is, when the person who desires to have pleasant dreams has not taken care to preserve, what is necessary above all things, A GOOD CONSCIENCE.”

(Isaacson 2003, pp.442-443)

“Declarations of a fixed opinion, and of determined resolution never to change it, neither enlighten nor convince us,” he said. “Positiveness and warmth on one side, naturally beget their like on the other.”

Franklin had long favored a legislature with only one directly elected house, seeing little reason to place checks on the democratic will of the people, and he had designed such a system in Pennsylvania. But in its first week the convention decided this was, in fact, too democratic by half. Madison recorded: “ ‘The national Legislature ought to consist of two branches’ was agreed to without debate or dissent, except that of Pennsylvania, given probably from complaisance to Dr. Franklin, who was understood to be partial to a single House of Legislation.” One modification was made to the Virginia plan. To give the state governments some stake in the new Congress, the delegates decided that the upper chamber, dubbed the Senate after the Roman precedent, would be chosen by the state legislatures rather than by the House of Representatives. (This procedure remained in effect until 1913.)

The central issue, however, remained unresolved. Would votes in the houses of Congress be in proportion to population or, as per the Articles of Confederation, equal for each state? The dispute was not only a philosophical one between proponents of a strong national government and those who favored protecting the rights of the states. It was also a power struggle: little states, such as Delaware and New Jersey, feared they would be overwhelmed by the big states such as Virginia and New York.

The debate grew heated, threatening to break up the convention, and on June 11 Franklin decided it was time to try to restore a spirit of compromise. He had written his speech in advance and because of his health asked another delegate to read it aloud. “Until this point [about] the proportion of representation came before us,” he began, “our debates were carried on with great coolness and temper.” After making his plea that members consult rather than contend, he expressed a sentiment that he had preached for much of his life, starting with the rules he had written for his Junto sixty years earlier, about the dangers of being too assertive in debate. “Declarations of a fixed opinion, and of determined resolution never to change it, neither enlighten nor convince us,” he said. “Positiveness and warmth on one side, naturally beget their like on the other.” He had personally been willing, he said, to revise many of his opinions, including the desirability of a unicameral legislature. Now it was time for all members to compromise.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.448-449)

Franklin was believer, even more so as he grew older, in a rather general and at times nebulous divine providence, the principle that God had a benevolent interest in the affairs of men. But he never showed much faith in the more specific notion of special providens, which held that God woud intervene directly based on personal prayer. So the question arises: Did he make his proposal for prayer out of a deep religious faith or out of a pragmatic political belief that it would encourage calm in the deliberations?

There was, as usual, probably an element of both, but perhaps a bit more of the latter. Franklin was never known to pray publicly himself, and he rarely attended church. Yet he thought it useful to remind this assembly of demigods that they were in the presence of a God far greater, and that history was watching as well. To succeed, they had to be awed by the magnitude of their task and be humbled, not assertive. Otherwise, he concluded, “we shall be divided by our little, partial, local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a by-word down to future ages.”

Hamilton warned that the sudden hiring of a chaplain might frighten the pubic into thinking that “embarrassments and dissensions within the convention had suggested this measure.” Franklin replied that a sense of alarm outside the hall might help rather than hurt the deliberations within. Another objection was raised: that there was no money to pay a chaplain. The idea was quietly shelved. On the bottom of his copy of his speech, Franklin appended a note of marvel: “The convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary!”

(Isaacson 2003, pp.451-452)

On other issues as well, Franklin was usually on the side favoring fewer fetters on direct democracy. He opposed, for example, giving the president a veto over acts of Congress, which he saw as the repository of the people’s will. Colonial governors, he reminded the delegates, had used that power to extort more influence and money whenever the legislature wanted a measure approved. When Hamiton favored making the president a near-monarch to be chosen for life, Franklin noted that he provided living proof that a person’s life sometimes lasted longer than his mental and physical prime. Instead, it would be more democratic to relegate the president to the role of average citizen after his term. The argument that “returning to the mass of the people was degrading,” he said, “was contrary to republican principles. In free Governments the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors sovereigns. For the former therefore to return among the latter was not to degrade but to promote them.”

Likewise, he argued that Congress should have the power to impeach the president. In the past, when impeachment was not possible, the only method people had for removing a corrupt ruler was through assassination, “in which he was not only deprived of his life but of the opportunity of vindicating his character.” Franklin also felt that would be more democratic for executive power to reside with a small council, as it did in Pennsylvania, rather than one man. This was a hard debate to have with Washington sitting in the chair, as it was widely assumed that he would be the first president. So Franklin noted diplomatically that the first man to take the office would likely be benevolent, but the person who came next (perhaps he had a sense that it could be John Adams) might harbor more autocratic tendencies. On this issue Franklin lost, but the convention did decided to institutionalize the role of the Cabinet.

He also advocated, unsuccessfully, the direct election of federal judges, instead of permitting the president or Congress to select them. As usual, he made his argument by telling a tale. It was the practice in Scotland for judges to be nominated byt that country’s lawyers, who always selected the ablest of the profession in order to get rid of him and share his practice among themselves. In America, it would be in the best interest of voters “to make the best choice,” which was the way it should be.

