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Fisher Sydney George
The True Benjamin Franklin

Afterwards, when it was definitely decided to have two Houses, the question as to the position of the smaller States was again raised in deciding how the Senate was to be composed. Some were for making its representation proportional to population, like that of the lower House, and this the small States resisted. Franklin said that the trouble seemed to be that with proportional representation in the Senate the small States thought their liberties in danger, and if each State had an equal vote in the Senate the large States thought their money was in danger. He would, therefore, try to unite the two factions. Let each State have an equal number of delegates in the Senate, but when any question of appropriating money arose, let these delegates “have suffrage in proportion to the sums which their respective States do actually contribute to the treasury.” This was not very practical, but it proved to be a step which led him in the right direction.

A few days afterwards, in a committee appointed to consider the question, he altered his suggestion so that in the lower House the representation should be in proportion to population, but in the Senate each State should have an equal vote, and that money bills should originate only in the lower House. The committee reported in favor of his plan, and it was substantially adopted in the Constitution. The lower House was given proportional representatives, and the Senate was composed of two Senators from each State, which gave absolute equality of representation in that body to all the States. Money bills were allowed to originate only in the lower House, but the Senate could propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.

Thus the great question was settled by one of those strokes of Franklin’s sublime luck or genius. He disapproved of the whole idea of a double-headed Congress, and thought the fears of the small States ridiculous; but, for the sake of conciliation and compromise with John Dickinson and his earnest followers, his masterful intellect worked out an arrangement which satisfied everybody and is one of the most important fundamental principles of our Constitution. Without it there would be no federal union. We would be a mere collection of warring, revolutionary communities like those of South America. It has never been changed and in all human probability never will be so long as we retain even the semblance of a republic.

This was Franklin’s greatest and most permanent service to his country, more valuable than his work in England or France, and a fitting close to his long life. The most active period of his life, as he has told us, was between his seventieth and eighty-second years. How much can be done in eighty vigorous years, and what labors had he performed and what pleasures and vast experiences enjoyed in that time! Few men do their best work at such a great age. Moses, however, we are told, was eighty years old before he began his life’s greatest work of leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. But it would be difficult to find any other instances in history except Franklin.

After the Constitution as prepared by the convention had been engrossed and read, it became a question whether all the members of the convention could be persuaded to sign it, and Franklin handed one of his happy speeches to Mr. Wilson to be read. He admitted that the Constitution did not satisfy him; it was not as he would have had it prepared; but still he would sign it. With all its faults it was better than none. A new convention would not make a better one, for it would merely bring together a new set of prejudices and passions. He was old enough, he said, to doubt somewhat the infallibility of his own judgment. He was willing to believe that others might be right as well as he; and he amused the members with his humor and the witty story of the French lady who, in a dispute with her sister, said, “I don’t know how it happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself that is always in the right.”

“It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded, like those of the builders of Babel, and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats…

“On the whole, sir, I cannot help expressing a wish, that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”

At the close of the reading of his speech Franklin moved that the Constitution be signed, and offered as a convenient form, —

“Done in Convention by the unanimous consent of the States present the 17th day of September, etc. In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names.”

Madison explains that this form, with the words “consent of the States,” had been drawn up by Gouverneur Morris to gain the doubtful States’ rights party. It was given to Franklin, he says, “that it might have the better chance of success.”

“Whilst the last members were signing,” says Madison, “Dr. Franklin, looking towards the president’s chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. ‘I have,’ said he, ‘often and often in the course of the session and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the president, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting, but now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.’”

So Franklin, from whose life picturesqueness and charm were seldom absent, gave, in his easy manner, to the close of the dry details of the convention a touch of beautiful and true sentiment which can never be dissociated from the history of the republic he had helped to create.

Appendix to Page 104
FRANKLIN’S DAUGHTER, MRS. FOXCROFT

It was impossible in the text at page 104 to give in full all the letters which showed that Mrs. Foxcroft was Franklin’s daughter. Most of them, however, were cited. It seems necessary now to give them in full, because since the book was first published the correctness of the statement in the text has been questioned; and the reasons for questioning it have been set forth by a reviewer in a New York newspaper called The Nation. A reply to this review appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine for May, 1899, and this reply, so far as it relates to Mrs. Foxcroft, was as follows:

The best way to discuss the above statement, and a great deal more nonsense that the reviewer has written on this subject, is to give in full the letters and reasons which have led the members of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to believe that a certain manuscript letter in the possession of the society showed that Franklin had an illegitimate daughter.

