Wiliam Bruce - Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2)

This prudential view of morality also found utterance in other forms in the writings of Franklin. In the first of the two graceful dialogues between Philocles, the Man of Reason and Virtue, and Horatio, the Man of Pleasure, which appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette , the former warns the latter in honeyed words that he would lose even as a man of pleasure, if, in the pursuit of pleasure, he did not practice self-denial, by taking as much care of his future as his present happiness, and not building one upon the ruins of the other; all of which, of course, was more epigrammatically embodied in that other injunction of Poor Richard, "Deny self for self's sake." No wonder that Horatio was so delighted with a theory of self-denial, which left him still such a comfortable margin for sensual enjoyment, that, when Philocles bids him good night, he replies: "Adieu! thou enchanting Reasoner!"

"Money makes men virtuous, Virtue makes them happy"; this is perhaps an unfair way of summarizing Franklin's moral precepts, but it is not remote from fairness. "Truth and Sincerity," he had written in his Journal of a Voyage from London to Philadelphia , when he was but twenty years of age, "have a certain distinguishing native lustre about them, which cannot be perfectly counterfeited; they are like fire and flame, that cannot be painted." It would have been well for the moralist of later years to have remembered this statement when he made up his mind to contract the habit of moral perfection. His Milton, from which he borrowed the Hymn to the Creator that is a part of his Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion , might have told him,

or in those other words from the same strains of supernal melody,

In teaching and pursuing a system of morals, which was nothing but a scheme of enlightened selfishness, dependent for its aliment upon pecuniary ease and habit, he was simply faithful to a general conception of life and character entirely too earthbound and grovelling to satisfy those higher intuitions and ideals which, be the hard laws of our material being what they may, not only never permit our grosser natures to be at peace, but reject with utter disdain the suggestion that they and our vices and infirmities are but offshoots of the same parent stock of selfishness. It cannot be denied that, as a general rule, a man with some money is less urgently solicited to commit certain breaches of the moral law than a man with none, or that we should be in a bad way, indeed, if we did not have the ply of habit as well as the whisper of conscience to assist us in the struggle between good and evil that is ever going on in our own breasts. But the limited freedom from temptation, secured by the possession of money, and the additional capacity for resisting temptation, bred by good habits, are, it is hardly necessary to say, foundations too frail to support alone the moral order of the universe. Beyond money, however conducive it may be in some respects to diminished temptation, there must be something to sweeten the corrupting influence of money. Beyond good habits, however desirable as aids to virtue, there must be something to create and sustain good habits. This thing no merely politic sense of moral necessity can ever be. Franklin's idea of supplying our languid moral energies with a system of moral practice as material as a go-cart or a swimming bladder is one, it is safe to say, upon which neither he nor anyone else could build a character that would, as Charles Townsend might have said, be anything but "a habit of lute string – a mere thing for summer wear." His Art of Virtue was a spurious, pinchbeck, shoddy substitute for the real virtue which has its home in our uninstructed as well as our instructed moral impulses; and for one man, who would be made virtuous by it, ten, we dare say, would be likely to be made shallow formalists or canting scamps. It is a pity that Poor Richard did not make more of that other time-honored maxim, "Virtue is its own reward."

