The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

He could not understand why every post chaise he and Pringle rode in had a hood or canopy so pitched as to make it nearly impossible for the passengers to see out—which, in Franklin’s opinion, was the whole reason for traveling. When he tried to persuade his drivers to change the rigging, they explained that this would be impossible. The chaises were rigged for the safety and benefit of the horses; to change would kill the animals. Franklin thought this absurd and said so, to no avail. “They added other reasons that were no reasons at all, and made me, as upon a hundred other occasions, almost wish that mankind had never been endowed with a reasoning faculty, since they know so little how to make use of it and so often mislead themselves by it; and that they had been furnished with a good sensible instinct instead of it.”