Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed, Volume 2 (of 2). Bruce Wiliam Cabell

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      Have extorted from the Posterity of those Settlers;

      And are daily endeavouring to reduce them

      To the most abject Slavery:

      Tho' to the Virtue and Industry of those People

      In improving their Country,

      They owe all that they possess and enjoy.

      A striking Instance

      Of human Depravity and Ingratitude;

      And an irrefragable Proof,

      That Wisdom and Goodness

      Do not descend with an Inheritance;

      But that ineffable Meanness

      May be connected with unbounded Fortune.

      It may well be doubted whether any one had ever been subjected to such overwhelming lapidation as this since the time of the early Christian martyrs.

      There are many other deadly thrusts in the Preface, and nowhere else are the issues between the Proprietaries and the People so clearly presented, but the very completeness of the paper renders it too long for further quotation.

      Franklin, however, was by no means allowed to walk up and down the field, vainly challenging a champion to come out from the opposing host and contend with him. At his towering front the missiles of the Proprietary Party were mainly directed. Beneath one caricature of him were these lines:

      "Fight dog, fight bear! You're all my friends:

      By you I shall attain my ends,

      For I can never be content

      Till I have got the government.

      But if from this attempt I fall,

      Then let the Devil take you all!"

      Another writer strove in his lapidary zeal to fairly bury Franklin beneath a whole cairn of opprobrious accusations, consuming nine pages of printed matter in the effort to visit his political tergiversation, his greed for power, his immorality and other sins, with their proper deserts, and ending with this highly rhetorical apostrophe:

      "Reader, behold this striking Instance of

      Human Depravity and Ingratitude;

      An irrefragable Proof

      That neither the Capital services

      of Friends power, tyranny."

      Nor the attracting Favours of the Fair,

      Can fix the Sincerity of a Man,

      Devoid of Principles and

      Ineffably mean:

      Whose ambition is

      And whose intention is

      The illegitimacy of William Franklin, of course, was freely used during the conflict as a means of paining and discrediting Franklin. In a pamphlet entitled, What is sauce for a Goose is also Sauce for a Gander, the writer asserted that the mother of William was a woman named Barbara, who worked in Franklin's house as a servant for ten pounds a year, that she remained in this position until her death and that Franklin then stole her to the grave in silence without pall, tomb or monument. A more refined spirit, which could not altogether free itself from the undertow of its admiration for such an extraordinary man, penned these lively lines entitled, "Inscription on a Curious Stove in the Form of An Urn, Contrived in such a Manner As To Make The Flame Descend Instead of Rising from the Fire, Invented by Dr. Franklin."

      "Like a Newton sublimely he soared

      To a summit before unattained,

      New regions of science explored

      And the palm of philosophy gained.

      "With a spark which he caught from the skies

      He displayed an unparalleled wonder,

      And we saw with delight and surprise

      That his rod could secure us from thunder.

      "Oh! had he been wise to pursue

      The track for his talents designed,

      What a tribute of praise had been due

      To the teacher and friend of mankind.

      "But to covet political fame

      Was in him a degrading ambition,

      The spark that from Lucifer came

      And kindled the blaze of sedition.

      "Let candor then write on his urn,

      Here lies the renowned inventor

      Whose fame to the skies ought to burn

      But inverted descends to the centre."

      The election began at nine o'clock in the morning on October 1, 1764. Franklin and Galloway headed the "Old Ticket," and Willing and Bryan the "New." The latter ticket was supported by the Dutch Calvinists, the Presbyterians and many of the Dutch Lutherans and Episcopalians; the former by the Quakers and Moravians and some of the McClenaghanites. So great was the concourse of voters that, until midnight, it took fifteen minutes for one of them to work his way from the end of the line of eager electors to the polling place. Excitement was at white heat, and, while the election was pending, hands were busy scattering squibs and campaign appeals in English and German among the crowd. Towards three the next morning, the new-ticket partisans moved that the polls be closed, but the motion was opposed by their old-ticket foes, because they wished to bring out a reserve of aged or lame retainers who could not stand long upon their feet. These messengers were dispatched to bring in such retainers from their homes in chairs and litters, and, when the new-ticket men saw the success, with which the old-ticket men were marshalling their recruits, they, too, began to scour the vicinage for votes, and so successful were the two parties in mobilizing their reserves that the polls did not close until three o'clock in the afternoon of the second day. Not until the third day were the some 3900 real and fraudulent votes cast counted; and, when the count was over, it was found that Franklin and Galloway had been defeated. "Franklin," said an eye-witness of the election, "died like a philosopher. But Mr. Galloway agonized in death like a mortal deist, who has no hopes of a future life."

      As for Franklin, his enemies had simply kicked him upstairs. A majority of the persons returned as elected belonged to his faction, and, despite the indignant eloquence of Dickinson, who declared him to be the most bitterly disliked man in Pennsylvania, the Assembly, by a vote of nineteen to eleven, selected him as the agent of the Province to go over to England, and assist Richard Jackson, its standing agent, in "representing, soliciting and transacting the affairs" of the Province for the ensuing year.

      The minority protested; and moved that its protest be spread upon the minutes, and, when this motion was denied, it published its remonstrance in the newspapers. This act provoked a pamphlet in reply from Franklin entitled Remarks on a Late Protest. Though shorter it is as good, as far as it goes, as the preface to Galloway's speech. He tosses the protestants and their reasons for believing him unfit for the agency on his horns with astonishing ease and strength, calls attention to the trifling majority of some twenty-five votes by which he was returned defeated, and chills the habit that we often indulge of lauding the political integrity and decorum of our American ancestors at our own expense by inveighing against the "many Perjuries procured among the wretched Rabble brought to swear themselves intitled to a Vote" and roundly saying to the protestants to their faces, "Your Artifices did not prevail everywhere; nor your double Tickets, and Whole Boxes of Forged Votes. A great Majority of the new-chosen Assembly were of the old Members, and remain uncorrupted."

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