Indeed, we shrewdly suspect that even Franklin's idea that he was such a debtor to his factitious system of moral practice was not much better than a conceit. The improvement in his moral character, after he first began to carry the virtues around in his pocket, is, we think, far more likely to have been due to the natural decline of youthful waywardness and dissent, the discipline of steady labor, the settling and sober effects of domestic life and the wider vision in every respect in our relations to the world which comes to us with our older years. It is but just to Franklin to say that, even before he adopted his "little artifice," his character as respects the virtues, which he specifically names as having had a hand in producing the constant felicity of his life, namely, Temperance, Industry, Frugality, Sincerity and Justice was, so far as Temperance, Industry and Frugality were concerned, exceptionally good, and, so far as Sincerity and Justice were concerned, not subject to any ineffaceable reproach. In truth, even he, we imagine, would have admitted with a laugh, accompanied perhaps by a humorous story, that the period of his life, before his dream of moral perfection was formed, when he was so temperate as to be known to his fellow printers in London as the "Water American," and to be able to turn from the common diet to the vegetarian, and back again, without the slightest inconvenience, would compare quite favorably with the period of his life, after his dream of moral perfection had been formed, when he had to confess on one occasion to Polly Stevenson that he had drunk more at a venison feast than became a philosopher, and on another to his friend, John Bartram that, if he could find in any Italian travels a recipe for making Parmesan cheese, it would give him more satisfaction than a transcript of any inscription from any old stone whatever. How far the effect of his moral regimen was to strengthen the virtues of Silence, Resolution, Moderation, Cleanliness and Tranquillity we lack sufficient materials for a judgment. These, assuming that Cleanliness must have gone along with such an eager propensity for swimming as his, were all native virtues of his anyhow we should say. But as to Chastity the invigorating quality of the regimen is certainly open to the most serious doubt. There is only too much in the correspondence which has survived him to give color to the statement of John Adams that even at the age of seventy-odd he had neither lost his love of beauty nor his taste for it. When we bear this in mind and recall what he had to say in the Autobiography about the "hard-to-be-governed passion of youth," which frequently hurried him into intrigues with low women that fell in his way before he resolved to acquire the habit of chastity with the aid of his book, we realize that the artificial scaffolding, which he proposed to build up around his character, reasonably enough broke down at just the point where the natural vigor of his character was the weakest.

In point of sexual morality, Franklin was no better than the Europe of the eighteenth century; distinctly worse than the America of that century. His domestic affections were uncommonly strong, but the notable peculiarity about his domestic life is that he was not a whit less soberly dutiful in his irregular than in his regular family connections, and always acted as if the nuptial ceremony was a wholly superfluous form, so far as a proper sense of marital or paternal obligation, or the existence of deep, unreserved affection, upon the part of a husband or father, went. His lack of scruples in this respect almost reminds us of the question put by his own Polly Baker, when she was prosecuted the fifth time for giving birth to a bastard: "Can it be a crime (in the nature of things, I mean) to add to the king's subjects, in a new country, that really wants people?" Apparently no ceremony of any kind ever preceded his union with Deborah, though accompanied by circumstances of cohabitation and acknowledgment which unquestionably rendered it a valid, binding marriage, in every respect, under the liberal laws of Pennsylvania. He simply remarks in the Autobiography , "I took her to wife, September 1, 1730." The artlessness with which he extended the full measure of a father's recognition to William Franklin excited comment abroad as well as at home, and, together with the political wounds inflicted by him upon the official arrogance and social pride of the Proprietary Party in Pennsylvania, was mainly responsible for the opprobrium in which his memory was held in the higher social circles of Philadelphia long after his death. So far as we know, there is nothing in his utterances or writings to indicate that the birth of William Franklin ever caused him the slightest shame or embarrassment. His dignity of character, in its way, it has been truly said by Sydney George Fisher, was as natural and instinctive as that of Washington, and, in its relations to illegitimacy, for which he was answerable, seems to have felt the lack of conventional support as little as our first parents, in their pristine state, did the lack of fig leaves. He accepted his natural son and William Temple Franklin, William's natural son, exactly as if both had come recommended to his outspoken affection by betrothal, honest wedding ring and all. The idea that any stigma