Many of the delegates believed strongly that only those who owned substantial property should be eligible for office, as was the case in most states other than Pennsylvania. Young Charles Pinckney of South Carolina went so far as to propose that the wealth requirement for president should be $100,000, until it was pointed out that this might exclude Washington. Franklin rose and, in Madison’s words, “expressed his dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people.” His democratic sensibilities were offended by any suggestion that the Constitution “should betray a great partiality to the rich.” On the contrary, he said, “some of the greatest rogues I was ever acquainted with, were the richest rogues.” Likewise, he spoke out against any property requirements on the right to vote. “We should not depress the virtue and public spirit of our common people.” On these issues he was successful.

On only one issue did Franklin take what could be considered the less democratic position, though he did not recognize it as such. Federal officials, he argued, should serve without pay. In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, historian Gordon Wood contends that Franklin’s proposal reflected the “classical sentiments of aristocratic leadership.” Even John Adams, generally less democratic in his outlook, wrote from London that under such a policy “all offices would be monopolized by the rich, the poor and middling ranks would be excluded and an aristocratic despotism would immediately follow.”

(Isaacson 2003, pp.454-455)

There are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but, when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects … And of what kind are the men that will strive for this profitable preeminence, through all the bustle of cabal, the heat of contention, the infinite mutual abuse of parties, tearing to pieces the best of characters? It will not be the wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the trust. It will be the bold and the violent, the men of strong passions and infatigable activity in their selfish pursuits.

On this issue he found almost no support, and the idea was put aside with no debate. “It was treated with great respect,” Madison recorded, “but rather for the author of it than from any conviction of its expediency or practicability.”

(Isaacson 2003, pp.456)

For, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and pay more respect to the judgment of others.

When it was all over, many compromises had been made, including on the issue of slavery. Some members were distressed because they felt that the final result usurped too much state sovereignty, other because they thought it did not create a strong enough national government. The cantankerous Luther Martin of Maryland sneered contemptuously that they had concocted a “perfect medley” and left before the final vote.

He was right, except for his contemptuous sneer. The medley was, indeed, as close to perfect as mortals could have achieved. From its profound first three words, “We the people,” to the carefully calibrated compromises and balances that followed, it created an ingenious system in which the power of the national government as well as that of the states derived directly from the citizenry. And thus it fulfilled the motto on the nation’s great seal, suggested by Franklin in 1776, of E Pluribus Unum, out of many one.

With the wisdom of a patient chess player and the practicality of a scientist, Franklin realized that they had succeeded not because they were self-assured, but because they were willing to concede that they might be fallible. “We are making experiments in politics,” he wrote la Rochefoucald. To Du Pont de Nemours he confessed, “We must not expect that a new government may be formed as a game of chess may be played, by a skillful hand, without a fault.”

Franklin’s final triumph was to express these sentiments with a wry but powerful charm in a remarkable closing address to the convention. The speech was a testament to the virtue of intellectual tolerance and to the evil of presumed infallibility, and it proclaimed for the ages the enlightened creed that became central to America’ freedom. They were the most eloquent words Franklin ever wrote – and perhaps the best ever written by anyone about the magic of the American system and the spirit of compromise that created it:

I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present; but sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and pay more respect to the judgment of others.

Most men, indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error. Steele, a Protestant, in a dedication, tells the Pope that the only difference between our two churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrine is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But, though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who, in a little dispute with her sister said: “I don’t know how it happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself that is always in the right.”

In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all it’s faults – if they are such – because I think a general government necessary for us … I doubt, too, whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution; for, when you assemble a number of men, to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?

It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the builders of Babel, and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.

He concluded by pleading that, “for the sake of our posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously.” To that end, he made a motion that the convection adopt the device of declaring that the document had been accepted by all of the states, which would allow even the minority of delegates who dissented to sign it. “I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the convention who may still have objections to it, would, with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.456-458)

Franklin’s views had been evolving as well. He had, as we have seen, owned one or two household slaves off and on for much of his life, and as a young publisher he had carried ads for slave sales. But he had also published, in 1729, one of the nation’s first antislavery pieces and had joined the Associates of Dr. Bray to establish schools for blacks in America. Deborah had enrolled her house servants in the Philadelphia school, and after visiting it Franklin had spoke of his “higher opinions of the natural capacities of the black.” In his 1751 “Observations on the Increase of Mankind,” he attacked slavery strongly, but mainly from an economic perspective rather than a moral one. In expressing sympathy for the Philadelphia abolitionist Anthony Benezet in the 1770s, he had agreed that the importation of new slaves should end immediately, but he qualified his support for out right abolition by saying it should come “in time.” As an agent for Georgia in London, he had defended the right of that colony to keep slaves. But he preached, in articles such as his 1772 “The Somerset Case and the Slave Trade,” that one of Britain’s great sins against America was foisting slavery on it.

