Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
America was notably happy and contented in comparison with Europe, and
America would remain happy and contented, he believed, so long as land
was abundant and her farmers remained freeholders. The new middle-class
gospel of industrialism he profoundly distrusted. He shared Goldsmith’s
concern over the destruction of the English peasantry and the creation
of a degraded proletariat. Manufacture and trade developed only
where free land was inadequate or the peasants were dispossessed;
industrialism sprang from the national poverty and was nourished by it.
Writing in 1760 he said:
Unprejudiced men well know, that all the penal and prohibitory
laws that were ever thought on will not be sufficient to prevent
manufactures in a country, whose inhabitants surpass the number
that can subsist by the husbandry of it.... Manufactures are
founded in poverty. It is the number of poor without land in a
country, and who must work for others at low wages or starve, that
enables undertakers to carry on a manufacture, and afford it cheap
enough to prevent the importation of the same kind from abroad, and
to bear the expense of its own exportation. But no man, who can
have a piece of land of his own, sufficient by his labor to subsist
his family in plenty, is poor enough to be a manufacturer, and work
for a master. Hence while there is land enough in America for our
people, there can never be manufactures to any amount or value.[182]
Nine years later, in his _Positions to be Examined, concerning National
Wealth_, he stated the Physiocratic theory thus:
There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The
first is by _war_, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered
neighbors. This is _robbery_. The second by _commerce_, which is
generally _cheating_. The third by _agriculture_, the only _honest
way_, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into
the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of
God in his favor.[183]
Franklin’s prejudice against trade somewhat lessened in after years,
as he considered the economic need of free exchange of commodities.
In 1774, two years before the publication of _The Wealth of Nations_,
he collaborated with George Whately in writing a pamphlet entitled
_Principles of Trade_, that suggests Adam Smith. Franklin was
acquainted with Smith, had visited him, and doubtless had discussed
with him the theory of _laissez faire_, division of labor, use of
machinery, and other principles of the new school, but no mention of
him is made.[184] The central doctrine is thus elaborated:
Perhaps, in general, it would be better if government meddled no
farther with trade, than to protect it, and let it take its course.
Most of the statutes, or acts, edicts, _arrêts_, and placarts
of parliaments, princes, and states, for regulating, directing,
or restraining of trade, have, we think, been either political
blunders, or jobs obtained by artful men for private advantage,
under pretense of public good. When Colbert assembled some wise
old merchants of France, and desired their advice and opinion,
how he could best serve and promote commerce, their answer, after
consultation, was, in three words only, _Laissez-nous faire_: “Let
us alone.” It is said by a very solid writer of the same nation,
that he is well advanced in the science of politics, who knows the
full force of that maxim, _Pas trop gouverner_: “Not to govern too
much.” Which, perhaps, would be of more use when applied to trade,
than in any other public concern. It were therefore to be wished,
that commerce was as free between all the nations of the world, as
it is between the several counties of England; so would all, by
mutual communication, obtain more enjoyments. Those counties do not
ruin one another by trade; neither would the nations. No nation was
ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous.[185]
As a colonial, long familiar with the injustice of Navigation Laws,
Boards of Trade, and other restrictions in favor of British tradesmen,
Franklin agreed with Adam Smith on the principle of free trade; but
with later developments of the _laissez-faire_ school--its fetish of
the economic man and its iron law of wages--he would not have agreed.
Plugson of Undershot was no hero of his, and the social system which
Plugson was creating would have seemed to him as vicious as the old
system with its “bad, wasteful, plundering governments, and their mad
destructive wars.” In his later speculations he was rather the social
philosopher than the economist, puzzled at the irrationality of society
that chooses to make a pigsty of the world, instead of the garden
that it might be if men would but use the sense that God has given
them. “The happiness of individuals is evidently the ultimate end of
political society,”[186] he believed, and a starvation wage-system was
the surest way of destroying that happiness.[187] In one of the most
delightful letters that he ever wrote, Franklin commented on the ways
of men thus:
It is wonderful how preposterously the affairs of this world are
managed. Naturally one would imagine, that the interests of a few
individuals should give way to general interest; but individuals
manage their affairs with so much more application, industry, and
address, than the public do theirs, that general interest most
commonly gives way to particular. We assemble parliaments and
councils, to have the benefit of their collected wisdom; but we
necessarily have, at the same time, the inconvenience of their
collected passions, prejudices, and private interests. By the
help of these, artful men overpower their wisdom and dupe its
possessors; and if we may judge by the acts, _arrêts_, and edicts,
all the world over, for regulating commerce, an assembly of great
men is the greatest fool upon earth?...
