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September 9 - September 24, 2018
The governor of Pennsylvania was among the enthusiastic, and he offered Franklin what could have been a lucrative patent. “But I declined it,” Franklin noted in his autobiography. “As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.” It was a noble and sincere sentiment.
not a mathematical or theoretical scholar, but instead a clever and ingenious person who had the curiosity to perform practical experiments, plus enough mechanical talent and time to tinker with a lot of contraptions.
Electricity also energized his antic sense of fun. He created a charged metal spider that leaped around like a real one, he electrified the iron fence around his house to produce sparks that amused visitors, and he rigged a picture of King George II to produce a “high-treason” shock when someone touched his gilded crown.
Nollet, jealous, continued to denigrate his ideas
he added his opinion that learning how nature acted was more important than knowing the theoretical reasons why: “Nor is it much importance to us to know the manner in which nature executes her laws; it is enough if we know the laws themselves. It is of real use to know that china left in the air unsupported will fall and break; but how it comes to fall and why it breaks are matters of speculation. It is a pleasure indeed to know them, but we can preserve our china without it.”
very practical
Franklin would soon apply his scientific style of reasoning—experimental, pragmatic—not only to nature but also to public affairs. These political pursuits would be enhanced by the fame he had gained as a scientist. The scientist and statesman would henceforth be interwoven, each strand reinforcing the other, until it could be said of him, in the two-part epigram that the French statesman Turgot composed, “He snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants.”
The focus, as to be expected from Franklin, would be on practical instruction, such as writing, arithmetic, accounting, oratory, history, and business skills, with “regard being had to the several professions for which they are intended.” Earthly virtues should be instilled; students would live “plainly, temperately and frugally” and be “frequently exercised in running, leaping, wrestling and swimming.”
Raising money was difficult, so he concocted a clever scheme: he got the Assembly to agree that, if £2,000 could be raised privately, it would be matched by £2,000 from the public purse. The plan, Franklin recalled, gave people “an additional motive to give, since every man’s donation would be doubled.”
a ruminative letter on human nature
“Whenever we attempt to mend the scheme of providence,” Franklin wrote, “we had need be very circumspect lest we do more harm than good.”
Instead, even as a retired would-be gentleman, he continued in his writings and letters to extol the diligence of the middling class of tradesmen, shopkeepers, and leather-aprons. Out of this arose a vision of America as a nation where people, whatever their birth or social class, could rise (as he did) to wealth and status based on their willingness to be industrious and cultivate their virtues. In this regard, his ideal was more egalitarian and democratic than even Thomas Jefferson’s view of a “natural aristocracy,” which sought to pluck selected men with promising “virtues and talents” and
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Franklin’s own idea was more expansive: he believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and ambition.
he predicted (also correctly) that what would restrain America’s population growth in the future was likely to be wealth rather than poverty, because richer people tended to be more “cautious” about getting married and having children.
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 quintessence of these was his effort to sweep, pave, and light the city streets. The endeavor began when he became bothered by the dust in front of his house, which faced the farmers’ market. So he found “a poor industrious man” who was willing to sweep the block for a monthly fee and then wrote a paper that described all the benefits of hiring him. Houses on the block would remain cleaner, he noted, and shops would attract more customers. He sent the paper around to his neighbors, who all agreed to contribute a portion of the street sweeper’s pay each month. The beauty of the scheme was
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With his love of science and detail, Franklin even worked on a design for the lamps. The globes imported from London, he noticed, did not have a vent on the bottom to allow air in, which meant the smoke collected and darkened the glass. Franklin invented a new model with vents and a chimney, so that the lamp remained clean and bright. He also designed the style of lamp, common today, that had four flat panes of glass rather than one globe, making it easier to repair if broken.
“Some may think these trifling matters not worth minding,” Franklin said, but they should remember that “human felicity is produced . . . by little advantages that occur every day.”
step by step!
Franklin wrote an editorial in the Gazette. He blamed the French success “on the present disunited state of the British colonies.” Next to the article he printed the first and most famous editorial cartoon in American history: a snake cut into pieces, labeled with names of the colonies, with the caption: “Join, or Die.”
Caty’s letters to him were filled with ardor.
a set of surviving letters that are filled with nothing more than tantalizing flirtations.
A romance? Yes, but a romance in the Franklinian manner, somewhat risqué, somewhat avuncular, taking a bold step forward and an ironic step backward, implying that he is tempted as a man but respectful as a friend. Of all shades of feeling, this one, the one the French call amitié amoureuse—a little beyond the platonic but short of the grand passion—is perhaps the most exquisite.
Franklin only occasionally forged intimate bonds with his male friends, who tended to be either intellectual companions or jovial club colleagues. But he relished being with women, and he formed deep and lasting relationships with many. For him, such relationships were not a sport or trifling amusement, despite how they might appear, but a pleasure to be savored and respected.
after his dalliance with Caty Ray,
the fissures were deepening.
respite,
Deborah was generally sanguine about the women in Franklin’s life.
Deborah’s letters to him would become more bereft
staying ensconced in her comfortable home
Franklin assiduously courted him
PERIPATETIC
tractable,
Always invigorated by travel and the pursuit of diverse interests,
invigorated by travel
a publishing magnate
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 the medical doctor John Fothergill, a Quaker friend living in London, Franklin wrote, “Do you please yourself with the fancy that you are doing good? You are mistaken. Half the lives you save are not worth saving, as being useless; and almost the other half ought not to be saved, as being mischievous.”
were leery of a new charter that might remove some of the religious liberties that
Norris, unwilling to be caught in the crossfire, feigned sickness and resigned as Assembly speaker in May.
Franklin also faced a more vitriolic older opponent:
today’s press is slammed for being scurrilous.
a quixotic quest to simplify English spelling.
copious quantities of “libations” were drunk to his health.
ever the homebound stalwart, she refused to flee.
his reputation as a defender of colonial rights in tatters because of his equivocation over the Stamp Act,
Franklin was cogent and calm.
Famed in Britain as a writer and scientist, he was now widely recognized as America’s most effective spokesman. He also became, in effect, the ambassador for America in general;
part of his retinue.
In his family life, as in the rest of his personal life, Franklin clearly did not look for deep commitments. He did, however, have a need for domestic comfort and intellectual stimulation.
sounds familiar