Franklin’s conversion culminated in 1787, when he accepted the presidency of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. The group tried to persuade him to present a petition against slavery at the Constitutional Convention, but knowling the delicate compromises being made between north and south, he kept silent on the issue. After that, however, he became outspoken.

One of the arguments against immediate abolition, which Franklin had heretofore accepted, was that it was not practical or safe to free hundreds of thousands of adult slaves into a society for which they were not prepared. (There were about seven hundred thousand slaves in the United States out of a total population of four million in 1790.) So his abolition society dedicated itself not only to freeing slaves but also to helping them become good citizens. “Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils,” Franklin wrote in a November 1789 address to the public from the society. “The unhappy man, who has long been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species. The galling chains that bind his body do also fetter his intellectual faculties and impair the social affections of his heart.”

(Isaacson 2003, pp.464-465)

“He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face.”

As he grew older, Franklin’s amorphous faith in a benevolent God seemed to become more firm. “If it had not been for the justice of our cause and the consequent interposition of Providence, in which we had faith, we must have been ruined,” he wrote Strahan after the war. “If I had ever before been an atheist, I should now have been convinced of the Being and government of a Deity!”

His support for religion tended to be based on his belief that it was useful and practical in making people behave better, rather than because it was divinely inspired. He wrote a letter, possible sent in 1786 to Thomas Paine, in response to a manuscript that ridiculed religious devotion. Franklin begged the recipient not to publish his heretical treatise, but he did so on the grounds that the arguments could have harmful practical effects, not on the grounds that they were false. “You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life without the assistance afforded by religion,” he said, “but think how great a proportion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced and inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to retain them from vice.” In addition, he noted, the personal consequences for the author would likely be odious. “He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face.” If the letter was indeed addressed to Paine, it had an effect. He had long been formulating the virulent attack on organized religious faith that he would later title The Age of Reason, but he held off publishing it for another seven years, until near the end of his life.”

The most important religious role Franklin played – and it was an exceedingly important one in shaping his enlightened new republic – was an apostle of tolerance. He had contributed to the building funds of each and every sect in Philadelphia, including £5 for the Congregation Mikveh Israel for its new synagogue in April 1788, and he had opposed religious oaths and tests in both the Pennsylvania and federal constitutions. During the July 4 celebration is 1788, Franklin was too sick to leave his bed, but the parade marched under his window. For the first time, as per arrangements that Franklin had overseen, “the clergy of different Christian denomination, with the rabbi of the Jews, walked arm in arm.”

His final summation of his religious thinking came the month before he died, in response to questions from the Rev. Exra Stiles, president of Yale. Franklin began by restating his basic creed: “I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children.” These beliefs were fundamental to all religions; anything else was mere embellishment.

Then he addressed Stiles’s question about whether he believed in Jesus, which was, he said, the first time he had ever been asked directly. The system of morals that Jesus provided, Franklin replied, was “The best the world ever saw or is likely to see.” But on the issue of whether Jesus was divine, he provided a surprisingly candid and wry response. “I have,” he declared, “some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.”

(Isaacson 2003, pp. 467-469)

The Age of Enlightenment, however, was being replaced in the early 1800s by a literary era that valued romanticism more than rationality. With the shift came a profound reversal, especially among those of presumed higher sensibilities, in attitudes toward Franklin. The romantics admired not reason and intellect but deep emotion, subjective sensibility, and imagination. They exalted the heroic and mystical rather than tolerance and rationality. Their haughty criticisms decimated the reputations of Franklin, Voltaire, Swift, and other Enlightenment thinkers.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.478)

His religious beliefs, especially early in life, were largely a calculus of what credos would prove useful for people to believe, rather than an expression of sincere inner convictions. Deism was appealing, but he discovered it was not all that helpful, so he gave it a moral gloss and seldom troubled his soul with questions about grace, salvation, the divinity of Christ, or other profound issues that did not lend themselves to practical inquiry. He was at the other extreme from the anguished soul-searching Puritans. As he had no factual evidence about what was divinely inspired, he settled instead for the simple creed that the best way to serve God was doing good to others.

His moral beliefs were likewise plain and earthly, focused on practical ways to benefit others. He espoused the middle-class virtues of a shopkeeper, and he had little interest in proselytizing about higher ethical aspirations. He wrestled more with what he called “errata” than he did with sin.

As a scientist, he had a feel for the mechanical workings of the world but little appreciation for abstract theories or the sublime. He was a great experimenter and clever inventor, with an emphasis on things useful. But he had neither the temperament nor the training to be a profound conceptualizer.

(Isaacson 2003, pp.486-487)

So, does Franklin deserve the accolade, accorded by his great contemporary David Hume, of America’s “first philosopher”? To some extent, he does. Disentangling morality from theology was an important achievement of the Enlightenment, and Franklin was its avatar in America. In addition, by relating morality to everyday human consequences, Franklin laid the foundation for the most influential of America’s homegrown philosophies, pragmatism. His moral and religious thinking, when judged in the context of his actions, writes James Campbell, “becomes a rich philosophical defense of service to advance the common good.” What it lacked in spiritual profundity, it made up for in practicality and potency.