Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
_Lucian._ In the heat of the day I saw the very same sheep tearing off
each other's fleeces with long teeth and longer claws, and imitating
so admirably the howl of wolves, that at last the wolves came down on
them in a body, and lent their best assistance at the general
devouring. What is more remarkable, the people of the villages seemed
to enjoy the sport; and, instead of attacking the wolves, waited until
they had filled their stomachs, ate the little that was left, said
piously and from the bottom of their hearts what you call _grace_, and
went home singing and piping.
BISHOP SHIPLEY AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
_Shipley._ There are very few men, even in the bushes and the
wilderness, who delight in the commission of cruelty; but nearly all,
throughout the earth, are censurable for the admission. When we see a
blow struck, we go on and think no more about it: yet every blow aimed
at the most distant of our fellow-creatures, is sure to come back,
some time or other, to our families and descendants. He who lights a
fire in one quarter is ignorant to what other the winds may carry it,
and whether what is kindled in the wood may not break out again in the
cornfield.
_Franklin._ If we could restrain but one generation from deeds of
violence, the foundation for a new and a more graceful edifice of
society would not only have been laid, but would have been
consolidated.
_Shipley._ We already are horrified at the bare mention of religious
wars; we should then be horrified at the mention of political. Why
should they who, when they are affronted or offended, abstain from
inflicting blows, some from a sense of decorousness and others from a
sense of religion, be forward to instigate the infliction of ten
thousand, all irremediable, all murderous? Every chief magistrate
should be arbitrator and umpire in all differences between any two,
forbidding war. Much would be added to the dignity of the most
powerful king by rendering him an efficient member of such a grand
Amphictyonic council. Unhappily they are persuaded in childhood that a
reign is made glorious by a successful war. What schoolmaster ever
taught a boy to question it? or indeed any point of political
morality, or any incredible thing in history? Caesar and Alexander are
uniformly clement: Themistocles died by a draught of bull's blood:
Portia by swallowing red-hot pieces of charcoal.
_Franklin._ Certainly no woman or man could perform either of these
feats. In my opinion it lies beyond a doubt that Portia suffocated
herself by the fumes of charcoal; and that the Athenian, whose stomach
must have been formed on the model of other stomachs, and must
therefore have rejected a much less quantity of blood than would have
poisoned him, died by some chemical preparation, of which a bull's
blood might, or might not, have been part. Schoolmasters who thus
betray their trust, ought to be scourged by their scholars, like him
of their profession who underwent the just indignation of the Roman
Consul. You shut up those who are infected with the plague; why do you
lay no coercion on those who are incurably possessed by the legion
devil of carnage? When a creature is of intellect so perverted that he
can discern no difference between a review and a battle, between the
animating bugle and the dying groan, it were expedient to remove him,
as quietly as may be, from his devastation of God's earth and his
usurpation of God's authority. Compassion points out the cell for him
at the bottom of the hospital, and listens to hear the key turned in
the ward: until then the house is insecure.
_Shipley._ God grant our rulers wisdom, and our brethren peace!
_Franklin._ Here are but indifferent specimens and tokens. Those
fellows throw stones pretty well: if they practise much longer, they
will hit us: let me entreat you, my lord, to leave me here. So long as
the good people were contented with hooting and shouting at us, no
great harm was either done or apprehended: but now they are beginning
to throw stones, perhaps they may prove themselves more dexterous in
action than their rulers have done latterly in council.
_Shipley._ Take care, Doctor Franklin! _That_ was very near being the
philosopher's stone.
_Franklin._ Let me pick it up, then, and send it to London by the
diligence. But I am afraid your ministers, and the nation at large,
are as little in the way of wealth as of wisdom, in the experiment
they are making.
_Shipley._ While I was attending to you, William had started. Look! he
has reached them: they are listening to him. Believe me, he has all
the courage of an Englishman and of a Christian; and, if the stoutest
of them force him to throw off his new black coat, the blusterer would
soon think it better to have listened to less polemical doctrine.
_Franklin._ Meantime a few of the town boys are come nearer, and begin
to grow troublesome. I am sorry to requite your hospitality with such
hard fare.
_Shipley._ True, these young bakers make their bread very gritty, but
we must partake of it together so long as you are with us.
_Franklin._ Be pleased, my lord, to give us grace; our repast is over;
this is my boat.
_Shipley._ We will accompany you as far as to the ship. Thank God! we
are now upon the water, and all safe. Give me your hand, my good
Doctor Franklin! and although you have failed in the object of your
mission, yet the intention will authorize me to say, in the holy words
of our Divine Redeemer, Blessed are the peacemakers!
_Franklin._ My dear lord! if God ever blessed a man at the
intercession of another, I may reasonably and confidently hope in such
a benediction. Never did one arise from a warmer, a tenderer, or a
purer heart.
