Being now sent to England as agent for the Assembly of Pennsylvania, I imagined my business would be troublesome, yet manageable; for I still believed that men who heard reason plainly set before them would in time submit to it. In this I understood argument better than power. Power has a logic of its own, and does not always love to be instructed.
My errand at first concerned the disputes of our Assembly with the Proprietors; but while I labored in that business, I came insensibly to observe a greater one, namely the growing misunderstanding between Britain and her colonies. I had long loved England. I admired her learning, her industry, her laws, and the strength she had acquired by commerce and liberty. I did not then think separation desirable, nor indeed necessary. I wished only that America might be governed with the same regard to rights which Englishmen at home claimed as their inheritance.
In London I had the advantage of good company, both among men of science and men of affairs. My electrical experiments had procured me some acquaintance, and acquaintance is a kind of paper money which, if founded on real credit, may answer many uses. I learned there that reputation, once earned in one field, may be spent in another; yet a wise man spends it sparingly, for public life draws down a man’s stock faster than private business.
I returned for a time to Philadelphia, but was soon again sent to England. By then the quarrel had grown larger. Parliament, not content with regulating trade, would tax the colonies internally. This gave great offence in America, where it was thought an Englishman’s purse ought not to be opened without his consent, given by himself or his representatives. I was examined before the House of Commons concerning the temper and circumstances of the colonies, and had the good fortune to answer in a manner useful to our cause. The Stamp Act was repealed. Many imagined the difficulty ended. I thought it only postponed; for the root of the mischief was not the tax, but the opinion in Britain that Americans might be compelled in all cases whatsoever.
Thus I learned an important truth: when one side thinks itself entitled to command, and the other resolved to preserve its liberty, small disputes are but sparks from a deeper fire.
For many years I still hoped for reconciliation. I petitioned, reasoned, explained, and delayed my despair. If I erred, it was in loving too long the old connection. Men do not willingly pronounce the ruin of an arrangement under which they have prospered. I had been proud to call myself both an Englishman and an American, and would gladly have kept the two from becoming opposites. But governments, like private men, may by repeated injuries lose the benefit of former affection.
At length came the affair of Governor Hutchinson’s letters, and soon after that public scene before the Privy Council in which I was not so much examined as insulted. I stood silent under much abuse, knowing that anger might relieve me but would not serve my country. Yet I confess that day worked a great change in me. When petition is treated as insolence, obedience soon begins to look like cowardice.
I had also private sorrows. My wife Deborah died while I was abroad, which I have always accounted among the heavier penalties of my long public service; for honors earned at a distance may cost too much if they are paid for in absences that cannot be repaired. My son William, whose parts were good and whose advancement I had much promoted, adhered to the Crown in the coming troubles. No difference in public judgment ever gave me so much pain in private life. A man may negotiate with enemies; it is harder to negotiate with blood.
When I returned to America in 1775, I found not the old temper of complaint, but a new temper of decision. The breach was nearly made. Congress appointed me to several businesses, among them the Post Office, which I had formerly helped improve under the Crown and now hoped to make useful to the continent in a different service. There is some satisfaction in seeing a system built for convenience become one of the arteries of liberty.
As matters hastened, I was named with Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Adams, Mr. Sherman, and Mr. Livingston to prepare a declaration of our reasons for separating. Mr. Jefferson drafted it with great ability. I made some small alterations, as did others. The instrument, when adopted, did not create our injuries, but gave them voice; and though the world now remembers the paper, it was the resolution behind it that made the danger great. A declaration is brave only when men are ready to stand to it.
Soon after, I was sent to France. I was then advanced in years and much afflicted at times by the stone and the gout, but public necessity is a great physician; it gets many men out of bed who would otherwise remain in it. In France I found a people lively, ingenious, and well disposed to our cause, partly from principle, partly from interest, and perhaps a little from the pleasure of mortifying England. One must not despise mixed motives in allies. Nations rarely act from pure affection; it is enough if their interest marches for a while in the same road with yours.