What occasions then so much want and misery? It is the employment
of men and women in works, that produce neither the necessaries
nor conveniences of life, who, with those who do nothing, consume
necessaries raised by the laborious.... Look round the world, and
see the millions employed in doing nothing, or in something that
amounts to nothing, when the necessaries and conveniences of life
are in question. What is the bulk of commerce, for which we fight
and destroy each other, but the toil of millions for superfluities,
to the great hazard and loss of many lives?... It has been computed
by some political arithmetician, that, if every man and woman would
work for four hours each day on something useful, that labor would
produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of
life, want and misery would be banished out of the world, and the
rest of the twenty-four hours might be leisure and happiness.[188]
But the immediate problem of Franklin as representative of the colonies
at St. James’s, was political--how to reconcile the antagonistic
ambitions of the sundered bodies of Englishmen; and the solution which
he set forth with admirable clearness, bears the impress of a mind
intent upon the reality behind parchment pretense. While lawyers were
befogging the issue with legal quibble, and politicians were proving
the unconstitutionality of the forces stirring in eighteenth-century
America, Franklin was more concerned with adjusting imperial policy to
existing fact. On one side were the colonies, in which the practice of
local self-government had taken deep root; whether the practice was
sanctioned by their charters or the British constitution was beside the
question. On the other side was the British parliament, serving as a
legislative body for its proper constituency, the people of the British
Isles. Over both colonies and parliament, providing an effective but
ungalling tie to bind the parts together, was the King, to whom both
paid willing allegiance. So long as England was content to maintain the
_status quo_, the colonies, Franklin believed, would remain loyal to
the empire; but if the ministry persisted in its program of extending
parliamentary sovereignty over the colonies, the outcome must be one of
two things, federation or separation.
To the principle of federation Franklin was an early and faithful
friend. The conception of a federal union of the several colonies was
slowly spreading in America, and no other colonial had done so much
to further it; in his well-known Plan of Union he had sketched the
outlines of a federal constitution; what was more natural, therefore,
than for him to think in terms of a Federated British Empire, as a
statesmanlike solution of the present perplexities. The plan involved
two problems: first, an inquiry into the nature and constitution
of an imperial parliament, and second, provision for an equitable
representation of the several divisions of the empire. The present
difficulties had arisen out of the ambition of the British parliament
to assume sovereignty over the colonial legislatures, thereby reducing
them to a dependent status; those difficulties would be settled only
by constitutional recognition of local rights and local sovereignties.
“The British state,” he argued, “is only the Island of Great Britain,”
and if by reason of familiarity with local needs, “the British
legislature” is “the only proper judge of what concerns the welfare of
that state,” why does the principle not hold for the several colonial
legislatures?
Here appears the excellency of the invention of colony government,
by separate, independent legislatures. By this means, the remotest
parts of a great empire may be as well governed as the centre;
misrule, oppressions of proconsuls, and discontents and rebellions
thence arising, prevented. By this means, the power of a king
may be extended without inconvenience over territories of any
dimensions, how great soever. America was thus happily governed in
all its different and remote settlements, by the crown and their
own Assemblies, till the new politics took place, of governing it
by one Parliament, which have not succeeded and never will.[189]
In this dream of a British Empire Franklin was far in advance of
his time. On both sides of the ocean selfish and unimaginative men
stood ready to thwart all such proposals; little Englanders and
little colonials in vast numbers were concerned with more immediate
and personal interests than those of the English race. Nevertheless
Franklin was convinced that the gods, if not the Tories, were on the
side of the colonies. The enormous increase in material strength that
the years were swiftly bringing to America was an augury of good hope;
the legitimate demands of America would be granted when America had
grown too strong to be denied, which must be shortly. In the meantime
it was the duty of Englishmen, British and colonial alike, to endeavor
“with unfeigned and unwearying zeal to preserve from breaking that
fine and noble China vase, the British empire.” It was the traditional
policy of “protract and grow strong”--a wise and sane policy--and
Franklin clung to it until he was convinced of its utter futility.
One other choice remained--separation; and he made that choice sadly,
understanding better than most what it involved.
The years which followed were filled to the brim for Franklin as well
as for America. Ideals changed and principles clarified swiftly;
but his social philosophy was founded on too wide and sobering an
experience with men and governments, to sway with every gusty passion
of the times. He had been a democrat from his youth up and in those
critical first days of independence, when the forces of agrarianism
were taking possession of state governments, he threw in his lot