_Shipley._ Infatuation! that England should sacrifice to her king so
many thousands of her bravest men, and ruin so many thousands of her
most industrious, in a vain attempt to destroy the very principles on
which her strength and her glory are founded! The weakest prince that
ever sat upon a throne, and the most needy and sordid Parliament that
ever pandered to distempered power, are thrusting our blindfold nation
from the pinnacle of prosperity.
_Franklin._ I believe _your_ king (from this moment it is permitted me
to call him _ours_ no longer) to be as honest and as wise a man as any
of those about him: but unhappily he can see no difference between a
review and a battle. Such are the optics of most kings and rulers. His
Parliament, in both Houses, acts upon calculation. There is hardly a
family, in either, that does not anticipate the clear profit of
several thousands a year, to itself and its connexions. Appointments
to regiments and frigates raise the price of papers; and forfeited
estates fly confusedly about, and darken the air from the Thames to
the Atlantic.
_Shipley._ It is lamentable to think that war, bringing with it every
species of human misery, should become a commercial speculation. Bad
enough when it arises from revenge; another word for honour.
_Franklin._ A strange one indeed! but not more strange than fifty
others that come under the same title. Wherever there is nothing of
religion, nothing of reason, nothing of truth, we come at once to
honour; and here we draw the sword, dispense with what little of
civilization we ever pretended to, and murder or get murdered, as may
happen. But these ceremonials both begin and end with an appeal to
God, who, before we appealed to Him, plainly told us we should do no
such thing, and that He would punish us most severely if we did. And
yet, my lord, even the gentlemen upon your bench turn a deaf ear to
Him on these occasions: nay, they go further; they pray to Him for
success in that which He has forbidden so strictly, and when they have
broken His commandment, thank Him. Upon seeing these mockeries and
impieties age after age repeated, I have asked myself whether the
depositaries and expounders of religion have really any whatever of
their own; or rather, like the lawyers, whether they do not defend
professionally a cause that otherwise does not interest them in the
least. Surely, if these holy men really believed in a just retributive
God, they would never dare to utter the word _war_, without horror and
deprecation.
_Shipley._ Let us attribute to infirmity what we must else attribute
to wickedness.
_Franklin._ Willingly would I: but children are whipped severely for
inobservance of things less evident, for disobedience of commands less
audible and less awful. I am loath to attribute cruelty to your order:
men so entirely at their ease have seldom any. Certain I am that
several of the bishops would not have patted Cain upon the back while
he was about to kill Abel; and my wonder is that the very same holy
men encourage their brothers in England to kill their brothers in
America; not one, not two nor three, but thousands, many thousands.
_Shipley._ I am grieved at the blindness with which God has afflicted
us for our sins. These unhappy men are little aware what combustibles
they are storing under the Church, and how soon they may explode. Even
the wisest do not reflect on the most important and the most certain
of things; which is, that every act of inhumanity and injustice goes
far beyond what is apparent at the time of its commission; that these,
and all other things, have their consequences; and that the
consequences are infinite and eternal. If this one truth alone could
be deeply impressed upon the hearts of men, it would regenerate the
whole human race.
_Franklin._ In regard to politics, I am not quite certain whether a
politician may not be too far-sighted: but I am quite certain that, if
it be a fault, it is one into which few have fallen. The policy of the
Romans in the time of the republic, seems to have been prospective.
Some of the Dutch also, and of the Venetians, used the telescope. But
in monarchies the prince, not the people, is consulted by the minister
of the day; and what pleases the weakest supersedes what is approved
by the wisest.
_Shipley._ We have had great statesmen: Burleigh, Cromwell,
Marlborough, Somers: and whatever may have been in the eyes of a
moralist the vices of Walpole, none ever understood more perfectly, or
pursued more steadily, the direct and palpable interests of the
country. Since his administration, our affairs have never been managed
by men of business; and it was more than could have been expected
that, in our war against the French in Canada, the appointment fell on
an able commander.
_Franklin._ Such an anomaly is unlikely to recur. You have in the
English Parliament (I speak of both Houses) only two great men; only
two considerate and clear-sighted politicians; Chatham and Burke.
Three or four can say clever things; several have sonorous voices;
many vibrate sharp comminations from the embrasures of portentously
slit sleeves; and there are those to be found who deliver their
oracles out of wigs as worshipful as the curls of Jupiter, however
they may be grumbled at by the flour-mills they have laid under such
heavy contribution; yet nearly all of all parties want alike the
sagacity to discover that in striking America you shake Europe; that
kings will come out of the war either to be victims or to be despots;
and that within a quarter of a century they will be hunted down like
vermin by the most servile nations, or slain in their palaces by their
own courtiers. In a peace of twenty years you might have paid off the
greater part of your National Debt, indeed as much of it as it would
be expedient to discharge, and you would have left your old enemy
France labouring and writhing under the intolerable and increasing
weight of hers. This is the only way in which you can ever quite
subdue her; and in this you subdue her without a blow, without a