I had there the honor to assist in procuring supplies, loans, and at last the treaties of alliance and commerce. If my plain appearance and manner were of service, I did not think it vanity to let them be so. In courts, as in shops, goods must sometimes be dressed for the market. The French saw in me, I believe, not merely a man, but a figure of America—plain, practical, self-taught, a little rough, and useful. If that fancy helped the cause, I was content to wear it.
The war continued, with its alternations of hope and fear. News from America was sometimes slow and often troubling. But after success at Saratoga and the French alliance, the balance altered. Later, in concert with Mr. Adams, Mr. Jay, and Mr. Laurens, I assisted in negotiating peace with Britain. That treaty, concluded in 1783, acknowledged the independence of the United States. Thus ended a contest which many had thought madness to begin and impossible to finish. I had lived long enough to see thirteen colonies become states, and petitions become a nation.
In 1785 I returned once more to Philadelphia. Age had bent me, pain had settled in me, and I could no longer pretend to the vigor of earlier years; yet I found public business not yet done with me. My countrymen chose me president of Pennsylvania. I accepted, as old men often do, not because the load is light, but because refusal may look like desertion.
The framing of a better federal government soon became necessary. We had won independence, but victory does not itself produce order. In the Convention of 1787 I was the oldest member and among the least able to speak at length, though not, I hope, the least willing to agree. Having seen much of life, I had learned to doubt my own infallibility, which is a temper very useful in assemblies and very rare. I supported the new Constitution, not because I thought it perfect, but because I thought it the best obtainable; and I had often observed that the public can rarely secure all the good it wants without accepting some mixture of what it would avoid.
At the close of that Convention, looking upon the sun painted on the back of General Washington’s chair, I had the satisfaction to think it a rising sun and not a setting one.
In my final years my thoughts turned more seriously to slavery, that unhappy system which custom makes familiar before reason makes it odious. In youth I had too easily tolerated what age taught me to condemn. This is one advantage of living long: a man may have time enough to correct some of his early agreements with the world. I served as president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and, shortly before my death, supported a petition to Congress against that injustice. I do not claim too much merit in seeing late what should have been seen sooner; but better an honest repentance than a stubborn consistency in error.
I had always valued useful institutions above splendid speeches. A library, a fire company, a hospital, an academy, a postal system, a learned society, a constitution—these are works that continue preaching when the preacher is silent. For the same reason, in my will I left funds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent for the benefit of young tradesmen and to grow over long years. I had been helped by small means wisely used and knew that money, like manure, does little good unless it is spread.
As death approached, I had less concern for fame than for usefulness already performed. Praise, like fireworks, makes a bright noise and disappears. Institutions are slower and dimmer things, but they continue. If I had any advantage over other men, it lay not in superior genius, but in a constant disposition to turn curiosity toward use, acquaintanceship toward cooperation, and prosperity toward public benefit.
I had been printer, writer, tradesman, inventor, postmaster, legislator, agent, commissioner, and citizen. In all these characters I made mistakes enough to furnish instruction, and some lucky choices enough to furnish example. I found that frugality without purpose may harden into meanness, that ambition without service becomes mere appetite, and that wit, unless joined to goodwill, is only a polished weapon.
Having lived many years, I can say that private virtue and public usefulness are not enemies, though they are often divorced by vanity. The safest road to reputation is to deserve it; and the surest way to be remembered kindly is not to ask too much to be remembered.
Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790, at age 84.
If you want the larger version, it begins just below.
The longer continuation, chaptered for slower reading.
Chapter I / 1757
Sent again to England, and instructed by Business more than by Books
Being now engaged more deeply than before in the public affairs of Pennsylvania, I was in the year 1757 sent to England as agent for the Assembly, there to solicit relief against the encroachments of the Proprietaries, who would enjoy the advantages of government without bearing an equal share of its burdens. I had been bred a printer, and had found by experience that types, when once set wrong, are not put right by staring at them, but by lifting them out letter by letter. Public abuses are much the same; they must be handled patiently, though the work soil the fingers.
