Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own WritingsBruce, Wiliam Cabell
History
Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own Writings
Bruce, Wiliam Cabell
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
James Wright, and his sister, Susannah Wright, who resided at Hempfield,
near Wright's Ferry, Pennsylvania, were likewise good friends of Franklin.
Part at any rate of the flour, on which Braddock's army subsisted, was
supplied by a mill erected by James Wright near the mouth of the Shawanese
Run. Susannah Wright was a woman of parts, interested in silk culture, and
fond of reading. On one occasion, Franklin sends her from Philadelphia a
couple of pamphlets refuting the charges of plagiarism preferred by William
Lauder against the memory of Milton and a book or tract entitled
_Christianity not Founded on Argument_. On another occasion, in a letter
from London to Deborah, he mentions, as part of the contents of a box that
he was transmitting to America, some pamphlets for the Speaker and "Susy"
Wright. Another gift to her was a specimen of a new kind of candles, "very
convenient to read by." She would find, he said, that they afforded a clear
white light, might be held in the hand even in hot weather without
softening, did not make grease spots with their drops like those made by
common candles, and lasted much longer, and needed little or no snuffing.
A sentiment of cordial friendship also existed between Franklin and
Anthony Benezet, a Philadelphia Quaker, born in France, who labored
throughout his life with untiring zeal for the abolition of the Slave
Trade. This trade, in the opinion of Franklin, not only disgraced the
Colonies, but, without producing any equivalent benefit, was dangerous to
their very existence. When actually engaged in business, as a printer, no
less than two books, aimed at the abolition of Slavery, one by Ralph
Sandyford, and the other by Benjamin Lay, both Quakers, were published by
him. The fact that Sandyford's book was published before 1730 and Lay's as
early as 1736, led Franklin to say in a letter to a friend in 1789, when
the feeling against Slavery was much more widespread, that the headway,
which it had obtained, was some confirmation of Lord Bacon's observation
that a good motion never dies--the same reflection, by the way, with which
he consoled himself when his abridgment of the Book of Common Prayer fell
still-born.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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