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have the fewer at home for those that go abroad; and, as every man who comes among us and takes up a piece of land becomes a citizen, and by our constitution has a voice in elections, and a share in the government of the country, why should you be against acquiring by this fair means a repossession of it, and leave it to be taken by foreigners of all nations and languages, who by their numbers may drown and stifle the English, which otherwise would probably become, in the course of two centuries, the most extensive language in the world, the Spanish only excepted? It is a fact that the Irish emigrants and their children are now in possession of the government of Pennsylvania, by their majority in the Assembly, as well as of a great part of the territory; and I remember well the first ship that brought any of them over. I am ever, my dear friend, yours, most affectionately,

B. FRANKLIN.

[TO GEORGE WHATLEY.]

Privileges of Old Age - On a Good Epitaph - Reasons for Confidence in a Future State- The American Constitution

England-Anecdote.

PASSY, May 23, 1785.

DEAR OLD FRIEND: I sent you a few lines the other day, with the medallion, when I should have written more, but was prevented by the coming in of a bavard, who worried me till evening. I bore with him, and now you are to bear with me, for I shall probably bavarder in answering your letter.

I am not acquainted with the saying of Alphonsus, which you allude to as a sanctification of your rigidity in refusing to allow me the plea of old age as an excuse for my want of exactness in correspondence. What was that saying? You do not, it seems, feel any occasion for such an excuse, though you are, as you say, rising seventy-five. But I am rising (perhaps more properly falling) eighty, and I leave the excuse with you till you arrive at that age; perhaps you may then be more sensible of its validity, and see fit to use it for yourself.

I must agree with you, that the gout is bad, and that the stone is worse. I am happy in not having them both together, and I join in your prayer that you may live till you die without either. But I doubt the author of the epitaph you send me was a little mistaken, when he, speaking of the world, says that

"he ne'er cared a pin

What they said or may say of the mortal within.”

It is so natural to wish to be well spoken of, whether alive or dead, that I imagine he could not be quite exempt from that desire; and that at least he wished to be thought a wit, or he would not have given himself the trouble of writing so good an epitaph to leave behind him. Was it not as worthy of his care that the world should say he was an honest and a good man? I like better the concluding sentiment in the old song called The Old Man's Wish, wherein, after wishing for a warm house in a country town, an easy horse, some good authors, ingenious and cheerful companions, a pudding on Sundays, with stout ale, and a bottle of Burgundy, &c. &c., in separate stanzas, each ending with this burden,

he adds,

"May I govern my passions with absolute sway,
Grow wiser and better as my strength wears away,
Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay,—”

"With a courage undaunted may I face my last day;
And when I am gone may the better sort say,

In the morning when sober, in the evening when mellow,
He's gone, and has not left behind him his fellow.

For he governed his passions,' &c."

But what signifies our wishing? Things happen, after all, as they will happen. I have sung that wishing song a thousand times when I was young, and now find at four-score that the three contraries have befallen me, being subject to the gout, and the stone, and not being yet master of all my passions. Like the proud girl in my country, who wished and resolved not to marry a parson, nor a Presbyterian, nor an Irishman, and at length found herself married to an Irish Presbyterian parson. You see I have some reason to wish that in a future state I may not only be as well as I was, but a little better. And I hope it for I too, with your poet, trust in God. And when I observe that there is great frugality as well as wisdom in His works, since he has been evidently sparing both of labor and materials; for by the various wonderful inventions of propagation he has provided for the continual peopling his world with plants and animals, without being at the trouble of repeated new creations; and by the natural reduction of compound substances to their original elements, capable of being employed in new compositions, he has prevented the necessity of creating new matter; so that the earth, water, air, and perhaps fire. which, being compounded from wood, do, when the wood is dissolved, return, and again become air, earth, fire and water; — I say, that when I see nothing annihilated, and not even a drop of

water wasted, I cannot suspect the annihilation of souls, or believe that He will suffer the daily waste of millions of minds ready made, that now exist, and put himself to the continual trouble of making new ones. Thus finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall in some shape or other always exist; and, with all the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine, — hoping, however, that the errata of the last may be corrected. * * * * *

The Philadelphia bank goes on, as I hear, very well. What you call the Cincinnati institution is no institution of our government, but a private convention among the officers of our late army, and so universally disliked by the people that it is supposed it will be dropped. It was considered as an attempt to establish something like an hereditary rank or nobility. I hold, with you, that it was wrong; may I add, that all descending honors are wrong and absurd, that the honor of virtuous actions appertains only to him that performs them, and is in its nature incommunicable. If it were communicable by descent, it must also be divisible among the descendants; and, the more ancient the family, the less would be found existing in any one branch of it, to say nothing of the greater chance of unlucky interruptions.