I arrived with hopes not ill-founded, though perhaps too sanguine. For I had long observed that most men think themselves reasonable; and from that charitable opinion I was apt to conclude that, when right reason should be shown them, they would soon discover their error and amend it. This is often true of private persons, but not always of bodies of men; for assemblies have pride, ministries have interest, and empires have a kind of appetite that is not to be satisfied by argument.
My business at first related chiefly to the proprietary dispute; yet during my residence in London I came by degrees to perceive that the matter between the colonies and the mother country was of a larger kind. Britain had lately grown mighty by arms and commerce. Success seldom teaches moderation. Men who have been fortunate in war are apt to imagine that Providence has not only favored their power but signed all their claims. Thus a nation may learn empire sooner than justice.
I found in England much to esteem. I had agreeable acquaintance among men of letters and philosophy, and that reputation which my electrical experiments had procured me, though of small use in a thunder-cloud, was of some advantage in society. A man may sometimes enter by the door of science into chambers which politics would keep shut against him. Yet I also found that a provincial, however civilly received, is long considered as a kind of inferior relation, who may be smiled upon, dined with, and neglected all in the same week.
It was some mortification to discover that many in England, who knew our trade and valued our remittances, knew almost nothing of our temper, our laws, or our manner of living. They thought a colony a thing to be commanded, because it was distant; and distance, which in friendship should make allowance, in government often breeds contempt. I had lived long enough to know that contempt is never a safe ingredient in policy. Men may submit to injury longer than to scorn.
My stay, designed for a short business, drew into years. Thus public service behaves like a lawsuit: when a man enters it, he imagines he shall soon be rid of it; but he finds at last that the suit has taken possession of him, rather than he of the suit. Still I labored, wrote, visited, explained, and waited; for waiting, in civil affairs, is often the dear price of any small success.
From these beginnings I learned one thing that was afterwards of great use to me; namely, that one may love a country and yet see its faults more plainly by living abroad, just as a man sometimes discovers the defects of his own handwriting by reading it after some interval.
Chapter II / 1765–1766
Of Taxes, Rights, and the Mistake of Governing Men as Revenue
After some time in England and a return to America, I was again sent over; and during this latter residence the great question of parliamentary taxation arose in that shape which soon set all our affairs in combustion. I had long desired that the connection between Britain and the colonies might be preserved on fair terms. I esteemed that connection advantageous to both, and thought separation a medicine too violent to be taken while gentler remedies remained. But there are physicians in state who kill by the vigor of their cure.
The Stamp Act gave a universal alarm in America. The people there did not deny that government must be supported, nor were they strangers to taxes laid by their own Assemblies; but they held, and with reason, that English liberty consisted not in paying little, but in consenting first. A penny levied with consent is easier than a shilling extorted by authority. Men do not measure oppression wholly by the weight of the burden, but by the hand that places it on their shoulders.
I was examined before the House of Commons concerning the condition and disposition of the colonies, and had the satisfaction to answer those interrogatories with such clearness as I was able. It was one of those occasions in which a plain truth, plainly spoken, may do more service than much oratory. The Act was repealed; and many worthy persons on both sides rejoiced as at the cure of a dangerous disease. But I, though pleased, was not altogether easy. For the same gentlemen who took off the tax often maintained the right of imposing it. They removed the chain and kept the lock.
This distinction, which to them seemed sufficient, appeared to me of little solidity. He that says he has a right to put his hand in my pocket, though he withdraw it for the present, leaves me but an uncertain security in my purse. Governments, like certain disputants, are apt to comfort themselves by reserving a principle after surrendering the practice. Yet principles are seeds; they wait, and afterwards arise.
