A Benjamin Franklin Reader (28 page)

Give me leave, Master John Bull, to remind you, that you are
related to all mankind;
and therefore it less become you than any body, to affront and abuse other nations. But you have mixed with your many virtues, a pride, a haughtiness, and an insolent contempt for all but yourself, that, I am afraid, will, if not abated, procure you one day or other a handsome drubbing. Besides your rudeness to foreigners, you are far from being civil even to your own family. The Welch you have always despised for submitting to your government: But why despise your own English, who conquered and settled Ireland for you; who conquered and settled America for you? Yet these you now think you may treat as you please, because, forsooth, they are a
conquered
people. Why despise the Scotch, who fight and die for you all over the world? Remember, you courted Scotland for one hundred years, and would fain have had your
wicked will
of her. She virtuously resisted all your importunities, but at length kindly consented to become your lawful wife. You then solemnly promised to
love, cherish,
and
honor
her, as long as you both should live; and yet you have ever since treated her with the utmost contumely, which you now begin to extend to your common children. But, pray, when your enemies are uniting in a
Family Compact
against you, can it be discreet in you to kick up in your own house a
Family Quarrel
? And at the very time you are inviting foreigners to settle on your lands, and when you have more to settle than ever you had before, it is [
sic
] prudent to suffer your lawyer, Vindex, to abuse those who have settled there already, because they cannot yet speak Plain English? It is my opinion, Master Bull, that the Scotch and Irish, as well as the colonists, are capable of speaking much
plainer English
than they have ever yet spoke, but which I hope they will never be provoked to speak.

To be brief, Mr. Vindex, I pass over your other accusations of the Americans, and of the Scotch, that we Persecute old women for witches, and are intolerant to other sects, observing only, that we were wise enough to leave off both those foolish tricks, long before Old England made the act of toleration, or repealed the statute against witchcraft; so that even
you yourself
may safely travel through all Scotland and the Colonies, without the least danger of being persecuted as a churchman, or taken (up) for a conjurer. And yet I own myself so far of an intolerant spirit, that though I thank you for the box-in-the-ear you have given Tom Hint, as being, what you justly call him, a futile calumniator, I cannot but wish he would give you another for the same reason.

One word more, however, about the
Indian corn,
which I began and must end with, even though I should hazard your remarking, that it is certainly indigestible, as it plainly appears to
stick in my stomach.
Let him tell the world, If he dares, (you say) that the Americans prefer it to a place at their tables. And, pray, if I should dare, what then? Why then You will enter upon a discussion of its salubrity and pleasant taste. Really? Would you venture to write on the salubrity and
pleasant taste
of Indian corn, when you never in your life have tasted a
single grain
of it? But why should that hinder you writing on it? Have you not written even on
politics?
Yours,

Homespun

C
. 1765

Largely due to Franklin’s propaganda campaign and a stirring testimony he provided to Parliament, the Stamp Act was repealed. In celebration, he sent his wife a loving letter and a shipment of gifts. Deborah’s frugality and self-reliance were symbols of America’s ability to sacrifice rather than submit to an unfair tax.

T
O
D
EBORAH
F
RANKLIN
, A
PRIL
6, 1766

My dear child,

As the Stamp Act is at length repealed, I am willing you should have a new gown, which you may suppose I did not send sooner, as I knew you would not like to be finer than your neighbors, unless in a gown of your own spinning. Had the trade between the two countries totally ceased, it was a comfort to me to recollect that I had once been clothed from head to foot in woolen and linen of my wife’s manufacture, that I never was prouder of any dress in my life, and that she and her daughter might do it again if it was necessary. I told the Parliament that it was my opinion, before the old clothes of the Americans were worn out, they might have new ones of their own making. And indeed if they had all as many old clothes as your old man has, that would not be very unlikely; for I think you and George reckoned when I was last at home, at least 20 pair of old breeches.

Joking apart, I have sent you a fine piece of pompadour satin, 14 yards cost 11s. per yard. A silk negligee and petticoat of brocaded lutestring for my dear Sally, with 2 doz. gloves, 4 bottles of lavender water, and two little reels. The reels are to screw on the edge of a table, when she would wind silk or thread, the skein is to be put over them, and winds better than if held in two hands. There is also an ivory knob to each, to which she may with a bit of silk cord hang a pin hook to fasten her plain work to like the hooks on her weight. I send you also lace for two lappet caps, 3 ells of cambric (the cambric by Mr. Yates) 3 damask table cloths, a piece of crimson Morin for curtains, with tassels, line and binding. A large true turkey carpet cost 10 guineas, for the dining parlor. Some oiled silk; and a gimcrack corkscrew which you must get some brother gimcrack to show you the use of. In the chest is a parcel of books for my friend Mr. Coleman, and another for cousin Colbert. Pray did he receives those I sent him before? I send you also a box with three fine cheeses. Perhaps a bit of them may be left when I come home.

Mrs. Stevenson has been very diligent and serviceable in getting these things together for you, and presents her best respects, as does her daughter, to both you and Sally. There are two boxes included in your bill of lading for Billy.

