Volume Ii Part 15 (2/2)
He approved the proposed article making the presidential term of office seven years, and declaring its inc.u.mbent ineligible for a second term. The sagacity of this conclusion has been confirmed by experience. There was nothing degrading, Franklin thought, in the idea of the magistrate returning to the ma.s.s of the people; for in free governments rulers are the servants, and the people are their superiors and sovereigns. The same popular bias manifested itself when the proposition was made to limit the suffrage to freeholders. ”It is of great consequence,” he said, ”that we should not depress the virtue and public spirit of our common people, of which they displayed a great deal during the war, and which contributed princ.i.p.ally to the favorable issue of it.” The British statute, setting forth the danger of tumultuous meetings, and, under that pretext, narrowing the right of suffrage to persons having freeholds of a certain value, was soon followed, he added, by another, subjecting the people, who had no votes, to peculiar labors and hards.h.i.+ps. Some days later, Madison informs us, he expressed his dislike to everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people. If honesty was often the companion of wealth, and, if poverty was exposed to peculiar temptations, it was not less true, he declared, that the possession of property increased the desire for more property. Some of the greatest rogues he was ever acquainted with were the richest rogues. They should remember the character which the Scriptures require in rulers, that they should be men hating covetousness. The Const.i.tution would be much read and attended in Europe, and, if it should betray a great partiality to the rich, would not only cost them the esteem of the most liberal and enlightened men there, but discourage the common people from removing to America.
He strongly favored the clause giving Congress the power to impeach the President. When the head of the government cannot be lawfully called to account, the people have no recourse, he said, against oppression but revolution and a.s.sa.s.sination. These, it should be recollected, were the utterances of a man who was from age too near the end of political ambition to be possibly influenced by demagogic designs of any sort. Franklin also opposed the idea of conferring an absolute veto upon the President, and the requirement of fourteen years' residence as a condition of citizens.h.i.+p.
Four years he believed to be enough. He approved the article making an overt act essential to the crime of treason, and exacting the evidence of two witnesses to establish the overt act.
He also forcibly expressed his views with regard to the respective powers with which the two Houses of Congress should be invested. When the Convention was drawing to a close, he urged its members in a tactful and persuasive speech to lay aside their individual disappointments, and to give their work to the world with the stamp of unanimity. As is well known, when the last members were signing, he looked towards the President's chair, at the back of which there was a representation of a rising sun, and, after observing to some of his a.s.sociates near him that painters had found it difficult in their art to distinguish a rising from a setting sun, he concluded with this exultant peroration: ”I have often and often, in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: but now, at length, I have the happiness to know, that it is a rising and not a setting sun.” And a rising sun, indeed, it was, starting out upon its splendid circuit like the sun in the lines of Charles Lamb, ”with all his fires and travelling glories round him.”
The opinions of Franklin with regard to general political topics are always acute and interesting, and, unlike the opinions of most great men, even the greatest, are rarely, if ever, flecked by the errors of his time. In some quarters, there has been a disposition to reproach him with being an advocate of what since his day has come to be known in the United States as rag or fiat money. The reproach loses sight of the fact that the currency problems, with which he had to deal, did not turn upon the true respective functions of paper and real money, under conditions that permit their application to their several natural and proper uses. No such conditions existed in America during the colonial period or the Revolutionary War.
There was no California, Alaska, Nevada, or Colorado then. ”Gold and Silver,” Franklin said in 1767, in his _Remarks and Facts Concerning American Paper Money_, ”are not the Produce of _North-America_, which has no Mines.”
Every civilized community, unless it is to be remanded to mere barter, must have some kind of convenient medium for the exchange of commodities and the payment of debts, even though it be no better than wampum or tobacco.
Paper money, whether it bore interest or not, and whether it was a legal tender or not, was, unsupported by any real provision for its redemption, a dangerous currency for America, in her early history, as it is for any country, whatever its state of maturity; but she had no choice. It was either that or something not even as good on the whole for monetary purposes. Not only were there no gold or silver mines in North America, but the balance of trade between the Colonies and Great Britain was so greatly in favor of the latter country that even such gold and silver coin, as found its way to them, was at once drawn off to her.
