The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

The entire spectacle appalled Franklin, and it called into question an objective toward which he had been working his whole political life. From the 1740s until now he had opposed Pennsylvania’s proprietary government, contending that Pennsylvanians would be better off under direct Crown rule. But England was under the rule of the Crown, and this was the sorry state to which it had fallen. He wrote one of his allies in the fight for royal rule, “I have urged over and over the necessity of the change we desire; but this country itself being at present in a situation very little better, weakens our argument that a royal government would be better managed and safer to live under than that of a proprietary.” If not proprietary rule, and not royal rule, then what? Logic—the same logic that was pushing Franklin to deny Parliament’s right to legislate for the colonies—indicated an answer. But it was an answer he was not ready to accept.