During these controversies I wrote much, conversed much, and hoped still more than events justified. It is difficult for a man who has long worked to preserve a fabric, to be the first that consents it cannot stand. Besides, reconciliation has always this advantage over resistance, that it promises peace without hazard; and hazard, though often inevitable, is not willingly embraced by those who have property, years, and families. Young men run more cheerfully to revolutions; old men count the cost. But old men also know that a bad peace may cost more than a good quarrel.
The ministry seemed not to understand that America had been growing while they were calculating. Towns had become cities, settlements had grown into provinces, and obedience itself had nourished that spirit which now made mere obedience more difficult. He that educates men in English notions should not wonder to find them one day acting like Englishmen.
From this time I began more seriously to suspect that the dispute was not about a stamp, a duty, or an office, but about the question whether the colonies were to be considered subjects possessing rights, or estates yielding income. When once a nation comes to value provinces chiefly by what can be got from them, it has already taken the first lesson in losing them.
Chapter III / 1774
My Hopes of Reconciliation Wear Thin
Though the repeal of the Stamp Act gave a temporary quiet, it cured not the distemper. New duties, new assertions, new resentments succeeded, as when an unskilful gardener cuts the branches and leaves the root. I had by this time the honor, or rather the burden, of serving as agent for more than one colony; and the more I learned of their several tempers, the more I was persuaded that they differed less in principle than England imagined. Their forms, interests, and denominations might vary, but they were united in one feeling—that liberty was part of their inheritance and not a favor to be renewed from session to session.
I cannot deny that my own mind was long slow to consent to the thought of a final breach. I loved the old name of Englishman. I had received much kindness in England, had found there valued friends, and had no relish for novelties in government, especially when they must be purchased by blood. The wisest changes are usually those which time seems almost to have made of itself. But there are seasons when time, instead of softening disputes, ripens them.
The affair of Governor Hutchinson’s letters, which came into my hands and were afterwards much talked of, brought upon me a degree of public censure in England beyond the proportion of my conduct. I shall not here renew the whole history. It is enough that I believed those letters discovered the true source of measures oppressive to the colonies, and that I judged it useful they should be known where their effects were borne. For this, and perhaps for more general reasons, I was made the object of a memorable invective before the Privy Council.
There are insults which, though they hurt less than blows, instruct more. I stood silent while much abuse was spent upon me; silence in such a case being the only answer that could not be misreported. Anger is often a kind of tribute paid by the weak to the strong occasion of their resentment. He that has business to serve should not waste himself in satisfying his temper. Yet I own that day went near to finishing in me what many previous acts had begun. When petition is treated as insolence, loyalty itself becomes ashamed of its condition.
Soon after, I was removed from my office in the Post Office under the Crown, which I had long endeavored to render useful and exact. Offices are pleasant things while a man holds them, and still more pleasant in the esteem of those who desire them; but I had lived too long to think either gain or honor secure where they depend on ministers. The same court that pins a ribbon on a man may next morning forget the coat.
My private afflictions at this time were such as public noise cannot drown. My dear wife Deborah, from whom many years of service abroad had too often separated me, died while I was still in England. This I ever reckoned among the heavier charges of my public employment. A man may acquire some reputation by serving the public at a distance, but he pays for it in a coin not entered in the account-books. No honors can restore a lost farewell.
I had likewise the unhappiness to differ in political judgment from my son William, whose abilities might have made him more useful to his country, had his opinions permitted. Public quarrels are sufficiently sharp when they are carried on by strangers; but when they divide families, they enter the house by a door no peace-maker can well shut. I learned then that principles are not the less serious for being debated at one table.
Thus the cords that tied me to the old system were loosened one by one: first in reason, then in affection, and at last in hope. When a government ceases to hear complaints, it tempts men to hear counsels that they had formerly rejected as extreme.
Chapter IV / 1775–1776
Return to America; Congress; and the Necessity of Choosing
I returned to Philadelphia in 1775, after an absence long enough to make me a stranger in my own street. Yet I found the country altered less in its affections than in its resolution. Formerly men had complained; now they prepared. Events had marched beyond wishes. The sword had been drawn in New England, and though many still spoke of accommodation, they spoke of it as sailors talk of calm weather in the middle of a storm.