However fit [bitterly declared Franklin in the pamphlet, to which we have just referred], a particular Thing may be for a particular Purpose, wherever that Thing is not to be had, or not to be had in sufficient Plenty, it becomes necessary to use something else, the fittest that can be got, in lieu of it.
In America, this undoubtedly was a paper currency, even though issued as real, and not representative, money. At times, in the history of the Colonies, it worked much pecuniary loss and debas.e.m.e.nt of morals, but, makes.h.i.+ft as it was, it was the best makes.h.i.+ft that the situation of the Colonies allowed; and, when New England pet.i.tioned for the Act of Parliament, depriving it of the legal-tender quality within her limits, it was only, Franklin contended, because the close intercourse between the four provinces, of which she was const.i.tuted, and the large supply of hard money, derived by her from her whale and cod fisheries, took the sting out of the act. But, when the act was afterwards extended to the other colonies, it became a real grievance, and, as such, was stated by Franklin, in his examination before the House of Commons, to be one of the causes, which had lessened the respect of the Colonies for Parliament. ”It seems hard therefore,” he said in the paper just mentioned, ”to draw all their real Money from them, and then refuse them the poor Privilege of using Paper instead of it.” In the same essay, the circ.u.mstances, in which the need for a paper currency in the Colonies originated, are stated in his perspicuous manner: ”The Truth is, that the Balance of their Trade with Britain being generally against them, the Gold and Silver is drawn out to pay that Balance; and then the Necessity of some Medium of Trade has induced the making of Paper Money, which could not be carried away.”
In his capacity as colonial agent, Franklin earnestly strove to secure the repeal of the British legislation, forbidding the use of paper money in the Colonies as a legal tender, and he even enlisted for this purpose the aid of a large body of London merchants, engaged in the American trade, but his efforts met with slight success. Some of the members of the Board of Trade, who had united in recommending the restraint upon colonial paper money, were, it was said, at the time in the state of mind of Soame Jenyns, who had laughingly declared, when he was asked as a member of the Board to concur in some measure, ”I have no kind of objection to it, provided we have heretofore signed nothing to the contrary.”[45] Worse still, Grenville threw out the chilling suggestion in the House of Commons that Great Britain should make the paper money for the Colonies, issue it upon loan there, take the interest and apply it as Parliament might think proper.[46] This suggestion, and the interest excited by it led to a letter from Franklin to Galloway in which he said that he was not for applying again very soon for a repeal of the restraining act. ”I am afraid,” he remarked, ”an ill use will be made of it. The plan of our adversaries is to render a.s.semblies in America useless; and to have a revenue independent of their grants, for all the purposes of their defence, and supporting governments among them.”
These comments were followed by the suggestion that the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly might be pet.i.tioned by the more prominent citizens of Pennsylvania to authorize a moderate emission of paper money, though without the legal-tender feature; the pet.i.tion to be accompanied by a mutual engagement upon the part of the pet.i.tioners to take the money in all business transactions at rates fixed by law. Or, perhaps, Franklin said, a bank might be established that would meet the currency needs of the community.
In any event, should the scarcity of money continue, they would rely more upon their own industrial resources, to the detriment of the British merchant, and by keeping in Pennsylvania the real cash, that came into it, would, in time, have a quant.i.ty sufficient for all their occasions. The same thought, tinged with a trace of resentment, emerges in one of his letters to Lord Kames:
As I think a scarcity of money will work with our other present motives for lessening our fond extravagance in the use of the superfluous manufactures of this country, which unkindly grudges us the enjoyment of common rights, and will tend to lead us naturally into industry and frugality, I am grown more indifferent about the repeal of the act, and, if my countrymen will be advised by me, we shall never ask it again.[47]
The relations sustained by Franklin to the Continental paper currency we have already seen. There was an apparent element of inconsistency in his suggestion that it should bear interest; for interest-bearing bills, he had contended in his _Remarks and Facts Concerning American Paper Money_, were objectionable as currency, because it was tedious to calculate interest on one of them, as often as it changed hands, and also because a distinct advantage was to be gained by h.o.a.rding them.
