Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed, Volume 2 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own WritingsBruce, Wiliam Cabell
History
Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed, Volume 2 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own Writings
Bruce, Wiliam Cabell
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
This Million doubling, suppose but once in 25 years,
will, in another Century, be more than the People of
_England_, and the greatest Number of _Englishmen_ will
be on this Side the Water. What an Accession of Power
to the _British Empire_ by Sea as well as Land! What
Increase of Trade and Navigation! What Numbers of Ships
and Seamen! We have been here but little more than 100
years, and yet the Force of our Privateers in the late
War, united, was greater, both in Men and Guns, than
that of the whole _British_ Navy in Queen _Elizabeth's_
time.
Indeed so fully possessed was he even as late as 1771 with the federative
spirit, which has brought recruits from Canada and Australia to the side of
England in recent wars that, after urging upon Thomas Cushing the
importance of a well-disciplined militia being maintained by
Massachusetts, for her protection against invasion by a foreign foe, he
added, "And what a Glory would it be for us to send, on any trying
Occasion, ready and effectual Aid to our Mother Country!" It is only by
reading such words as these that we can begin to divine what the divulsion
of England and America has really meant to the vast host of human beings
throughout the world who speak the English tongue.
To all the shallow sophistries or sottish errors, that tended to falsify
his glorious dream of world-wide British unity, Franklin presented a
merciless intellect. With regard to the intention of Parliament to tax the
colonies, he had these pointed words to say in a letter to Peter Collinson
in 1764: "What we get above a Subsistence we lay out with you for your
Manufactures.
"Therefore what you get from us in Taxes you must lose in Trade. The Cat
can yield but her skin."
Even more acute was his letter to the _Public Advertiser_ on a proposed Act
to prevent emigration from England. Such an Act, he declared, was
unnecessary, impracticable, impolitic and unjust. What is more, with an
insight into the laws governing population, superior to that of any man of
his time, he made his assertions good. To illustrate this claim in part, we
need go no further than what he had to say about the necessity of the Act.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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