A Benjamin Franklin Reader (41 page)

Franklin focused much of his writing on his egalitarian, anti-elitist ideas for building a new American society based on middle-class virtues. His daughter Sally sent him newspaper clippings about the formation of a hereditary order of merit called the Society of the Cincinnati, which was headed by General Washington and open to distinguished officers of the American army who would pass the title down to their eldest sons. Franklin ridiculed the concept. The Chinese were right, he said, to honor the parents of people who earned distinction, for they had some role in it. But honoring a worthy person’s descendants, who had nothing to do with achieving the merit, “is not only groundless and absurd but often hurtful to that posterity.” Any form of hereditary aristocracy or nobility was, he declared, “in direct opposition to the solemnly declared sense of their country.”

He also, in the letter, made fun of the symbol of the new Cincinnati order, a bald eagle, which had also been selected as a national symbol. That provoked one of Franklin’s most famous riffs about America’s values and the question of a national bird.

T
O
S
ARAH
B
ACHE
, J
ANUARY
26, 1784

My dear Child,

Your care in sending me the news papers is very agreeable to me. I received by Capt. Barney those relating to the Cincinnati. My opinion of the institution cannot be of much importance. I only wonder that when the united wisdom of our nation had, in the articles of confederation, manifested their dislike of establishing ranks of nobility, by authority either of the Congress or of any particular state, a number of private persons should think proper to distinguish themselves and their posterity from their fellow citizens, and form an order of hereditary knights, in direct opposition to the solemnly declared sense of their country. I imagine it must be likewise contrary to the good sense of most of those drawn into it, by the persuasion of its projectors, who have been too much struck with the ribbons and crosses they have seen among them, hanging to the button-holes of foreign officers. And I suppose those who disapprove of it have not hitherto given it much opposition, from a principle a little like that of your mother, relating to punctilious persons, who are always exacting little observances of respect, that
if people can be pleased with small matters, it is pity but they should have them.

In this view, perhaps I should not myself, if my advice had been asked, have objected to their wearing their ribbon and badge according to their fancy, though I certainly should to the entailing it as an honor on their posterity. For honor worthily obtained, as that for example of our officers, is in its nature a personal thing, and incommunicable to any but those who had some share in obtaining it. Thus among the Chinese, the most ancient, and, from long experience, the wisest of nations, honor does not
descend
but
ascends.
If a man from his learning, his wisdom or his valor, is promoted by the emperor to the rank of mandarin, his parents are immediately entitled to all the same ceremonies of respect from the people, that are established as due to the mandarin himself; on this supposition, that it must have been owing to the education, instruction, and good example afforded him by his parents that he was rendered capable of serving the public. This
ascending honor
is therefore useful to the state as it encourages parents to give their children a good and virtuous education. But the
descending honor,
to posterity who could have had no share in obtaining it, is not only groundless and absurd, but often hurtful to that posterity, since it is apt to make them proud, disdaining to be employed in useful arts, and thence falling into poverty and all the meannesses, servility and wretchedness attending it; which is the present case with much of what is called the
noblesse
in Europe. Or if, to keep up the dignity of the family, estates are entailed entire on the eldest male heir, another pest to industry and improvement of the country is introduced, which will be followed by all the odious mixture of pride and beggary, and idleness that have half depopulated Spain, occasioning continual extinction of families by the discouragements of marriage and improvement of estates.

I wish therefore that the Cincinnati, if they must go on with their project, would direct the badges of their order to be worn by their parents instead of handing them down to their children. It would be a good precedent, and might have good effects. It would also be a kind of obedience to the fourth commandment, in which God enjoins us to
honor
our father and mother, but has no where directed us to
honor
our children. And certainly no mode of honoring those immediate authors of our being can be more effectual, than that of doing praiseworthy actions, which reflect honor on those who gave us our education; or more becoming than that of manifesting by some public expression or token that it is to their instruction and example we ascribe the merit of those actions.

