The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Franklin was as outraged as Hall (they certainly discussed the issue), yet he articulated his outrage with a lighter touch and sharper pen. Writing anonymously, Franklin asserted in all apparent seriousness that every argument adduced for sending convicts to the colonies argued equally for sending rattlesnakes from Pennsylvania to England. These serpents—“felons-convict from the beginning of the world”—were a hazard to public safety, to be sure, but this might be simply due to an unfavorable environment (as was said of the transported convicts). “However mischievous those creatures are with us, they may possibly change their natures if they were to change the climate.” To test this hypothesis, Franklin proposed that a bounty be awarded to any enterprising person who collected rattlesnakes—he suggested the spring, when, heavy and sluggish, they emerged from their winter quarters and might easily be captured—and transported them to Britain. “There I would propose to have them carefully distributed in St. James’s Park, in the Spring Gardens and other places of pleasure about London; in the gardens of all the nobility and gentry throughout the nation; but particularly in the gardens of the Prime Ministers, the Lords of Trade and Members of Parliament; for to them we are most particularly obliged [for the transport of felons to America].” The upper classes as a whole would benefit from proximity to Pennsylvania’s slithering class. “May not the honest rough British gentry, by a ...