Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

in complete control of the appointment of officers, and of all the orders
directed to them. Apprised of these facts, Penn relented and expressed his
warm approval of the institution as a necessity of the time.
Franklin displayed his cunning in the affair by having a fast day proclaimed
in honor of the association, in order to bring the clergy and God in
on the side of the scheme. As Franklin himself boasted in his autobiography:
"Calling in the aid of religion, I proposed to them (the Governor and Council)
the proclaiming a fast to ... implore the blessing of heaven on our
undertaking. . . . This gave the clergy of the different sects an opportunity of
influencing their congregation to join in the association, and it will probably
have been general among all but Quakers if the peace had not soon intervened."
Indeed, peace "intervened," and disproved all the nonsensical claims and
fears perpetrated by Franklin and the ruling war party. The Quakers emerged
from the war more honored and entrenched than ever; they needed to retain
only their unity and principle to continue the peace policy. As we shall soon
see, however, this proved impossible, and a good part of the responsibility for
the collapse of Quaker peace principles belongs to Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin was, indeed, a man of many and versatile attainments, but he
lived, it must be remembered, in a versatile and unspecialized age when
learned men were familiar with most of the ranges of human thought. Moreover,
he was the opportunist par excellence; amidst all the uncritical adulation
for Franklin, probably Professor Joseph Dorfman has given the most just estimate:
"In an age where great flexibility of mind and action was called for, he
[Franklin] was without peer in moving with the course of events. His inconsistencies
were many, but they were the inevitable accompaniments of his
diverse loyalties and his journalistic habits."*
Benajmin Franklin, the son of a Boston artisan, made his way to Philadelphia
to work as a printer, setting up his own business in 1728, at the age of
twenty-two. Characteristic of Franklin—the popular and inveterate spouter of
copybook maxims—was the way he repaid the venerable Andrew Bradford,
Pennsylvania's first printer, and his son William, who had befriended the
young Franklin and had gotten him his first job as a printer. Anxious to
obtain the highly lucrative patronage of being public printer, and seeing that
Bradford had printed an Assembly address containing some errors, Franklin
quickly prepared a correct printing and sent a copy to every member of the
Assembly. He was soon able to take the public printing business away from
Bradford.
Franklin was able to develop a lucrative printing business at so young an
age largely by keeping an eye to the main chance—that is, through an ability
to win a favored place at the public trough by gaining the patronage of older
•Joseph Dorfmi¤, The Economic Mind in American Civilization (New York: Viking
Press, 1946), 1: 178.
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