I received your kind letter of Feb. 20. It gives me great pleasure to hear that our good old friend Mrs. Smith is on the recovery. I hope she has yet many happy years to live. My love to her.

I fear, from the account you give of brother Peter that he cannot hold it long. If it should please God that he leaves us before my return; I would have the post office remain under the management of their son, till Mr. Foxcroft and I agree how to settle it.

There are some droll prints in the box, which were given me by the painter; and being sent when I was not at home, were packed up without my knowledge. I think he was wrong to put in Lord Bute, who had nothing to do with the stamp act. But it is the fashion here to abuse that nobleman as the author of all mischief. I send you a few bush beans, a new sort for your garden. I shall write to my friends per packet, that goes next Saturday. I am very well, and hope this will find you and Sally so with all our relations and friends, to whom my love. I am, as ever, Your affectionate Husband,

B. Franklin

The good-humored domestic relationship that Franklin had with his landlady Margaret Stevenson was illustrated by the good-natured grumpiness he expressed when she left their home on Craven Street for a long weekend visit with relatives in the country.

T
O
M
ARGARET
S
TEVENSON
, N
OVEMBER
3, 1767

Dear Madam,

I breakfasted abroad this morning and nanny tells me that Mr. West called while I was out, and left word that you did not intend to come home till Sunday next, and that you expected me then to come and fetch you; that Mr. West also desired I would dine at his house that day: I know not whether nanny is right in all this, as she has but an indifferent memory. But it seems strange to me that you should think of staying so long.

People must have great confidence in their own agreeableness that can suppose themselves not to become tiresome guests at the end of three days at farthest. I did not imagine you had been so conceited. My advice to you is, to return with the stage tomorrow. And if it is proposed that we dine there on Sunday, I shall wait on Mr. and Mrs. West with pleasure on that day, taking you with me.

But, however, I pray you not to understand that I so want you at home as not to do very well without you. Everything goes on smoothly, and the house is very quiet; and very clean too, without my saying a word about it. I am willing to allow that the arrangements you made before you went may have contributed something towards the good order and comfort in which we go on; but yet you are really mistaken in your fancy that I should, by your absence, become more sensible of your usefulness to me, and the necessity of having you always near me; for in truth I find such a satisfaction in being a little more my own master, going any where and doing any thing just when and how I please without the advice or control of anybody’s wisdom but my own small as it is, that I value my own liberty above all the advantage of other’s services, and begin to think I should be still happier if nanny and the cat would follow their mistress, and leave me to the enjoyment of an empty house, in which I should never be disturbed by questions of whether I intend to dine at home, and what I would have for dinner; or by a mewing request to be let in or let out.

This happiness however is perhaps too great to be conferred on any but saints and holy hermits. Sinners like me, I might have said US, are condemned to live together and tease one another, so concluding you will be sentenced to come home tomorrow, I add no more but that I am as ever your affectionate friend and humble servant

B. Franklin

Franklin’s innate conservatism about government intervention and welfare was evident in the series of questions he had posed to Peter Collinson in 1753. Back then, he had asked whether laws “which compel the rich to maintain the poor have not given the latter a dependence” and “provide encouragements for laziness”?

To Collinson these points were raised as questions. But in his essays in the late 1760s and early 1770s, Franklin asserted these ideas more forcefully. Most notable was an anonymous piece in 1768 which he signed as “Medius,” from the Latin word for middle. He noted that in England wealthy legislators had passed many laws to help support the poor. These laws were compassionate, but he warned that they could have unintended consequences and promote laziness.

Not only did he warn against welfare dependency, 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. He also debunked the idea of imposing a higher minimum wage.

O
N THE
L
ABORING
P
OOR
,
T
HE
G
ENTLEMAN
’
S
M
AGAZINE
, A
PRIL
, 1768

Sir,

I have met with much invective in the papers for these two years past, against the hard-heartedness of the rich, and much complaint of the great oppressions suffered in this country by the laboring poor. Will you admit a word or two on the other side of the question? I do not propose to be an advocate for oppression, or oppressors. But when I see that the poor are by such writings exasperated against the rich, and excited to insurrections, by which much mischief is done, and some forfeit their lives, I could wish the true state of things were better understood, the poor not made by these busy writers more uneasy and unhappy than their situation subjects them to be, and the nation not brought into disrepute among foreigners by public groundless accusations of ourselves, as if the rich in England had no compassion for the poor, and Englishmen wanted common humanity.

In justice then to this country, give me leave to remark, that the condition of the poor here is by far the best in Europe, for that, except in England and her American colonies, there is not in any country of the known world, not even in Scotland or Ireland, a provision by law to enforce a support of the poor. Everywhere else necessity reduces to beggary. This law was not made by the poor. The legislators were men of fortune. By that act they voluntarily subjected their own estates, and the estates of all others, to the payment of a tax for the maintenance of the poor, encumbering those estates with a kind of rent charge for that purpose, whereby the poor are vested with an inheritance, as it were, in all the estates of the rich. I wish they were benefited by this generous provision in any degree equal to the good intention with which it was made, and is continued: But I fear the giving mankind a dependence on any thing for support in age or sickness, besides industry and frugality during youth and health, tends to flatter our natural indolence, to encourage idleness and prodigality, and thereby to promote and increase poverty, the very evil it was intended to cure; thus multiplying beggars, instead of diminishing them.

