Volume Ii Part 17 (1/2)

[20] ”Your medallion is in good company; it is placed with those of Lord Chatham, Lord Camden, Marquis of Rockingham, Sir George Saville, and some others, who honoured me with a show of friendly regard, when in England.”

(Letter from Franklin to Geo. Whatley, May 18, 1787.)

[21] This idea is advanced also in _The Mother Country_, _A Song_, which Jared Sparks thought was probably written by Franklin about the time of the Stamp Act or a little later:

”We have an old mother that peevish is grown; She snubs us like children that scarce walk alone; She forgets we're grown up and have sense of our own; Which n.o.body can deny, deny, Which n.o.body can deny.

If we don't obey orders, whatever the case, She frowns, and she chides and she loses all pati- Ence, and sometimes she hits us a slap in the face, Which n.o.body can deny, etc.

Her orders so odd are, we often suspect That age has impaired her sound intellect.

But still an old mother should have due respect, Which n.o.body can deny, etc.

Let's bear with her humors as well as we can; But why should we bear the abuse of her man?

When servants make mischief, they earn the rattan, Which n.o.body should deny, etc.

Know too, ye bad neighbours, who aim to divide The sons from the mother, that still she's our pride; And if ye attack her we're all of her side, Which n.o.body can deny, etc.

We'll join in her lawsuits, to baffle all those, Who, to get what she has, will be often her foes; For we know it must all be our own, when she goes, Which n.o.body can deny, deny, Which n.o.body can deny.”

[22] ”But there can hardly be a doubt, as between the America and the England of the future, that the daughter, at some no very distant time, will, whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than the mother.

”'O matre forti filia fortior.'”

_Kin Beyond Sea_, by William E. Gladstone.

[23] Jared Sparks hardly overstates the case when he a.s.serts that the policy and acts of Lord Hillsborough contributed more, perhaps, than those of any other man towards increasing the discontents which led to the separation of the Colonies from Great Britain.

[24] On Jan. 28, 1820, John Adams stated in a letter to Dr. Hosack, of New York, that Temple had told him in Holland that he had communicated the Hutchinson letters to Dr. Franklin, though ”I swear to you,” he said to Adams, ”that I did not procure them in the manner represented.”

[25] Worldly success has rarely been less effective in gilding an unworthy character than it was in the case of Wedderburn. American indignation over his tirade against Franklin, indecent as it was under the circ.u.mstances, would seem to be somewhat overdone, when we remember the professional license allowed from time immemorial to the pleas of lawyers. It is enough to say that we can safely leave his English contemporaries to take care of his forbidding reputation. The searing irons of two of the most ferocious satirists of literary history have left ineffaceable scars upon his forehead. In the _Rosciad_ Churchill lifted the veil from the future in these terms:

”To mischief train'd, e'en from his mother's womb, Grown old in fraud, tho. yet in manhood's bloom, Adopting arts, by which gay villains rise, And reach the heights, which honest men despise.”

”In vain,” Junius wrote to the Duke of Grafton, some ten years later, ”would our gracious sovereign have looked round him for another character as consummate as yours. Lord Mansfield shrinks from his principles; Charles Fox is yet in blossom; and as for Mr. Wedderburn, there is something about him which even treachery can not trust.” But the ”gracious sovereign,” to whom Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Rosslyn, sold his Whig principles, when they had reached just the right stage of merchantable maturity, was equally hard upon him. ”When he died,” Lord Brougham tells us, ”after a few hours'

illness, the intelligence was brought to the King, who, with a circ.u.mspection abundantly characteristic, asked the bearer of it if he was quite _sure_ of the fact, as Lord Rosslyn had not been ailing before; and, upon being a.s.sured that a sudden attack of gout in the stomach had really ended the days of his late servant and once a.s.siduous courtier, his majesty was graciously pleased to exclaim: 'Then he has not left a worse man behind him.'”

[26] It is hard to think of a man, whose life was so essentially urban as that of Franklin, becoming a backwoodsman, but such he was ready to become, if necessary. In his _Hints for a Reply to the Protests of Certain Members of the House of Lords against the Repeal of the Stamp Act_, he uses this resolute language: ”I can only Judge of others by myself. I have some little property in America. I will freely spend nineteen s.h.i.+llings in the pound to defend my right of giving or refusing the other s.h.i.+lling, and, after all, if I can not defend that right, I can retire cheerfully with my little family into the boundless woods of America, which are sure to afford freedom and subsistence to any man who can bait a hook or pull a trigger.”

[27] In 1780, Franklin wrote from Pa.s.sy to Georgiana s.h.i.+pley: ”I am unhappily an Enemy, yet I think there has been enough of Blood spilt, and I wish what is left in the Veins of that once lov'd People, may be spared by a Peace solid and everlasting.”