The letter itself, which Mr. Fisher gives in his book, is addressed to Franklin at his Craven Street lodgings in London, and is as follows:

Philada. Feby. 2d, 1772.

Dear Sir:

I have the happiness to acquaint you that your daughter was safely brot to Bed the 20th ulto. and presented me with a sweet little girl, they are both in good spirits and are likely to do very well.

I was seized with a Giddyness in my head the Day before yesterday as I had 20 oz. of blood taken from me and took physick wch does not seem in the least to have relieved me.

I am hardly able to write this. Mrs. F. Joins me in best affections to yourself and compts to Mrs. Stevenson and Mr. and Mrs. Huson.

I am Dr Sir yrs affectionately

John Foxcroft.

Mrs. Franklin, Mrs. Bache, little Ben & Family at Burlington are all well. I had a letter from yr. Govr. yesterday.

J. F.

It is to be observed that the above letter is an entirely serious one from beginning to end; there is no attempt to joke or make sport, as some of Franklin’s correspondents did; and the first sentence in the letter states that the writer’s wife was Franklin’s daughter and that she had given birth to a girl. The letter is apparently written to announce that event to Franklin. Such a statement, made by a man about his wife, is certainly deserving of serious consideration. Would he on such an occasion and in such a manner have said that she was Franklin’s daughter unless he firmly believed that she was?

If she was Franklin’s daughter, as her husband describes her, she must have been illegitimate, for it is well known that Franklin’s only legitimate daughter was Mrs. Sarah Bache.

John Foxcroft, the writer of the letter, is well known as the deputy postmaster of Philadelphia at that time, and Franklin was postmaster-general of the Colonies. Foxcroft and Franklin were close friends and often corresponded on business matters. We shall give, therefore, the letters of Franklin to Foxcroft in which he refers to Mrs. Foxcroft as his daughter, and we shall give them in full, so that the connection can be seen. Some of these letters are in the collection of Franklin’s papers in the State Department at Washington, and have been copied from that source. Others are from the collection of the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, and one or two can be found in Bigelow’s “Works of Franklin.”

American Philosophical Society Collection, vol. xlv., No. 46:

London, Feb. 4, 1772.

Mr. Foxcroft,

Dear Friend

I have written two or three small letters to you since my return from Ireland and Scotland. I now have before me your favours of Oct. 1, Nov. 5 and Nov. 13.

Mr. Todd has not yet shown me that which you wrote to him about the New Colony, tho he mentioned it and will let me see it, I suppose, when I call on him. I told you in one of mine, that he had advanced for your share what has been paid by others, tho I was ready to [torn] and shall in the whole Affair take the same care of your interests as of my own. You take notice that Mr. Wharton’s friends will not allow me any Merit in this transaction, but insist the Whole is owing to his superior Abilities. It is a common error in Friends when they would extol their Friend to make comparison and depreciate the merit of others. It was not necessary for his Friends to do so in this case. Mr. Wharton will in truth have a good deal of Merit in the Affair if it succeeds, he having been exceedingly active and industrious in soliciting it, and in drawing up Memorials and Papers to support the Application, remove objections &c. But tho I have not been equally active (it not being thought proper that I should appear much in the solicitation since I became a little obnoxious to the Ministry on acct. of my Letters to America) yet I suppose my Advice may have been thought of some use since it has been asked in every step, and I believe that being longer and better known here than Mr. Wharton, I may have lent some weight to his Negotiations by joining in the Affair, from the greater confidence men are apt to place in one they know than in a stranger. However, as I neither ask or expect any particular consideration for any service I may have done and only think I ought to escape censure, I shall not enlarge on this invidious topic. Let us all do our endeavours, in our several capacities, for the common Service, and if one has the ability or opportunity of doing more for his Friends than another let him think that a happiness and be satisfied.

The Business is not yet quite completed and as many Things happen between the Cup and the Lip, perhaps there may be nothing of this kind for Friends to dispute about. For if no body should receive any Benefit there would be no scrambling for the Honour.

Stavers is in the wrong to talk of my promising him the Rider’s Place again. I only told him that I would (as he requested it) recommend him to Mr. Hubbard to be replaced if it could be done without impropriety or inconveniency. This I did & the rather as I had always understood him to have been a good honest punctual Rider. His behaviour to you entitles him to no Favour, and I believe any Application he may make here will be to little purpose.

