We can’t know if Franklin applied his moral algebra in all situations, but the general principle of deliberate open-minded thinking seems to have dictated many of his biggest decisions. ‘All the achievements in the public’s interest ? getting a fire department organised, the streets paved, a library established, schools for the poor supported, and much more ? attest to his skill in reading others and persuading them to do what he wanted them to do’, writes the historian Robert Middlekauf.34 ‘He calculated and measured; he weighed and he assessed. There was a kind of quantification embedded in
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