Benjamin Franklin's Humor

9. Revising Past and Future 1786–1790

153 Revising Past and Future 9 REVISING PAST AND FUTURE 1786–1790 Philadelphians met Franklin at the wharf on 14 September 1785 and paraded him home to Market Street “with acclamations of joy,” the booming of cannon, and the pealing of bells. They elected him president of the Supreme Executive Council as Pennsylvania’s hope for “reconciling all parties.”1 Gossips claimed that councilors humored him in the morning and waited for him to leave before they took care of business.2 Records show that he presided at only one session in six.3 The pain of his many ills could be eased only by laudanum, the household remedy made from opium. The comic muse was no substitute for opium, yet he continued to write humorous material for friends and for the local press. Eighty-year-old Franklin found no relief from national service. As a delegate to the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, he was often too weak to speak, and others read his speeches for him. The records show few flashes of his apologues. During debates on the judiciary, he told “in a brief and entertaining manner” how Scotch judges were appointed by lawyers “who always selected the ablest of the profession in order to get rid of him, and share his practice among themselves.”4 Because proceedings were secret, newspapers provided epitomes of his familiar apologues. In reporting Franklin’s famous appeal for compromise at the Convention (17 September), they published paraphrases where we BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S HUMOR 154 would expect full-scale apologues. In that widely reported speech, as in his early practice, Franklin drew two anecdotes from sources known to his audience, the first by Richard Steele, and the second by Paris friend Madame La Freté.5 —Most men indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far errour. Steele, a Protestant, in a dedication , tells the Pope, that the only difference between our two churches, in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrine, is, the Romish church is infallible, and the church of England is never in the wrong. —But though many private persons, think almost as highly of their own infallibility as that of their Sect—few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who in a little dispute with her sister, said, I do not know how it happens, sister, but I meet with no body but myself that is always in the right.6 While the Convention was in session, Franklin organized a Society for Political Enquiry holding seminars at his home to study problems facing the innovative democratic republic. Among studies of long-range finance and urban problems, Franklin proposed a timely study of freedom of the press, a problem he had faced in earliest days on the New-England Courant and now encountered with renewed anxiety. During the intense state conventions being held to ratify the Constitution, the press replaced debate with invective, even calling Franklin an old fool.7 From his sickbed, the weary veteran of newspaper wars of sixty years wrote to preserve Pennsylvania’s unicameral system that he had proposed first to the Albany Congress in 1754 and later to the Continental Congress in 1776. He concocted an attack on bicameralism with a fable as sharp as the fables he had wielded against the British Parliament. Has not the famous political Fable of the Snake, with two Heads and one Body, some useful Instruction contained in it? She 155 Revising Past and Future was going to a Brook to drink, and in her Way was to pass thro’ a Hedge, a Twig of which opposed her direct Course; one Head chose to go on the right Side of the Twig, the other on the left; so that time was spent in the Contest, and, before the Decision was completed, the poor Snake died with thirst.8 In earlier conflicts, Franklin had relied on his own pen against almanac competitors, religious zealots, greedy proprietors, powermad parliaments, and unruly kings. Now, on 23 November 1787, he asked the Society for Political Enquiry to study the responsibility that came with a free press.9 Another sign of his deep concern was a draft he did not publish complaining about the “Spirit of Rancour, Malice, and Hatred” in Philadelphia newspapers. Using actual quotations and a device of his...