The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Some warned that without the French threat from Canada, the North Americans would become dangerously independent-minded. Franklin did not deny that Americans thought on their own. Such was no more than their heritage as Englishmen. But he dismissed any notion that they might become dangerous to Britain. Indeed, it was the colonies’ very independent-mindedness that would prevent danger to London; the danger was entirely to themselves. “Their jealousy of each other is so great that however necessary an union of the colonies has long been, for their common defence and security against their enemies, and how sensible soever each colony has been of that necessity, yet they have never been able to effect such an union among themselves, nor even to agree in requesting the mother country to establish it for them.” If the American colonies could not combine against a universally acknowledged foe, still less could they combine against their mother country. “An union amongst them for such a purpose is not merely improbable, it is impossible.”