In yours from N York of July 3 you mention your intention of purchasing a Bill to send hither as soon as you return home from your journey. I have not since received any from you, which I only take notice of to you, that if you have sent one you may not blame me for not acknowledging the Receipt of it.

In mine of April 20 I explained to you what I had before mentioned that in settling our private Account I had paid you the sum of 389£ (or thereabouts) in my own Wrong, having before paid it for you to the General Post Office. I hope that since you have received your Books and looked over the Accounts you are satisfied of this. I am anxious for your Answer upon it, the sum being large and what cannot prudently for you or me be left long without an Adjustment.

My Love to my Daughter and compliments to your Brother, I am ever my dear Friend

Yours most affectionately

B Franklin

The above letter is taken from the copy kept by Franklin in his own handwriting in the collection of the American Philosophical Society. The same letter, with some verbal differences and without the last clause relating to the daughter, appears in Bigelow’s “Works of Franklin,” vol. iv., p. 473.

Library of State Department, Washington, 11 R, 8:

London, Oct. 7, 1772.

Mr. Foxcroft,

Dear Sir —

I had no line from you by this last Packet, but find with Pleasure by yours to Mr. Todd that you and yours are well.

The affair of the Patent is in good Train and we hope, if new Difficulties unexpected do not arise, we may get thro’ it as soon as the Board meet. We are glad you made no Bargain [torn] your Share and hope none of our Partners [torn] do any such thing; for the Report of such a Bargain before the Business is completed might overset the whole.

Mr. Colden has promised by this Packet that we shall certainly have the Accounts by the next. If they do not come I think we shall be blamed, and he will be superseded; For their Lordships our masters are incensed with the long Delay.

I hope you have by this time examined our private Accounts as you promised, and satisfyd yourself that I did, as I certainly did, pay you that Ballance of about 389£ in my own wrong. It would relieve me of some uneasiness to have the Matter settled between us, as it is a Sum of Importance and in case of Death might be not so easily understood as while we are both living.

With love to my Daughter and best Wishes of Prosperity to you both, and to the little one, I am ever my dear Friend

Yours most affectionately,

B. Franklin

Library of State Department, Washington, 11 R, 12:

London Nov 3 1772

Mr. Foxcroft

Dear Sir

I received your Favour of June 22d by Mr. Finlay and shall be glad of an opportunity of rendering him any service on your Recommendation. There does not at present appear to be any Disposition in the Board to appoint a Riding Surveyor, nor does Mr. Finlay seem desirous of such an Employment. Everything at the Office remains as when I last wrote only the Impatience for the Accounts seems increasing. I hope they are in the October Packet now soon expected agreeable to Mr. Colden’s last promise.

I spent a Fortnight lately at West Wycomb with our good master Lord Le Despencer and left him well.

The Board has begun to act again and I hope our Business will again go forward.

My love to my Daughter concludes from

Your affectionate Friend

and humble servant B. F.

There is a letter to Foxcroft in the Library of the State Department, Washington, 11 R, 8, dated London, December 2, 1772, which need not perhaps be given in full, because Franklin sends love to his daughter and then crosses it out as follows:

I can now only add my Love to my Daughter and best Wishes of Happiness to you and yours from Dear Friend

Yours most affectionately

B. Franklin.

He apparently struck out the words “Love to my Daughter and” because they were in effect included in the best wishes and happiness which followed.

Library of State Department, Washington, 11 R, 63:

London Mar. 3, 73

Mr. Foxcroft,

Dear Friend —

I am favoured with yours of June 5, and am glad to hear that you and yours are well. The Flour and Bisket came to hand in good order. I am much obliged to you and your brother for your care in sending them.

I believe I wrote you before that the Demand made upon us on Acct. of the Packet Letters was withdrawn as being without Foundation. As to the Ohio Affair we are daily amused with Expectations that it is to be compleated at this and T’other time, but I see no Progress made in it. And I think more and more that I was right in never placing any great dependence on it. Mr. Todd has received your 200£.

Mr. Finlay sailed yesterday for New York. Probably you will have seen him before this comes to hand.