Being chosen to the Continental Congress, I entered again upon public business in a form more grave than any I had before known. In civil disputes one may often gain time by forms, committees, and replies; but where force has once begun, delay itself becomes a kind of decision. The Congress had difficult work, not only because the danger was great, but because the members brought with them the habits of thirteen governments and were to learn in haste the business of one people. To make a nation is not much unlike making a clock: there must be many wheels, but one motion.
I was likewise appointed Postmaster General under the authority of the colonies now united in resistance. It gave me some satisfaction that an engine which under the Crown I had endeavored to improve for common convenience might be made serviceable to American union. The conveyance of letters seems a humble business; yet it is to a nation what the circulation of the blood is to the body. News binds men together who have never seen one another, and common intelligence is among the first foundations of common interest.
When the question of independence drew near, I found that many who had once dreaded the word were now more afraid of dependence than of separation. Circumstances do that for political language which fashion does for apparel; things thought too bold in one season become necessary in the next. I was named with Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Adams, Mr. Sherman, and Mr. Livingston to prepare a declaration. Mr. Jefferson wrote with a happy force and elegance; my share was small, consisting in a few amendments and the general concurrence due to the thing itself. There are works in which the honor belongs less to him who speaks first than to all who at the right moment dare to stand by the speech.
The Declaration, when adopted, did not create our rights, but asserted them. It was not a boast that we were free, but a pledge that we would support the claim. Many papers are admired which cost little; this paper was admirable because it risked much. He that signs an address asks to be read; he that signs a declaration of independence invites the gallows, if he fails.
I was sent also with others on a mission toward Canada, in hopes that province might join the common cause; but the attempt prospered not. Age, travel, bad roads, and the little success of our negotiations convinced me more than ever that Providence has fixed bounds to every man’s usefulness, and that wisdom often consists less in pressing every undertaking than in knowing which may be safely left.
Still the work enlarged. Armies must be supported, credit established, foreign favor solicited, and among all these cares there must be preserved enough union at home to prevent our being conquered by one another before the enemy completed the business. In such seasons I have observed that little jealousies, which in quiet times are but flies, become in public danger mosquitoes, and may keep a whole camp from sleeping.
Thus were we led, not by choice only, but by necessity sharpened into principle. A people may be reasoned into a claim; they are usually driven into a revolution.
Chapter V / 1776–1778
My Embassy to France, and How Plainness Sometimes Prospers at Court
In the latter end of 1776 I was sent with other commissioners to France, to solicit aid for the United States; an employment which, if it had been proposed to me in the days when I first kept a printing-house in Philadelphia, I should have taken for one of those fictions with which projectors entertain themselves. Yet life is full of translations. The compositor may become the author of his fortune, and the author the messenger of a nation.
My passage was not without hazard, for the seas were infested and our condition new. On my arrival in France I found the disposition of many persons favorable to us, though the court moved with that caution which is prudent where assistance to one side is war with the other. France was willing to see England humbled; but princes, like merchants, do not care to trust beyond their calculation. They help not because a thing is just only, but because they think it likely to succeed.
I was received with a degree of notice and civility which exceeded my expectation and perhaps my merit. The French have a turn for honoring singular characters; and whether from my plain dress, my age, my electrical fame, or the novelty of our situation, I became for a time as much a spectacle as a servant. Some persons have blamed the use I permitted to be made of this appearance. But I considered that, where a plain man may pass for a philosopher and a philosopher for the image of a new republic, it would have been weak vanity to spoil a serviceable mistake. Fine feathers may adorn a fool; plain ones may sometimes recommend an envoy.
Our commission was not without its vexations. Where several are joined in one business, and each thinks his own method the best, there will seldom be so much harmony as outsiders suppose. I had long observed that men can more easily forgive a wrong opinion in one another than a different manner. Yet public business admits no indulgence to private airs. We must often row with oars not shaped to our liking, because the boat is not our own.