attached to either, or that they stood upon any different footing from his legitimate daughter, Sarah Bache and her children, was something that his mind does not appear to have harbored at all. His attitude towards them was as unblushingly natural and demonstrative, to get back to the Garden of Eden, as the mutual caresses of Adam and Eve before the Fall of Man. William was born a few months after the marriage of Franklin and Deborah, and his father, so far as we can see, took him under his roof with as little constraint as if his introduction had been duly provided for in the marriage contract. Indeed, John Bigelow, who is always disposed, in the spirit of Franklin's own limping lines on Deborah, to deem all his Joan's faults "exceedingly small," rather ludicrously observes: "William may therefore be said to have been born in wedlock, though he was not reputed to be the son of Mrs. Franklin." So identified did he become with all the other members of Franklin's household that Franklin in his letters not only frequently conveyed "Billy's" duty to his "mother" and "Billy's" love to his "sister" but on one occasion at least even "Billy's" duty to his "grandmother," Mrs. Read, the mother of Mrs. Franklin. As the boy outgrew his pony, of which we obtain a pleasant glimpse in a "lost" notice in the Pennsylvania Gazette , we find Franklin in a letter to his own mother, Abiah Franklin, in which he couples the name of "Billy" in the most natural way with that of his daughter Sally, saying: "Will is now nineteen years of age, a tall proper Youth, and much of a Beau." It was with William Franklin, when Governor of New Jersey, that Sally took refuge at the time that her father's house in Philadelphia was threatened with destruction by a Stamp Act mob; and it was to him shortly afterwards, when the tide of popular approval was again running in favor of Franklin, then the agent of Pennsylvania at London, that she dispatched these joyful words: "Dear Brother: — The Old Ticket forever! We have it by 34 votes! God bless our worthy and noble agent, and all his family! " Through the influence of his father the son obtained a provincial commission which brought him some military experience, and also filled the office of Postmaster at Philadelphia, and afterwards the office of Clerk of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. He was with Franklin when the latter sent his kite on its memorable flight into the skies; when he visited Braddock's camp; and when he conducted his military expedition against the murderous Indians. When Franklin sailed for England in 1757, William accompanied him with the view of obtaining a license from the Inns of Court, in which he had already been entered by the former, to practice as a barrister. Abroad, he still remained his father's inseparable companion, living with him, accompanying him in his travelling excursions, attending him, when he was so signally honored at Cambridge and Oxford, even poring with him over the parish records and gravestones at Ecton from which Franklin sought to rescue such information as he could about his humble ancestors, who could not have excited his curiosity more keenly, if they had all been Princes of the Blood. What the two learned at Ecton of the abilities and public spirit of Thomas, an uncle of Franklin, and a man of no little local prominence, suggested such a close resemblance between the uncle and nephew that William Franklin remarked: "Had he died on the same day, one might have supposed a transmigration." Alexander Carlyle in his Autobiography has something to say about an occasion at Doctor Robertson's house in Edinburgh when the pair as well as Hume, Dr. Cullen, Adam Smith and others were present. The son, Carlyle tells us, "was open and communicative, and pleased the company better than his father; and some of us observed indications of that decided difference of opinion between father and son which in the American War alienated them altogether." The favorable impression made by William Franklin on this company at this period of his life, he also made on William Strahan, of whom we shall have much more to say. "Your son," Strahan wrote to Franklin's wife, "I really think one of the prettiest young gentlemen I ever knew from America." Indeed, even in extreme old age the handsome presence, courtly manners and quick intelligence of William Franklin won their way at any social gathering. Speaking of an occasion on which he had met him, Crabbe Robinson says in his Diary , "Old General Franklin, son of the celebrated Benjamin was of the party. He is eighty-four years of age, has a courtier-like mien, and must have been a very fine man. He is now very animated and interesting, but does not at all answer to the idea one would naturally form of the son of the great Franklin." 