But the absurdity of
descending
honors is not a mere matter of philosophical opinion, it is capable of mathematical demonstration. A man’s son, for instance, is but half of his family, the other half belonging to the family of his wife. His son too, marrying into another family, his share in the grandson is but a fourth; in the great grandson, by the same process, it is but an eighth. In the next generation a sixteenth: the next a thirty-second. The next a sixty-fourth. The next an hundred and twenty-eighth. The next a two hundred and fifty-sixth: and the next a five hundred and twelfth. Thus in nine generations, which will not require more than 300 years, (no very great antiquity for a family) our present chevalier of the order of Cincinnatus share in the then existing knight will be but a 512th part; which, allowing the present certain fidelity of American wives to be insured down thro’ all those nine generations, is so small a consideration, that methinks no reasonable man would hazard for the sake of it the disagreeable consequences of the jealousy, envy and ill-will of his countrymen.

Let us go back with our calculation from this young noble, the 512th. part of the present knight, thro’ his nine generations till we return to the year of the institution. He must have had a father and mother, they are two. Each of them had a father and mother, they are four. Those of the next preceding generation will be eight; the next sixteen; the next thirty-two; the next sixty-four; the next one hundred and twenty-eight; the next two hundred and fifty-six; and the ninth in this retrocession five hundred and twelve, who must be now existing, and all contribute their proportion of this future Chevalier de Cincinnatus. These with the rest make together as follows: 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 total 1022.

One thousand and twenty-two men and women contributors to the formation of one knight. And if we are to have a thousand of these future knights there must be now and hereafter existing one million and twenty two thousand fathers and mothers who are to contribute to their production, unless a part of the number are employed in making more knights than one. Let us strike off then the 22,000 on the supposition of this double employ, and then consider whether after a reasonable estimation of the number of rogues, and fools, and royalists and scoundrels and prostitutes that are mixed with and help to make up necessarily their million of predecessors, posterity will have much reason to boast of the noble blood of the then existing set of Chevaliers de Cincinnatus. I hope therefore that the order will drop this part of their project, and content themselves as the knights of the garter, bath, thistle, St. Louis and other orders of Europe do, with a life enjoyment of their little badge and ribbon, and let the distinction die with those who have merited it. This I imagine will give no offence. For my own part, I shall think it a convenience when I go into a company where there may be faces unknown to me, if I discover by this badge the persons who merit some particular expression of my respect; and it will save modest virtue the trouble of calling for our regard, by awkward round-about intimations of having been heretofore employed in the continental service.

The gentleman who made the voyage to France to provide the ribbons and medals has executed his commission. To me they seem tolerably done, but all such things are criticized. Some find fault with the Latin, as wanting classic elegance and correctness; and since our nine universities were not able to furnish better Latin, it was pity, they say, that the mottos had not been in English. Others object to the title, as not properly assumable by any but General Washington, who served without pay. Others object to the bald eagle, as looking too much like a
dindon,
or turkey.

For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree near the river, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes it from him. With all this injustice, he is never in good case but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank coward: the little
king bird
not bigger than a sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the
king birds
from our country, though exactly fit for that order of knights which the French call
chevaliers d’industrie.
I am on this account not displeased that the figure is not known as a bald eagle, but looks more like a turkey. For in truth the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours, the first of the species seen in Europe being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and served up at the wedding table of Charles the Ninth. He is besides, though a little vain and silly, a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.