Our constitution seems not to be well understood with you. If the Congress were a permanent body, there would be more reason in being jealous of giving it powers. But its members are chosen annually, cannot be chosen more than three years successively, nor more than three years in seven; and any of them may be recalled at any time, whenever their constituents shall be dissatisfied with their conduct. They are of the people, and return again to mix with the people, having no more durable preeminence than the different grains of sand in an hourglass. Such an assembly cannot easily become dangerous to liberty. They are the servants of the people, sent together to do the people's business, and promote the public welfare; their powers must be sufficient, or their duties cannot be performed. They have no profitable appointments, but a mere payment of daily wages, such as are scarcely equivalent to their expenses; so that, having no chance for great places and enormous salaries or pensions, as in some countries, there is no canvassing or bribing for elections.

I wish Old England were as happy in its government, but I do not see it. Your people, however, think their constitution the best in the world, and affect to despise ours. It is comfortable to have a good opinion of one's self, and of everything that

belongs to us; to think one's own religion, king and wife, the best of all possible wives, kings, or religions. I remember three Greenlanders, who had travelled two years in Europe, under the care of some Moravian missionaries, and had visited Germany, Denmark, Holland, and England; when I asked them at Philadelphia (where they were in their way home) whether, now they had seen how much more commodiously the white people lived by the help of the arts, they would not choose to remain among us, their answer was, that they were pleased with having had an opportunity of seeing so many fine things, but they chose to LIVE in their own country. Which country, by the way, consisted of rock only; for the Moravians were obliged to carry earth in their ship from New York for the purpose of making a cabbage-garden! * * * *

We shall always be ready to take your children, if you send them to us. I only wonder that, since London draws to itself and consumes such numbers of your country people, the country should not, to supply their places, want and willingly receive the children you have to dispose of. That circumstance, together with the multitude who voluntarily part with their freedom as men to serve for a time as lackeys, or for life as soldiers, in consideration of small wages, seems to me proof that your island is over-peopled. And yet it is afraid of emigrations!

B. FRANKLIN.

[TO MRS. MARY HEWSON, LONDON.]

Recovery of an Old Letter - Life in Philadelphia-Cards- Consolation for Idleness Public Amusements - Family Matters.

PHILADELPHIA, May 6, 1786. MY DEAR FRIEND: A long winter has passed, and I have not had the pleasure of a line from you, acquainting me with your and your children's welfare, since I left England. I suppose you have been in Yorkshire, out of the way and knowledge of opportunities; for I will not think you have forgotten

me.

To make me some amends, I received, a few days past, a large packet from Mr. Williams, dated September 1776, near ten years since, containing three letters from you, one of December 12, 1775. This packet had been received by Mr. Bache after my departure for France, lay dormant among his papers

during all my absence, and has just now broke out upon me like words that had been, as somebody says, congealed in northern air. Therein I find all the pleasing little family history of your children. How William had begun to spell, overcoming by strength of memory all the difficulty occasioned by the common wretched alphabet, while you were convinced of the utility of our new one; how Tom, genius-like, struck out new paths, and, relinquishing the old names of the letters, called U bell and P bottle; how Eliza began to grow jolly, - that is, fat and handsome, resembling Aunt Rooke, whom I used to call my lovely; together with all the then news of Lady Blunt's having produced at length a boy; of Dolly's being well, and of poor good Catherine's decease; of your affairs with Muir and Atkinson, and of their contract for feeding the fish in the channel; of the Vinys, and their jaunt to Cambridge in the long carriages; of Dolly's journey to Wales with Mr. Scot; of the Wilkes's, the Pearces, Elphinston, &c. &c.; concluding with a kind of promise that as soon as the Ministry and Congress agreed to make peace I should have you with me in America. That peace has been some time made, but, alas! the promise is not yet fulfilled. And why is it not fulfilled? *

I have found my family here in health, good circumstances, and well respected by their fellow-citizens. The companions of my youth are, indeed, almost all departed, but I find an agreeable society among their children and grandchildren. I have public business enough to preserve me from ennui, and private amusement besides, in conversation, books, my garden, and cribbage. Considering our well-furnished, plentiful market as the best of gardens, I am turning mine, in the midst of which my house stands, into grass-plats, and gravel-walks, with trees and flowering shrubs. Cards we sometimes play here in long winter evenings, but it is as they play at chess,-not for money, but for honor, or the pleasure of beating one another. This will not be quite a novelty to you, as you may remember we played together in that manner during the winter you helped me to pass so agreeably at Passy. I have, indeed, now and then a little compunction in reflecting that I spend time so idly; but another reflection comes to relieve me [whispering], "You know the soul is immortal; why, then, should you be such a niggard of a little time, when you have a whole eternity before you?" So, being easily convinced, and, like other reasonable creatures, satisfied with a

*Mrs. Hewson (once Miss Mary Stevenson, and daughter of Franklin's London landlady) removed, in 1786, with her family, to Philadelphia where one of her sons became a successful physician.

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