The great point was credit. We wanted money, arms, clothing, stores, and the countenance of a power whose alliance would discourage our enemies and encourage our friends. To obtain all this for a people yet scarcely acknowledged was a task requiring patience enough to wait, firmness enough to ask again, and prudence enough to promise only what our country could perform. National credit, in its infancy, is more delicate than a young lady’s reputation; one rumor may hurt it, and truth comes too slow to mend the damage.
The success at Saratoga greatly altered the face of things. Victory is an argument which even kings understand. Soon thereafter the treaties of alliance and commerce were concluded; and by these France openly took our part. This was a capital event in the Revolution. From that day America was no longer a dispute within the British empire only, but an object in the balance of Europe.
I saw then more clearly than before that the world is governed less by single causes than by mixtures. We had justice, and France had interest. Some lament that human affairs are not carried by purer motives. I have learned to be content when honest ends may be advanced by motives not wholly angelic. He that waits for perfect instruments will see little work accomplished on earth.
Chapter VI / 1778–1782
Of War, Credit, and the Management of Men
After the alliance, my station in France became at once more secure and more laborious. Before, we were suitors; after, we were allies: and there is often more ceremony in friendship than in courtship. Supplies must be obtained, loans renewed, accounts settled, complaints answered, naval matters adjusted, prisoners considered, and every ill success in America explained to men who had ventured their money and their policy in the same cause. A minister abroad serves his country best when he knows that bad news, like sour wine, must not be sent home in the cask it came in.
I was by this time advanced in years and not free from painful disorders; but public necessity is a brisk apothecary. It administers a draught that keeps old men from lying down. I found moreover that labor, when mingled with purpose, is borne better than ease with anxiety. Many a man grows old by living softly.
In France I had frequent occasion to study the difference between reputation and usefulness. There are courts where a bow may seem to do more than a service, and companies where wit passes for wisdom because it is better dressed. Yet I was persuaded that steady exactness in business, even when less glittering, acquires at length a credit more substantial than charm. Pleasing manners may open the door; but dispatch, fidelity, and a memory for particulars keep a man in the room.
We were not without difficulties from our own countrymen. A young state, being little acquainted with its proper channels, sends abroad many expectations that exceed both possibility and justice. Those at home think foreign aid slower than it ought to be; those abroad know it comes faster than could have been hoped. Thus each complains from ignorance of the other’s impediments. I have always thought it one advantage of old age, that a man who has often been blamed becomes less eager either to deserve or refute every accusation.
The war at sea, the enterprises of our cruisers, and the growing embarrassments of Britain all gave encouragement. Yet I never wholly yielded to that exultation which attends favorable news. For war is a trade in uncertainties, where the same wind that brings one man his prize brings another his ruin. The habit of moderation in prosperity is no small savings-bank against future disappointment.
It has been asked what quality is most useful in negotiation. Some answer address; some secrecy; some firmness. I think patience comes nearest. Address may contrive a step, secrecy may conceal it, firmness may defend it; but patience supports the whole burden. Without it a man grows angry, and anger in bargaining is like spilling the ink before the account is finished.
I also learned that nations, like individuals, love most those services which they can understand. A battle won has a visible splendor. A loan procured, a delay prevented, a misunderstanding healed, are benefits of a quieter kind, and receive less applause, though they may preserve the army that wins the battle. The husbandman who mends the fence is not celebrated like him that kills the wolf, though the crop may depend more on the fence than on the wolf.
Thus I continued in France, striving to make myself useful rather than important; for importance is often a shadow cast by men standing in the light of great events, while usefulness is something done in the dark whether observed or not.
Chapter VII / 1783
Peace Made, and Independence Confirmed
At length the course of the war, joined to the weariness of Britain and the enlarged system of European hostilities, brought on a disposition toward peace. In such conjunctures there is danger from two opposite passions—impatience to conclude, and vanity to dictate. A good peace requires that one side shall not be too weak to bargain, nor the other too proud to hear reason.