I shall not enter into the criticisms made upon their Latin. The gallant officers of America may not have the merit of being great scholars, but they undoubtedly merit much as brave soldiers from their country, which should therefore not leave them merely
fame
for their
virtutis premium;
which is one of their Latin mottos. Their
esto perpetua
another is an excellent wish, if they mean it for their country, bad, if intended for their order. The states should not only restore to them the
omnia
of their first motto which many of them have left and lost, but pay them justly, and reward them generously. They should not be suffered to remain with their new created chivalry
entirely
in the situation of the gentleman in the story, which their
omnia reliquit
reminds me of. You know every thing makes me recollect some story. He had built a very fine house, and thereby much impaired his fortune. He had a pride however in showing it to his acquaintance. One of them after viewing it all, remarked a motto over the door,
o-ia vanitas.
What, says he, is the meaning of this
o-ia?
’Tis a word I don’t understand. I will tell you says the gentleman; I had a mind to have the motto cut on a piece of smooth marble, but there was not room for it between the ornaments to be put in characters large enough to be read. I therefore made use of a contraction anciently very common in Latin manuscripts, by which the
ms
and
ns
in words are omitted, and the omission noted by a little dash above, which you may see there, so that the word is
omnia, omnia vanitas.
O, says his friend, I now comprehend the meaning of your motto, it relates to your edifice; and signifies, that if you have abridged your
omnia,
you have nevertheless left your vanitas legible at full length. I am ever,

Your affectionate Father,

B. Franklin

Franklin heard so frequently from people who wanted to emigrate to America that in early 1784 he printed a pamphlet, in French and in English, designed to encourage the more industrious of them while discouraging those who sought a life of upper-class leisure. His essay, “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America,” is one of the clearest expressions of his belief that American society was based on the virtues of the middle (or “mediocre,” as he sometimes called them, meaning it as a word of praise) classes of which he still considered himself a part. He purported to be describing the way America was, but he was also subtly prescribing what he wanted it to become. All in all, it was his best paean to the middle-class values he represented and helped to make integral to the new nation’s character.

F
EBRUARY
, 1784

Information to Those Who Would Remove to America

Many persons in Europe having directly or by letters, expressed to the writer of this, who is well acquainted with North America, their desire of transporting and establishing themselves in that country; but who appear to him to have formed thro’ ignorance, mistaken ideas & expectations of what is to be obtained there; he thinks it may be useful, and prevent inconvenient, expensive & fruitless removals and voyages of improper persons, if he gives some clearer & truer notions of that part of the world than appear to have hitherto prevailed.

He finds it is imagined by numbers that the inhabitants of North America are rich, capable of rewarding, and disposed to reward all sorts of ingenuity; that they are at the same time ignorant of all the sciences; & consequently that strangers possessing talents in the belles-lettres, fine arts, &c. must be highly esteemed, and so well paid as to become easily rich themselves; that there are also abundance of profitable offices to be disposed of, which the natives are not qualified to fill; and that having few persons of family among them, strangers of birth must be greatly respected, and of course easily obtain the best of those offices, which will make all their fortunes: that the governments too, to encourage emigrations from Europe, not only pay the expense of personal transportation, but give lands gratis to strangers, with Negroes to work for them, utensils of husbandry, & stocks of cattle. These are all wild imaginations; and those who go to America with expectations founded upon them, will surely find themselves disappointed.

The truth is, that though there are in that country few people so miserable as the poor of Europe, there are also very few that in Europe would be called rich: it is rather a general happy mediocrity that prevails. There are few great proprietors of the soil, and few tenants; most people cultivate their own lands, or follow some handicraft or merchandise; very few rich enough to live idly upon their rents or incomes; or to pay the high prices given in Europe, for paintings, statues, architecture and the other works of art that are more curious than useful. Hence the natural geniuses that have arisen in America, with such talents, have uniformly quitted that country for Europe, where they can be more suitably rewarded. It is true that letters and mathematical knowledge are in esteem there, but they are at the same time more common than is apprehended; there being already existing nine colleges or universities, viz. Four in New England, and one in each of the provinces of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, all furnished with learned professors; besides a number of smaller academies: these educate many of their youth in the languages and those sciences that qualify men for the professions of divinity, law or physic. Strangers indeed are by no means excluded from exercising those professions, and the quick increase of inhabitants every where gives them a chance of employ, which they have in common with the natives. Of civil offices or employments there are few; no superfluous ones as in Europe; and it is a rule established in some of the states, that no office should be so profitable as to make it desirable…