You misunderstood me if you thought I meant in so often mentioning our Acct. to press an immediate Payment of the Ballance. My Wish only was, that you would inspect the Account and satisfy yourself that I had paid you when here that large supposed Ballance in my own wrong. If you are now satisfied about it and transmit me the Account you promise with the Ballance stated I shall be easy and you will pay it when convenient.

With my Love to my Daughter &c. I am ever Dear Friend

Yours most affectionately

B. Franklin

Bigelow’s “Works of Franklin,” vol. v. p. 201:

London, 14 July, 1773.

To Mr. Foxcroft.

Dear Friend: – I received yours of June 7th, and am glad to find by it that you are safely returned from your Virginia journey, having settled your affairs there to satisfaction, and that you found your family well at New York.

I feel for you in the fall you had out of your chair. I have had three of those squelchers in different journeys, and never desire a fourth.

I do not think it was without reason that you continued so long one of St. Thomas’ disciples: for there was always some cause for doubting. Some people always ride before the horse’s head. The draft of the patent is at length got into the hands of the Attorney General, who must approve the form before it passes the seals, so one would think much more time can scarce be required to complete the business: but ’tis good not to be too sanguine. He may go into the country, and the Privy Councillors likewise, and some months elapse before they get together again: therefore, if you have any patience, use it.

I suppose Mr. Finlay will be some time at Quebec in settling his affairs. By the next packet you will receive a draft of instructions for him.

In mine of December 2d, upon the post-office accounts to April, 1772, I took notice to you that I observed I had full credit for my salary: but no charge appeared against me for money paid on my account to Mrs. Franklin from the Philadelphia office. I supposed the thirty pounds currency per month was regularly paid, because I had had no complaint from her for want of money, and I expected to find the charge in the accounts of the last year – that is, to April 3, 1773: but nothing of it appearing there, I am at a loss to understand it, and you take no notice of my observation above mentioned. The great balance due from that office begins to be remarked here, and I should have thought the officer would, for his own sake, not have neglected to lessen it by showing what he had paid on my account. Pray, my dear friend, explain this to me.

I find by yours to Mr. Todd that you expected soon another little one. God send my daughter a good time, and you a good boy. Mrs. Stevenson is pleased with your remembrance of her, and joins with Mr. and Mrs. Hewson and myself in best wishes for you and yours.

I am ever yours affectionately,

B. Franklin.

American Philosophical Society Collection, vol. xlv., No. 80:

London Feb. 18, 1774

Mr. Foxcroft,

Dear Friend —

It is long since I have heard from you. I hope nothing I have written has occasioned any coolness. We are no longer Colleagues, but let us part as we have lived so long in Friendship.

I am displaced unwillingly by our masters who were obliged to comply with the orders of the Ministry. It seems I am too much of an American. Take care of yourself for you are little less.

I hope my daughter continues well. My blessing to her. I shall soon, God willing, have the Pleasure of seeing you, intending homewards in May next. I shall only wait the Arrival of the April Pacquet with the accounts, that I may settle them here before I go. I beg you will not fail of forwarding them by that Opportunity, which will greatly oblige.

Dear Friend

Yours most affectionately

It is to be observed of all these letters that, like the original letter of Foxcroft, they are entirely serious. They are business letters. They are not letters of amusement and pleasure, in which Franklin might joke and laugh with a young girl and in sport call her his daughter. They are not addressed to the woman in question but to her husband, and at the close of long details about business matters he simply says “give my love to my daughter,” or he refers to her, as in the letter next to the last, as about to have another child. Read in connection with Foxcroft’s original letter, they form very strong proof that Franklin believed Mrs. Foxcroft to be his daughter.

But the reviewer says that Mr. Fisher notes in two places that women correspondents in writing to Franklin called him father and signed themselves “your daughter.” Mr. Fisher notes on page 332 the letter of a girl written to Franklin in broken French and English, in which she begins by calling him “My dear father Americain,” and signs herself “your humble servant and your daughter J. B. J. Conway.” The letter is obviously childish and sportive. We do not find the other instance of a similar letter to which the reviewer alludes. The Conway letter is such a frivolous one that it amounts to nothing as proof to overcome the serious, solemn statements by Franklin and Foxcroft in their letters. A light-minded French girl calling Franklin her father is very different from serious, business-like statements by Franklin saying that a certain woman was his daughter.

