The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

The essential issue was not the cost in money of supporting the executive but the cost in liberty of introducing money so directly into politics. “There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh: get first all the people’s money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants forever.” Franklin anticipated the obvious objection to this statement: that no one was proposing a king for America. (Alexander Hamilton would get around to that later.) “I know it. But there is a natural inclination in mankind to kingly government. It sometimes relieves them from aristocratic domination. They had rather have one tyrant than five hundred. It gives more of the appearance of equality among citizens, and that they like. I am apprehensive, therefore—perhaps too apprehensive—that the government of these states may in future times end in a monarchy. But this catastrophe I think may be long delayed if in our proposed system we do not sow the seeds of contention, faction and tumult by making our posts of honour, places of profit.”