Much less is it advisable for a person to go thither who has no other quality to recommend him but his birth. In Europe it has indeed its value, but it is a commodity that cannot be carried to a worse market than to that of America, where people do not enquire concerning a stranger,
what is he?
but
what can he do?
If he has any useful art, he is welcome; and if he exercises it and behaves well, he will be respected by all that know him; but a mere man of quality, who on that account wants to live upon the public, by some office or salary, will be despised and disregarded. The husbandman is in honor there, & even the mechanic, because their employments are useful. The people have a saying, that God almighty is himself a mechanic, the greatest in the universe; and he is respected and admired more for the variety, ingenuity and utility of his handiworks, than for the antiquity of his family. They are pleased with the observation of a Negro, and frequently mention it, that
boccarorra
(meaning the whiteman) make de blackman workee, make de horse workee, make de ox workee, make ebery ting workee; only de hog. He de hog, no workee; he eat, he drink, he walk about, he go to sleep when he please,
he libb like a gentleman.

According to these opinions of the Americans, one of them would think himself more obliged to a genealogist, who could prove for him that his ancestors & relations for ten generations had been ploughmen, smiths, carpenters, turners, weavers, tanners, or even shoemakers, & consequently that they were useful members of society; than if he could only prove that they were gentlemen, doing nothing of value, but living idly on the labor of others, mere
fruges consumere nati,
and otherwise
good
for
nothing,
till by their death, their estates like the carcass of the Negro’s gentleman-hog, come to be
cut up.

There are a number of us born merely to eat up the corn.
—Watts

With regard to encouragements for strangers from government, they are really only what are derived from good laws & liberty. Strangers are welcome because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old inhabitants are not jealous of them; the laws protect them sufficiently, so that they have no need of the patronage of great men; and every one will enjoy securely the profits of his industry. But if he does not bring a fortune with him, he must work and be industrious to live. One or two years’ residence give him all the rights of a citizen; but the government does not at present, whatever it may have done in former times, hire people to become settlers, by paying their passages, giving land, Negroes, utensils, stock, or any other kind of emolument whatsoever. In short America is the land of labor, and by no means what the English call
lubberland,
and the French
pays de cocagne,
where the streets are said to be paved with half-peck loaves, the houses tiled with pancakes, and where the fowls fly about ready roasted, crying,
come eat me!

Who then are the kind of persons to whom an emigration to America may be advantageous? And what are the advantages they may reasonably expect?

Land being cheap in that country, from the vast forests still void of inhabitants, and not likely to be occupied in an age to come, insomuch that the propriety of an hundred acres of fertile soil full of wood may be obtained near the frontiers in many places for eight or ten guineas, hearty young laboring men, who understand the husbandry of corn and cattle, which is nearly the same in that country as in Europe, may easily establish themselves there. A little money saved of the good wages they receive there while they work for others, enables them to buy the land and begin their plantation, in which they are assisted by the good will of their neighbors and some credit. Multitudes of poor people from England, Ireland, Scotland and Germany, have by this means in a few years become wealthy farmers, who in their own countries, where all the lands are fully occupied, and the wages of labor low, could never have emerged from the mean condition wherein they were born.

From the salubrity of the air, the healthiness of the climate, the plenty of good provisions, and the encouragement to early marriages, by the certainty of subsistence in cultivating the earth, the increase of inhabitants by natural generation is very rapid in America, and becomes still more so by the accession of strangers; hence there is a continual demand for more artisans of all the necessary and useful kinds, to supply those cultivators of the earth with houses, and with furniture & utensils of the grosser sorts which cannot so well be brought from Europe. Tolerably good workmen in any of those mechanic arts, are sure to find employ, and to be well paid for their work, there being no restraints preventing strangers from exercising any art they understand, nor any permission necessary. If they are poor, they begin first as servants or journeymen; and if they are sober, industrious & frugal, they soon become masters, establish themselves in business, marry, raise families, and become respectable citizens.