3 3 In a paper on William Franklin, read before the New Jersey Historical Society on Sept. 27, 1848, William A. Whitehead sketches him in this manner: "He was of a cheerful, facetious disposition; could narrate well entertaining stories to please his friends; was engaging in his manners, and possessed good conversational powers. He lived in the recollection of those who saw him in New Jersey as a man of strong passions, fond of convivial pleasures, well versed in the ways of the world, and, at one period of his life not a stranger to the gallantries which so frequently marred the character of the man of that age. He was above the common size, remarkably handsome, strong and athletic, though subject to gout towards the close of his life." His writings, Whitehead thought, though perhaps less remarkable than might be expected from his advantages of education and association, gave evidence of literary attainments which compared favorably with those of most of the prominent men of that day in the Colonies. If The Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania from its Origin is one of them, as has been supposed, we can only say that it at least hardly deserves such praise. The unassimilated material scattered through its pages reminds us of nothing so much as feather pellets and fragments of bone that have passed unchanged through the gastric tract of a hawk. A few days after the departure of Franklin from England in August, 1762, the son was married to Miss Elizabeth Downes, of St. James Street, "a very agreeable West India lady," if her father-in-law may be believed. Before the marriage took place, he had been appointed, in the thirty-second year of his age, Governor of New Jersey. If the appointment was made, as has been supposed, to detach Franklin from the Colonial cause, it failed, of course, to produce any such result, but it did have the effect of completely bringing over William Franklin to the Loyalist side, when the storm finally broke, and Franklin pledged his life, his fortune and his sacred honor to the patriot cause. As the Revolution drew on, William Franklin became a partisan of the British Government, and, when he still held fast to his own office, in spite of the dismissal of his father from his office as Deputy Postmaster-General for the Colonies, Franklin wrote to him bluntly: "But you, who are a thorough Courtier, see everything with Government Eyes." The son even disregarded what was practically a request from the father that he should give up an office, which was becoming more and more complicated with the arbitrary measures of the English Ministry, and had been year after year a drain upon the purse of the father. Then followed his ignominious arrest as a Tory by the New Jersey Assembly, his defiant vaunt " Pro Rege and Patria was the motto I assumed, when I first commenced my political life, and I am resolved to retain it till death shall put an end to my mortal existence," his breach with his father, his rancorous activity as the President of the Board of Associated Loyalists, which drew down on him the suspicion of having abetted at least one murderous outrage, and his subsequent abandonment of America for England, where he died long after the war, a pensioner of the British Crown. With the breach between father and son, ended forever the visits that the members of the Franklin family in Philadelphia had been in the habit of paying from time to time to the Colonial Governor, the personal intercourse between the two, which, upon the part of the father, we are told by William Strahan, was at once that of a friend, a brother and an intimate and easy companion, and such filial letters as the one, for example, in which William Franklin wrote to Franklin that he was extremely obliged to him for his care in supplying him with money, and should ever have a grateful sense of that with the other numberless indulgences that he had received from his parental affection. After the restoration of peace between the two waning countries, overtures of reconciliation were made by William Franklin. "I … am glad," his father wrote, "to find that you desire to revive the affectionate Intercourse, that formerly existed between us. It will be very agreeable to me; indeed nothing has ever hurt me so much and affected me with such keen Sensations, as to find myself deserted in my old Age by my only Son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up Arms against me, in a Cause, wherein my good Fame, Fortune and Life were all at Stake." Then with an uncertain touch of the native sense of justice, which was so deeply seated in his breast, he continued: "I ought not to blame you for differing in Sentiment with me in Public Affairs. We are Men, all subject to Errors. Our Opinions are not in our own Power; they are form'd and govern'd much by Circumstances, that are often as inexplicable as they are irresistible. Your Situation was such that few would have censured your remaining Neuter, tho' there are Natural Duties which precede political ones, and cannot be extinguish'd by them ." Responding to a statement in this same letter that the writer would be glad to see him when convenient, but would not have him come to Paris at that time, William Franklin had a brief interview with his father at Southampton, when the latter was returning, after the restoration of peace between Great Britain and the United States, full of gratified patriotism, as well as of years and infirmities, to the land from which the son was an outcast. That immedicable wound, however, was not to be healed by one or even by many interviews, and, while Franklin did subsequently devise his lands in Nova Scotia to William Franklin and release him from certain debts, he could not refrain from a bitter fling in doing so. "The part he acted against me in the late war, which is of public notoriety," the will ran, "will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeavoured to deprive me of."