I was joined in the negotiations by Mr. Adams, Mr. Jay, and afterwards Mr. Laurens; gentlemen of abilities and zeal, though not always of the same temper or opinion. It is a happy thing for a country when men who differ in method agree in the necessity of success. We had questions not only with Britain but among ourselves, and some with our allies; for friendship between nations, like partnership between merchants, stands best when accounts are often examined and seldom published.
It has been much discoursed whether, in treating with Britain, we departed in any measure from the expectations of France. I shall not enter minutely into what is unnecessary for the instruction of posterity. It is enough that we judged the interest of the United States required a direct settlement not to be delayed by every foreign convenience, and that the terms finally obtained were honorable and advantageous. Our independence was acknowledged, our boundaries established with considerable extent, and the great point secured that the new nation should stand in the world not as a tolerated rebellion but as a recognized power.
When the preliminary articles were signed, I felt less triumph than relief. Men suppose that public events of magnitude raise in those concerned a transport equal to their importance. It is not always so. The close of a long labor often resembles the laying down of a heavy burden more than the receiving of a prize. Joy leaps; satisfaction breathes.
I reflected then on the various steps by which Providence had conducted us: the old disputes of Assemblies and governors, the stamp duties, the petitions despised, the bloodshed, the alliances, the loans, the winters of discouragement, the recoveries, and now the peace. Great revolutions are not made of one act or one speech. They are a long account, in which many small items, apparently trifling when entered, produce at last an astonishing balance.
Some imagine that peace ends the business of a revolution. I was never of that opinion. War may establish a nation’s claim to exist; peace must teach it how to deserve existence. It is easier to expel a master than to govern oneself. Victory settles who shall command; wisdom settles what command shall be for.
Before quitting France I had one further satisfaction, that the disposition there toward America remained, in the main, friendly. This I valued; not from any wish that my country should lean permanently on foreign support, for leaning is a poor habit in states as in men, but because gratitude honestly acknowledged strengthens the character of a people. It is not dependence to remember a favor; it is meanness to forget one.
Thus did a contest, begun in protest, conclude in sovereignty. And I, who had once gone to London to mend a provincial quarrel, lived to sign the peace of a new republic.
Chapter VIII / 1785–1787
Return Home; My Service in Pennsylvania; and the Federal Convention
In 1785 I returned to Philadelphia, being then in my advanced age and much worn by public business, voyages, and infirmities. My reception by my countrymen was affectionate beyond my deserts. Applause to the living is a pleasant thing, yet not wholly safe; for a man may come to love the sound of praise better than the practice that first occasioned it. I endeavored therefore to take the good will shown me rather as a debt due to the public cause than as a treasure laid up to my private vanity.
I was chosen President of Pennsylvania, an office which, though honorable, sat on shoulders less fit than formerly to bear weight. But old men are sometimes pressed again into service because they look like landmarks, and communities, when uncertain of their road, are fond of any sign that has stood long. I accepted, being unwilling to refuse what might appear a duty.
The peace had left us with liberty enough and government too little. Our federal bond under the Articles was found insufficient to many of the common purposes for which union had been desired. States, like neighbors, may agree perfectly while nothing presses them; but a road to mend, a debt to pay, or a fence to settle quickly discovers the defects of merely verbal friendship. I therefore saw with satisfaction a Convention called to frame a better system.
In that assembly at Philadelphia in 1787 I had the distinction, and perhaps the inconvenience, of being among the oldest members and among those least able to make long speeches. Age teaches reserve partly by wisdom and partly by shortness of breath. Yet I attended as constantly as I could, listened much, and found my chief use to consist in recommending moderation. I had lived long enough to know that men often differ more in words than in things, and that a proposition rejected in a hot expression may afterwards be embraced when cooled into another form.
