¶1  By coming up with what is now known as the matching grant, Franklin showed how government and private initiative could be woven together, which remains to this day a very American approach. He believed in volunteerism and limited government, but also that there was a legitimate role for government in fostering the common good. By working through public-private partnerships, he felt, governments could have the best impact while avoiding the imposition of too much authority from above.

¶2  There were other streaks of conservatism, albeit what would now be labeled compassionate conservatism, in Franklin’s political style. He believed very much in order, and it would end up taking a lot to radicalize him into an American revolutionary. Though charitable and very much a civic activist, he was wary of the unintended consequences of too much social engineering.

¶3  This was reflected in a ruminative letter on human nature he sent to his London friend Peter Collinson. “Whenever we attempt to mend the scheme of providence,” Franklin wrote, “we need be very circumspect lest we do more harm than good.” Perhaps even welfare for the poor was an example. He asked whether “the laws peculiar to England which compel the rich to maintain the poor have not given the latter a dependence.” It was “godlike” and laudable, he added, “to relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures,” but might it not in the end “provide encouragements for laziness”? He added a cautionary tale about the New Englanders who decided to get rid of blackbirds that were eating up corn crops. The result was that the worms the blackbirds used to eat proliferated and destroyed the grass and grain crops (letter to Collinson, 9 May 1753). 

¶4  But these were questions more than assertions. In his political philosophy, as in his religion and science, Franklin was generally non-ideological, indeed allergic to anything smacking of dogma. Instead, he was, as in most aspects of his life, interested in finding out what worked. As one writer noted, he exemplified the Enlightenment’s “regard for reason and nature, its social consciousness, its progressivism, its tolerance, its cosmopolitanism, and its bland philanthropy.” He had an empirical temperament that was generally averse to sweeping passions, and he espoused a kindly humanism that emphasized the somewhat sentimental (but still quite real) earthly goal of “doing good” for his fellow man (Stewart Sherman, “Franklin and the Age of Enlightenment”).

¶5  What made him a bit of a rebel, and later much more of one, was his inbred resistance to establishment authority. Not awed by rank, he was eager to avoid importing to America the rigid class structure of England. Instead, even as a retired would-be gentleman, he continued in his writings and letters to extol the diligence of the middling class of tradesmen, shopkeepers, and leather-aprons.

¶6  Out of this arose a vision of America as a nation where people, whatever their birth or social class, could rise (as he did) to wealth and status based on their willingness to be industrious and cultivate their virtues. In this regard, his ideal was more egalitarian and democratic than even Thomas Jefferson’s view of a “natural aristocracy,” which sought to pluck selected men with promising “virtues and talents” and groom them to be part of a new leadership elite. Franklin’s own idea was more expansive: he believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and ambition. His proposals for what became the University of Pennsylvania (in contrast to Jefferson’s for the University of Virginia) were aimed not at filtering a new elite but at encouraging and enriching all “aspiring” young men.

¶7  Franklin’s political attitudes, along with his religious and scientific ones, fit together into a rather coherent outlook. But just as he was not a profound religious or scientific theorist—no Aquinas or Newton—neither was he a profound political philosopher on the order of a Locke or even a Jefferson. His strength as a political thinker, as in other fields, was more practical than abstract.

¶8  This was evident in one of his more important political tracts, “Observation Concerning the Increase of Mankind,” which he wrote in 1751. The abundance of unsettled lands in America, he said, led to a faster population growth. This was not a philosophical surmise but an empirical calculation. He observed that the colonists were only half as likely as the English to remain unmarried, that they married younger (around age 20), and that they averaged twice as many children (approximately eight). Thus, he concluded, America’s population would double every twenty years and surpass that of England in one hundred years.

¶9  He turned out to be right. America’s population surpassed that of England in 1851, and kept doubling every two decades until the frontier ran out at the end of that century. Adam Smith cited Franklin’s tract in his 1776 classic, The Wealth of Nations, and Thomas Malthus, famous for his gloomy views on overpopulation and inevitable poverty, also used Franklin’s calculations.

¶10  Franklin, however, was no Malthusian pessimist. He believed that, at least in America, increased productivity would keep ahead of population growth, thus making everyone better off as the country grew. In fact, he predicted (also correctly) that what would restrain America’s population growth in the future was likely to be wealth rather than poverty, because richer people tended to be more “cautious” about getting married and having children.

¶11  Franklin’s most influential argument—one that would play a significant role in the struggles ahead—was against the prevailing British mercantilist desire to restrain manufacturing in America. Parliament had just passed a bill prohibiting ironworks in America, and it held fast to an economic system based on using the colonies as a source of raw materials and a market for finished products.

¶12  Franklin countered that America’s abundance of open land would preclude the development of a large pool of cheap urban labor. “The danger, therefore, of these colonies interfering with their Mother Country in trades that depend on labor, manufactures, etc., is too remote to require the attention of Great Britain.” Britain would soon be unable to supply all of America’s needs. “Therefore Britain should not too much restrain manufactures in her colonies. A wise and good mother will not do it. To distress is to weaken, and weakening the children weakens the whole family” (“Observations,” 1751).

¶13  The seriousness of this tract on imperial affairs was balanced by a satirical one he wrote around the same time. Britain had been expelling convicts to America, which it justified as a way to help the colonies grow. Writing as Americanus in the Gazette, Franklin sarcastically noted that “such a tender parental concern in our Mother Country for the welfare of her children calls aloud for the highest returns of gratitude.” So he proposed that America ship a boatload of rattlesnakes back to England. Perhaps the change of climate might tame them, which is what the British had claimed would happen to the convicts. Even if not, the British would get the better deal, “for the rattlesnake gives warning before he attempts his mischief, which the convict does not” (“Felons and Rattlesnakes,” Pennsylvania Gazette, 9 May 1751).