CHAPTER VIII.

STUDIES AND PUBLICATIONS IN ENGLAND.

THE dividing year between old England and modern England is 1760. On the twenty-fifth of October, of that year, old George II. fell dying in his closet, and his grandson, George III., with unprecedented éclat, ascended the throne. This ignorant, moody, wellintentioned young man was to be "the retarding person" in the history of the time. Directly through him the British empire was to be dismembered, the national expenditures increased sevenfold, and a national debt created that remains the wonder of the world. But the gods, if I may use that heathen word, love England, though man loves her not. So, in this very year, a poor mathematical instrument maker in Edinburgh, Watt by name, began to experiment upon the steam engine, and Arkwright forsook his barber's shop and entered upon a wandering way of life (buying up hair for the wigmakers), which led him ere long to become the improver of cotton spinning machinery. And these two men provided for the English exchequer the countless millions which were squandered in consequence of the ignorance of George III.

There is a provision in nature, says Goethe, for preventing trees from growing up into the sky. George III. performed this office for that brave old oak, the realm of Britain. The student of this period cannot but amuse himself sometimes by fancying what might have been, if this unhappy young king had chanced to be an able and enlightened person. Suppose, for example, that Benjamin I., with his massive understanding, his great knowledge, his noble prudence, his openness to conviction, his good heart, his gracious presence, had come to the throne of England in October, 1760! He would not have exchanged a Pitt for a Bute, I think. There had been no George Grenville at the head of the cabinet; no stamp act; no American Revolution, probably, in that century; no French Revolution; and, perhaps, no need of one. From Manhattan Island, instead of the banks of the Thames, Englishmen might at this moment be ruling half the world. But there is a provision in nature for preventing trees from growing up into the sky. And, therefore, appeared George III., at the nick of time, to call off Mr. Pitt,

just as he had it in his power to permanently humble the House of Bourbon, and make England and her protestant allies supreme in Europe.

King though he was not, nor minister, we can now perceive that Benjamin Franklin was the man then living who had the clearest comprehension of the state of things, and the most correct view of the true policy of England. He had the prodigious advantage of being an Englishman without being an Islander. His mind had something of the breadth, fertility, and clear atmosphere of his native continent, without having lost the practical sense of the British man of detail. He considered well the questions of the day, and in the decision of some of them he exerted an influence that, perhaps, was preponderating.

In the Annual Register for this year, I find part of Franklin's essay on the Peopling of Countries, which was written before he left America. It was, probably, inserted in the Register by Edmund Burke, the editor of that work, who headed it, "Extract from a Piece written in Pennsylvania." The object of this essay -incredible to relate!-was to remove the prevalent impression that the growth of the American colonies tended to impoverish England. Most Englishmen at that day appear to have believed, that the people and the wealth of the colonies were so much drawn from the mother country; and, as a too vigorous progeny sometimes exhausts a mother, so, it was feared, these hungry young colonies would at last drain their aged parent; reducing her, at once, to decrepitude and poverty. Franklin combated this astonishing delusion by arguments which Adam Smith has since made familiar to the world. Indeed, there can be no doubt that the author of the Wealth of Nations read this pamphlet before he wrote the first book of his great work, which contains very numerous allusions to the North American colonies.

“There is,” said Franklin, “no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other's means of subsistence. Were the face of the earth vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread with one kind only, as, for instance, with fennel; and, were it empty of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be replenished from one nation only, as, for instance, with Englishmen. Thus, there are supposed to be now upwards of one million English

souls in North America (though it is thought scarce eighty thousand has been brought over sea), and yet perhaps there is not one the fewer in Britain, but rather many more, on account of the employment the colonies afford to manufacturers at home. This million doubling, suppose but once in twenty-five 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!" Franklin's conjecture that the population of the colonies would double every twenty-five years, was very happy, for it has held true down to the census of 1860. Adam Smith adopts the conjecture.*

The passages of this pamphlet which arrest the eye of the recent reader, are those in which the author, in a few sentences, exhausts the argument against African slavery. A hundred years of discussion have added little to his summary of the withering effects of that hideous crime against nature. He saw in 1760, as clearly as we see in 1860, that the true victim of slavery is the master, whom it enervates, diminishes, and savagizes-not the slave, whom it tortures, but holds for final deliverance and civilization. The black man appears slowly to improve under slavery. The white master seems generally to lose, in three or four generations, every redeeming trait of human nature.

