10 - Statesmanship

Summary

Franklin applied Whig principles of natural right, social compact theory, and the proper ends of government to colonial politics. From his earliest years, he argued for American equality, not just between the “meaner Sort” and the “better Sort” in Pennsylvania, but with the British. The theory of the state of nature was all too applicable to the actual state of affairs during the breakdown of government in Pennsylvania Province, during the periods of chaos on the frontier, as well as the time after the American colonial revolt from Britain (“a whole people … without any laws or government at all”). And it was precisely the gap between Franklin's liberalism and the elitist views—Mulford calls this “the problem of liberalism”—that guided his policies during the 1750s and 1760s. As a prudential statesman, Franklin understood that principles must be applied in ways that often contradicted one another. This included exempting the proprietors from taxes in order to defend the colony, abandoning precedent to procure the necessary materials for the Braddock campaign, shifting party allegiances, and changing strategies to achieve colonial union. But Franklin's ends, throughout, were informed by “early modern liberal” principles. Franklin's prudence may best be summed up in his greatest political lesson: “Those who govern … do not generally like … considering and carrying into Execution new Projects. The best public Measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous Wisdom, but forc’d by the Occasion.” Or in our modern parlance: Never waste a political crisis.

Origins

Franklin's earliest political ideas came from the Whig theories of the Old Charter Party in Boston. James Franklin surrounded himself with aspiring wits that opposed the New Charter Party and its concessions to the Crown. According to Lemay, Franklin learned burlesque in part from “the Massachusetts hero of his boyhood, the Reverend John Wise,” who famously refused to carry out Edmund Andros's order to levy taxes without the people's consent. Wise was jailed and denied the writ of habeas corpus.6 His Vindication of New England Churches (1717) used the Whig theory of natural rights both to resist the efforts of Increase Mather to consolidate New England churches and to preserve the original freedoms of representation and speech in the New Charter.