[28] Franklin's three political hobbies were gratuitous public service, a plural executive and a single legislature. Through his influence, the second and third of these two ideas were engrafted upon the Revolutionary Const.i.tution of the State of Pennsylvania, and were later ably defended by him, when a.s.sailed. The manner in which he ill.u.s.trated his opposition to a bi-cameral legislature is well-known. ”Has not,” he said, ”the famous political Fable of the Snake, with two Heads and one Body, some useful Instruction contained in it? She was going to a Brook to drink, and in her Way was to pa.s.s thro' a Hedge, a Twig of which opposed her direct course; one Head chose to go on the right side of the Twig, the other on the left; so that time was spent in the Contest, and, before the Decision was completed, the poor Snake died with thirst.” As far as carrying the idea of gratuitous public service into execution was concerned, Franklin, of course, might as well have attempted to grow pineapples in the squares of Philadelphia.

[29] In his Diary John Adams states shortly after his arrival in France that it was said among other things that Arthur Lee had given offence by an unhappy disposition, and by indiscreet speeches before servants and others concerning the French nation and government--despising and cursing them.

[30] Deprived of its epigrammatic form, this estimate does not differ so very greatly from that of Jefferson a few years later: ”He is vain, irritable and a bad calculator of the force and probable effects of the motives which govern men. This is all the ill which can possibly be said of him. He is as disinterested as the being who made him; he is profound in his views and accurate in his judgment, except when a knowledge of the world is necessary to form a judgment. He is so amiable, that I p.r.o.nounce you will love him if ever you become acquainted with him. He would be, as he was, a great man in Congress.”

[31] On Oct. 29, 1778, Vergennes finally wrote to Gerard, the French Minister at Philadelphia, that his fear of Lee and of _ses entours_ made the communication of state secrets to him impossible, and he instructed Gerard to inform Congress that Lee's conduct had ”created the highest disgust” in the courts of France and Spain. It is doubtful whether any man of the same degree of parts, courage and patriotic constancy as Arthur Lee was ever more irredeemably condemned by the general verdict of his contemporaries or posterity. It would be a profitless task to bring together the most notable of these judgments. Jefferson summed up most of them in a few words: ”Dr. Lee,” he said, ”was his (Franklin's) princ.i.p.al calumniator, a man of much malignity, who, besides enlisting his whole family in the same hostility, was enabled, as the agent of Ma.s.sachusetts with the British Government, to infuse it into that State with considerable effect. Mr. Izard, the Doctor's enemy also, but from a pecuniary transaction, never countenanced these charges against him. Mr. Jay, Silas Deane, Mr. Laurens, his colleagues also, ever maintained towards him unlimited confidence and respect.” Silas Deane, the most efficient envoy except Franklin sent abroad by Congress during the Revolution, derived a degree of unaffected pleasure from the respect felt for Franklin in France that contrasts most favorably with the base jealousy of Arthur Lee and the ign.o.ble jealousy of John Adams. After telling how the French populace on a certain occasion showed Franklin a measure of deference seldom paid to their first princes of the blood, he says: ”When he attended the operas and plays, similar honors were paid him, and I confess I felt a joy and pride which was pure and honest, though not disinterested, for I considered it an honor to be known to be an American and his acquaintance.”

[32] John Adams admits in his Diary that Deane was ”active, diligent, subtle and successful, having accomplished the great purpose of his mission to advantage.” After the recall of Deane from France, Franklin wrote of him to Henry Laurens: ”Having lived intimately with him now fifteen months, the greatest part of the time in the same House, and been a constant witness of his public Conduct, I can not omit giving this Testimony, tho. unasked, in his Behalf, that I esteem him a faithful, active, and able Minister, who, to my Knowledge, has done in various ways great and important Service to his Country, whose Interests I wish may always, by every one in her employ, be as much and as effectually promoted.” On other occasions, Franklin spoke in equally laudatory terms of the abilities and services of Deane. But when Deane, soured by the persistent malevolence of Arthur Lee and the injustice of Congress, was weak enough to fall away from ”the glorious cause,”

Franklin gave him up. ”I see no place for him but England,” he wrote to Robert Morris. ”He continues, however, to sit croaking at Ghent chagrined, discontented, and dispirited.” Franklin, however, was too nice a judge of conduct, and of the balanced considerations, which have to be taken into account in pa.s.sing upon it, not to refer later to Deane as ”poor, unhappy Deane,”--language such as he would have been the last man in the world to use with regard to a perfidious scoundrel like Benedict Arnold.

[33] The Diary of John Adams shows that shortly after he arrived in France Franklin took pains to lay before him the lamentable situation created by the impracticable tempers of the Lees and Izard. It would have been well for the reputation of Adams if this conversation had resulted in a thorough understanding between Franklin and himself, but the bias that he brought to France as a member of the Adams-Lee faction in Congress and the inability of his egotistical, jealous, suspicious and bustling, though honorable and fearless, nature, to reconcile itself to the overshadowing fame and influence of Franklin at the French Court drew him into working relations with Lee and Izard, which abundantly verified all that Franklin had said to him about them. ”There are two men in the world,” he declares in his Diary, ”who are men of honor and integrity, I believe, but whose prejudices and violent tempers would raise quarrels in the Elysian fields, if not in Heaven.” At times the vanity of Adams--easily mortified, easily elated as all vanity is--was humbled by some fresh proof of the dwarfing prominence of Franklin. ”Neither Lee nor myself is looked upon of much consequence,”