The reviewer goes on to say that “a little more research would have shown him [Mr. Fisher] letters of Franklin couched in the same parental terms.” The meaning of this is presumably that Franklin was in the habit of calling the young women he corresponded with his daughters. This, however, it will be observed, is quite a different matter from Franklin’s writing to a husband and sending love to the husband’s wife as his daughter. But there are some letters to young girls on which a reckless, slap-dash reviewer would be likely to base the statement that Franklin habitually called women his daughters. Let us look into these letters and see what they are.

Franklin’s first correspondent of this sort was Miss Catherine Ray, of Rhode Island. They were great friends and exchanged some beautiful letters, almost unequalled in the English language. They are collected in Bigelow’s “Works of Franklin,” vol. ii. pp. 387, 414, 495. The letter at page 387 begins “Dear Katy,” and ends “believe me, my dear girl, your affectionate faithful friend and humble servant.” The letter at page 414 begins “My Katy,” speaks of her as “dear girl,” and ends with the same phrase as the previous one, except that the word “faithful” is left out. The one at page 495 begins “Dear Katy,” and closes “Adieu dear good girl and believe me ever your affectionate friend.” In none of these letters does he speak of her as his daughter.

The letters to Miss Catherine Louisa Shipley and to Miss Georgiana Shipley, the daughters of the Bishop of St. Asaph, are friendly but not very endearing in the terms used. He once calls Georgiana “My dear friend,” and in the famous letter on the squirrel addresses her as “My dear Miss.” He nowhere calls them his daughters.

The letters that come nearest to what the reviewer wants are those to Miss Mary Stevenson. There are quite a number of them, and she and Franklin were on the most affectionate terms. We will give the citations of them in Bigelow, although any one can look them up in the index: In vol. iii. pp. 34, 46, 54, 56, 62, 139, 151, 186, 187, 195, 209, 232, 238, 245; in vol. iv. pp. 17, 33, 212, 258, 264, 287, 332, 339; in vol. x. p. 285. These letters call Miss Stevenson “Dear Polly,” “My dear friend,” “My good girl,” and “My dear good girl.” The first of them, vol. iii. p. 34, begins by addressing her as “dear child,” and another, vol. iii. p. 209, closes by saying “Adieu my dear child. I will call you so. Why should I not call you so, since I love you with all the tenderness of a father.”

This may be what the reviewer had in his mind. But Franklin nowhere calls Miss Stevenson his daughter. The word daughter and child are very different. We all of us often call children we fancy “my child.” Franklin’s use of the word child as applied to Miss Stevenson has from the context of the letters a perfectly obvious meaning, – no one can mistake it; just as his use of the word daughter in the Foxcroft letters has, from the context and all the circumstances, a perfectly obvious meaning.

It would be endless to discuss all the reviewer’s irrelevant and extravagant statements. We shall call attention to only one other illustration of his methods. He closes one of his wild paragraphs by saying that if “Mr. Fisher wishes further knowledge on this subject for ‘speculation,’ we recommend him to read Franklin’s letter to Foxcroft of September 7, 1774.”

The reviewer is careful not to quote from this letter or even to say where it may be found, and the inference the ordinary reader would draw from the way it is paraded is that it contains some very positive denial that Mrs. Foxcroft was Franklin’s daughter. But when it is examined, it is found to be a business letter like the others, referring to the lady in question as “Mrs. Foxcroft” instead of as “my daughter,” a perfectly natural way of referring to her and entirely consistent with the other letters. We give the letter in full. It is in the American Philosophical Society Collection, vol. xlv., No. 94:

London Sept. 7, 1774.

Mr. Foxcroft,

Dear Friend —

Mr. Todd called to see me yesterday. I perceive there is good deal of uneasiness at the office concerning the Delay of the Accounts. He sent me in the Evening to read and return to him a Letter he had written to you for the Mail. Friendship requires me to urge earnestly your Attention to the contents, if you value the Continuance of your Appointment; for these are times of uncertainty, and I think it not unlikely that there is some Person in view ready to step into your Shoes, if a tolerable reason could be given for dismissing you. Mr. Todd is undoubtedly your Friend. But everything is not always done as he would have it This to yourself; and I confide that you will take it as I mean it for your Good.

Several Packets are arrived since I have had a Line from you. But I had the pleasure of seeing by yours to Mr. Todd that you and Mrs. Foxcroft with your little Girl are all in good Health which I pray may continue.

I am ever my dear old friend

Yours most affectionately B. Franklin.