Essays of Benjamin Franklin

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1752429486

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-127700

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Franklin, Benjamin http://d-nb.info/gnd/118534912

Title:: Essays of Benjamin Franklin

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: G. P. Putnam's Sons

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: xi, 273 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: XXXI.To Francis Maseres

Collection:: Economics Books

2. Benjamin Franklin [1785 we are broken, and the parts must now do as well as they can for themselves. We may still do well, though separated. I have great hopes of our side, and good wishes for yours. The anarchy and con- fusion you mention, as supposed to prevail among us, exist only in your newspapers. I have authentic accounts, which assure me that no people were ever better governed, or more content with their respec- tive constitutions and governments, than the present Thirteen States of America. A little reflection may convince any reasonable man that a government wherein the administrators are chosen annually by the free voice of the governed, and may also be recalled at any time if their conduct displeases their constituents, cannot be a tyrannical one, as your loyalists represent it; who at the same time inconsistently desire to return and live under it. And, among an intelligent, enlightened people, as ours 1s, there must always be too numerous and too strong a party for supporting good government and the laws, to sufier what is called anarchy. This bet- ter account of our situation must be pleasing to your humanity, and therefore I give it you. But we differ a little in our sentiments respecting the loyalists (as they call themselves), and the con- duct of America towards them, which, you think, ‘‘seems actuated by a spirit of revenge; and that it would have been more agreeable to policy, as well as justice, to have restored their estates upon their tak- ing the oaths of allegiance to the new governments.’ That there should still be some resentment against them in the breasts of those, who have had their ‘64

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