Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

paper, increased the numbers demanded, as well as the advertisements to be
inserted, so that it came to afford me a considerable income. My old competitor's
newspaper declined proportionally. . . ."
With his business success thus assured, Benjamin Franklin had the leisure
to turn more attention to public affairs. Here he was helped by the Junto, a
club of young men Franklin had founded in 1727. Members of the Junto,
formed for philosophical discussion and later transformed into the American
Philosophical Society, formed their own clubs and thus the Junto became a
center of intellectual life in Philadelphia. Franklin was able to tap the Junto
for financial aid and to mobilize it for help in his various public projects.
Franklin's first meddling in public affairs set the model for what was to
follow. The police force of Philadelphia was financed by a uniform tax of six
shillings a year on each householder; the bulk of the duties of the force were
undertaken by householders themselves, serving unpaid, in lieu of tax payment.
Franklin decided that it would be better to hire a full-time police
bureaucracy and to pay for it by a proportional tax on property. Franklin
never bothered to explain why it should be perfectly common and proper for a
wealthy man and a poor man to pay the same price for every other conceivable
commodity, but that morality suddenly shifted its answers regarding the service
of police protection. Working through his Junto and its numerous front clubs,
Franklin was able to change public opinion, and then to win acceptance of a
change in the law a few years later.
By the end of the war, Franklin had assumed a leading role in Pennsylvania
politics through his association movement. Having accumulated a
sufficient fortune as printer and publisher, Franklin turned more zealously to
the quest for political power. From being a clerk of the Assembly, Franklin
now became an assemblyman. In the Assembly, Franklin continued to push
for government intervention in urban affairs; for example, he sponsored a
grant-in-aid of 4,000 pounds for constructing a local hospital, conditioned on
the hospital's raising a matching sum among the public. His grant-in-aid
device enabled Franklin to override the opposition of the country members,
who did not relish subsidizing the rich city of Philadelphia by paying for a
hospital there. He also drove through a bill providing for governmental
paving and lighting of the city's streets.
Franklin added to his power and income by linking himself to the proprietary
party in the Assembly and securing its patronage, particularly that of the
powerful chief justice, William Allen. In 1753, Allen used his influence to
gain Franklin the appointment of joint deputy postmaster general of the colonies,
a lucrative post for its own sake and for aiding the circulation of Franklin's
newspaper. Franklin had begun to scramble for the post two years before
the death of the previous, ailing deputy postmaster general. Chief Justice
Allen put up 300 pounds to purchase the post for Franklin.
Despite the fact that peace had hardly yet broken out, Great Britain was
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