After the accession of the young monarch, a clamor arose in the kingdom for peace; a clamor not unpleasing to the new courtiers. Franklin was a Pittite. He was for a vigorous prosecution of the war until the enemy should be disposed to make a peace that could be reasonably expected to last. To impair the effect of the pamphlets, sermons, and articles which favored an immediate peace at almost any price, he wrote what purported to be a chapter from an old book, which he said was written by a Spanish Jesuit, and addressed to an ancient king of Spain. The chapter was entitled, "On the Means of Disposing the Enemy to Peace." The imaginary Jesuit advises his king to spend a few doubloons in changing the minds of his enemies by corrupting their authors, editors, and preachers. The English people, he intimates, "though hardie of

"In Great Britain, and most other European countries, the inhabitants are not supposed to double in less than five hundred years. In the British colonies in North America, it has been found, that they double in twenty or five and twenty years."- Wealth of Nations, book 1. chapter viii.

bodie, and bold in fight, be nevertheless, through over much eating and other intemperance, slow of wit, and dull in understanding,” and therefore easily deceived. "In England," he continues, "there are not wanting Menne of Learning, ingenious Speakers and Writers, who are nevertheless in lowe Estate, and pinched by Fortune. These, being privately gained by proper Meanes, must be instructed in their Sermons, Discourses, Writings, Poems, and Songs, to handle and specially inculcate Points like these which followe. Let them magnifie the Blessings of Peace, and enlarge mightilie thereon, which is not unbecoming grave Divines and other Christian Menne. Let them expatiate on the Miseries of Warre, the Waste of Christian Blood, the growing Scarcitie of Labourers and Workmen, the Dearness of all foreign Wares and Merchandise, the Interruption of Commerce, the Captures of Ships, the Increase and great Burthen of Taxes."

He proceeds to state all the arguments used by the writers of the day who opposed the continuance of the war. "The result will be," concludes the Jesuit, "that all those who be timerous by Nature, amongste whom be reckoned Menne of Learning that lead sedentarie Lives, doing little Exercise of Bodie, and thence obtaining but few and weake Spirits; great Statesmen, whose natural Spirits be exhausted by much Thinking, or depressed by overmuch Feasting; together with all Women, whose Power, weake as they are, is not a little amongste the Menne; these shall incessantly speake for Peace. And finally, all Courtiers, who suppose they conforme thereby to the Inclinations of the Prince; all who are in Places, fear to lose them, or hope for better; all who are out of Places, and hope to obtaine them; with all the worldly-minded Clergy, who seeke Preferment; these, with all the Weighte of their Character and Influence, shall join the crie for Peace; till it becomes one universal Clamor, and no Sound but that of Peace, Peace, Peace, shall be heard from every Quarter."

This ingenious production was published in the Morning Chronicle, and was signed "A Briton." Nothing could be better adapted to its purpose. And though there are weighty objections to this mode of political warfare, we must bear in mind that it was then a universal opinion that the enemies of England did expend gold in corrupting influential persons. In this very chapter, the Jesuit remarks: "I shall say little of the Power of Money secretly dis

tributed among Grandees, or their Friends or Paramours; that Method being in all Ages known and practised." It is possible that some pamphleteers and editors may really have been hired to advocate peace by French gold, and many of them certainly were by English. A political writer who wrote from disinterested couvictions, was a rarity at that period: and, therefore, I suppose we must accept Franklin's Chapter as a fair hit.

A work more extensive, and worthier of his powers, was published by Dr. Franklin soon after the capture of Quebec. It became a question which of the late acquisitions should be retained, at the conclusion of peace, Canada, or the Sugar Islands of Guadaloupe; those two islands having an area of five hundred and thirtyfour square miles, and producing annually three hundred thousand pounds' worth of sugar. In this controversy the Earl of Bath and one of the Burkes (William) took part; the Earl arguing for Canada, and Mr. Burke for Guadaloupe. Franklin wrote a voluminous pamphlet on the subject, entitled "The Interests of Great Britain Considered, with regard to her Colonies, and the acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe." He showed, that while Canada remained French, the English colonies of North America could never be safe, nor peace in Europe permanent. His arguments will occur to every reader, and need not be repeated. We moderns, who know the value and magnificent capabilities of Canada, can only marvel that it could ever have been put into comparison with any sugar island, or all the sugar islands. There is, however, a point or two in this pamphlet, which will reward the reader's attention for a moment.

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To appreciate its courteous opening paragraph, one must have been immersed, for some time, in the acrimonious controversies of the first years of George III. It will suffice, if the reader turns over a volume of that shallow and brutal calumniator, Junius." Franklin began his pamphlet thus: "I have perused, with no small pleasure, the Letter Addressed to Two Great Men" (by the Earl of Bath), and the "Remarks on that letter" (by Mr. W. Burke). "It is not merely from the beauty, the force, and perspicuity of expression, or the general elegance of manner, conspicuous in both pamphlets, that my pleasure chiefly arises; it is rather from this, that I have lived to see subjects of the greatest importance to this nation, publicly discussed without party views or party heat, with decency and politeness, and with no other warmth than what a zeal