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The Spectacle Blog
Having just finished a remarkably good biography of Ben Franklin (by H.W. Brands), I had two different columns out this week about different things we can learn from him these days. The first, for CFIF, noted his insightful thoughts on economics.
The great and wise Franklin, sounding much like an 18th Century Jack Kemp, wrote a fascinating response in 1784 in answer to an English editor accusing Americans of predilections towards luxury. Franklin, despite his own personal frugality, argued that a taste for luxury might not be a bad thing.
“Is not the hope of being one day able to purchase and enjoy luxuries a great spur to labour and industry? May not luxury, therefore, produce more than it consumes?”….
[And Franklin questioned] “the English statutes for the maintenance of the poor. Franklin asked himself whether these laws had not instilled in the poor “a dependence that very much lessens the care of providing against the wants of old age.” He did not question the morality of aiding the poor, only the efficacy. “To relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures is concurring with the Deity; ’tis Godlike, but if we provide encouragements for laziness, and supports for folly, may it not be found fighting against the order of God and nature…?”
The other column, for the University of Mobile’s Center for Leadership, detailed more of Franklin’s amazing accomplishments. But, although this is far from an unknown passage, it still bears repeating:
One of Franklin’s most famous speeches from that convention, when tempers were at their worst and the whole proceedings in danger of collapse, bears repeating.
I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?
If space had permitted, I would have written much more on Franklin’s notion of “republican [small ‘r’] virtue.” It is a concept we need to revitalize.
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More Blog Posts by Quin Hillyer
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/12/14/ben-franklins-wisdom
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RJ| 12.14.12 @ 1:26PM
H. W. Brands' "The First American" is a good biography of Benjamin Franklin.
In recent years, I have been haunted by the following passage of Dr. Franklin's speech at the close of the Constitutional Convention:
" In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
I hope that we have not become that people so corrupted as to require a despotic government, but knowing how far we have moved away from our Founding principles is very troubling.
Thom| 12.16.12 @ 2:20PM
Several Founders spoke to the kind of people “fit” for the kind of government “a republic” if both were to survive. We, a majority are not fit for the form of government they gave us. We are “democracy” and like all democracies before us they consume themselves and disappear from the face of the earth. The Founders loathed “democracies” for the very reasons we are living today. Uneducated and ignorant people have an unbounded desire to live off other people’s labor and the “educated” and all knowing have an unbounded desire to profit from that.
Such is born a suicide pact with the devil.
Al Adab| 12.14.12 @ 1:31PM
2500 years of Western Civ and wisdom, including Dr, Franklin, and we have decided that all of them were wrong while Marx, Keynes and their followers are right.
"Return to proven ways, not because they are old, but because they are true." Barry Goldwater
Mazzuchelli| 12.14.12 @ 2:51PM
Brands' is my favorite Franklin biography. For there to have been so many wise and brilliant men then with such a small population at the outset of our founding and so few today with so large.
Sturmudgeon| 12.14.12 @ 5:43PM
Concisely put! If one cares to look back only as far as the late 18oo's, and examine the school 'tests' of an 8th. grader... we are a bunch of dummies today!
Thom| 12.16.12 @ 2:22PM
I couldn't pass those test. It requires real teachers to teach and learn what it take to pass those tests. Modern "education" is more day care than anything else.