The Convention had among it many able men of strong opinions; a circumstance useful for producing a good plan, but not always for agreeing upon one. In such cases I have observed that every man naturally compares his own watch with the sun, and thinks the sun wrong if it differs. One of the most serviceable habits in public life is to suspect a little one’s own infallibility. This virtue is rare, because each man’s judgment is nearest to him, and proximity breeds fondness.
The Constitution at length framed did not satisfy all in every part; nor did it fully satisfy me. But I consented to it because I expected no better and because I was not sure it was not the best. This is a species of contentment which proud understandings do not easily attain. They desire to choose among perfect things, whereas politics generally offers a choice among imperfect men and tolerable measures.
At the close of the Convention, seeing the painted sun upon the back of General Washington’s chair, I had the pleasure to think it a rising, not a setting sun. I cherished that sentiment, not as a prophecy exempt from human folly, but as a hope consistent with duty. Constitutions do not work by being admired; they work by being obeyed, amended when necessary, and sustained by manners fit to preserve them.
I have sometimes thought that republics fail less from lack of wisdom than from fatigue of virtue. Men are willing enough to establish liberty, but not always to practice the self-restraint without which liberty becomes only a more civil name for confusion.
Chapter IX / 1789–1790
Of Slavery, Beneficence, and the Closing of Life
In my last years I found my thoughts drawn more seriously to certain subjects which in earlier parts of life I had not regarded with sufficient severity. Among these was slavery, that sad contradiction in a people contending for freedom while holding others in bondage. Youth is often content with customs because it has found them standing; age, if it has profited by experience, asks by what right they stand at all.
I became connected with the Pennsylvania Society for promoting the abolition of slavery, and thought it no discredit in old age to repair, as far as I might, some errors of former opinion. There is a stubborn pride which calls itself consistency and refuses to leave a mistake because it has long lodged there. I have never greatly esteemed that pride. A man who persists in a wrong notion merely because it is his own resembles one who cherishes a disease for fear the physician should seem wiser than he.
Accordingly, not long before my death, I concurred in presenting to Congress a petition against that evil. The opposition it met with showed how much remains to be done in every country after it has secured the outward forms of liberty. Nations, like individuals, are patched creatures; they wear velvet on one sleeve and rags on the other. To boast only the velvet is vanity; to mend the rag is wisdom.
My bodily pains increased, and I was often reminded that Nature, though an excellent nurse, is a strict creditor. She allows no man to live on indefinitely against her books. Yet I bore these infirmities with as much patience as I could, finding some relief in conversation, in books, in occasional pleasantry, and in reflecting that a long life, like a long meal, is made more tolerable to quit when one has had enough.
I disposed by my will some sums for the use of Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent in small portions for the encouragement of young tradesmen, imagining that money, when made to circulate among the industrious, may continue after a man’s death the good office he had wished to perform in his life. Wealth, I have ever thought, resembles manure less in its smell than in this, that it yields most when spread.
Looking back on my course, I could not but see many faults, imprudences, and vain pursuits mixed with the more useful parts of my conduct. It is a comfort, however, that life does not demand of us perfection before it consents to take some service from us. He that waits till he can do everything well will leave much undone. I had been printer, writer, tradesman, philosopher, magistrate, agent, and minister; in all which characters I made enough mistakes to humble me, and perhaps enough use to render the mistakes forgivable.
Of fame I thought less as I approached the end. Fame is an excellent breakfast, a tolerable dinner, and a very poor supper. By that time a man chiefly values kindness received, mischief avoided, and whatever institutions he may leave behind him that can proceed without his noise. A saying dies quickly unless it is lodged in a practice.
Thus I came near the close, persuaded of little more than this: that private thrift is a good servant but a bad master; that knowledge without public spirit is a lantern in a miser’s cellar; and that the happiest talent a man can possess is not invention only, nor wit only, nor even prudence only, but a certain turn of mind that makes him useful to others while he prospers himself.
Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790, aged 84.