The Continental bills depreciated so rapidly that in 1777 the price of a bushel of salt at Baltimore was nine pounds. Three years later, the price of a yard of ca.s.simere in America was $300, and of a yard of jean and habit cloth $60. Inflated as the bills were, Franklin with his cheerful habit of mind was not at a loss to say a good word for them. There was some advantage to the general public, at any rate, he wrote to Stephen Sayre, in the facility with which taxes could be paid off with the depreciated paper. Congress, he wrote to Dr. Cooper, had blundered in not earlier adopting his suggestion that the interest on the bills should be paid in real money.
The _only Remedy_ now [he said] seems to be a Diminution of the Quant.i.ty by a vigourous Taxation, of great nominal Sums, which the People are more able to pay, in proportion to the Quant.i.ty and diminished Value; and the _only Consolation_ under the Evil is, that the Publick Debt is proportionably diminish'd with the Depreciation; and this by a kind of imperceptible Tax, everyone having paid a Part of it in the Fall of Value that took place between his receiving and Paying such Sums as pa.s.s'd thro' his hands.
In this same letter, Franklin declared that it was a mystery to foreign politicians how America had been able to continue a war for four years without money, and how it could pay with paper that had no previously fixed fund appropriated specifically to redeem it. ”This Currency, as we manage it,” he said, ”is a wonderful Machine. It performs its Office when we issue it; it pays and clothes Troops, and provides Victuals and Ammunition; and when we are obliged to issue a Quant.i.ty excessive, it pays itself off by Depreciation.” The paper he subsequently wrote to Thomas Ruston had really operated as a tax, and was perhaps the most equal of all taxes, since it depreciated in the hands of holders of money, and thereby taxed them in proportion to the sums they held and the time they held them, which generally was in proportion to men's wealth.
All this, of course, was but making the best of a _pis-aller_. Franklin in a sense held a brief for paper money all his life, because, during almost his whole life, his country had to put up with paper money, whether she wanted to do so or not. When the Revolutionary War was over, he could be less of an advocate, and more of a judge with respect to such money; and the change is neatly ill.u.s.trated in the words that he wrote from Philadelphia to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld in 1787. ”Paper money in moderate quant.i.ties has been found beneficial; when more than the occasions of commerce require, it depreciated and was mischievous; and the populace are apt to demand more than is necessary.”
To see at once how quickly Franklin could evade the danger, lurking in the proposition, urged by John Adams upon Vergennes, that the subjects of King Louis were as fairly amenable to the will of Congress, in reducing the value of paper money in their hands to one part in forty, as the Americans themselves, and yet how perfectly Franklin understood the workings of a depreciated paper currency, we need but turn to a letter from him to M. Le Veillard dated Feb. 17, 1788.
Where there is a free government [he said in this letter] and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money. It is no more so than compelling a man by law to take his own note. But it is unjust to pay strangers with such money against their will. The making of paper money with such a sanction is however a folly, since, although you may by law oblige a citizen to take it for his goods, you cannot fix his prices; and his liberty of rating them as he pleases, which is the same thing as setting what value he pleases on your money, defeats your sanction.
Franklin was a free-trader, but his opinions with regard to import duties are sometimes streaked with Protectionist reasoning. All the natural leanings of such a broad-minded man were, it almost goes without saying, in favor of unrestricted commerce. His general att.i.tude towards commercial restrictions was emphatically expressed in one of his letters to Peter Collinson from which we have already quoted.
In time perhaps [he said] Mankind may be wise enough to let Trade take its own Course, find its own Channels, and regulate its own Proportions, etc. At present, most of the Edicts of Princes, Placaerts, Laws & Ordinances of Kingdoms & States for that purpose, prove political Blunders. The Advantages they produce not being _general_ for the Commonwealth; but _particular_, to private Persons or Bodies in the State who procur'd them, and _at the Expence of the rest of the People_.
Many years later, he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan, ”The making England entirely a free port would have been the wisest step ever taken for its advantage.” In recent years, his _Wail of a Protected Manufacturer_ has been reprinted and widely circulated in England by the opponents of the Fair Trade movement:
Suppose a country, X, which has three industries--cloth, silk, iron--and supplies three other countries--A, B, and C--therewith, wishes to increase the sale and raise the price of cloth in favour of its cloth-makers.
To that end X prohibits the importation of cloth from A.
In retaliation A prohibits silks coming from X.
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