Besides this tax, which the rich in England have subjected themselves to in behalf of the poor, amounting in some places to five or six shillings in the pound of the annual income, they have, by donations and subscriptions, erected numerous schools in various parts of the kingdom, for educating gratis the children of the poor in reading and writing, and in many of those schools the children are also fed and clothed. They have erected hospitals, at an immense expense, for the reception and cure of the sick, the lame, the wounded, and the insane poor, for lying-in women, and deserted children. They are also continually contributing towards making up losses occasioned by fire, by storms, or by floods, and to relieve the poor in severe seasons of frost, in times of scarcity, &c. in which benevolent and charitable contributions no nation exceeds us. Surely there is some gratitude due for so many instances of goodness!

Add to this, all the laws made to discourage foreign manufactures, by laying heavy duties on them, or totally prohibiting them, whereby the rich are obliged to pay much higher prices for what they wear and consume, than if the trade was open: These are so many laws for the support of our laboring poor, made by the rich, and continued at their expense; all the difference of price between our own and foreign commodities, being so much given by our rich to our poor; who would indeed be enabled by it to get by degrees above poverty, if they did not, as too generally they do, consider every increase of wages, only as something that enables them to drink more and work less; so that their distress in sickness, age, or times of scarcity, continues to be the same as if such laws had never been made in their favor.

Much malignant censure have some writers bestowed upon the rich for their luxury and expensive living, while the poor are starving, &c. not considering that what the rich expend, the laboring poor receive in payment for their labor. It may seem a paradox if I should assert, that our laboring poor do in every year receive
the whole revenue of the nation;
I mean not only the public revenue, but also the revenue, or clear income, of all private estates, or a sum equivalent to the whole. In support of this position I reason thus. The rich do not work for one another. Their habitations, furniture, clothing, carriages, food, ornaments, and every thing in short that they, or their families use and consume, is the work or produce of the laboring poor, who are, and must be continually, paid for their labor in producing the same. In these payments the revenues of private estates are expended, for most people live up to their incomes. In clothing and provision for troops, in arms, ammunition, ships, tents, carriages, &c. &c. (every particular the produce of labor) much of the public revenue is expended. The pay of officers civil and military, and of the private soldiers and sailors, requires the rest; and they spend that also in paying for what is produced by the laboring poor. I allow that some estates may increase by the owners spending less than their income; but then I conceive that other estates do at the same time diminish, by the owners spending more than their income, so that when the enriched want to buy more land, they easily find lands in the hands of the impoverished, whose necessities oblige them to sell; and thus this difference is equaled. I allow also, that part of the expense of the rich is in foreign produce or manufactures, for producing which the laboring poor of other nations must be paid; but then I say, that we must first pay our own laboring poor for an equal quantity of our manufactures or produce, to exchange for those foreign productions, or we must pay for them in money, which money, not being the natural produce of our country, must first be purchased from abroad, by sending out its value in the produce or manufactures of this country, for which manufactures our laboring poor are to be paid. And indeed if we did not export more than we import, we could have no money at all. I allow farther, that there are middle men, who make a profit, and even get estates, by purchasing the labor of the poor and selling it at advanced prices to the rich; but then they cannot enjoy that profit or the incomes of estates, but by spending them and employing and paying our laboring poor, in some shape or other, for the products of industry. Even beggars, pensioners, hospitals, and all that are supported by charity, spend their incomes in the same manner. So that finally, as I said at first,
our laboring poor receive annually the whole of the clear revenues of the nation,
and from us they can have no more.

If it be said that their wages are too low, and that they ought to be better paid for their labor, I heartily wish any means could be fallen upon to do it, consistent with their interest and happiness; but as the cheapness of other things is owing to the plenty of those things, so the cheapness of labor is, in most cases, owing to the multitude of laborers, and to their underworking one another in order to obtain employment. How is this to be remedied? A law might be made to raise their wages; but if our manufactures are too dear, they will not vend abroad, and all that part of employment will fail, unless by fighting and conquering we compel other nations to buy our goods, whether they will or no, which some have been mad enough at times to propose. Among ourselves, unless we give our working people less employment, how can we, for what they do, pay them higher than we do? Out of what fund is the additional price of labor to be paid, when all our present incomes are, as it were, mortgaged to them? Should they get higher wages, would that make them less poor, if in consequence they worked fewer days of the week proportionally? I have said a law might be made to raise their wages; but I doubt much whether it could be executed to any purpose, unless another law, now indeed almost obsolete, could at the same time be revived and enforced; a law, I mean, that many have often heard and repeated, but few have ever duly considered. Six
days shalt thou labor.
This is as positive a part of the commandment as that which says,
the
Seventh
day thou shalt rest.
But we remember well to observe the indulgent part, and never think of the other. St. Monday is generally as duly kept by our working people as Sunday; the only difference is, that, instead of employing their time, cheaply, at church, they are wasting it expensively at the alehouse. I am, Sir, &c.

Medius