Also, persons of moderate fortunes and capitals, who having a number of children to provide for, are desirous of bringing them up to industry, and to secure estates for their posterity, have opportunities of doing it in America, which Europe does not afford. There they may be taught & practice profitable mechanic arts, without incurring disgrace on that account; but on the contrary acquiring respect by such abilities. There small capitals laid out in lands, which daily become more valuable by the increase of people, afford a solid prospect of ample fortunes thereafter for those children. The writer of this has known several instances of large tracts of land, bought on what was then the frontier of Pennsylvania, for ten pounds per hundred acres, which, after twenty years, when the settlements had been extended far beyond them, sold readily, without any improvement made upon them, for three pounds per acre. The acre in America is the same with the English acre or the acre of Normandy.

Those who desire to understand the state of government in America, would do well to read the Constitutions of the several states, and the Articles of Confederation that bind the whole together for general purposes under the direction of one assembly called the Congress. These Constitutions have been printed by order of Congress in America; two editions of them have also been printed in London, and a good translation of them into French has lately been published at Paris.

Several of the princes of Europe having of late years, from an opinion of advantage to arise by producing all commodities & manufactures within their own dominions, so as to diminish or render useless their importations, have endeavored to entice workmen from other countries, by high salaries, privileges, &c. Many persons pretending to be skilled in various great manufactures, imagining that America must be in want of them, and that the Congress would probably be disposed to imitate the princes above-mentioned, have proposed to go over, on condition of having their passages paid, lands given, salaries appointed, exclusive privileges for terms of years, &c. Such persons on reading the Articles of Confederation will find that the Congress have no power committed to them, or money put into their hands, for such purposes; and that if any such encouragement is given, it must be by the government of some separate state. This however has rarely been done in America; and when it has been done it has rarely succeeded, so as to establish a manufacture which the country was not yet so ripe for as to encourage private persons to set it up; labor being generally too dear there, & hands difficult to be kept together, every one desiring to be a master, and the cheapness of land inclining many to leave trades for agriculture.

Some indeed have met with success, and are carried on to advantage; but they are generally such as require only a few hands, or wherein great part of the work is performed by machines. Goods that are bulky, & of so small value as not well to bear the expense of freight, may often be made cheaper in the country than they can be imported; and the manufacture of such goods will be profitable wherever there is a sufficient demand. The farmers in America produce indeed a good deal of wool & flax; and none is exported, it is all worked up; but it is in the way of domestic manufacture for the use of the family. The buying up quantities of wool & flax with the design to employ spinners, weavers, &c and form great establishments, producing quantities of linen and woolen goods for sale, has been several times attempted in different provinces; but those projects have generally failed, goods of equal value being imported cheaper. And when the governments have been solicited to support such schemes by encouragements, in money, or by imposing duties on importation of such goods, it has been generally refused, on this principle, that if the country is ripe for the manufacture, it may be carried on by private persons to advantage; and if not, it is a folly to think of forcing nature.

Great establishments of manufacture, require great numbers of poor to do the work for small wages; these poor are to be found in Europe, but will not be found in America, till the lands are all taken up and cultivated, and the excess of people who cannot get land, want employment. The manufacture of silk, they say, is natural in France, as that of cloth in England, because each country produces in plenty the first material: but if England will have a manufacture of silk as well as that of cloth, and France one of cloth as well as that of silk, these unnatural operations must be supported by mutual prohibitions or high duties on the importation of each other’s goods, by which means the workmen are enabled to tax the home-consumer by greater prices, while the higher wages they receive makes them neither happier nor richer, since they only drink more and work less. Therefore the governments in America do nothing to encourage such projects. The people by this means are not imposed on, either by the merchant or mechanic; if the merchant demands too much profit on imported shoes, they buy of the shoemaker: and if he asks too high a price, they take them of the merchant: thus the two professions are checks on each other. The shoemaker however has on the whole a considerable profit upon his labor in America, beyond what he had in Europe, as he can add to his price a sum nearly equal to all the expenses of freight & commission, risk or insurance, &c. necessarily charged by the merchant. And the case is the same with the workmen in every other mechanic art. Hence it is that artisans generally live better and more easily in America than in Europe, and such as are good; economists make a comfortable provision for age, & for their children. Such may therefore remove with advantage to America.